Imagine you’re doing the Keanu Reeves bit in Speed. You’re on a bus that can’t drop below 50 miles an hour or it will explode. It’s high-octane stuff, even if the bus is running on diesel. You have to avoid collisions, do sick jumps, kindle a romance with Sandra Bullock. But then imagine there’s a change in script. Dennis Hopper rings up with a different idea. Now, the bus has a maximum speed. And that speed is 10 miles an hour. Chill.
It was this sort of change that came over the first Test between Australia and India on its second day. On the first day, Australia had taken all 10 India wickets for 150, then lost seven of their own by stumps for 67. But after the early exchanges on the second morning, the match morphed from fast-forward chaos to careful, considered, and conventional. The slowdown though was only good for one team. We are stretching the metaphor beyond breaking point, but even if this bus was only going at 10 miles an hour, it was driving inexorably away from Australia.
The Australians though were the ones who first applied the brakes, unexpectedly via Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood with the bat. The first day’s detonation had been triggered by Jasprit Bumrah, and it took him one ball the next morning to set off a secondary. Alex Carey had looked the best of anyone on evening one, and started morning two with a couple of busy singles from Harshit Rana. But Bumrah’s first ball had him fencing where he should instead have sat, that delicious kick away from the left-hander coming from Bumrah’s wrist to take an edge.
Nathan Lyon gloved Rana to gully, and the game was still speeding. Australia would be all out any minute for about 80, then crash headlong into the India top order with the ball doing plenty. Except somehow that didn’t happen. Hazlewood’s edge flashed past the keeper, so many balls beat stumps or edges or fell short of catchers, and the last pair stayed at the crease. They didn’t seem sure why, but they tried to just carry on and bat.
An hour and a half, facing 110 deliveries, that final measure standing out when the next best in the innings was 34. They added 25 runs and turned down almost as many in trying to give Starc most of the strike, especially through Bumrah’s two spells. Bumrah as captain, meanwhile, went defensive, scattering the field though Starc tried precious few big shots before the one that got him out.
It was frustrating for India, undoubtedly. It put more overs into their bowlers. Out of a total of 104, scoring 25 was huge. All big ticks according to cricket wisdom. But the less tangible effect, the one that couldn’t be “stategorised”, was to take momentum out of the game. Speed no more. The manic energy was gone. And as the pitch eased through the morning session, with the last pair demonstrating to the fielders how comfortably they were surviving, the anxieties of India’s batters would have eased as well. Rather than those 25 runs in two hours, would Australia have been better off slogging 10 runs in two overs, then piling into India with a new ball and scattered minds on a pitch that was still morning fresh?
Instead, Yashasvi Jaiswal and KL Rahul got a lunch break to compose themselves, and came out ready to settle in. It still wasn’t easy: there was decent carry, Starc and Hazlewood were a handful early, both batters had to apply themselves. A few soft-handed Rahul edges didn’t carry, a couple of aggressive Jaiswal shots didn’t connect. An occasional one did. But as the afternoon wore on, they never tried too much. Hazlewood bowled his first 10 overs for nine runs. Coming the last hour of play, before a slight lift, both batters had strike rates in the 30s.
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What they did, though, was make the game feel like normal Test cricket again. Circumspect accumulation on a pitch that rewarded patience. They wore through spells from the quicks, got into overs from Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Marnus Labuschagne, and after some unspectacular hours of stopping things from moving quickly, they had built a partnership bigger than Australia’s first-innings score, then bigger than India’s. By stumps it was 172.
The Australians faded to the point of missing small moments: Khawaja not getting his weight forward enough to reach a low slip catch that he fingertipped down, Smith throwing way too wide to Lyon when a run out was on. Days two and three were always likely to offer the best batting. India will now get a look at day three with 10 wickets in hand. Australia regard a deficit that already stands at 218, and the prospect of batting on day four when it might be bounce, not speed, that poses the danger.
