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Jason Krejza’s outrageous debut for Australia was a vindication of the faith of his captain Ricky Ponting.
It was also a nod to the Australian selection panel that picked Krejza to tour India in the first place, plucking him from the back of an admittedly thin field of spin bowling prospects.
But to watch Krejza coaxing the ball to spit and turn on a surface as fair for batsmen as any produced in this series was to ask the obvious question: How was he left out until Nagpur?
The oft-quoted reason will remain his disastrous return of 0-199 from 31 overs in the Hyderabad tour match, where second string Indian bats Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Yuvraj Singh did as they pleased to Krejza on a slow pitch.
Tour match form, however, has always been notoriously fickle, particularly when a young spin bowler is still in familiarisation mode.
On the 1993 tours of New Zealand and England, Shane Warne was taken apart by Martin Crowe (0-60 in 16 overs) and Graeme Hick (1-122 in 23 overs) in warm-up fixtures.
Both times he was written out of the equation by local pundits as no good, subsequently causing blushes every bit as pronounced as those caused by Krejza here.
In any event, Ponting never seemed to lose belief that his Tasmanian teammate could be a handful on the subcontinent.
Relentlessly positive whenever he was called on to speak about Krejza, Ponting talked up his man before each Test, hinting in the lead-up to the first in Bangalore that he was very close to being chosen, then bemoaning his non-selection in the aftermath of the Delhi draw.
So it can only be concluded that selectors on duty, Andrew Hilditch (first and second Tests) and Merv Hughes (third and fourth), were uncomfortable picking Krejza.
This inability to choose a specialist spinner for the first three Tests, instead preferring the bits and pieces of replacement player Cameron White, may be seen as the tourists’ gravest misstep should they fail to secure a drawn series in Nagpur.
It is all the more puzzling that Krejza was ignored for so long when it is considered that his selection for the tour was a hunch based on subcontinental conditions.
As coach Tim Nielsen said at Jaipur in the tour’s first week: “It’s a credit to the selectors I believe, because if you picked it on the scoreboard you’d let the scorers be the selectors basically, so they’ve had a look at all the bowlers and picked the person they feel has the best tools to do the job.
“As an off-spinner that spins the ball big and puts a lot of work on it, Krejza fits that bill.”
Krejza himself was grateful for Ponting’s support, particularly in keeping him on after Virender Sehwag had pilfered 32 runs from the tweaker’s first three overs on day one.
“Yeah definitely, that is one thing that’s good about Ricky with spin bowling, a lot of spinners do get taken off,” Krejza said.
“But when you’ve got a captain who backs you and sets the right fields I think that’s the most important thing to give you confidence to keep doing what you’re doing.
“The whole team’s been positive, that’s the best thing about Australian cricket, everyone is positive around the group from support staff to players, and me going for some runs and him backing me and giving me confidence to keep going.”
Better late than never, Krejza’s delayed selection was nonetheless a botched job by a selection panel that second guessed its own instincts.
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