Honours even after Renshaw and Starc hold their own

When a team makes 9-256 on day one of a Test match the appraisals of their performance tend to be hyper-critical. But Australia’s effort against India yesterday was not as bad as their total suggests.

I’m not trying to say Australia should feel content with their score, as India have the ability to come out and earn a big lead.

Rather, the bar has been set so low for Australia’s batting in Asia that they actually showed significant improvement on their embarrassing displays in Sri Lanka last year.

In that series, Australia’s batsmen floundered on pitches which didn’t even offer much help for the home spinners. The touring batsmen showed awful technical deficiencies against spin and also lacked the temperament required.

Whereas yesterday Australia’s top five actually displayed encouraging circumspection on a dustbowl pitch. Faced with a remarkably difficult surface, which offered wild turn and bounce within the first ten overs, Australia’s top five played with a rarely-seen level of resilience.

Even cavalier opener David Warner reined in his attacking instincts, making 38 from 77 balls.

That sounds like a regular Test innings. But it was notably cautious for Warner – it was only the second time in his entire Test career that he had operated at a strike rate of less than 50 during a score of 25 or more.

Matt Renshaw, Steve Smith, Shaun Marsh and Peter Handscomb all showed similar degrees of stoicism, even if none of them made apart from Renshaw made a truly important score.

Smith batted for 95 balls in making 27, shackling his desire to take on the bowlers until he was well set. His downfall came about as a result of one of his first instances of genuine aggression.

Smith came down the wicket and tried to loft Ashwin over the leg side, only to lob a catch to midwicket.

Marsh looked very comfortable at the crease and avoided playing any risky shots in his first hour. Then he made the mistake of trying to sweep Jayant Yadav right after Kohli had moved himself to leg slip.

Handscomb, too, did not look out of his element during his knock of 22.

The rookie played Ashwin and Yadav beautifully. But his propensity to play mostly off the back foot was a liability against Ravi Jadeja, who is an expert at pinning batsmen to the crease.

Renshaw, meanwhile, compiled one of the finest innings by an Australian batsmen in Asia in quite some time. That may sound like exaggerated praise for a knock of 68 but considering his age and the menacing pitch it was a seriously fine knock.

It only took until the fourth over for me to be proved completely wrong in my prediction that the pitches in this series would not be raging turners.

Ashwin opened the bowling and his eighth delivery exploded off the parched, cracked surface.

From the first over paceman Ishant Sharma had been dislodging significant chunks of the pitch in his follow through, as highlighted by close-up slow-motion footage.

In the 10th over Ashwin got a delivery to turn incredibly, by up to 60cm, and bounce so extremely that the keeper gloved it at almost shoulder height.

This kind of extravagant turn and bounce only became more common as the day progressed and the pitch wore badly under foot.

Even the home commentators, normally so fierce in their defence of anything Indian, were critical of the pitch. But, rather than hindering Australia, the tricky surface may well end up helping them. Batting first on such a dusty track is undoubtedly a major advantage, so they will have zero excuses if they do not compete strongly in this Test.

Australia’s spinners Nathan Lyon and Steve O’Keefe should cherish bowling on such a surface, but that doesn’t mean that India’s dominant batting line-up can’t overcome the conditions and build a big score.