Mitchell Starc bowled Australia into a strong position in the second Test with a career-best six-wicket haul before the lights went out twice at the Adelaide Oval – but the power failure failed to distract Nathan McSweeney and Marnus Labuschagne, who dug in and got through to stumps unscathed.
Australia were placed under pressure when India won the toss and elected to bat on Friday, but Starc inflicted early damage with the very first ball of the Test and showed his class with the pink ball by returning figures of 6-48 from 14.1 overs of top-quality swing bowling.
India crashed to 180 all out – the lowest first innings total from a team batting first in a day-night Adelaide fixture – before Australia’s top order rebounded from their nightmare in Perth and managed for the most part to hold Jasprit Bumrah (1-13 from 11 overs) at bay, with the cheap dismissal of Usman Khawaja for 13 the only Australian wicket to fall by stumps.
McSweeney, in his second Test, was dropped on three and survived an LBW review on 31 but survived to be not out on 38 from 97 balls, with Labuschagne unbeaten on 20 from 67.
Before Australia reached stumps at 1-86, trailing India by 94 runs, tensions spilled over when Mohammed Siraj threw the ball at Labuschagne when the Australian No.3 pulled out of his batting stance.
Siraj did not know that a fan on the hill at the northern end of Adelaide Oval had run behind the side screen holding a huge ‘beer snake’ in the air right at the height of his run-up.
Labuschagne’s record of one score above 10 from his previous 10 innings made for grim reading but this was a gritty and cautious innings. Few people know Labuschagne spent 25 minutes by himself at the end of Australia’s evening training session on Wednesday night facing throwdowns with a pink ball to get his technique in order.
Gritty: Marnus Labuschagne.Credit: AP
Before Labuschagne could get off the mark, play was stopped twice due to issues with the ground’s lights. The first delay lasted 28 seconds at 8.52pm local time, while the second lasted 86 seconds at 8.54pm as fans offered their phone lights as a generous but ineffective alternative in the hope they would not be deprived of watching the final hour of play.
Indian pace bowler Harshit Rana appeared displeased but there were no further issues, even if Australia’s batsmen would have been happy to go off early and come back to bat in sunshine on Saturday afternoon.
“Venue management are working to determine the cause of the issue with the lights tonight,” CA said in a statement. “We will update when they provide further information.”
The lights went out briefly on two occasions tonight at Adelaide Oval.Credit: Getty Images
The prospect of the lights going out during a delivery could have made Labuschagne and McSweeney uneasy, but it didn’t seem to interrupt their concentration.
“Very frustrating for the umpires and the players,” said former international umpire Simon Taufel on Seven’s coverage. “They will be having their concentration and routines broken like everyone else and having to refocus and get back on the job as quickly as possible.”
Earlier, Starc picked up a wicket with the first ball of a Test for the third time in his career as Australia rebounded from an underwhelming display in Perth to put India’s batsmen on the back foot.
Already boasting the most wickets of any bowler in day-night Tests, Starc bettered his previous best innings haul of 6-50 against Sri Lanka in 2016.
Starc swung the ball more than ever in his Test career, according to bowling data, to run through India’s top order. He removed KL Rahul (37), caught at gully, and the prized scalp of Virat Kohli (7), caught at second slip, before cutting short a dangerous innings from Nitish Kumar Reddy (42).
“I feel like the ball has been coming out alright for the last little while and I don’t think we did too much wrong last week,” Starc said on Fox. “I thought we were pretty good.”
Starc now has 72 wickets with the pink ball at an average of 17.81. Nathan Lyon is next best, in terms of wickets, with 43.
In one of the most important Test matches in recent times, Australia’s start could not have been better as Starc trapped Jaiswal LBW from the opening ball.
Starc celebrated accordingly – Jaiswal, having made a duck in the first innings in Perth, tormented the Australians with a score of 161 to set up India’s 295-run win, even sledging Starc for not bowling fast enough.
Starc’s first ball to the left-handed Jaiswal on Friday looked to be sliding down the leg side but swung back late and caught the young opener by surprise. It was a similar line to the ball that bowled Rory Burns around his legs with to set the 2020-21 Ashes series alight.
“I managed to sneak one past. A nice start,” Starc said with a smile.
It was the third time Starc had struck with the first ball of a Test, having removed Sri Lanka’s Dimuth Karunaratne in Galle in August 2016. The last Australian before Starc to take a wicket to begin a Test was Glenn McGrath, also in Galle, in 1999.
The only other bowler in Test history to pull off a treble of first ball dismissals is West Indian Pedro Collins. Remarkably, Collins removed Bangladesh’s Hannan Sarkar from the first ball of a Test on all three occasions in an 18-month period including in back-to-back Tests in 2004.
Pat Cummins (2-41) and Scott Boland (2-54) provided handy support, with Lyon only sending down six balls in the 44.1 overs.
Cummins said he would have batted if Australia won the toss, but losing it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
