Australia cricketers celebrate after dismissing Virat Kohli at The Gabba in Brisbane. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images) On rain-hit day, Indian top order implodes yet again in face of relentless Aussie pace attack at The Gabba BRISBANE: India sank deeper into the mire as rain played havoc here on Monday. On a bizarre stop-start day which saw the covers being put on and removed eight times, a familiar script played out as the top order made some strange calls and collapsed with next to nothing on the board.
In the limited 33.1 overs of play possible, Australia first consolidated their advantage, adding 40 runs in the morning to get to 445. Subsequently, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood did the rest with the new ball to leave India tottering at 51/4 from 17 overs faced.
Only KL Rahul, who opened the innings again, played to the situation and adapted to the conditions, made an effort to blunt the new ball and ended the day batting on 33. Giving him company was the edgy and totally out-of-character Rohit Sharma , whose lack of runs compelled him to go down the order again. Australia's relentless pace attack induced silly errors from the other batters and raised the question whether India's Test-match batting is close to imploding on this tour.
For Yashasvi Jaiswal and Virat Kohli , in particular, the Perth heroics will now seem a distant memory. India's first-innings collapses have been a constant feature of their last five Test campaigns across home and away conditions. They h.