There’s this thing that Australia do when they sense what they’re trying to do isn’t working. They make the whole concept of scoring runs seem far-fetched.
Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc went for back-to-back-to-back maidens. This happened after they corrected a minor error. Their fielders in front of the wicket – mid-off, point, midwicket and mid-on – were just deep enough that India were tapping and running singles.
Yashasvi Jaiswal had done well so far. He had fixed an issue with his game as well. In the first innings, when he ran into trouble, he tried to hit himself out of it. It didn’t work this time. It has before, that’s why he attempted it. But at Perth, against this bowling attack, and in those early morning conditions, letting his hands stray out in front of his body wasn’t ideal. In the second innings, he was better, to the point that he was being annoying.
There was a bit when he just swung all across the line of a good-length ball from Starc and got four runs off it. Right then, the bowler didn’t have too much going for him. One ball later though, he did. Starc trapped Jaiswal on the crease and zipped past his outside edge. Starc felt compelled to extend his follow through, searching for Jaiswal’s eyes as he had done earlier in the day for Harshit Rana’s to warn him off bowling bouncers: “I bowl faster than you and I have a long memory”. The two of them stared off against each other. Starc smiled and shook his head. Jaiswal smiled and shook his head. They had a running battle through the day.
Generating a bat speed of 120kph with your wrists to hit Australia’s spearhead for a six over square leg and being unbeaten on 90 gives you a hint who won.
When the day was done and Jaiswal walked off the ground, the entire dressing room was waiting just beyond the advertising hoardings. As the distance between him and them shrunk, the smile on his face grew. Jaiswal had shown immense restraint all day long. Now he could finally drop his guard and just be a 22-year-old with a career highlight to brag about. He was punching the air as he was swarmed by the team.
Jaiswal’s innings really began to take shape when he absorbed all the venom on a back-of-a-length delivery from Starc to end the third over. The ball trickled away harmlessly to point and his partner at the other end loved it. He seemed to gesture “yeah, that’s it, that’s what we want, keep doing that”.
KL Rahul had scored 26 off 74 in perhaps the toughest conditions this Test match had to offer. It looked like they had eased off in the afternoon on day two but not entirely. Ball-tracking data suggested that there were 28 deliveries in the first 26 overs that seamed more than one degree off the pitch. For context, the jaffa that Rana bowled to Travis Head and blew up his off stump moved 1.36 degrees off the pitch.
So, if you were an opening batter, there was, on average, one ball coming at you with your name on it every over. In the 12th, it was the very first one, with Jaiswal flashing hard outside off stump. Starc wasn’t able to get the nick but having seen that shot and its potential to create unnecessary trouble, Rahul immediately came down the pitch and had a word with Jaiswal. He’d already seen the benefit of meeting the ball under his eyes with soft hands. In the middle of those three maidens, his outside edge was taken, but it didn’t carry to the slips.
India’s openers were very much in sync, except maybe in the 42nd over when one of them thought there was a single and the other didn’t. Rahul had come more than halfway down the pitch and was certain he was going to be out. This is the kind of luck he sometimes has. In his mind, as he just stayed there, on the floor, now on his knees instead of on his stomach after putting in a big dive that still would not have been enough if Steven Smith’s throw had been on target at the bowler’s end, he might have run back all the other times when he’d done well but the numbers just wouldn’t reflect it. Indeed, 42 off 115 would have fit neatly into that bracket.
This was well into the period when the surface was losing a bit of its sting. The ball had gotten softer. Batting normally was once again a viable option. It hadn’t been in the first innings because that was the start of a big tour, and with India’s batting under pressure, there was a lot of focus on trying not to make a mistake. They weren’t entirely playing the opposition or the cricket match that was out there. They were playing themselves and a cricket match two or three hours in the future, and if all went well, they’d only be two or three down. All did not go well.
On Saturday, the focus was still on defence, but it wasn’t to set up anything in the future, it was simply to set themselves up in the present. This time they were happy to make mistakes. This time they had a second line of defence. Rahul’s soft hands. Jaiswal’s increased focus. The upper cut that he played off Cummins will go viral but there was another time, when he was maybe a split-second away from playing it. He sensed doing it was inviting trouble because Starc had angled the bouncer into him and it was Starc so it was quicker. There was a good chance had he gone through with that shot, he might have nicked off. But in this mood, with this focus, he was able pull out.
In recent times, India have tried to combat difficult conditions by trying to go all-out attack. Forty-eight all out last month happened partly because they decided they just couldn’t trust their defence. The 3-0 loss to New Zealand happened because India were at least a little bit careless. That accusation did not apply here. They have always taken pride in being able to beat the odds. Now they’re willing to suffer for it again.