When India last played five Tests on these shores some 32 years ago, the great all-rounder Kapil Dev produced an unforgettable one-two punch on a steamy Brisbane morning.
Bending the second new ball late, he snaked between Allan Border’s bat and pad to take the off bail. Next came a fiendish away swinger to beat Dean Jones comprehensively. But the pièce de résistance was still to come.
Shaping to swing away, Jones’ next ball held its line to take off stump. “Goodnight Charlie, he’s on his way!” exclaimed Tony Greig in the commentary box.
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Jones’ bereft reaction, glancing mistrustfully at the pitch, came to mind as India’s captain Jasprit Bumrah put Perth’s biggest-ever Test match crowd on the edges of their seats, with an exhibition of pace bowling mastery that rattled Australia.
The rolling of India for 150 was only ever going to be half the story on this day, or throughout this Border-Gavaskar series.
After Bumrah’s surgical opening spell of the contest laid waste to the Australian top four, the narrative of the encounter was twisted well away from some of the one-sided Test battles glimpsed in Australia lately. What Shamar Joseph had exposed at the Gabba in January, Bumrah locked onto in November.
Read Dan Berttig’s full analysis here.
