As Australia put the broom through themselves in Delhi, England were celebrating the latest in an inspired run of victories, this time wiping the floor with New Zealand.
In an Ashes year, both sides will have room to ponder the relevance of the India result to the bigger picture. Two years ago, almost to the day, many of those same England players picked up their own pieces from a thumping in India.
Indian players celebrate the dismissal of Australia’s Pat Cummins.Credit:AP
For each case, India needed a substantial series victory to secure a place in the World Test Championship final. Pitches turned big and touring players were embarrassed.
Back then, Ben Stokes was Joe Root’s lieutenant in a conventional England team set-up, with “Bazball” some way from being invented. As Stokes explained after the final Test of a 3-1 defeat, batters were left to choose their own methods and needed to figure out ways to do better next time.
“It’s a case of finding it in your own way,” Stokes had said. “It’s not about coming together and saying what we need to do better as a group, but how can we go away as individuals and progress when we come back next time. Everyone plays in a different way, I have a gameplan out here that is completely different to Joe Root’s.”
There was the echo of Stokes’ India words in how captain Pat Cummins tried to make sense of the galling 90-minute passage of play in Delhi that turned a marginal points advantage for Australia into a second consecutive thrashing by Rohit Sharma’s side.
“You’ve got to find a way to try and put pressure back on the bowlers,” Cummins said. “They’re really, really good bowlers, especially in these conditions. Each batter has their own way to go about it. I don’t think there’s any one size fits all rule. Unfortunately, quite a few of us got out with kind of cross-batted shots, which might not be our preferred method.”
England have since adopted a fearless, aggressive approach where players are all encouraged to entertain and take the game on. That fearlessness, sustained over nearly 12 months now, means that whatever the conditions, both England and their opponents know what to expect: foreknowledge has not made the opposition’s job any easier, but it has certainly grooved England’s batters to commit to their shots.
Australia have been similarly upended in conditions where Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja reign supreme. In 2021, England were primarily undone by Axar Patel, who this time has posed more problems for Australia with the bat than the ball.
As foretold by Australia’s former assistant coach Sridharan Sriram, that flurry of sweeps was the product of sustained pressure from Ashwin and Jadeja over a couple of Test matches, in concert with the accumulation of mental fog that often overtakes overseas players in India.
“You think you’re very well-prepared, but what if that method doesn’t work?” Sriram had asked. “For example, I come in with an attacking mindset, I want to attack spin, but what if you play an attacking shot and get out? Do you still convince yourself this method will work throughout the series, or two, three innings later if you change? That’s where batsmen have had their downfall and the series just goes plummeting down.”
As a bowling side, the Australians have got much better returns from Nathan Lyon, Todd Murphy and Matt Kuhnemann than England gained from Jack Leach and Dom Bess in 2021. But there has still been enough of a relaxation in pressure to allow India’s batters and allrounders to play straight – finding gaps on the leg side most often.
Whether with the bat, or the ball, the Australians have not been sharp enough to sustain their hold on proceedings, leading to a pair of third innings implosions in contrasting styles – where Nagpur was death through dead bats, Delhi was a decidedly unclean sweep.
Axar Patel after dismissing Ben Stokes in Ahmedabad in 2021.Credit:AP
So far, there has been no inclination from the Australian set-up to wholly adopt England’s unbridled blueprint. How much Cummins and company are shaken from their current tack by these events remains to be seen, but at least in terms of conditions, Nagpur and Delhi will be only vaguely relevant to Edgbaston and Lord’s.
And as it stands, the Test Championship final will pit Australia against India at the Oval.
Instead, the emphasis on individual approaches within a shared team ethos leaves mainly the question of how well-honed those approaches were for India before the series. And also a query about how relevant last year’s Pakistan tour was as a guide to preparation for India’s much more extreme surfaces for spin.
After the first Test, Australia’s planners were already conceding privately that much had been left to fortune by the tight timelines around the tour.
As a simple guide, the 2017 Australian touring team that very nearly beat India had 24 clear days between departure for a camp in Dubai on bespoke pitches and the first ball in Pune. That contrasts with the mere 13 days between a mini-camp in North Sydney on a scarified surface and the start of the Nagpur Test. Pakistan preparation was similar, but for a series played on pancake flat pitches.
Even then, this year’s camp was only attended by players not taking part in the Big Bash League – of the Australian top six in Delhi, only Pete Handscomb was available. Unquestionably, the timeline most administrators worried about during the home summer was more about broadcast rights talks than batting against spin.
Some key junctures in that process? David Warner signed with the Sydney Thunder on August 21. Dates for the India tour were publicly confirmed on December 8. Steve Smith signed with the Sydney Sixers on December 11. And on January 3, Cricket Australia announced its $1.5 billion renewal with Foxtel and Seven.
CA then kept faith with its broadcasters by deigning to have Warner, Smith, Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne and Matt Renshaw all fulfil their BBL commitments even though the rights had been locked in.
Meantime, the likes of high-performance chief Ben Oliver, head coach Andrew McDonald and selection chair George Bailey held their tongues. It is worth pondering whether Pat Howard, engineer of the 2017 preparatory camp, would have been so diplomatic in the circumstances.
The next Australian Test tour of India is not until 2027, but the calendar should already have a solid three weeks blocked out for closely directed training on low, spinning pitches. The interim, too, needs greater attention on visits to India’s MRF academy, Australia A tours, and the encouragement of adaptable skills at the National Cricket Centre.
With that sort of lead up, the Cummins mantra stands a better chance of working, for it would be built on a much less rickety base than the one that collapsed under the weight of Australian expectations in Delhi.
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