The innings without a double figure

India were bowled out for 36 at the Adelaide Oval on 19 December 2020. It took 21.2 overs. Not one batter reached double figures.

That last part had never happened in a Test innings before.

What the scorecard shows

Mayank Agarwal top-scored with 9 from 40 balls. Hanuma Vihari made 8. Prithvi Shaw made 4, Virat Kohli 4, Cheteshwar Pujara 0, Ajinkya Rahane 0. Mohammed Shami was on 1 when he retired hurt. The innings closes on nine wickets rather than ten.

Josh Hazlewood bowled five overs, three of them maidens, and took 5 for 8. Pat Cummins took 4 for 21. Mitchell Starc bowled six overs for seven runs and took nothing, which in almost any other Test would be the line people remembered.

The fall of wickets is the part that does not look real. India were 15 for 2, then 15 for 3, then 15 for 4, then 15 for 5. Four wickets went down without the score moving at all.

Full scorecard: Australia v India, 1st Test, Adelaide Oval, 17–19 December 2020 →

Extras: 0

There is one more figure worth sitting with. India's 36 contains no byes, no leg byes, no wides and no no-balls. The whole innings is eleven small numbers and nothing else.

This is not a coincidence of that morning. In the very lowest Test totals the extras column tends to empty out too, because the innings is short enough that the ordinary accidents of cricket never get a chance to happen. A collapse fast enough produces a scorecard with no debris in it.

The day before

India had been in front. They made 244 in the first innings, Kohli scoring 74 before he was run out, and bowled Australia out for 191. At the close on the second day they were 9 for 1 and 62 runs ahead in a match they were winning.

The collapse took a single session on the third morning. Australia needed 90 and got them for the loss of two wickets, in daylight, with the floodlights at a day-night Test never becoming relevant.

What it did not settle

The convenient explanation is the pink ball, and it is not sufficient. Australia had been bowled out for 191 with the same ball on the same pitch, and India would go on to win the series after losing this match, without their captain, with a side full of replacements.

So the lowest total in India's Test history sits inside a series they won. It is a complete record of what happened over 21.2 overs and it explains nothing about why the same players were fine a fortnight later. The scoreboard survives. The reason does not.

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No. 1 in Collapse, a series of 1.

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