Crisis averted. Panic stations vacated. All units stand down. Australian cricket followers were hitting every big red button they could find after India handed out a hammering in Perth, but the Australian team hit the big pink button in Adelaide. A different style of thrashing has levelled the five-match series. It took less than two and a half days, not even a third night – under seven sessions – for Australia’s bowlers to take apart India either side of Travis Head’s hundred. A win by 10 wickets that freed up everybody’s Sunday afternoon.
It’s not pure hindsight to say that some of the dire responses to Perth – whitewash imminent, permanent guard change, scrap the team to sell for parts – were overblown. This Australian configuration has achieved plenty in tough situations over several years and is still stacked with quality. It’s also true that some of those players are underperforming, the collective has vulnerabilities, and that appropriately timing a team’s transition requires a cascade of decisions that can be got right or very wrong.
But even before coming to Adelaide, even after the Perth result, an Australian win in the second Test looked the much more likely outcome considering their experience and record with the pink ball, including the way they destroyed India with it in 2020. As of now that record says: played 12, lost one, that being the match when Shamar Joseph stole it at the last gasp in Brisbane.
So things fell as the numbers would suggest: Mitchell Starc blitzing six wickets in the first innings, Pat Cummins five in the second, Scott Boland useful throughout as the replacement quick with two-for and three-for, and spinner Nathan Lyon required for one over in the match. Luck in terms of timing was not a factor – they took down India during daylight on the first day and in the darkness of the second night.
It was bowling so venomous that it made up for a consistent weakness of this team’s, which is relying on one player’s big score to rescue an otherwise floundering innings. Travis Head has been the Baywatch star several times in that sequence, as was Cameron Green in Wellington in March, and Mitchell Marsh twice against Pakistan last summer.
Starting the last day, when the clock ticked over to 2:30pm local time. India had five wickets in hand and still trailed by 29. Everything rode on their pyrotechnic wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant to smash a score and try to set Australia a chase north of a hundred. But it was Starc ending that distant ambition in the first over of the day, seaming the ball away from the left-hander to take his edge to Steve Smith at slip.
That was Starc’s eighth and final dismissal - four further overs didn’t get him closer to a 10-wicket match, though Smith dropped a tougher chance from Nitish Kumar Reddy that would have made it nine. Instead the job was passed over to Cummins to soften up the lower order with short bowling, getting fended catches from Ravichandran Ashwin and Harshit Rana before Reddy uppercut one to the deep. Boland finished it off, Head appropriately taking the skied catch from his new frenemy Mohammed Siraj.
So we go to Brisbane one-all, with Australia feeling cheerful again. But the anomaly of the day-night format means that results here may not mean much when arriving somewhere else. India’s batting has shown that it can take down Australia’s bowling on easier surfaces, and there are days when the modern Gabba can be comfortable for scoring runs. Jasprit Bumrah will always be a threat, spin hasn’t played a role yet but at some point it will. Possibilities abound. Veering too sharply towards any of them is likely to lead you astray.
