australia 405 for 7 (Head 152, Smith 101, Carey 45*, Bumrah 5-72). India
Almost single-handedly, Bumrah was not the only Indian to quickly get Australia into trouble here. Akash Deep continued to land the ball in the Test area and induced as many false shots (45) as Bumrah (46) but ended the day wicketless. Mohammed Siraj also played a solid shift and for much of the first session, India kept the pressure on from both sides and Australia were bundled out.
But as the day progressed, India’s lack of attacking depth began to show, and Australia pulled away as Head and Smith added a blistering 241 for the fourth wicket from 302 balls. The second new ball gave India some respite as Bumrah dismissed Smith, Mitchell Marsh and Head in the space of 12 balls, but Australia were already in top position by then.
At stumps they were 405 for 7, and although their drive for victory was still complicated by time (all but 13.2 overs on the first day were gone) and the weather, they could decide the form of the rest of this Test match. It was in a location. .
India still have no answer to the vexing issue of head pose. How can you bowl to a batsman who is a square cut with stock reaction to the top line and length? They tried a variety of options, but nothing really worked, and their attempts to run the tribe proved particularly futile. The bouncers were not hostile or precise enough to constantly twitch the head in space and the speed and bounce of this Gabba pitch was too realistic to cause indecision. . Instead of pulling him up and making him look awkward, India typically allowed Header to lean back and tip the ball wide over the slips.
India’s bigger problem is their lack of a consistent wicket-taking threat other than the three main quickies. The fourth and fifth bowlers, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Ravindra Jadeja, gave away 141 runs in their combined 29 overs and picked up just one wicket. That wicket was crucial to leave Australia 75 for 3, but it turned out that this was more the result of Marnus Labuschagne’s loose driving than an actual wicket delivery.
The problems of the fourth and fifth bowlers were particularly noticeable after the tea break when India resumed play with over 70 balls to spare. It presented them with a conundrum. They could start the session with their best bowlers, or they could save it for the second new ball with 10 overs to go. They started with Reddy and Jadeja and conceded 63 runs in the first 10 overs of the session.
Smith in particular blossomed during this period, his confidence soaring after a struggling first half-century. He came into this innings with a large, back-and-forth trigger movement that he had held off on after the first ball in the first innings in Perth, and took time to find fluency. He was beaten several times in the corridor, especially by Akash Deep, and hit 30 false shots before reaching his half-century.
It was a measure of how much he was struggling, as each of the remaining 11 innings in Smith’s Test career with 30 or more false shots took hundreds. But perhaps it was also a sign, his wheels blossoming after he brought up his fifty, and India could no longer restrict him to leg-side scoring shots only. Smith got 128 off his first 50 balls and just 57 off his second. And even after half a century he has recorded just eight false shots.
The last of them was a wide drive towards Bumrah after India took the second new ball. In the next over, Bumrah struck two more to send back Marsh and Head, and like Smith’s wicket, these two also came from balls that landed at the perfect length, preventing the batsmen from driving safely. There is enough seam movement to find the perfect channels and outer edges to make you play.
Although it’s the most basic thing about bowling in Test cricket, finding the right area for a particular pitch can be a long and arduous process for even the best bowlers. Bumrah took his time finding it from day one.
But it was almost inevitable that he would find it as soon as the second day dawned. His six-over spell in the morning was nearly unplayable, with 14 of his 30 balls inducing false shots, two of which he sent away Australia’s openers.
He got Usman Khawaja on the front foot and got a feel for three successive balls, hitting the bat with the last two balls of the day’s first and finding the edge of the first ball of the second.
Later, Nathan McSweeney was dropped by Bumrah for the fourth time in his five-innings Test career, hauling the away seamer to second slip before Virat Kohli took his first of three catches on the day. Bumrah bowled five overs on the first day, but McSweeney faced just three balls from him. Now he has been exposed by his adversary for three balls in a row and is out, taking the entire Test match to 52 balls, 12 runs and four dismissals.
A tense period followed, with Labuschagne and Smith making 37 of 89 balls, with their tenacity in leaving balls long standing out as a key feature of their partnership. It may not have had the pulse racing, but it performed an important function for Australia, allowing the ball to go past 33.2, do far less work than it did at the start of the day, and head in when the three major quick paces had already been completed. They bowled 29 overs between them.
Karthik Krishnaswamy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo.
