Unlike what transpired over all four days of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy opener at Perth's Optus Stadium, Australian seamers out-bowled their Indian counterparts on Day 1 of the Adelaide pink-ball Test on Friday (December 6, 2024). The Mitchell Starc-led Aussie attack dismissed the visitors for 180 runs, while Jasprit Bumrah and Co could only pick up one wicket in 33 overs before stumps. (Day 1 Highlights | Streaming | More Cricket News)

Starc produced career-best figures of six for 48 in the first innings, which included the scalps of Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul and Virat Kohli. The left-arm fast bowler got wickets off the first as well as last ball of the Indian innings in the form of Jaiswal and Nitish Kumar Reddy.

Former Australia opener Matthew Hayden waxed lyrical about Starc's performance at the Adelaide Oval, calling him a "magician with the pink ball". Speaking exclusively on Star Sports, Hayden said: “He has that scrambled seam delivery that goes across the right-hander, but when he does have that ability — which he did — I must admit I was a little surprised. I’ve never really seen the pink ball swing into the sort of 40th over and so aggressively swing as well.

"By that stage, he used a really important word, and it’s a bit of an underrated word as well, and that’s ‘momentum.’ It was all in favor of India. A difficult position to come back from in life and sport is those opportunities to wrestle back momentum, and Mitchell Starc did that in only the way he can — when the lights are like the way they are and with that beautiful-coloured ball in his hand. He’s just a magician with the pink ball.”

The legendary southpaw also provided his take on Australia’s overall bowling performance on Day 1. He said: “I think Australia bowled in two halves, to be honest. I thought their first maybe 20 overs, they were very conservative. It was like they knew that the pink ball was going to start to swing. And when Scott Boland came around and just started getting into the line of the stumps, that was the turnaround.

"Around about that 35th over, we saw some of those missiles that Mitchell Starc started. That was 45, 50 overs in, and it started to swing. That’s what earned them the strong position they find themselves in today.”

Meanwhile, Indian cricket great Sunil Gavaskar shared his thoughts on what Indian bowlers need to do on Day 2. He said: “They have to make the batters play as much as they can. And this is what happens when you make the batters play as much as you can.

"You can set them up by bowling a couple of deliveries outside and then get the ball to move back in, as it did to Nathan McSweeney in the Perth Test, or to Labuschagne in the Perth Test, like what Bumrah did. The Indian bowlers have not really used the pink ball as well as they should have.”