Australian fury dashed against India’s butterfly effect

It was perhaps the characteristic exchange: pent-up Australian fury dashing itself against Pujara’s full face, soft hands and yogi-like patience.

Cheteshwar Pujara contends with a bouncer from Pat Cummins on day five at the Gabba. Picture: AFP

Around 2pm at the Gabba on Tuesday, Josh Hazlewood was mid-gallop to the bowling crease when Cheteshwar Pujara held up a gloved hand. Hazlewood came, grumpily, to a stop.

Normally in such circumstances, the batsman will point out some movement in the crowd within his eyeline. Pujara cast a look around, made a vague gesture — the distraction, it turned out, was a pale butterfly that had fluttered momentarily into his airspace. It was as though cricket’s great apostle of nonviolence was putting in a word for nature or placing a plea for peace.

Hazlewood was unhappy; Hazlewood is seldom happy, save around wickets. His response to the butterfly was to sting like a bee. His sharp lifter dislodged Pujara’s stem guard as it seamed back and cuffed the helmet firmly. “Did ya see that one?” Hazlewood asked helpfully. Pujara picked up the guard, studied the helmet, and the game, as it did regularly on Tuesday, adjourned for physical attention, running repairs. Onlookers paused too, for breath, on a day where every ball seemed loaded with meaning.

It was perhaps the characteristic exchange of the first two sessions: pent-up Australian fury dashing itself against Pujara’s full face, soft hands and yogi-like patience.

India began the last day of this extraordinary Test series needing only a draw to retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. So they did not chase the 324 runs they needed so much as stalk them, gradually and stealthily.

The point was to bat through, to stay the distance so that the objective remained in view for long enough to be a legitimate option, to draw the sting from Australia’s marauding pacemen so that a final push was possible after tea. And no batsman goes through like Pujara, not to mention round, under and over.

Pujara reminds me of that line of Harold Pinter’s about Sir Leonard Hutton’s forward defensive shot being “a complete statement”. India’s number three starts with that unvarying communion with his bat, setting his low grip on the handle, the V of the hands in line.

At the point of contact, the bat is tight into the body, its face almost withdrawing from the ball as it delays contact as long as possible — Pujara gets beaten on the outside edge from time to time, but very seldom on the inside. The ball is not simply blocked; it is neutralised; it is terminated with extreme prejudice. It drops to the ground heavily, as though it weighs a tonne.

One expects this of Pujara, of course, but he yesterday recruited the whole of his body in the act of resistance, as he was bombarded by Hazlewood and Pat Cummins with short leg and leg gully.

It is a hard thing to be hit by a cricket ball; it is harder still to volunteer to let a ball hit you. One lost count of how often Pujara was struck, and consented to be struck: helmet, gloves, ribs, hip. At one point the broadcasters showed a diagram of where each blow had landed, with little cricket balls superimposed on a photograph of the batsman, who was, a little incongruously, smiling.

The smile, however, was not misplaced. By prolonging his resistance into the 81st over, and only being dislodged by the new ball, he made the games of others possible — viz Shubman Gill and Rishabh Pant.

A scary thought, for bowlers, is that Gill is 21. He has time, in every respect. He has a young man’s face, almost an air of innocence. He hangs back, leg side of the ball, in the modern fashion; he waits until it seems almost too late; then, and only then, does he play, right under the eyes. He has a shot all his own, a half-cut, half-drive off the back foot with a diagonal bat that is sure to be named for him, although he plays it so naturally it feels like it should always have existed.

Above all, Gill has nerve. He hooked Starc in the air despite two men back; he slashed Starc over slip despite a deep third man; Starc’s 12th over went for 20. The only regret India might harbour about Gill is having ignored him in favour of Prithvi Shaw in Adelaide.

Rishabh Pant did not play in Adelaide either, when India were bustled and bullied out in their second innings for 36 — how long ago that seems. Funnily enough, had India been dismissed for 150 that day, and Wriddhiman Saha perhaps scrounged 20 together, Pant might still be an onlooker.

As it was, the visitors felt compelled to replace the superior gloveman with the better batsman. If he felt the pressure of that, Pant never showed it, and certainly not yesterday, so relaxed at the crease that he might as well have been whistling. Far from being daunted by the approaching target, Pant played shots like wisecracks: cheeky sweeps, slogs out of the rough, a fall-over ramp, a fall-over pull. If Pujara is India’s centre of gravity, Pant is its centre of levity.

The Indians also benefited by their staunch last-day fight at Sydney, which left Australian legs leaden, and by another Australian pitch that did not really deteriorate — for which, it’s worth noting, drop-in technology cannot be blamed. There was some variation in bounce, occasional sharp turn. But whether the prohibition on saliva was the cause, as has been the case all summer, they could conjure little from the ball, orthodox or reverse. Hazlewood finished the day with a full toss, decisively driven, thwarted by multiple factors as well as his opponents. One might well have called it the butterfly effect.