An eerie mirror image of the script of 2020-21 is rapidly unfolding in Australia four years on. On that occasion, after being beaten out of sight in the first Test in Adelaide, when they were shot out for their lowest Test score of 36, India lost senior pacer Mohammed Shami for the rest of the tour with a broken forearm. The boot is on the other foot. Australia, hammered by 295 runs in the opening game in Perth last week, face the prospect of a long couple of weeks without Josh Hazlewood, their standout quick in the Western Australian capital who will miss at least next week’s day-nighter in Adelaide with a side strain.
It’s an injury that has dogged the 33-year-old in the past as well, scuppering his Ashes campaign in 2021 and forcing him to miss the second Test against West Indies last year. It marks the first time since his debut, against India in Brisbane in December 2014, that the strapping quick will miss a home Test against the Indians.
In some quarters, Hazlewood is regarded as the natural successor to Glenn McGrath for his metronomic accuracy and his relentlessness outside the off-stump, at once a compliment and a disservice. Compliment, because McGrath is an all-time great who signed off with 563 Test wickets, disservice owing to the fact that Hazlewood is his own man whose 278 Test scalps haven’t come about by accident.
In Perth, Hazlewood precipitated the Indian collapse with four for 29 from 13 searching overs on the first morning, then backed it up with 21 overs for just 28 runs and the wicket of Devdutt Padikkal in the second innings. His extra bounce had accounted for Virat Kohli in the first innings and he must have been relishing a return to the Adelaide Oval, where in the corresponding pink-ball Test in December 2020, he wrecked India with five for eight in the second dig.
Where Mitchell Starc attacks the stumps and the pads with his fullish length with the new ball, Hazlewood slots in as the perfect foil, applying consistent pressure and bringing the score board to a standstill, testified by his economy of 2.77 in 71 Tests. As much as penetration, his absence will rob skipper Pat Cummins of the control that Australia so thrive on, forcing them to change tack and strategy as they seek to square the series.
Hazlewood’s unavailability comes on the back of concerns surrounding the bowling fitness of Mitch Marsh, the fourth seamer who pulled up sore after Perth. Beau Webster, who impressed for Australia ‘A’ against India ‘A’ in two four-day games recently, has been drafted in as cover, though early indications a week before the Adelaide faceoff are that Marsh might play just as a pure batter, if it comes to that.
Abott, Doggett in
The uncapped duo of Sean Abbott and Brendan Doggett have been added to the squad, but it is Scott Boland who is primed to play his first Test since July last year as Hazlewood’s replacement. The 35-year-old crowd favourite is a swing exponent who finished with extraordinary figures of six for seven on debut in the second innings against England in the Boxing Day Test in 2021. In another era, he would have played a lot more than ten Tests but Starc, Hazlewood and Cummins have formed such an extraordinary triumvirate in the last decade that the only time someone else has got a look-in is when one of them has been injured or rested.
Abbott is a white-ball specialist with 55 wickets in 46 white-ball internationals in the two formats combined while Doggett, like Boland an Indigenous player, took six for 15 against India ‘A’ in Mackay in the first four-day game and backed it up with a five-wicket haul for South Australia against Western Australia at the Adelaide Oval, the venue of the second Test. Neither is a realistic chance to make the XI at this stage but if Doggett and Boland both get the nod, it will mark the first instance of two Indigenous players in the same Test XI for the first time. The three other Indigenous cricketers to have represented the country are Jason Gillespie, and women’s stars Ashleigh Gardner and Faith Thomas, who played her only international against England in February 1958.
No matter who comes in, Australia will badly miss Hazlewood, both for his sterling record against India and in Adelaide and for the constant threat he poses every time he has the ball in his right hand. Tenuously in the same predicament at this stage of the series as India were in 2020, Australia don’t have to look too far for inspiration.
