Echoes of India’s 1980 win in MCG Test shock

Forty years ago in Melbourne, an Indian team that looked utterly outmatched and demoralised surged to win a Test and tie up a series. It may be on the brink of happening again.

Steve Smith walks off glumly after being bowled by Jasprit Bumrah at the MCG

History does not repeat, but does rhyme. Forty years ago in Melbourne, an Indian team that looked utterly outmatched and demoralised surged to win a Test and tie up a series. It may be on the brink of happening again.

In that earlier Test, India was led by Sunil Gavaskar, so disgruntled by Australian umpiring that he famously almost forfeited the match. India’s current captain is no longer even here, Virat Kohli having heard the call of family. It has been his proxy, the self-effacing Ajinkya Rahane, making the case for the leadership of character rather than charisma.

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Australia, meanwhile, has had their worst Boxing Day Test for 10 years, recapitulating the 2010 Ashes match with a costly decision to bat first, a stumbling first innings, a listless bowling and fielding effort, and a gradual fade from there. Hubris? If so, say hello to nemesis.

Two years ago there, for the parallels keep coming, Australia subsidised to India, in a defeat that could be explained in some degree by the absence through suspension of David Warner and Steve Smith. Thanks to injury, Warner is now missing again. Something else is missing from Smith.

It remains possible to argue that, as they say, “a big one is round the corner” for Australia’s most prolific modern batsman — he has made too many runs, too many centuries for it to be otherwise. Still, we are coming to terms with it being a long block.

Steve Smith stares back at his missing bail

Three years have now elapsed since Smith’s last Test hundred in Australia; his four innings in this Border-Gavaskar Trophy have produced 10 uneasy runs. A corollary of Smith’s unique methods of success, moreover, is that he has been capable to finding idiosyncratic ways to fail. Monday’s was a case in point. Ask not for whom the bail falls; it falls for thee.

At 2-42 on the eve of tea, Smith faced Ravi Ashwin, who has lately been confounding him with drift and accuracy. Smith reverted to a former method, dancing a few steps; he had recourse to a new method, essaying a rare sweep; he revisited the first innings, softer hands this time causing the deflection to fall a foot short of Pujara at leg slip.

Then, just after break, Smith shaped to glance Jasprit Bumrah. About five years ago, Smith was bowled behind his legs twice in a World Cup, but quickly adjusted his guard; this delivery was subtler, like a barely audible twig snap in a horror movie as it passed the leg stump.

Smith set off and Bumrah winced as the deflected ball eluded Rishabh Pant’s grasp. Then, pointing fingers, excited cries. The larkish Australian opener Sid Barnes liked it as a trivia question: “What does a bail weigh?” It’s a trick: Law 8 (3) (b) specifies no weight. A heavier leg bail might have remained in place; this one, almost retrospectively, dropped.

The knell had already tolled on Joe Burns. He faced 10 deliveries in each innings of the match. Nearly half of these might conceivably have dismissed him. He was beaten thrice before nicking off in the first innings; in the second he was nearly run out getting off the mark then exonerated from lbw by an umpire’s call before being given out caught at the wicket.

Even then, Burns sought a video Hail Mary — anything to prolong his career, it seemed, if only by a few seconds. Matthew Wade acquiesced — it would have been a hard heart that did otherwise. When the hanging chad went against him, Burns moved off until swallowed in the shadows of the race, fate no longer his own, although curiously entwined now with his coach.

This is a bigger problem than it should be. By identifying so closely with Burns’ second innings success at Adelaide, coach Justin Langer has entwined himself in the opener’s fate. In appreciation of their bond, the batsman described his unbeaten 51 as “our innings”; does the Melbourne Test now become “our 0 and 4”?

Jasprit Bumrah celebrates the wicket of Steve Smith with his teammates

Wade, at least, has fulfilled his brief as ersatz opener. He hit a fine straight drive to the fence, ran a hardworking four to fine leg, showed sound judgment around off stump and absorbed a blow to the helmet like he was catching a bullet between the teeth. But with a good delivery to Marnus Labuschagne and a wretched shot by Travis Head, Australia sagged further. They live to fight a fourth day, and, after Adelaide, nothing can be ruled out. But the simply sensible way Cameron Green and Pat Cummins approached batting in the last hour rather mocked the efforts of their nominal betters.

What has happened in this Test so far that the polarities of Adelaide should have reversed themselves so utterly? It will be a rich subject for conjecture. But the match has recalled a story that Graeme Swann related about the Headingley Test of 2009, where England were stuffed out of sight in barely three days.

It was a game where if it could go wrong it did, and of that, after the match, the players persuaded each other: their performance had been so feeble that the events could be dismissed as an outlier. They won the next match, and the Ashes, convincingly.

36 all out is nothing if not an outlier. Neither India nor Australia have ever made fewer. The visitors have tackled this Melbourne Test as though Adelaide was an anomaly, the hosts as though it was a trend. For the Australians, it has not gone well.