As Adelaide perked up for the Sunday blockbuster, Team India was busy doing its bit on Thursday to make sure that defeat leaves them alone for a while, now that the Test and tri-series mess is over for good and the World Cup stares the defending champions down.
Even though Indian skipper MS Dhoni left for Melbourne on Thursday to attend the opening ceremony of the 2015 World Cup after long confabulations with team director Ravi Shastri at nets, his boys had a full-fledged drill at the picturesque St Peter’s College grounds, nestling a little away from central Adelaide.
After not marking a single victory in the long three-and-a-half month season in Australia preceding the World Cup, the skipper and his band knows how important it has become to break the killing monotony of non-performance.
Even as the Pakistani squad arrived in the city for the big clash against India in this Sunday’s expected blockbuster, the Men in Blue prepared to sort out their rival’s arm strength quite meticulously, especially the threat being posed by the 7 feet tall Pakistani pacer Mohammad Irfan.
For starters, the Indian support staff threw the ball at the batsmen from atop a raised stool to give off short ones and bouncers, deliveries that the out of form Shikhar Dhawan as also Rohit Sharma navigated for over an hour.
Expectedly, these balls flew at the batsmen at an uncomfortable height making them go on the backfoot many times to deal with the rising danger.
Sharma, who had a relaxed dinner with his mates Ajinkya Rahane and Dhawal Kulkarni at the famous Concubine restaurant on Wednesday, was all business on Thursday morning, looking refreshed after a day off from practice. Shikhar, who has been in a bother with his bat for quite some time now, worked hard to find his touch back again.
As these two mainstays of Team India’s well known batting troika sweated it out under a sizzling sun, vice-captain and face of the team in this World Cup Virat Kohli cut some scintillating shots on deliveries by Mohit Sharma and Bhuvneswar Singh, though quite surprisingly, it was Dhawal Kulkarni who bowled for much longer spells than Bhuvneswar Kumar did.
The boys also played a restricted match, setting a proper fielding and posting batsmen on two ends. Pacers Mohit Sharma and Mohammad Shami got to show off their batting prowess, hitting big ones thrown at them.
Virat Kohli polished his style at nets as usual and with some stylish shots that got him loud cheers from the motley crowd gathered at the training session.
The media, of course, was kept at an arm’s length.