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Opinion
Dropping Travis Head at the start of the series was a shocking decision but the Australians have redeemed themselves with one of the all-time great Test wins at Indore.
And speaking of all-timers, that pitch is one of the worst I’ve seen. The ICC has rated it as poor and rightly so because it was terrible. It’s not a great series for day-four ticket holders.
How can you produce pitches that bad for a Test? I know this game was moved from Dharamshala at late notice a few weeks ago but that’s no excuse for trotting out such a woeful pitch.
You’ve got to have a balance between all the skills of cricket and this was one-way traffic in favour of the bowlers.
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They’ve got about 20 Test venues in India and they definitely moved it to the wrong one.
Travis Head bats during day three at Holkare Cricket Stadium. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
Unlike the curators, the Aussie coaching staff got it right with their preparation for this match. Giving the players time off and a chance to recharge the batteries for a few days was a masterstroke. A big tick to them for getting the lead-up to this match right when the whole squad was under the pump to turn it around.
When you’ve lost a couple of games back to back, you can panic and over-train but they saw that it was time to take the foot off the accelerator a bit and give the players space to clear their heads and it worked a treat.
This series had 4-0 written all over it after the second Test but Australia have bounced back with a vengeance. Victories over there are so rare, they’re like golden nuggets when you get your hands on one.
It was a great performance especially considering confidence would have been tested going into the game 2-0 down and then losing the toss and having to bowl first.
We saw in the first two Tests with the Aussies that one bad session can take you out of the game but this time it was the home side when they collapsed on day one.
Nathan Lyon was magnificent with his eight wickets in the second innings. The pitches in India aren’t necessarily suited to his bowling style but he’s mastered the way to bowl spin there and the records that are coming his way as one of the most successful foreign bowlers are thoroughly deserved.
That just continues the theme of the Gazza Lyon greatness really.
And the Aussie spin stocks are now suddenly looking very healthy with Todd Murphy and Matt Kuhnemann breaking through in this series.
When I’d seen Kuhnemann bowl in the BBL I could tell he was a spinner who wouldn’t get flustered no matter what the occasion. He was playing against the Renegades bowling to Andre Russell who was slogging them everywhere and Kuhnemann came on, knew exactly what he wanted to do and halted his momentum.
He showed that cool temperament again in the first innings with his 5-16. He’s not the kind of bowler who will rip through teams in Australian conditions but he’s given the team another option being a left-armer with Lyon and Todd Murphy bowling offies.
None of the batters looked comfortable against him, he’s young enough at 26 so he will only improve and we’ve now got a few spinners with Test experience who we can call upon when the conditions are right in all three formats.
Steve Smith’s captaincy was spot on throughout the Test. It really is a luxury for Australia to have someone of his experience at the ready to step in whenever Pat Cummins is not available. He had a massive impact at Indore, marshalled his bowlers really well and I liked how he said straight away afterwards that it’s Pat’s team now and he’s happy to help out when needed in the background as vice-captain.
Although his score of 60 won’t be one of the highest of his career, Usman Khawaja’s knock in the first dig was amazing. Pure class. It was worth as much as most centuries on that wicket.
Travis Head bats during day three. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
Half-centuries are pretty much like hundreds in this series and that innings was incredible. It was almost a match-winner.
If you under-achieve in the first innings it will come back to bite you but with Uzzy leading the way the Aussies ended up nearly 100 in front and that made it almost impossible for India after they let themselves down at the start of the match with the bat.
Head’s 49 not out to finish the game off was a beauty. He was given that freedom to go hard at the new ball and this innings was very similar to the couple of hundreds he scored against England in the Ashes series last summer and his 92 against South Africa on a very tough wicket at the Gabba a couple of months ago.
He’s a match-winner. Heady’s not like Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith, who you know are going to be more reliable game to game but he’s like Ben Stokes with his ability to grab the game by the scruff of the neck, even in tough conditions for batting.
I thought Cameron Green looked good with the bat too which is another positive sign out of this match in his first match in India after a couple of months off. For a big, tall batter, his footwork was good and he got down the pitch nicely to the spinners.
Now that we’ve qualified for the World Test Championship, that’s out of the way, and if the Aussies can level up the series with a win in Ahmedabad that would be enormous.
The Indian batting has a lot of question marks. Rohit Sharma’s century in the first Test saved them and for the most part it has been their spinners coming to the rescue with lower-order runs.
Cheteshwar Pujara is bowled by Nathan Lyon. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
Shubman Gill’s wild swing running down the wicket to get out to Lyon in the second innings at Indore was the kind of thing you’d expect from a No.11. Has he got the poise against quality spin for Test cricket?
Cheteshwar Pujara needed that 59 in the second innings because he hasn’t been his usual self and Virat Kohli looks good when he’s out there but hasn’t been able to convert any of his starts into big scores.
Shreyas Iyer and Suryakumar Yadav have been used in the middle order but they both seem more like white-ball specialists to me.
It will be interesting to see what kind of pitch they roll out for next week’s final Test at Ahmedabad with talk that they’re going to possibly have more of a green seamer to get used to conditions in England if they make the World Test Championship final. The Aussies won’t be too unhappy with that.
Even though the pitch was not up to scratch, it was a compelling match. You couldn’t take your eyes off each delivery because something could happen at any time.
It’s one of the reasons why Test cricket is so tremendous. We saw a high-scoring five-day game in Wellington with New Zealand winning a thriller that went right down to the wire and this one in Indore was the total opposite because of a nightmare pitch but just as fascinating.
At both ends of the spectrum, it’s must-watch TV, it’s nail-biting stuff and may it live forever.