Perth: When India last played five Tests on these shores some 32 years ago, the great all-rounder Kapil Dev produced an unforgettable one-two punch on a steamy Brisbane morning.
Bending the second new ball late, he snaked between Allan Border’s bat and pad to take the off bail. Next came a fiendish away swinger to beat Dean Jones comprehensively. But the pièce de résistance was still to come.
Jasprit Bumrah takes the prized wicket of Steve Smith.Credit: AP
Shaping to swing away, Jones’ next ball held its line to take off stump. “Goodnight Charlie, he’s on his way!” exclaimed Tony Greig in the commentary box.
Jones’ bereft reaction, glancing mistrustfully at the pitch, came to mind as India’s captain Jasprit Bumrah put Perth’s biggest-ever Test match crowd on the edges of their seats, with an exhibition of pace bowling mastery that rattled Australia.
The rolling of India for 150 was only ever going to be half the story on this day, or throughout this Border-Gavaskar series. If India’s batting had question marks entering these five Tests, partly through a surprise loss at home to New Zealand, then Australia was no less vulnerable based on recent evidence.
After Bumrah’s surgical opening spell of the contest laid waste to the Australian top four, the narrative of the encounter was twisted well away from some of the one-sided Test battles glimpsed in Australia lately. What Shamar Joseph had exposed at the Gabba in January, Bumrah locked onto in November.
With his snappy wrist and whippy arm, Bumrah releases the ball some 30 centimetres closer to the bat than most other bowlers, and the Australians were almost universally late to pick him up.
And by applying the scalpel to Nathan McSweeney, Usman Khawaja and Steve Smith while also having Marnus Labuschagne dropped, Bumrah (4-17) opened wounds he and India can exploit over the next seven weeks. He rounded out the day by nicking off his opposite number Pat Cummins.
Looking down the pitch at debutant McSweeney as the shadows lengthened across Optus Stadium, stand-in skipper Bumrah sniffed an opportunity for the bowling instincts of which he spoke so proudly on match eve.
McSweeney left his first ball on length, but that only encouraged Bumrah to work his way fuller. He soon found a nip-backer that McSweeney, playing for away swing, missed by a distance, although Bumrah required DRS to win the lbw verdict.
Labuschagne’s stay might have last just two balls if not for Kohli dropping a chance in the slips, spilling it only after the Indian cordon had begun sprinting towards the bowler in celebration. But Bumrah was not to be denied.
Khawaja, who showed understandable eagerness to get to the non-striker’s end, could do nothing about a rising ball angled into him from around the wicket. Smith, for all the talk of having “found his hands”, could do even less with a break back of full length that pinned him palpably lbw on the crease.
Bumrah’s heroics inspired his tyros. Debutant Harshit Rana hit the seam on the perfect line and length to beat and bowl Travis Head from around the wicket. For Bumrah, this was arguably the biggest wicket of all, given Head’s recent record against India.
When Labuschagne finally notched his first run after 24 balls and 44 minutes, he bashfully raised his bat in response to the crowd’s roar. Runs were that hard to come by. Mitchell Marsh edged Mohammed Siraj (2-17) into the cordon and Labuschagne fell lbw – in all, 17 wickets fell for the day.
Australia’s Josh Hazlewood celebrates the wicket of India’s Devdutt Padikkal.Credit: AP
Ugly as these moments were, it was impossible to look away. There is an undeniable fascination with the battle between two ageing and struggling batting orders, their jobs made more difficult by the prouder seam of the Kookaburra ball, and the preponderance of live grass on Australian pitches.
Kohli’s struggles earlier in the day had come despite clear technical work geared at evading the kinds of outside edges that Pat Cummins and company have become adept at finding. What he had not prepared for was the kind of West Indian lifter that Josh Hazlewood summoned as part of a sublime 4-29.
Not as freakishly gifted as Bumrah, Hazlewood’s craft is more earthy, as befits a product of Bendemeer in country New South Wales. He thrives on steep bounce and consistency, asking questions of the defence again and again.
Per CricViz numbers, no-one over the past 20 years has matched Hazlewood’s 45 per cent of balls on a good line and length in Tests, and he knows that every year the lure of Twenty20 makes it harder for batters to ignore his temptations.
“Some touring teams aren’t as used to that bounce so they’re playing at a lot more balls that they don’t need to,” Hazlewood said this week. “Guys generally want to feel bat on ball more than 10-15 years ago, no doubt.”
In the final session, it was Australia’s turn to grope for bat on ball, a thankless task against Bumrah in this mood and on this pitch. A vaunted bowling attack and a struggling India won’t be enough for Cummins: He needs to find runs from somewhere.
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