Sloppy fielding lets down stingy Indians

At the end of day two of the opening Test in Adelaide, after India's bowlers had coughed up 517 runs and still had not accounted for all 10 Australian wickets, the touring party's fielding coach Ramakrishnan Sridha drew the short straw and faced the post-match media.

Lacking the hierarchical authority to dissect the team's bowling efforts, Sridha clearly felt far more comfortable running the rule over the couple of half chances and fumbles that had cost his team a potential breakthrough or two, and a few more runs.

"We are trying to get the players to be better fielders but they can't all be Jonty Rhodes," Sridhar earnestly explained to a somewhat bemused press pack still not quite sure why the fielding coach was fielding questions.

Come Boxing Day, the most eulogised and scrutinised cricket event of an Australian summer, and the Indian brainstrust might have sat through the opening session thinking "forget Jonty Rhodes, at this point we'd happily take Wilfred".

The fact that left-arm spinner Wilfred Rhodes was a sprightly 52 when he played his final Test for England in the West Indies in 1930 would self-evidently indicate that India's efforts to stop the ball when hit along the ground and – on one notably costly occasion – catch it while in the air could have been better.

But perhaps even more useful than the creaking frame that carried the game's most capped first-class player to more than 4,000 wickets throughout that elongated career was the uncompromising performance levels he set himself and gruffly expected of those alongside him.

Rhodes's curmudgeonly demeanour and his unwillingness to hide his displeasure when his teammates lapsed in concentration or execution led that most eminent of cricket writers Neville Cardus to diplomatically describe him as "not a man given to affability".

And that's probably what India needed as their standards and then a potentially vital chance from the outside edge of Shane Watson's bat dropped.

After all, India had started the Commonwealth Bank Series biggest day with a bang by getting danger opener David Warner out before he had a chance to get in. Or score a run.

But just as quickly as they prised the door to greater rewards open, the Indians carelessly let it swing shut as they were forced to wait another two and half hours to snare their next wicket.

A vast majority of the on-field participants in a cricket match at any given time are fielders who are unable to exert any direct influence on the contest between bat and ball, but who must remain ever vigilant for any opportunity that comes their way to lend secondary assistance.

And the people charged with ensuring those fielders are switched on and alert for all of the 500-plus deliveries that make a day's Test cricket are the bowling team's captain and their wicketkeeper.

It's a job that Australia's gloveman Brad Haddin likens to being a drum major in a marching band – with a responsibility to set the beat, the tempo and the standard.

If your 'keeper is also your skipper, then that burden rests even more singularly and heavily.

So when, having bowled three consecutive maidens to start Boxing Day and with the wicket of Warner in their keeping, the Indians conceded their first runs courtesy of a bye that burst through MS Dhoni's gloves from what seemed a regulation shoulder-high take the sub-standard soon followed.

Two balls later, Chris Rogers pushed a delivery from Umesh Yadav to mid-wicket where Lokesh Rahul – understandably anxious making his Test debut in front of a crowd that would grow to 70,000 – fumbled just as he slid and gathered and the Australians helped themselves to an extra run.

The ball after that, Rogers squirted a push to point where Mohammed Shami – brought back into the team in place of fellow quick Varun Aaron – was somehow unable to get his hands out of the way of his feet even though he was standing stock still.

Another couple was added to the total from that error, but more significantly another derisory cheer rose from the crowd.

From holding an early ascendancy, the tourists suddenly seen to be hanging their heads.

Virat Kohli fumbled a couple here and there, but the most costly – from a morale, if not a productivity perspective – miss came from Shikhar Dhawan who had moved so smartly forward and low to the ground to snare Warner in the second over.

Watson's forward lunge at a perfectly pitched Shami length ball caught a healthy edge that sped to the right of first slip specialist Ravi Ashwin, whose catching in Brisbane had been peerless.

But just as Ashwin moved and shaped to clasp the catch near his right knee, Dhawan flung himself to his left in front of his colleague and clutched once at the chance, then again as it bobbled up and finally flung out his left hand his vain as both he and the ball rolled on the turf.

Dhawan buried his face in the grass, Ashwin stood silently trying to figure why the ball that was all but in his hands had never arrived and Dhoni – the other immediate eyewitness – simply retrieved the ball and betrayed not a trace of rebuke or frustration.

Clearly the India captain is no scholar of Rhodes, as one can only imagine what Wilfred would have unleashed in such a circumstance.

Certainly it was a trend not lost on the Australians.

"It definitely helps, there were a few misfields out there," Rogers observed, as if to rub salt into a wound that had begun to heal over aided by day's end, salved by a regular fall of Australian wickets from the middle of the day onwards.

"A dropped catch that was pretty crucial before lunch and that helped us.

"That was a bit of a factor - hopefully we won't make those mistakes."

At day's end, Shami faced the media and – according to translation of the answers he delivered at length in Hindi – he did not broach the subject of India's fielding.

Instead, he stuck safely to details of the line and length and the detailed plans that India's bowlers adhered to in restricting Australia to 5-259 by day's end, at a previously unseen rate for this series of 2.88 runs per over.

They were the sort of insights that would have conceivably been useful from one of the bowling unit after day two in Adelaide where, instead, Sridha was left to offer his philosophical take on 120 overs that had delivered just seven wickets at a cost of 517 runs.

"So catches," he observed when summarising his assessment of India's strengths and weaknesses in the field.

"You catch some, you don't catch some."