ADELAIDE: Perth wasn’t an outlier. India and Australia kept Test cricket’s flag flying high here as the series acquired an edgy tone. The absorbing day evoked memories of past skirmishes and reminded us why reprising a five-Test series between these two is an idea whose time has come.
You could see it even before a ball was bowled, when the turnstiles went into overdrive as the crowd swelled on a working day. You could see it when Mitchell Starc all but copyrighted the phrase ‘smiling assassin’ with just one delivery, his first, ripping apart Yashasvi Jaiswal’s manicured swagger and then letting out a satisfying roar.
You could see it in Shubman Gill’s fluent drives and composed attempts at resurrecting the innings. You could see it in under-fire Pat Cummins’ return to new-ball duties. You could see it in the recalled, 35-year-old Scott Boland’s nagging lengths. You could see it in the precocious Nitish Kumar Reddy’s flailing against the tide as India’s wickets kept tumbling.
You could see it in Jasprit Bumrah’s heated exchanges with Marnus Labuschagne, as he fought to keep his place in the team. You could see it in Siraj’s fury as a drunk Aussie fan carrying an impressive beer snake interrupted the game. You could see it in Virat Kohli and Rishabh Pant’s constant chirping, a serious, coordinated attempt at unsettling the Aussies in the middle.
Bizarrely, you could even see it when the lights went out at the stadium and South Australia’s minister for infrastructure immediately tweeted, “I can confirm there was no lack of power supply.”
So, who turned the lights out?! This Test is where the stakes are rising. Soon there will be no second chances for the team which slips up. This is no scripted drama but real pressure. This is Test cricket, every tiny moment is part of a larger tapestry. When it all comes together well, there is no format quite just like it. And when India and Australia play, the masks are off.
Australia ended the day on the ascendancy but they did so on the first day in Perth too, a game they eventually lost.
India let Jaiswal and KL Rahul retain their opening combo and Rohit Sharma came down the order. Neither move worked. Ashwin earned a recall over Washington Sundar, but we don’t know why yet.
“This team doesn’t need the coaches to go into the dressing room and tell them why they have to fight,” India’s assistant coach Ryan Ten Doeschate said, refuting notions that India was on the back foot in this Test.
The ever-smiling Starc said on the Jaiswal dismissal: “Nice to sneak one past. He had a good Test match but that was last week. We’ll have to work on him (again) in the second innings.”
With that one ball, Starc demolished notions that this ageing Aussie team had gone ‘too soft’, or that it lacked the fight. Wasn’t it Jaiswal who told the veteran seamer in Perth that he was “coming too slow”? India pacers struggled to control the pink ball under lights.
Does Starc know where they fell short?
“I’m not their bowling coach,” he offered.
