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Peter Siddle did not waste much time making an impression in his first Test match for Australia. Sharing the new ball with Brett Lee, Siddle’s maiden delivery was short, fast and thudding into the helmet of Indian opener Gautam Gambhir before the left-hander knew much at all about it.
Unfortunately for Siddle, the first day highlights reel ended right there.
Gambhir, Virender Sehwag and Rahul Dravid went on to comfortably negotiate his bowling in ideal conditions to do so, with nothing at all in the pitch to inconvenience the local batsmen or assist the visiting bowlers.
Siddle’s elevation to the Test squad after only 12 first-class matches left a trail of discontent among more senior pace bowlers in Australia, most vocally Queensland right-arm seamer Ashley Noffke and NSW left-arm swing bowler Nathan Bracken.
Both pointed to their superior records as proof of why they should be in India instead, but in truth neither had impressed sufficiently when they had their chances on earlier tours, Bracken in particular being made to look an innocuous bowler when weather and pitch conditions did not suit his orthodox outswing.
Australian captain Ricky Ponting has talked about building a bowling attack capable of imposing pressure for long periods, almost as a way of compensating for the sheer wicket-taking ability that was lost when Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath retired.
To that end, 23-year-old Siddle was an ideal option, able to charge in all day and bowl accurately to the field settings of his captain.
Cameron White, too, earned rave reviews from Ponting after the Bangalore Test for his ability to do the same, allowing the Australians to be at their predatory best in the field to batsmen being starved of loose deliveries.
Ponting also spoke of finding bowlers accurate enough to take advantage of “natural variation” in the pitches, like the cracks that opened up in Bangalore.
This approach falls down, however, when confronted by a pitch as blameless as the Mohali strip, which Siddle ultimately found far less lively than his first ball had promised.
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