Australia v India Second Test, Day One Report Card
Featuring handsome thumb flicks, first over messes, looming Bumrah threats, renewable energy monkeys and extending spells
Handsome Thumb Flicks
Grade: B+
The temptation, of course, was to keep watching the New Zealand v England Test, which was into its final session of day one as the first session of day one of this Test began.
But that is a fool’s temptation, and one easily resisted by the astute fan, who knows that even a coin toss between Australia and India is an event worth flipping over for. Not because of Pat Cummins’ handsome flick of the thumb, or Rohit Sharma’s dulcet (and correct) call of ‘heads’.
No, the true event is Ravi Shastri’s emceeing. Shastri’s work at a coin toss is genuine art. In a just world, there’d be some kind of awards ceremony he would sweep every year.
Alas, no such ceremony exists (curse you, ICC! Let’s focus on something important, for once). Instead, we must simply look into our own hearts and revel in the great man as he hypes up the toss, the match, the ground, the scoreboard, the cricket, and life itself, in a manner nobody else can even contemplate.
Oh, and it was also good to not miss the first ball of the actual Test either, because Mitchell Starc hurled down a big inswinging yorker that blew Yashasvi Jaiswal’s pad clean off.
First Over Messes
Grade: D-
This was a foolish mistake from Starc, obviously. Based on what we’ve seen so far this series, the Jaiswal duck will now be followed by a big century in the second innings. Nevertheless, what’s done is done.
Starc was in no mood to listen to reason. Despite a brief recovery by KL Rahul and Shubman Gill, he took the first three wickets to fall, and seemed on track to take all ten (or however many Australia dismissed before India declared), until Scott Boland came along and ruined the fun.
Boland was in the side because Josh Hazlewood had injured himself in the first Test. Or, if Sunil Gavaskar was to be believed, because Hazlewood was being punished for cruelly suggesting that it had been the batters’ job to score runs in that Test. It was, according to Gavaskar and other panic-riddled pundits, a clear sign that this over-the-hill Australian team were tearing themselves apart. 2024, man. One of the great years for people losing their minds over Josh Hazlewood press conference comments.
Anyway, Boland’s first over was an absolute mess. First, he had KL Rahul caught behind from his first ball, Starc-style. Then had that overturned because it was a no ball. Also, Rahul might not have edged it, according to UltraEdge. But also, he was walking, seemingly convinced he had.
Sort it out, guys. You’re all over the place here.
Then Boland again found the edge of Rahul’s bat, only for Usman Khawaja to drop the catch. Starc returned a little later to show Boland how it was done, taking Rahul’s edge and having it fly to a diving Nathan McSweeney at gully instead.
That’s the key to fast bowling, Scott. Make sure your edges go to somebody as young and agile as McSweeney. (Or, as it turns out, Steve Smith, who also hung onto one when Starc had Virat Kohli edging one behind.)
Looming Bumrah Threats
Grade: B+
Later, McSweeney also started dropping edges that flew to him, so Starc sensibly returned to the less-fielder-reliant approach of bowling sharply swinging yorkers that cannon into either pads or stumps. (He’s genuinely not fussy which.)
Cummins, as captain, was not quite as willing to abandon his team mates, but instead made it as simple as possible for them, by unleashing a criminally brutal bouncer that found the startled shoulder of Rishabh Pant’s bat and ballooned to Marnus Labuschagne to have India 6/109.
Of course, every wicket the Australian fast bowlers took only served to make Jasprit Bumrah under lights in the evening session loom more ominously.
Surely the better tactic would have been to just let India bat and negate Bumrah’s twilight threat. Or, alternatively, if they were going to stupidly knock India over in two sessions, maybe Cummins needed to declare Australia’s first innings at 0/0. Counter the threat of Bumrah that way.
Yes, Rohit might declare back. But each innings break takes time out of the evening session’s play. Sometimes you need to out-think your opponents rather than outplay them.
Renewable Energy Monkeys
Grade: C-
Despite another thrilling counter-attack from Nitish Kumar Reddy that dragged India up to 180 all out, the cowardice of Cummins, who refused to declare, meant Australia still had to work their way through two-and-a-half hours of batting under lights.
Or, sometimes, not under lights, with Pat reverting to Plan B, summoning his renewable energy monkeys to turn off one of the light towers on a couple of occasions. But that would be a temporary solution only, not a long term one.
So Khawaja and McSweeney made their way to the middle, as Mark ‘Yowie’ Howard on commentary pointed out that Bumrah had taken eight wickets in Perth. Nonsense. I watched that Test and he clearly took somewhere between seventy and eighty wickets.
Nevertheless, when Khawaja survived Bumrah’s first ball, Australia were officially doing better than India #atthisstage.
Extending Spells
Grade: D
They continued to do better, too, with Khawaja and McSweeney almost seeing off Bumrah’s opening spell (‘spell’ in the most literal, magical sense, of course), but not quite. Instead, Bumrah had Khawaja caught at slip off the final ball of his sixth over.
Still, that first wicket fell about ten overs later than expected. And what if there was a different plan?
What if Australia intended to just keep tricking Bumrah into extending his spell by one or two overs at a time, losing a wicket every time he was about to stop? Suddenly he’s bowled thirty consecutive overs and is knackered for the rest of the series. Maybe that was the tactic.
Because surely the tactic wasn’t for Labuschagne to bat out the rest of the session. The man looked utterly out of form and/or his depth. Watching Marnus stuck on zero over after over, leaving, playing and missing, ‘no run’ing and so forth, made it almost impossible to reconcile the idea that Marnus has (allegedly) scored more than 4000 of the bloody things.
And yet, he persevered, and he and McSweeney saw Australia to 1/86 at stumps.
Huh.
It’s almost as if - and I know this will sound crazy - the Australian men’s cricket team didn’t suddenly become a group of squabbling, infighting, drooling, idiot blitherers who were too woke and pampered to ever play cricket competently again.
