India played without any of their first-choice seamers in the fourth Test of Border-Gavaskar series against Australia because of injuries
India's injury woes have resulted in many of unwanted records for them during the ongoing four-match Test series against Australia. On Friday, India came on the park with four fast bowlers and one spinner at the Gabba on the first day. However, none of the fast bowlers had played more than two Test before this game.
The absence
With India's first choice pace attack - Ishant Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav - all being unavailable as they are nursing their respective injuries, Indian team had an inexperienced bowling attack to play with.
While Ishant was ruled out even before the series, the other three pacers suffered injuries during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Mohammed Shami was ruled after the Adelaide Test when he was hit on the hand by a Pat Cummins delivery. Umesh tore his calf and was ruled out after the Melbourne Test and Bumrah, the latest casualty suffered an abdominal strain during the third Test in Sydney and didn't play in Brisbane.
With experience of one (Navdeep Saini, Shardul Thakur) or two (Mohammed Siraj) tests and one debutant (Thangarasu Natarajan), India's pace attack did look a little toothless on the first day of the Brisbane game. However, this situation resulted in India creating an unwanted record.
The (unwanted) record
Since 2012, this is the first time that an Indian Test XI doesn't feature any of Ishant, Shami, Bumrah or Umesh Yadav. During England's tour of India in November 2012, India played with a bowling attack featuring lone pacer in Zaheer Khan, and three spinners in Ravichandran Ashwin, Pragyan Ojha, Harbhajan Singh, while all-rounder Yuvraj Singh was the fifth bowler.
Since, that Mumbai game, at least one of those four bowlers have featured in every Test since. But, on Friday, the 8-year long run came to an end with all of them not playing due to their respective injuries. Not just the pacers, the Brisbane game saw team India without the likes of Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin too and another off-spinner from Tamil Nadu Washington Sundar made his Test debut alongside T Natarajan.
The period of 2012-2020 along with these four also featured Zaheer Khan and Bhuvneshwar Kumar in a few games, but one of them did feature in every game India played in the longest format.
India's inexperience in the bowling department showed on the first day of the Gabba Test as Australia dominated the first day owing to Marnus Labschagne's fifth Test century.
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