Causes for concern? Aussies hammer India...
Adam Collins in India and Geoff Lemon of the ABC Down Under
The boys are still a few time zones apart and there are differences of opinion, too, about that amazing Australian win. Geoff Lemon: The Mandela Effect. We’re deep in some alternate dimension business. Right now, in our version of the world, Sinbad never made a movie called Shazaam. Donald Trump is the leader of a country. Australia won a Test match in India. Steve O’Keefe took a dozen wickets for nothing. Virat Kohli made a duck and left a ball that bowled him. This is a Sliders sci-fi TV universe, and we need its central character Jerry O’Connell to take us home. Adam Collins: His mentor Professor Arturo did the sums before Pune and said it was mathematically impossible for Australia to get a win. Rembrandt Brown wrote a song about it. But here we are: one-nil up, and havin’ a laugh. As Smith, Warner, anyone we interview is quick to remind us: no one thought they could win a game. Now, they could retain the trophy in straight sets. GL: OK, straight sets is a way off. In my heart of hearts, this is more like when some up-and-comer gets a fast start at the Australian Open, and takes a set off Serena Williams, then she gets mad and chases them down like Bette Midler after a carload of litterbugs. Surely India will come back hard in Bangalore? AC: I’m not so pessimistic. Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome being over here, but we just had a look at the track and it is going to be a road. It looks a bit green, but as you see in Australia, soon as they mowed a bit of grass it started to shine. Do you think they’ve got the pitch doctoring the wrong way around? Had they punished Australia in Pune then came here with a heap of junk like we had last week, wouldn’t that have sequenced better for India? GL: Well, a couple of things. I don’t buy into complaints about the pitch. The ICC assessments are junk. If a green top that ends a game in three days is all right, and a flat-track draw is all right, what’s wrong with a spinning surface that provides a result? Second, what’s wrong with India’s curators dishing up what they please? That’s the test of cricket. Third, why say they got the pitch wrong because they lost? It wasn’t the pitch’s fault they got outplayed. Australia bowled better, fielded better, and batted better, and those three things will get you a win on any surface. AC: I agree with doctoring. A country should use their comparative advantage. Go nuts. I just think it was strategically a mistake not to go with the model that worked against England. Make Australia sweat, then give them the track from last week. There is more to that story too: the curator was fuming with the BCCI about his instructions. Pune doesn’t usually do “those”. So he didn’t roll it! Bingo, bango. GL: I’ll nod and smile here, I’m not a horticulturalist. What I can say is that it was a fond moment watching Steve O’Keefe run amok. There’s a slo-mo replay from that game of him imploring for an appeal: kneeling, wrists wobbling, doing full jazz hands, mouth agape, howling. Amazing footage. It was not out. Against Kohli, I think? But a dozen were out to him, including Kohli a moment later. SOK has always been super
intense, but seeing this was… inspiring, really. So much hard work. Three disastrous Tests out of four in his career: a flogging, a washout, an injury. And then this. The best an Australian has ever performed with the ball in India. AC: It was hard not to get a bit emotional about it, without wanting to go over the top. It’s a glorious story. Every bit of it. The struggle to get there. The poor firstup Test. The injury when he looked ready to light the joint up. The boozy episode when he got home. The fact that he thought it was done, multiple times. For celebrations, my favourite was how he carried on when Starc picked up Kohli in the first innings. Speaks volumes. As does the fact that at lunch after his first spell, he went out to the middle to do some bowling practice as his teammates put their feet up. Deserves every ounce of this success. GL: Renshaw the other one who showed his mettle: young batsman, sick as a dog, puking at short leg, endangering his creams, the whole lot, yet found a way to put on 99 runs in the match, which was about as much as India’s XI managed in either innings. We expected Smith to fight, but being backed up by the kid in the squad was less predictable. AC: The selectors deserve credit. I’m relishing the Renshaw v Haseeb battle come Ashes time. On Smith, I know you found it hard to love his ton due to the four chances, but I loved his refusal to remove front pad from bat. His teammates said on day two he was like a man possessed staying in till stumps. It was gritty and messy and far from fluent, but it was the exact knock they have cried out for in Asia. He says, when asked, his leaderships style is to lead by example. His 18th Test century was the essence of that. GL: Make that six chances. I admired his determination, and how he learned from Sri Lanka. I just don’t understand lauding a ‘great’ innings as opposed to an important one, when luck was such a factor. Greatness implies a mastery of conditions, not having the fortune to survive them. AC: If we’re splitting on this, it’s the quintessential good problem to have. A shout out to Mitch Starc. The broadcast named him Player of the Match, before adding O’Keefe as Man of the Match. Huh? But Starc had a top all-round game too. He’ll be needed in Bangalore, with Hazlewood. If the rain stays away, it’s going to be attritional. GL: No more room for anomalies. It’ll either be a triumph completed or normal service resumed. Not long now.
On Smith, I know you found it hard to love his ton due to the chances but teammates said he was like a man possessed staying in ‘till staumps