by It’s funny watching a day of Test cricket where nothing matters. Not just any cricket day Really matters, if we’re honest, but on a day when the game doesn’t even make a difference in the match itself. India in Perth on Monday had 522 runs and two days of bowling in their innings to claim seven wickets on a pitch already showing erratic bounce. Wickets would fall and the match would end, regardless of the setup. Travis Head hit 89 and Mitchell Marsh bowled a couple of sixes en route to 47, it was great fun, but didn’t change the calculus at all.
Related: India beat Australia by 295 runs: Men’s first Test, day four – as it happened
Usman Khawaja was the only player with the pedigree to hit a day and a half late in a game, but he immediately fell foul without assessing the bounce. Steve Smith is considered in the same category, but he always had a mediocre record last, even during his godhood years – 70% of his career runs came in the team’s first innings. This time he was out for 17. The lower order couldn’t muster much, and as in the first innings, keeper Alex Carey looked the most controlled and confident in front of his fellow specialist hitters. He was last out for 36 runs and his team lost by 295 runs.
Australia has suffered some savage blows over the past decade and changed. They come easily to mind, needing only the name of the land to recall the memories. Generally, though, these were games where the other team was always ahead. Trent Bridge 2015 or Hobart 2016 saw the Australian baton reversed from the outset, doomed to be led in the match. In Johannesburg in 2018, South Africa achieved a huge feat in their first innings. A series of beatings in India resulted in Australia doing around 200 and India doing 500 in response. In 2011, in Cape Town, Australia collapsed while in a winning position, but at least that match wasn’t too far from over.
This thrashing is different because after the first bowling, Australia were completely in the lead. South Africa at the Waca in 2016 is the closest equivalent, but even then the visitors made a half-decent score of 242. This summer the visitors were all out for 150 in two sessions on the first day. Post-mortem analyzes that consider this Australian team destined for the scrapyard will review the quality of this performance. It was as good as tandem fast bowling, backed by brilliant fielding. The stick to follow spoiled the effect, but should not diminish the effort.
In the end, however, it was a bizarre capitulation from such an advantageous position. A foreign team in its first game of a series is not supposed to come back after 150 points, much less to the point of taking the advantage in the first inning. Then to such an extent that they bat for almost three sessions without losing a wicket. Yashasvi Jaiswal and KL Rahul became the sixth opening duo to make a double century tour of Australia.
The grinding in the dirt that followed, six wickets in the space of two days, would have been all the more painful because the Australians were not just working hard, they were confused. Being late from the first minute is sometimes sport, you can get away with it. But in this variation, as the Indian batting sessions went by, the expressions on the faces seemed to continue to say, “How the hell did this happen?”
How to answer this question is the next step. The current Australian camp is about trying to stay calm, without overreacting to poor results; they did so with some success after two heavy defeats in India last year. The general public will be much less optimistic, and will agitate a lot for changes for Adelaide in the way you would expect after a humiliating defeat. How this happened will be the first question which will turn into how to prevent it from happening again.
And while Australians worry, think or call chat lines to vent, for India this is a historic test match result in a country that until 2018 had never enjoyed success in the Indian series, and since 2019 has seen nothing else. Their last two test tours to Australia produced heartbreaks in Adelaide and Brisbane, and two excellent professional victories in Melbourne. They didn’t produce an absolute thrashing like this, the kind of victory that can throw an opposing camp into disarray.
India has a young opener of seemingly limitless ability, a veteran champion in the middle order, a wicketkeeper whose return to play is a miracle even beyond some of the innings he plays, the best fast bowler of the world and a high-class supporting cast in both departments. They didn’t bother picking two of the greatest spinners in their history and didn’t suffer for that choice. They have other serious players to bring back for the second Test, including their regular captain. One performance offers no guarantee for the next, especially with 10 days in between, but by considering three extremely rare consecutive tours of Australia, this team has given themselves the best possible start.
