Todd Murphy: The man in a hurry and waiting for no one

Australia's players get round Todd Murphy after he took the wicket of India's Srikar Bharat – his fifth of the day. Picture: AFP.

Finger spinners making eye-catching Test debuts 10 years apart: Todd Murphy and Ashton Agar have a bit in common. But two days into Murphy’s career, their paths are already diverging.

Trent Bridge 2013: the memory is still fresh as day of Agar’s ­improbable dash as last man, dragging Australia back from the brink in a tight-wound Test. The slow bowling for which Agar had actually been chosen was still ­unpolished, tidy but unmenacing. Still, we told ourselves, time was on his side.

Ten years, much patience and considerable investment later, maybe not.

The way Murphy confirmed Australia’s selection preference for him here has suggested a ­bowler waiting for no one. The seedings in cricket’s garden germinate and blossom at different rates: having opened on the first day here, Murphy on Friday bloomed.

You can already imagine kids imitating him: windmilling arms a la Graeme Swann, upturned collar buttoned high like Michael Clarke, circular spectacles like … well, like Todd Murphy. They are already his look, his style, part of his owlish charisma.

He has been impressing hard-to-impress judges for years ­already, and so far appears to have no ceiling: every step up, now ­including Test cricket, has been taken in his stride.

Make no mistake, this was a challenge to Murphy’s precocity. A small total to defend; only three other bowlers; a phalanx of batters for whom finger spin holds few terrors.

But it was not long before he looked not only the part but ­almost the senior spinner, allotted the preferred slow bowler’s end in a spell of 14-4-40-3 broken only by lunch.

Murphy picked the plan, whirling quickly from round the wicket, endangering the stumps as Ravi Jadeja and Ravi Ashwin had the previous day: he commenced, in fact, by Ashwinning Ashwin, coaxing India’s primo off-spinner into playing round a tentative front pad.

For most of the time, the 22-year-old was content with a single outfielder, and manoeuvred his formations constantly, even his captain, whom at one stage in the afternoon he motioned a metre or two straighter. Cummins ­responded with a cheerful thumbs up.

As his Victorian skipper Peter Handscomb remarked the ­previous night, Murphy needs little counsel; he always appears to know exactly what he wants. Cheteshwar Pujara’s miscued sweep spooned to where Scott Boland had been precisely placed, at 45 degrees.

Virat Kohli was the one gimme, giving in to temptation and following a drag-down – the feather down leg was juggled but held by Alex Carey.

Spinners cherish such poles: they feel like God’s apology for slogging’s impertinence. Murphy disappeared into his team’s embrace, welcomed like a homecoming son.

When Suryakumar Yadav’s debut Test innings ended with a brief razzle-dazzle, Australia ­appeared to have lassoed runaway India. They were assuredly restrained, but nor was Rohit Sharma going anywhere in a hurry. He seldom is.

Nobody in world cricket moves so economically as India’s captain. You get the impression that he would, were it permissible, prefer to bat sitting down. Contrasted with the trim, taut Kohli, he is built on observably generous lines – not Inzamam generous, but maybe Warne comfortable. His resting ­expression, placid and herbivorous, seldom changes.

Yet, somehow, Rohit always gets there. Despite no elaborate prefatory trigger movements, he is always found in perfect position at point of contact. On a slow pitch such as this, he seems to have more spare time than a man at a bus stop. His bat, pale and broad, sends check drives zooming.

There were a few strokes of violence: from Cummins, a hooked six and a pulled four. Rohit went to his 171-ball, 263-minute hundred by hitting Murphy inside out over cover, which was in its way a tribute: it was his first such stroke. He had to hasten once only, diving for the crease after being sent back by Kohli: at lunch the dusty shirt was carried reverently from one side of the ground to the other by a BCCI minion.

Cummins got a measure of his own back by extracting Rohit’s off stump after tea with the second new ball, which he also correctly intuited might suit Murphy. Five wickets on a spinner’s debut is not so uncommon: it’s two months since teenager Rehan Ahmed achieved the feat for England. But Murphy ­already has the look of one capable to holding fast to a seized opportunity.

On the field while Matthew Renshaw went for a knee scan, meanwhile, was Ashton Agar, a limber figure beneath his back-tilted sun hat running here and there, wondering perhaps if and when he might next command a place in the XI.