Tall order to stop India’s never-ending highlights

Are the Australians merely the Washington Generals being trounced by India’s Harlem Globetrotters?

Matthew Renshaw looks on during an Australian Test squad training session Picture: Getty Images

There has been no live international cricket in India to watch these past nine days, but that does not mean it has been out of sight.

Walk into a bar or an airport, a home or a hotel, and you can be almost guaranteed the television will be tuned to Star Sports 1, where cricket revolves in an endless, oneiric loop.

For those at the Nagpur and Delhi Tests, it becomes a little like watching your life flash before your eyes – your recent life, at any rate, chock full of blazing Indian strokes, dizzy Australian batters, local players interviewing one another and visiting players looking beleaguered, interspersed with teasers and trailers for the Indian Premier League.

Watch Australia’s Tour of India. Every Test & ODI live & ad-break free during play on Kayo. New to Kayo? Start your free trial now >

There’s a saying that Indians don’t really love cricket so much as Indian cricket and it certainly gains support from Star Sports 1’s stock in trade. On the morning after the Australian women’s team’s win in the T20 World Cup, Star Sports 1 was still showing highlights of Indian games, as though Harmanpreet Kaur’s team remained in contention.

This is not a new phenomenon: Andrew Symonds commented in his autobiography that when he watched Indian television it was as though he had never made a run while batting and only been carted for six when he bowled. But the effect is almost narcotic, and on the visitor pronounced, intensifying the sense that you have entered a world in which India never loses. The IPL is, in a way, the ultimate dreamscape: a cricket of endless India self-celebration.

As the Australians’ curious limbo ends, and cricket resumes, they must confront the degree to which Star Sports 1, for all its compulsory jubilation, corresponds with real life. India’s home Test record in the past decade is 36 wins and two defeats. In that time, for good measure, they have lost only 21 of 72 one-day internationals, and but two of their past 20.

The dramatic personae are altered: no Cummins, Warner or Agar; Cricket Australia’s CEO has returned home, and its chairman will shortly be on his way.

There’s hope of a fresh start, in India’s self-proclaimed cleanest city. But India has prevailed overwhelmingly in two previous Tests here, in 2016 and 2019, and custody of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy has been decided, leaving both teams loitering palely.

Can Australia break the cycle? The pitch here is unsurprisingly dry, with, for the moment at least, tufty grass, reminiscent of the top of Virender Sehwag’s head back in the day. The toss feels important. Australia has wasted the advantage of winning it twice in this series, as the team did four times in the series a decade ago.

But the opportunity to post a competitive total on one of the smaller playing surfaces in India, scale accentuated by Holkar Stadium’s stands rising almost vertically from the edge of the playing surface, would be welcome.

Smith, in particular, would be relieved time in the field straining his stiff back before batting. Nota bene: Australia’s stand-in skipper has not gone three Tests without 50 since the end of 2019.

Stand-in skipper Steve Smith inspects the pitch at the Holkar Stadium in Indore Picture: Getty Images

The inclusion of Cameron Green and Mitchell Starc will strengthen both bowling and batting. Green adds another right-hander to an order that has looked vulnerable to Ravi Ashwin turning the ball away. Starc’s loose-armed swinging was vital to Australia’s last win in India.

Fit three weeks ago, they’d have been among the first picked in Nagpur; fit here, they can treat the next two Tests as a series within the series.

There’s some blue sky to Australia’s batting, in that everyone save Matthew Renshaw has at least once got started at some stage on this tour – actually the hardest part of batting hereabouts. Their failure has been wastefulness. India’s Ravi Jadeja and Axar Patel have shown the way. Batting is straightforwardest after the 50-over point, when the ball has softened and the fields gone defensive. For these somewhat sunnier uplands, it is essential to have key wickets in hand.

Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith, so far in this series, have not got there. At Feroz Shah Kotla, both were gone by the 24th over in each innings, and guilty on the last day of somewhat manic shots, despairing of opportunities to score. Should batting prove more of a paying proposition here, either or preferably both must endure beyond what in Nagpur and Delhi were Australia’s points of no return.

But is Australia beaten already? As the Delhi Test doom-scrolls again before your eyes over the breakfast buffet or in the departure lounge, it’s tempting to accept the Star Sports bargain – that the Australians are merely the Washington Generals to India’s Harlem Globetrotters.

The Australians deserve more credit. They have exhibited a good deal of resilience these past few years, through Covid and beyond. They built a position near parity in Nagpur, of strength in Delhi, before margins blew out, as they are wont to in these parts.

The shift from Dharamshala, where they lost five years ago, and where, by the way, it continues raining heavily, will not hurt them. That said, this is pretty much do or die. If India prevails, there will be nothing much for Australia to play for, and little to prevent a clean sweep, especially given Ahmedabad’s reputation. India won a two-day Test there in 2021 by 10 wickets and the next even more conclusively.

In contrast to Australia moreover, Star Sports doesn’t seem greatly bothered by Tests ending early in these parts. All the more time to go on replaying those endlessly Indiacentric highlights.