Australia v New Zealand: ‘Extreme’ challenge too great for Kiwis

Kane Williamson spreads calm wherever he goes. He could walk into a burning house and leave you feeling just cosy.

Australian offspinner Nathan Lyon bowls on day 4 of the first Test against New Zealand in Perth. Picture: AAP

Small, self-contained, softly-spoken, Kane Williamson spreads calm wherever he goes. He plays so late that it’s like someone waiting at the top of a staircase for you to catch up; he walked in to New Zealand’s second innings at Perth Stadium and got going with two soundless leg side boundaries.

If any possibility existed that the Black Caps would make Australia toil, it lay in Williamson’s fourth innings average of nearly 60.

At the other end as the tenth over began, another unassuming figure. Nathan Lyon is a bowler who has welcomed Perth’s venue switch. Having paid 48 for his Test wickets at the WACA, he was man-of-the-match last year with eight for 106. He bowled maybe the best ball of this Test on Saturday to dismiss Ross Taylor; he was about to follow it up.

The size of the cracks, which at the WACA used to yawn like something down which Arne Saknussemm might have vanished, is restricted at Perth Stadium by the drop-in trays, but you could still lose coins or car keys down them. Lyon’s first delivery landed on just about a perfect length. There was the suspicion of a puff and dust as the ball impacted the turf, and of the snarl on a glove as it bounced above waist high.

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In another over or two, Williamson might have steered it to safety; as it was, not yet quite grooved or calibrated, he was caught between wind and water, and at short leg. Colleagues gathered round gleefully, patting his pate. Williamson receded, taking with him the Black Caps’ skerrick of a fraction of a glimmer of a hope.

So tolled the knell on the Black Caps’ chances in this first Test. Their coach Gary Stead said in advance of the game that the match presented the “most extreme” challenge they could face — it was putting a brave face on a fixture frankly ridiculous even by modern standards.

The idea of preparing for a pink-ball Test at Perth Stadium in fierce heat with three practice sessions, having played their previous Test with a red ball three time zones east in mild conditions barely 10 days earlier, is so ludicrous only administrators could have come up with it. What were they thinking, except about money?

Never, in fact, in the history of cricket has a visiting international team gone into a Test with so little cricket: that is to say, zero. It is a reductio ad absurdum of modern scheduling. The next step will be teams turning up after the toss, or maybe having proxies play the first day for them.

New Zealand then lost the toss in 40C. Deprived by injury of their best pink ball bowler, Trent Boult, they almost immediately went down a further bowler, Lockie Ferguson.

They started their own innings in in-between light, proceeded in the dark — a trap well lain by Australia, but considerably assisted by external circumstance.

They showed, in the circumstances, impressive pluck.

Tim Southee’s nine for 162 from 51.3 overs and Neil Wagner’s seven for 151 from 60 overs with only a 56 over intermission kept the Australians’ honest throughout. But the Black Caps started from the back marks, and from there fell further behind before they could make any impact on this match.

For their part, the Australians did the needful. Still a team learning to assert their authority, they dallied a little in the opening session on Sunday. Without Josh Hazlewood they were unable to exert the tentacular control they achieved with the ball against Pakistan.

But Mitchell Starc brought immediate height and heat to the new ball, and made quick incursions: the hapless Jeet Raval is now averaging 7.3 in his last six Tests, although how an already out-of-form opening batsman was meant to grope his way back into touch here is beyond comprehension.

Starc later struck a spark from the older ball to get rid of the stubborn BJ Watling.

Lyon varied his pace adeptly, while Matthew Wade and Travis Head leaned in for edges round the bat, and the Australian outfielding was often superb — twelfth man Michael Neser’s busy hours on the field here have deserved a special citation. From the additional over gained by a quick changeover just before the second break came the important wicket of Henry Nicholls. It was a shame there were not more to watch some well-contested Test cricket on Brett Sipthorpe’s outstanding pitch. The announcement that anyone who had purchased a sandwich, wrap or salads should return them “to the outlet of purchase immediately” occasioned almost as much tension as any other event during the match.

Though the alert was later downgraded to only involving items with a chicken filling, it at least challenged the view of the arena as “sterile”. But whoever could have thought that?