Sweep-happy Australia open door to clean sweep for India

For all their pretensions to global supremacy, Australia have suffered some embarrassing implosions this century. Eight times they have been skittled for as few as they made in Delhi on Sunday or fewer. But this was the most muddle-headed of the lot.

It came down to shot selection. Shot, singular. You could say Australia swept themselves off their feet, except that this doesn’t feel like a time for glibness. Or dancing. Six Australians fell to variations on this doubtful theme.

Pat Cummins leads the dejected Australians from the field in Delhi.Credit: Getty Images

One was Steve Smith, who rarely plays the shot. If India have gotten into his head, the jig is up, One was Alex Carey, who plays the reverse sweep well, but misjudged the length by metres. One was Matt Renshaw, who missed, who keeps missing.

Captain Pat Cummins’ effort wasn’t so much a sweep as a godawful first-ball heave. No. 11 Matt Kuhnemann played a reverse sweep into his stumps second ball. He’s a Test innocent, the least guilty party, and the cause was long lost by then, but really!

It’s true that on this pitch against these bowlers, a man is liable to get an unplayable ball, spinning or not in contradiction to all his instincts. But none of these were.

You’d think they all were playing Big Bash League a minute ago. Which they were. But we’re all meant to close our eyes and pretend that has nothing to do with it and that the emperor is wearing clothes.

Matt Kuhnemann becomes the last wicket of Australia’s feeble second innings.Credit: Getty Images.

You could understand the principle. On a spinning pitch, against the best spin combo in the world, the Australians did not want to make themselves sitting ducks.

But another principle applied, too, concerning the need to fight through the first 10 or 20 balls in India. Pitch, bowlers, crowd and in Delhi, haze: all must be assimilated. The Australians talk about it all the time.

These two imperatives had to be weighed in the moment by each batsman. But none of the six Dick Van Dykes got to 20 balls and four didn’t get past 10. As they now know, the alternative to a sitting duck is not a duck.

Yes, this was a testing pitch. Most are in India. Yes, with the restoration of Ravindra Jadeja and the revitalisation of Virat Kohli and despite the absence of Rishabh Pant, this is a strong Indian team. And yes, Australia’s team here was a bit of a patchwork. But by Saturday night, by playing bold but thoughtful cricket, they had if not control of the Test match at least the honours on the first tee on Sunday.

Ravindra Jadeja: Australia’s wrecker again.Credit: AP

And then in barely an hour-and-a-half, Australia had surrendered the match, the series and a still to be quantified helping of their self-belief at the start of what was always going to be a momentous year. Their place in the world Test championship final in June is not yet guaranteed, remember.

Meantime, as Australia flailed away in Delhi, in Mount Maunganui, England romped to their sixth Test win in a row and their 10th in their past 11.

Who’s to blame for Australia’s capitulation? In the round, questions remain about the prelude to this series, despite Cricket Australia protestations that it was working to a carefully laid plan.

In the moment, impossible to ignore, what was lacking was leadership. As each swipe across the line begat another, as the next wicket tumbled over the heels of the last until it looked like a mania had taken hold of the team, someone needed to give the order to go to Plan B. On that, it has to be said that Cummins’ brain fade was far greater cause for concern than the golden duck it cost him.

Wherever the balance of power lies between coach, captain and senior players in the new dispensation, or even if they are being run as an anarcho-syndicalist commune, a la Monty Python, someone had to call the cricket equivalent of a time-out. Instead, in the blink of an eye, they were all out.

Only then did the scale of Australia’s dereliction become apparent in its context. India’s target was negligible, yet they lost four wickets attaining it. It wasn’t close because India have batting down to No. 13, but in the bowling of off-spinners Nathan Lyon and Todd Murphy, there was enough to suggest that a target of 200 or so might have given the second half of this match an entirely different complexion. We’ll never know. That’s the tragedy.

Conspicuously, the Indians hit only one sweep between them, and that was really more of a low-level glance from Rohit Sharma.

There were enough other ways of getting out, and there were enough other ways of making runs, too, for the judicious. In the first innings, Australia had balanced these two certainties admirably. In the second, they came armed with brooms instead of bats.

Cheteshwar Pujara said the sweep was a shot he wouldn’t play on this low-bouncing, sharp-turning pitch. After 100 Tests, he knows a thing or two about batting in India. How to bat in India? How about bat a bit like India?

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