India pulls a switcheroo thanks to courage of conviction

Australia and India have played each other so often in recent years that each team is beginning to look and play like the other did in the past

It felt as if a heavenly body with a sense of humour had moved around all the placards carrying excuses. Poor preparation, bad selection, terrible form, weak body language, flat bowling, limp batting, lack of fight (you can add your own here) — the standard reasons for India’s poor performances abroad, and recently, for its 0-3 defeat at home against New Zealand, became Australia’s after the Perth Test. Perhaps, as Tolstoy might have said, all defeated teams are alike; the victorious win in their own way.

Traditional metrics no longer apply to modern Test cricket. It doesn’t matter if you don’t play a first-class match ahead of a five-Test series, nor is gear-changing between the formats such a big deal. Any 22-year-old can do it, as Yashasvi Jaiswal demonstrated with such ease and class. You don’t need to play your best spinners; R. Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, with 1357 international wickets between them, were rested.

For those who had an uncomfortable series at home on familiar tracks, an away Test on unfamiliar tracks is all that is needed to get back into nick, as Virat Kohli showed. Sometimes the untried and untested, as with Nitish Reddy and Harshit Rana, are the better options.

And even if your captain is the best fast bowler in the world, you still bat first if you win the toss in Perth — a decision that paid off handsomely. Many of these judgement calls balanced precariously between disaster and success before tipping into the latter. It needed rare courage of conviction, and a refusal to play safe at the start of a series.

Australia and India have played each other so often in recent years that each team is beginning to look and play like the other did in the past. India is fitter, younger, more exuberant, full of spunk, and has become masters at sledging, which for years was an Australian speciality (Jaiswal told fast bowler Mitchell Starc at one point, “It’s coming too slow”). Australia looked diffident, uncertain, indecisive and full of self-doubt.

Before the series began, there were signs that this would be a battle between two ageing teams, yet India’s average age was 26.5 while Australia’s was 32.5. Sometimes fearlessness and lack of baggage can overcome the benefits of experience and longevity.

Every Test win in a ‘Sena’ country (South Africa, England, New Zealand, Australia) is seen as historic because India has won only 29 of the 170 Tests it has played in those countries, a meagre 17 percent. Yet even by that reckoning, the Perth win was exceptional for two reasons. Firstly, it demonstrated how a team down in the dumps after being dismissed for 150 can fight back to wrap up a Test in four days, giving breath to such sporting cliches as toughness, teamwork, the never-say-die spirit.

Secondly, it showed Australia in rare light — confused, panic-stricken, disorganised. Perth was expected to knock India out in the first round and have it limping through the rest of the series. India did a switcheroo, ruining the best laid plans of the Australian board. The hunter and hunted exchanged places very early.

No one personified Australia’s confusion better than Marnus Labuschagne. He scored two in 52 balls in the first innings, unsure whether the ball was coming in or leaving or indeed on course to hitting him which it did often. In the second, he was just as clueless, and despite the cushion of a nightwatcher sent ahead of him, still managed to get himself out leg before to reduce Australia to 12 for three, wasting a review in the process.

His bowling swung from the bizarre to the ridiculous. Batters would have had to sit on the wicketkeeper’s shoulders to get to some of his bouncers. When he turned to leg spin and a negative line, Kohli put him in his place.

Kohli’s return to century-making ways saw a nation heave a collective sigh of relief. He can take credit for the turnaround in India’s fortunes in Australia; he led it to its first series win there six years ago. India’s task now is to avoid complacency and keep the pressure on even as new heroes are emerging while old ones consolidate.

Published - November 28, 2024 12:02 am IST