There are ominous signs for India ahead of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy as few of their squad members for the series have not managed to impress in the first innings of the ongoing 2nd unofficial Test match between India A and Australia A.
Abhimanyu Easwaran, who has been named in India's squad as a reserve opener bagged a duck on Thursday. Michael Neser dismissed Easwaran for nought and hurt his confidence badly as this is his third consecutive failure in the unofficial Test series.
Easwaran registered scores of seven and 12 in the 1st unofficial game. He had a new opening partner on Thursday (November 7) in the form of KL Rahul. Rahul also had a forgettable outing with the bat as he scored just four runs before getting caught behind to Scott Boland.
Rahul would hope to get a big one in the second innings of the game to do his confidence some good ahead of the five-match Test series against Australia. He was dropped from the playing XI for the second and the third Test of the three-match series against New Zealand on home soil after a string of poor scores (0 and 12) in the first game at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru.
Budding allrounder Nitish Reddy also failed to contribute with the bat in the hand. Reddy could only manage 16 runs before fell to Beau Webster. Reddy also had nothing special to write home about during the first unofficial Test with scores of 0 and 17 and a wicket.
The only positive that has emerged out of the ongoing second unofficial Test is the fight from wicketkeeper-batter Dhruv Jurel. Jurel steadied India's ship after an early batting collapse.
A gritty half-century from Jurel has allowed India A to go past the 150-run mark. Notably, Jurel and Rahul were sent early to Australia to have some match practice leading into the high-profile series.
