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It was skittish. It was stilted. It was, at times, quite ugly. Joe Burns won’t care a jot, though.
The 58 next to his name is all that matters and may free him of the nerves which have hampered him over his first two Tests.
FOLLOW SCORES FROM DAY 3 OF THE CRICKET IN SYDNEY HERE
The story out of domestic cricket is that the rookie Australian batsman is notoriously edgy while he waits to bat. He has carried that anxiousness with him to the crease during his brief international career.
Similar to the last specialist batsman blooded in Tests for Australia, Alex Doolan, the pressure seem to have shackled Burns.
While donning the baggy green, Doolan never attained the fluency he often displays for Tasmania. Typically, he was stiff and unnatural in his play. Just once in Doolan’s eight Test innings did he look relaxed, and even then it was only during the latter part of his knock of 89 against South Africa on debut.
From that point on, Doolan made just 75 runs at an average of 12. Underlining his laboured efforts is the fact he faced 250 balls to make those runs.
Before he could manage to find a modicum of ease at Test level, Doolan was jettisoned. We never got to see what he could have produced in a calm and assured state.
Burns remains in that same uncomfortable phase. The Australian selectors can be impatient with fresh faces so hopefully yesterday’s 58 will imbue him with the kind of confidence that will see him play in a more natural fashion.
At the start of his dig, Burns’ feet were heavy and he was playing the Indian spinners as though the SCG was a dusty Delhi deck. With Shaun Marsh struggling similarly at the other end, that pair went into lunch with a partnership of 5 from 33 balls. After 17 deliveries, Burns was yet to get off the mark.
First ball of the second session, he again stayed glued to the crease to defend an Ashwin delivery. With the parched SCG pitch beginning to allow the ball to turn reasonably and leap occasionally, the Indian spinners would have been delighted with Burns’ cautious, stay-at-home approach.
Perhaps sensing that he was vulnerable as a static target, Burns changed his method the next delivery. He skipped down the track, reached the pitch and drove against the turn through cover for four. Showing even more aggression, Burns followed that shot by again advancing and lofting the ball over midwicket.
He didn’t get all of it but it didn’t matter. Those consecutive displays of positive intent prompted Indian skipper Virat Kohli to implement a less attacking field. After building steadily on Burns, the pressure had been released.
On 22 we caught another glimpse of Burns’ dynamism. Bhuvneshwar Kumar sent down a respectable delivery on a length just outside off stump. The rookie Australian has shown at domestic level that he is a quick judge of length. Kumar’s offering was not short but Burns leant back so quickly he was able to unfurl his trademark pull shot, sending the ball zooming to the rope.
Soon after, he wielded another of his favourite strokes, the sweep, to collect one more boundary. After being stuck on nought for so long, he had then crunched 30 from just 40 balls, including five boundaries.
Rather than freeing him up, Burns soon found himself bogged deeply once more. A sequence of 22 deliveries came and went without a scoring stroke.
It is at this point that most batsmen, let alone rookies, slam their fist into the panic button and conjure their demise with a rash stroke. Amid his seeming bout of anxiety, Burns protected his wicket and soon rediscovered some momentum. First he drove, then he pulled, and finally he lofted to register three boundaries in the space of six deliveries.
When finally he fell for 58 Australia had patently moved into dash-towards-a-declaration mode and the youngster’s attempted slog lobbed into the mitts of long on. But the manner in which Burns endured two periods of struggle was salient.
The 25-year-old is a noted fast starter – he likes to assert his authority early in his digs before settling into a gentler rhythm. Here he was not allowed such a luxury.
The selectors will have been impressed with the way in which he batted against type. They saw in the Shield innings which likely earned him his Test spot that he prefers the David Warner method of spreading the field from the get go and then exploiting gaps.
Selector Mark Waugh was in the stands when Burns crashed 183 against a Test-standard New South Wales attack at the Gabba in mid-November.
NSW boasted Nathan Lyon, Steve O’Keefe, Doug Bollinger, Gurinder Sandhu and Sean Abbott. Burns motored to 52 from just 46 balls, lashing five fours and a six.
Having put NSW on the back foot and forced them into more defensive fields, he was then content to cruise. His following 131 runs came from 209 balls as he demoralised the Blues’ bowlers and left a strong impression on Waugh.
Burns has one more Test innings this summer to turn Waugh and his fellow selectors into true believers.