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I seem to recall using a similar phrase ahead of the Adelaide Test last summer, and though the personnel and opposition have changed since then, the story remains the same.
Both Australian and India have arrived in Adelaide as teams under pressure, but for completely contrasting reasons.
For India, this Test is for pride. Pure and simple. The only way for their aging champions to get their baying media off their backs is to perform, and perform well. A win may not be enough on its own.
The Indian media got a scent of blood in Sydney, a taste in Perth, and will be ready to feed off the carcass should another loss befall their team in Adelaide.
Though not quite to the same shock and awe level that the team’s go-karting expedition in Perth drew upon themselves, there were minor media rumblings late last week when it was reported that some Indian squad members had gone … (gasp) shopping.
Adelaide’s paintball and laser skirmish businesses must be feeling positively robbed.
Though he’ll miss this Test through a tardy over-rate enforced suspension, MS Dhoni will remain under fire for his team’s overall performance in this series.
Questions over his own performances will undoubtedly remain, too. If the grind of wicket-keeping and captaining India in three forms of the game is starting to take its toll, it’s best he does something about that sooner rather than later.
Dhoni’s Test Match batting has been disappointing for some time, but his captaincy in the three preceding Tests has been worse. I’m still scratching my head why it took so long for Ishant Sharma to be introduced in Australia’s only innings in Perth.
By the time Sharma did send down his first balls in anger, David Warner was already in the 60s, and Sharma became just another run-a-ball notch in Warner’s hunting belt.
Virender Sehwag hasn’t had a happy time in Australia at all, and indeed, hasn’t had a happy time away from the subcontinent since he last played in Adelaide four years ago.
Just as the whispers about his place in the side and rumours of displeasure with Dhoni had him being pushed toward the firing squad, Dhoni’s absence suddenly handed Sehwag a Presidential pardon in the form of the Captaincy.
Sehwag seems a strange choice, but when you consider all other options have had the Captaincy before and lost it voluntarily or otherwise, he becomes the last man standing.
VVS Laxman may or may not be playing his last Test, with Indian media push that peaked after Perth evidently easing up. On that score, Ricky Ponting can be thankful he was born in Launceston and not Hyderabad. Laxman certainly won’t be going into this Test underdone, even training on days off as they arrived from Perth last week.
It will, of course, be the last Test for a number of Laxman’s colleagues too, with Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar unlikely to be seen in these parts again. I still wonder about the former Australian captain too, with my hunch that he’s about to call time refusing to go away.
I figure that Ricky Ponting now has nothing left to prove. The 134 in Sydney showed he can still make the big score he (and Australia) has yearned; he can still make runs at Test level. But everything that he’s never done in his career (win in India & regain the Ashes in England, both as Captain) he’ll never get another chance, and everything he can do he’s done before. There is nothing left for him to achieve.
Despite being “on the cusp of a whitewash,” Australia can’t exactly cruise through this Test, either. They’re under pressure from within.
The batting order is yet to fire properly as a unit, with every innings in the series so far being built upon two or three scores, but none of the four innings with contributions from the entire top six.
The top six have all made one century, or at least two fifties, for the series with one exception: Shaun Marsh.
Since coming into the side for the Boxing Day Test, at the expense of Usman Khawaja (who coincidently made 134 for NSW 2nd XI in Canberra yesterday), Marsh has returned 0, 3, 0, and 11 from his four innings. Only bowlers Nathan Lyon and Ryan Harris sit below him on the series aggregates, and neither of them has batted four times.
A mercy dash innings back in the Big Bash League proved just as lean, netting 18 for the Perth Scorchers in Sydney last Wednesday. His unbeaten BBL 99 in the week before Christmas seems an eternity ago, never mind his 148 on Test debut against Sri Lanka in September.
Marsh needs a big score in Adelaide to book his Caribbean ticket.
As does Brad Haddin. Plus some.
An unhappy summer deteriorated further, when like a naughty kid being held back for detention, Haddin was also dispatched to the BBL last week for an extra hit after the Perth Test.
A second ball duck, out giving catching practice to the Perth ‘keeper Luke Ronchi, was further compounded by an ordinary dropped catch off Marcus North, who went on to produce an almost match-winning innings.
I’m not sure if Haddin’s admission of being physically and mentally exhausted was a plea for help within a busy summer or a pre-emptive defence should the axe fall.
And if that’s all not bad enough, Shane Warne has spoken. The last time Warnie made a suggestion about the Test team, Michael Beer was elevated about seven places in the spin-bowling pecking order.
This time around, SKW hopes for more runs and solid ‘keeping from Haddin in Adelaide “because he’s a wonderful player”, but that still didn’t stop Warne suggesting in the next breath that Matthew Wade was ready to go now for Australia in all forms of the game.
Be worried, Brad, be very worried.
All told, Australia thoroughly deserve to be firm favourites in Adelaide, and quite rightly so. Even despite a mixed a bag from the batsmen, the Australian team has been simply too good for India this series.
My ‘whitewash’ suggestion last week was perhaps a touch pre-emptive, but now, anything less would be an anti-climax. Michael Clarke has imposingly dismissed talk of a dead rubber, and he’s giving me the impression that he’s not interested in anything other than a 4-0 series win.