What a difference a day makes. Especially in a test match. To be fair, even a session can completely change the course of a game. The format is the perfect allegory for life. Sure, fate exists, but free will does come in handy sometimes. Bowled poorly for 30 overs? Come back after lunch and start again. Top four back in the hut trying to force the issue? Dig in, play a whole session out and even if you don’t score too many runs, you’re back in the hunt. Often, over the course of a day, the pitch changes, the weather changes, there are fewer field restrictions. If you’re willing to battle it out, Father Time will come to your aid as the ball softens and the opposition’s energy dips.
With the Border-Gavaskar Series 2024 is off to a banging (and I daresay unpredictable) beginning, such reflections are inevitable. Never mind my excitement at the beleaguered underdog just up and thrashing their much-vaunted opponents. At least, opponents that were, before the start of the first day of the opening test, billed to most certainly add insult to the injury of a 3-0 blackout for the former at home.
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If the odds were in favour of Australia giving India all forms of yearend pummelling over the next two months, a ‘Perthquake’ burying India in the rubble of mellow seniors and undercooked juniors was just a foregone conclusion by the end of the first session. The second session gave us the confirmation that we didn’t even need. India were bundled out for 150, a score that honestly felt more than they would muster after Josh Hazlewood’s morning burst through the Indian top order. But before you could complete the sad sigh and switch off your screens, the end of the day began. A spicy pitch, an opposition batting lineup with a fragile core, the world’s finest fast bowler captaining a side known for its batting legacy—what else were we expecting, really?
It takes less than a day to change a test match. That’s because it’s a five-day format of a sport that’s been labelled tedious and dull for decades, if not a century. In the post-tea session of the opening day of the Perth test, every advantage Australia had mustered had been wrested from their reverse-cupped hands courtesy Jasprit Bumrah, whose brilliance with the ball has honestly become predictable. Death by Bumrah is a thing now. On the following morning, after making short work of the opposition, the captain’s batters set about making that opening day evening session count.
Prior to coming to Australia and then during the buildup of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, the narrative in the media had successfully built it up as pummelling in the making. A pummelling for the ages. What would it be 5-0 or only 4-0? After getting lucky twice in two consecutive test series—in probably the toughest country to play cricket against the host—India were set to face their reckoning. After a disastrous whitewash at home, the customary culmination of another cycle of life following a world cup victory earlier in the year awaited the Indian cricket team. The coach’s credentials were outed, the selection policy was doubted.
And then, Australia were routed. They never quite recovered from losing six wickets for 60-odd runs in that tumultuous evening session. Despite some of the best fast bowlers—and a veteran off-spinner—in their ranks, the baggy greens allowed the visitors to bound away with a mountain of runs. But the point of test cricket is that you have 15 sessions in a game that’s not affected by rain. You have five days. It was how India managed the 2001 Eden Gardens coup. It was how Willis and Botham joined forces to snatch defeat from Australia at Headingley in 1981. Sri Lanka chasing down 304 at Durban in 2019 was a matter of a session of initiative-taking. But nothing of that sort happened for Australia.
They did not make it happen. Important catches were grassed in both innings. Complacency set in. Tactical blunders were made with captaincy—like bringing on a spinner too early on a lively surface when you have four genuine seamers bowling reasonably well. Field placement manoeuvres arrived late and skilful Aussie bowlers resorted to bowling defensive lines instead of trying mental attack. Why did Pat Cummins not have Mitchell Starc bowl around the wicket to Yashasvi Jaiswal with a short leg in place?
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The gargantuanism of test cricket brings to the sport the heft and meaning that its shorter and more commercial iterations have robbed it of. Even if Jaiswal does end up scoring 40 test hundreds, like Glenn Maxwell declared recently, nothing will erase the memory of his first on foreign soil. I’m sure he will remember every one of his 100s. The same is true for spectators—the memories, the clutch moments, the turnarounds are all burned in our memory. Bumrah’s slower yorker to Shaun Marsh is indelibly printed in my memory. MCG, 2018, the ball right before lunch. What separates it from the countless brilliant yorkers bowled in the history of the game was the context of the match situation. The wider canvas of the test match and the fact that there are only so many, make each one of these moments unforgettable.
Perth was full of those moments, even if unfortunately not in favour of the hosts. KL Rahul, who is a fine batter but somehow continues to struggle to prove himself, showed that tests are a war of attrition. Despite the twentytwentyfication of the format, playing the long game and waiting for the opposition’s next mistake are tenets with rich dividends even in life. Of course, you make things happen: setting opposition batters up, analysing weaknesses and capitalising on them, stepping out to slower bowlers to make them shorten their lengths and even a bit of the old chatter—we’ve seen it all from the heroes of our last two series wins in Australia. Unfortunately for lovers of test cricket, the hosts did not step up and capitalise on the half-chances in Perth. (Aside: What if Marnus Labuschagne had tried playing his natural game instead of putting a curb on scoring? ’Cause it seemed like such a gimmick!)
And then, test cricket shows us that winning isn’t everything. But it isn’t about losing either. Go for a draw. In the past decade or so, the percentage of draws has gone down crazily, as teams increasingly seek the twentytwentyised gratification of a result at any cost. But there’s nothing quite like the satisfaction of denying the opposition a win they thought was within sight. Compromise is cool, folks. It’s what happened at the SCG in 2021, when Hanuma Vihari and Ravichandran Ashwin bailed India out of a tough spot in the previous iteration of the BGT.
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As the world steps out of the crease to clinch the newest version of playing a test match, I hope Australia will see that there are five days in a test. Fifteen sessions. Four hundred and fifty overs. It takes less than a day to change a game. Over to Adelaide.