The opening test of a five match series between the Australia and India men’s teams is under way in Perth, contested for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. This post looks back at the action from the first three days of that match.
THE PRELIMINARIES
This series had one very unusual feature – both captains, Pat Cummins, who is Australia’s regular incumbent, and Jasprit Bumrah who is standing in for the unavailable Rohit Sharma are specialist fast bowlers. Australia had a controversial debutant in Nathan McSweeney. McSweeney has a fine batting record at state level, but his most productive positions in the order are numbers four and five, and at number three he averages a very modest 30, while he has never opened in professional cricket, and that was the job he was being selected to do in a test match. India won the toss and chose to bat first.
DAY ONE – BOWLERS ON TOP
At lunch on day one India’s decision to bat first was looking questionable – they were four wickets down, and no one had looked remotely good for them. Two further wickets shortly after the interval and it was looking like India were handling Perth no better than most visiting sides. Rishabh Pant, returning to test ranks after a long layoff due to injuries sustained in a car crash, and Nitish Kumar Reddy making his test debut. staged something of a revival for India, getting the total to 150 all out, which did not seem enough for a side choosing to bat first.
Jasprit Bumrah had other ideas. The captain and star bowler for India was soon getting busy among the Australian batters. His first victim was McSweeney for 10, pinned absolutely plumb in front of the stumps. Then he had the other opener Khawaja caught by Kohli for 8 and with his very next ball pinned Steve Smith plumb in front to make it 19-3. Labuschagne dug in, but simply could not get the ball away, and wickets fell at the other end from him with great frequency. Travis Head was clean bowled to become the first victim of the second of India’s test debutants, Harshit Rana., having scored 11. That was 31-4, and when Siraj had Mitchell Marsh caught behind for 6. Siraj struck again nine runs later, putting Labsuchagne out of his misery by pinning him LBW for 2, scored off 52 balls. For a slower innings of 2 by an Australian one has to go back to the 1960s and Bill ‘Phant’ Lawry who once took 55 balls over a score of 2. Australia were 47-6. There was still one wicket to come on this eventful day, one that symbolised the respective positions of the sides by then as Indian skipper Bumrah had his opposite number Cummins caught behind to make it 59-7. By the close Australia were 67-7. The pitch had pace and bounce, but no real mischief – the bounce was consistent and reliable, and there was nothing in the way of extravagant sideways movement. Bumrah ended his first day as Indian test skipper with figures of 4-12 from seven overs.
DAY TWO – CONSOLIDATION
Jasprit Bumrah completed his five-for by dismissing Alex Carey, caught behind for 21. That was 70-8. When Harshit Rana had Lyon caught by KL Rahul it was 79-9. The final Australian pairing of Starc and Hazlewood added 25 to this score, Starc becoming along the way top scorer of the innings, in itself a devastating statistic for Australia. Starc had scored 26, and had faced 112 balls to do so. Bumrah’s final figures were 5-30, while Rana had 3-48 and Mohammed Siraj 2-20.
Australia needed wickets, and quickly if the match wasn’t to get away from them. Yashavsi Jaiswal and KL Rahul realized this, and batted superbly for the situation. They batted through the 57 overs that Australia managed by stumps (over rates have been dire in this match from both sides), leaving India in complete control on 172-0, an overall advantage of 218. Jaiswal had 90*, Rahul 62* and 20 extras had been donated by Australia.
DAY THREE: RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT
If you had asked Jasprit Bumrah to script the third day of this match I don’t think he would have dared to make it as favourable for India as it actually was. India spent the first two sessions building their advantage steadily, Jaiswal advancing his score to 161, his fourth test century, and all four scores have ended up crossing 150. Only one other person in test history has a similar distinction, Graeme Smith of South Africa, also an opening batter. Although India had a minor blip, a high water mark of 275-1 becoming 321-5, Kohli, supported first by Washington Sundar and then by Nitish Kumar Reddy steadied the ship, and then in the final stages of the Indian innings attacked as a declaration loomed. Kohli reached his hundred off 143 balls, at which point India declared, with Reddy 38 not our from 27 balls at the other end. Australia needed 534 to win and had about 20 minutes plus two full days to bat. With the fourth ball of the innings Bumrah pinned McSweeney LBW for a duck to end a miserable debut for the ersatz opener. McSweeney’s efforts here, and those of Daniel Lawrence when asked by England to open the batting for the first time in his professional career in a test match constitute fairly damning evidence about how doing this works in practice, i.e. it doesn’t. Cummins now made what I consider a ‘right wrong call’ – he wrongly deemed this a sensible situation in which to use a nightwatch, but having made that error at least assumed responsibility for playing that role himself, rather than sacrificing one of his fellow bowlers. Siraj got Cummins, caught by Kohli for 2 to make it 9-2. Then just to put the cherry on top of this most one-sided of days, Bumrah pinned Labuschagne, the guy Cummins had tried to protect, LBW with what turned out to be the last ball of the day – there were four balls still to come in the over but were past the official close, so the umpires correctly called stumps (slow over rates have been around long enough that the Laws of Cricket have this contingency of a wicket falling after the scheduled close covered). That left Australia 12-3, and Bumrah with figures of 2-1. This means that Bumrah currently has 180 test wickets at 19.94 a piece. The last person to finish a test career with over 150 wickets at under 20 was Syd Barnes, with 189 wickets at 16.43, and the last of his 27 test appearances was in 1914. Australia with two whole days to come need 522 more runs to win and have seven wickets standing. India had won all three days outright, and on session scores I make it 7.5-1.5 – Australia had the better of the morning session on the opening day with those four wickets, the afternoon session was about even, the evening session of that day was overwhelmingly India’s, and days two and three belonged entirely to India, with Australia’s one decent passage of play on those days, when they reduced India from 275-1 to 321-5 being too insignificant in the scheme of things to matter – India were so utterly in command by then that even the wicket taking had continued and India had been say 350 all out it would have made no difference to the final result. With it also being IPL auction time, the commentators raised a question about their four expert summarisers, Sunil Gavaskar, Darren Lehmann, Glenn McGrath and Tom Moody: if all were available and in their pomp but you could sign only one for an IPL who it be? My answer is McGrath – I reckon I am getting four cheap overs, and wickets into the bargain, in pretty much every match. Moody’s all round skills make him second choice in my view, with Lehmann a poor third, and Gavaskar due to his approach to batting not even worth considering in this context.
PHOTOGRAPHS
My usual sign off…
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