Perth Test: No quick solution to tourists’ long batting tail of woe

India’s strange selection strategy for the second Test has made one of the side’s weaknesses even weaker.

A member of India’s four-pronged pace attack, Mohammed Shami, unsuccessfully appeals for lbw against Aaron Finch. Picture: Getty Images

Virat Kohli called heads but India said we’ll have a tail. A long one.

In gambling on four quicks for the second Test in Perth, the Indian selectors perhaps mistook the city’s new cricket ground for the adjacent casino.

They went all in to play an XI brimming with pace but with precisely no specialist spinners.

And being six out, all out, in the second innings in Adelaide (losing 4-4), they’ve achieved what seemed impossible by making the lower order even weaker.

With Ravi Ashwin (four hundreds, one abdominal strain) on the sidelines, the tourists have brought in Umesh Yadav, highest score 30, average 11.08.

Yadav joins Mohammed Shami (11.39), Ishant Sharma (7.92) and Jasprit Bumrah (1.42) in a tail almost as long as the queues snaking and baking on the concrete outside the stadium yesterday.

Consider that Australian No 11 Josh Hazlewood has a better Test average (12.50) than all four Indians. By way of local comparison, they’re fielding a tail of Michael Kasprowicz, Rodney Hogg, Doug Bollinger and Jim Higgs.

By playing a bunny, rabbit, hare and ferret at numbers 8-11, the tourists are making a weakness weaker, thereby strengthening Australia’s advantage in lower-order batting.

Even the reason for the selection — exploiting the pacy pitch — is arguable.

As Trent Copeland said on the eve of the Test, why play four when three was more than enough in Adelaide?

“All this external chat about both teams needing another quick bowler … ‘because it’s green’ … I don’t get it,” Copeland said.

“That’s in fact the time it should be easiest to take 20 wickets with your three frontline quicks? Spin still relevant.”

Copeland speaks with the authority of someone with 300 first class wickets, including seven in a Shield match here a fortnight ago.

If the wicket was as fast-bowler friendly as everyone — especially the groundsman — was saying before the match, then three quicks should have been enough, especially given three did the job on a slower wicket in Adelaide.

If the three quicks needed help after their heavy load in Adelaide, then there was another option — rest one.

Yadav wasn’t the only alternative. This juicy track was tailor-made for swing specialist Bhuvneshwar Kumar.

And Kumar would have slotted in neatly at No 8. He has three Test 50s, a best of 63 not out, and an average of 22.08.

The long tail isn’t the only issue with India’s batting. In Adelaide the openers were flighty, No 6 Rohit Sharma was unproductive and keeper Rishabh Pant was agricultural.

The injured Rohit’s replacement, Hanuma Vihari, is playing only his second Test.

Granted, Prithvi Shaw is injured, but at present India’s batting is vulnerable, so the decision to further weaken it might not be wise.

Chasing immediate returns from the quicks, instead of the more reliable but distant dividend promised by a spinner, is some gamble.

It’s not like the overlooked tweaker is a novice: Ravindra Jadeja is at present No 5 in the ICC’s Test bowling rankings.

And did we mention he bats a bit too? Bats a bit in that he has three first-class triple hundreds.

Without Jadeja, spin duties fell to Vihari whose first two balls were hit to the fence but whose eighth was hit by Harris to first slip.

In going with express-man Yadav instead of swing-man Kumar or a spinner, the tourists for a time seemed to have been seduced by all the talk about the fast pitch.

As the runs piled up in the first session yesterday, Kerry O’Keeffe was guffawing at how easily the Indians fell into the Australian trap, and broaching which award should be conferred on groundsman Brett Sipthorpe.

It might have been different, of course, as the Australians rode their luck.

Aaron Finch and Harris flashed, flirted and flailed at balls that missed their edges by millimetres and the best part of metres, such was the movement in the deck.

India’s gamble started to pay dividends in the afternoon. But the final reckoning must wait until a certain tract of uncharted territory is fully explored and comprehensively mapped.