The didgeridoo is a wind instrument made by hollowing out the limbs or even the trunks of trees. It produces a low-pitched, soulful, resonant hum. This alone makes it captivating enough but the indigenous Australian people believe this long, wooden flute, which may perhaps be the oldest instrument known to mankind, connects them to the invisible forces that shape our world. It certainly felt like it on the morning of the first Border-Gavaskar Trophy Test. Perth Stadium – whose walls are adorned with 17 verses of indigenous Noongar prose – practically shook in tune with the music.
When all this was happening, Yashasvi Jaiswal had found himself a little spot over on the other side of the ground and was taking some last-minute throwdowns, except it went way longer than that and if it hadn’t been time for the national anthems, he might have kept going.
“This is the toughest challenge,” Jasprit Bumrah had said leading up to the game. “So I give this message to everyone: if you come and perform in this country then your cricket level will go up.”
“This is where you make your name for yourself on one of the biggest stages in the world to play cricket,” bowling coach Morne Morkel had said. “I think that’s one of the driving forces in this group of young guys to come up here and play good, solid cricket, score five-, six-hundred runs in a series, take 19-20 wickets, and put yourself on that stage. It’s a fantastic carrot to dangle in front of Indian players.”
KL Rahul certainly took this whole opening-the-batting business really seriously, but he seemed equally preoccupied with something else as well during the first half-hour of play. Gardening. He kicked the dirt off his batting crease. He marked and re-marked his guard. He patted the grass by the side of the pitch. He patted the good-length area of the pitch. He wanted to stay connected with the game. He wanted to stay plugged in. He wanted to get in that zone.
On Friday, at Perth Stadium, if you weren’t in the zone, you didn’t exist.
****
Bumrah was among the first to be back out there at the change of innings. And he was letting them fly. His genius has distorted reality before and just then it seemed like he was fine working with 150 on the board. It can be the dark that makes his light shine brighter.
The pace was up. At the pre-match press conference, he picked up on the words “medium-fast” and forgot about everything else that followed including the next one – “allrounder”. The question was actually about Nitish Kumar Reddy, but he fired back “150 daala main ne, fast bowler bol sakte ho” [I bowl 150kph, call me a fast bowler please]. Misplaced indignation aside, there’s a chance he’s underselling himself there.
Bumrah created four wicket-taking opportunities with his first 12 deliveries on tour. He was doing almost the same thing in the nets, but there were no stakes there.
Nathan McSweeney was the only casualty during this period of play, out lbw to a good-length ball curved into his front pad.
He could have been dismissed earlier when a back-of-a-length ball zipped past his outside edge. Marnus Labuschagne’s score – 2 off 43- could easily have lost its curiosity value if Virat Kohli had been able to take a catch that he offered from the second ball he faced. This one was angled in and held its line.
Bumrah was bowling fast – yeah, so fast bowler makes sense – but he brings people alive. A record crowd for a Test match day in Perth – 31,302 – including a very quiet Indian contingent until their captain was on a hat-trick. Then they began chanting his name. He makes the batting crease – which is usually wide open space – claustrophobic. He has his own gravity. Everybody at the ground was drawn to him when he was at the top of his mark. He makes his own rules. Pitches aren’t 22 yards long when he’s bowling.
It’s about time cricket finds something else to describe him. Mitchell Starc pretty much said there’s nobody like him: “He’s obviously got a fair bit of hyperextension in that elbow and does things a lot of actions won’t let you do. So there’s no surprise he’s been a fantastic bowler across formats for a long time and again his skills were on show today as to how good he is. I’m sure there’s something in that release point that’s significant to his action. It’s something that a lot of people can’t do. I’m certainly not going to go and try it.”
****
India’s batters did the best they could. The score at lunch – 51 for 4 – and immediately afterwards, when Mitchell Marsh was taking wickets – 73 for 6 – may not have looked nice but they were facing a relentless bowling attack that was able to generate, on average, 0.8 degrees of seam movement. That’s a lot. Three of the four Tests played at Perth Stadium before this one offered much less in terms of deviation after pitching: 0.65, 0.56, 0.62.
India matched their hosts with the ball. They too were able to gain 0.8 degrees of seam on average, and Harshit Rana, playing only his 11th first-class match, got almost twice that (1.36 degrees) when he dismantled Travis Head. The whole team got around him, which was good because he looked like he was ready to run straight out of the stadium. To be 22 years old and able to conjure that kind of magic on debut.
Rana and Reddy were both told on match eve that they would be playing. Twenty-four hours later, both of them have played a significant part in India turning their fortunes around in about as dramatic a manner as there could be.
“We got to know just before one day,” Reddy said after the day’s play. “We were a little excited as well. Obviously nervousness as well was there. We were having dinner and we were just keeping ourselves the way we were last week. We wanted to continue that. We wanted to take no pressure. So we had a cycle ride as well last evening and it was good.”
Australia were expecting to face a very different bowling attack. They practiced hard for left-arm spin. Ravindra Jadeja got on the pitch only at lunch, to do some running drills. They have had enough run-ins with R Ashwin to be wary of him no matter the conditions. He was at the indoor nets, experimenting with legspin. They thought at least one of them would play. So did almost everybody else.
India went in with a team designed to give them depth. An uncapped batting allrounder at No. 8. An uncapped bowling allrounder at No. 9. Washington Sundar, he of the no-look six from three years ago, as the lone spinner, a senior fast bowler who hasn’t had a good time of late, and him. The biggest him in the world of cricket right now.