Adelaide Test: Tim Paine consults, listens, acts and wickets fall

The lowest point of Tim Paine’s first session of his first home Test as captain came before a ball was bowled.

Tim Paine led from the front and his keeping was excellent behind the stumps. Picture: AAP

It started badly and it was all uphill from there.

The lowest point of Tim Paine’s first session of his first home Test as captain came before a ball was bowled.

He lost the toss. After saying he also would’ve batted, and trotting out the standard line about bowling first not being such a bad thing, Paine led his men out of the fire and into the furnace, whereupon they dominated the first session.

Everything worked. There’s nothing a captain likes more than a bowling change that brings ­immediate joy.

Paine tasted such sweet success twice yesterday. Pat Cummins dismissed Virat Kohli in his first over and Josh Hazlewood knocked over Ajinkya Rahane with the second ball of his second spell.

India’s captain and vice-captain were gone — Paine’s bowling changes had decapitated India.

Events leading to Kohli’s wicket speak of Paine’s understated, consultative style.

At the end of a Mitchell Starc over, Hazlewood and Cummins both strode for the same bowling crease.

One more, Hazlewood appeared to signal, in the time-honoured fast-bowler tradition.

Paine acquiesced.

The skipper then ran the more than 50m to his station at the other end and signalled to Starc at fine-leg: Did he want a rest?

He must have, because Cummins replaced Starc. Enter Cummins, exit Kohli.

Usman Khawaja’s left-handed screamer will not be bettered this summer but it wouldn’t have happened without the captaincy.

The chance was created because Paine listened to his bowlers and Paine trusted his bowlers.

As he should listen to the best attack in the world.

Just like last year, when the ­English rejected as “partisan sabre-rattling’’ Australian predictions of a perfect fast-bowling storm, the Australian bowlers might have again been underrated leading into this series.

All four were relentless, unerring and uncomplaining in the 39C heat. Paine marshalled his resources — his depleted resources in Mitch Marsh’s absence — ­judiciously, spreading the load across all four.

Even when the pitch lost some of its zip after lunch, the bowlers stuck to their hard task.

By failing to quickly excise the tail, they ceded some of the ground earlier won, but it was unforgiving out there in the middle.

A good toss to lose? A bad one for India to win more like. Batsmen bent on self-destruction helped the Australian cause.

Hazlewood needed only two balls of his second spell to deal with Rahane, leaving the top order in tatters and Paine clothed in captaincy glory.

The four scalps in the first session set up the day. Cheteshwar Pujara was magnificently defiant, but better having him at the crease than Kohli or Rahane in the benign conditions after lunch.

Even when Pujara and Ravi Ashwin dug in late in the day, Paine’s Australians kept probing on an increasingly unhelpful surface.

And with the strip baking harder by the minute, the hosts should be well satisfied with their work. Par batting first in Adelaide is in the vicinity of 350-plus.

The run rate was held in check all day even though Paine eschewed sweepers and ring fields.

No-one could accuse Paine of being overly defensive; three slips — including a funky, helmeted Aaron Finch at a short third slip — were in place for most of the day.

(Although a helmeted leg gully in the first session was a bit much. Nothing wrong with the position, but a helmet so far from the bat?)

Leadership, like interviewing, is all about listening and Paine ­apparently doesn’t like the sound of his own voice.

No bombastic autocracy. In Paine, Australia has a leader for the times. He has been thrust into the job in the most difficult circumstances and time will tell if he’s Frank Forde or Harry Truman.

But his performance yesterday — in that heat, under all that pressure — has shored up his captaincy in the medium term, assuming any doubters remained.

And through it all, the ball kept puffing snugly into those safe gloves.

Early on he pouched a feather from Murali Vijay and in the afternoon he held a fine catch from a Nathan Lyon ball that bounced steeply to kiss Rishabh Pant’s bat.

The bounce made it a harder catch than it looked, but that’s nothing unusual for Paine.

His notional job was pushed into the background by his decisive tactical moves as much as it was by the excellence of his glovework rendering him almost invisible in his station behind the stumps.