At the Perth Test
The ABC statistician's diary
Day 1—Friday
Perth dawns bright and sunny, as it has for the other 219 days of its 54-year Test career. Still boasting the crown as the only (major) Test venue in Australia not to have lost a day to rain. Today’s not going to alter that.
Nathan McSweeney becomes the 467th Australian to don the Baggy Green (or its multi-coloured predecessors). Jim Maxwell, when advised that the 467th English player to be capped was Peter Willey in 1976, launches into a diatribe about one-Test wonders.
Australia take a gigantic step towards losing this Test before a ball is bowled by losing the toss. Since this ground (well, stadium—it hardly fits the definition of a ground) became a Test venue in 2018, the four toss-winners have all elected to bat, and ended up winning the Test. The fact that it was Australia every time has no bearing on the power of this stat.
The alleged new star in the firmament, Yashasvi Jaiswal, commences his Test career in Australia with an eight-ball duck. A check reveals he is the eighteenth visiting opener to end up scoreless in his first Test innings on Australian soil. He is in good company, alongside RG Barlow, Hon. IFW Bligh, PF Warner and Gordon Greenidge, among notable others (and not forgetting Rory Burns’s spectacular entrance three years ago). If I was an Australian player, I wouldn’t count on this being par for the course for young Jaiswal.
The man most responsible for this duck is McSweeney, who snaps Jaiswal up in the gully. I pose a question to the commentary team, asking them to identify the last Australian debutant to take the first catch of his first Test. I am bitterly disappointed when no-one can advance the name of Chadd Sayers, in 2018. Others to do it were G. Alexander (1880), J. Worrall (1885), K. Miller (1946), P. Burge (1955), R. Simpson (1957), G. McKenzie (1961), I. Chappell (1964), R. Robinson (1977), M. Bennett (1984), M. Veletta (1987) and S. Law (1995). Everyone is now properly educated about this feat when Beau Webster does the same at Adelaide in two weeks time.
With no. 3 Devdutt Padikkal also retiring for zero, it takes some time for that end of the Indian batting to get going. In fact, it takes until the last ball of the fifteenth over (taking the score to 2-21) for anyone apart from opener KL Rahul to score a run for India. I have no idea if this is a record or not, so the challenge is on for anyone interested to find a later start to the scoring from one end.
At the start of play, the long-standing quartet of Australian bowlers Cummins, Hazlewood, Lyon and Starc have 497 wickets between them when all four play (and bowl) in qualifying Tests. When Kohli edges Hazlewood to Khawaja in the slips, the magical 500 appears, but the celebration generated by getting the master batter out swamps the achievement of this remarkable record of longevity. Actually, I suspect they didn’t know. But what is even more remarkable than this feat, achieved by playing 31 Tests together, is the evenness of their contributions: At the end of the Test, it is 510 wickets, with Cummins 133, Hazlewood 127, Lyon 124 and Starc 126. This quartet is nearly 100 wickets better than their nearest rivals, Moeen Ali, Jimmy Anderson, Stuart Broad and Ben Stokes, who have 415 wickets in matches in which all four played.
After some middle-order resistance, India are dispatched for 150, but Australia fare worse, slumping to 7-67 at stumps. Highlight of the innings is Marnus Labuschagne’s 2 off 52 balls, the 2nd-slowest recorded innings of 2 by Australia after the efforts of Bill Lawry—who else?—at Chennai in 1969. McSweeney just makes double figures before being first out to the rampant Jasprit Bumrah, taking full advantage of a sympathetic first-day pitch, little realising at the time that his score would be a major contribution to the Australian total. I note that average opening partnership for Australia this decade is 33.09, only two-thirds of the average between 2000 and 2019—48.56.
Day 2—Saturday
Today’s colour is … blue!
Australia are unable to resuscitate their faltering start to this series on yet another boringly fine day in Perth, and are bowled out for 104. This, I am able to inform, is only the fifth time in Tests that Australia has conceded a first-innings lead having initially bowled out the opposition for 150 or less. The previous occasions were against England in 1888 and 1896, the West Indies in 1991, and New Zealand at Hobart in 2011.
Despite the disappointing batting effort of Australia, Nathan Lyon is able to make his mark by being dismissed for 5, which brings him exactly level with Stuart Broad in the much sought-after category of Most Runs at Number 10 in Tests. Both now have 825 runs (which Broad is unlikely to increase), and Lyon will believe his effort is more meritorious in that he has taken only 81 innings to achieve this to Broad’s 84—and, furthermore, has done so without the aid of a fifty, where Broad has two scores of over 50 at this position.
By adding 25 for the last wicket, Starc and Hazlewood contribute the largest partnership of the Australian innings. I am perturbed to discover this has happened as many as 28 times for Australia, which although reflecting nicely on our tailenders, says little for the more technically equipped batters before them.
Some amusing banter between Mitchell Starc and debutant Harshit Rana is heard over the stump mic. The pair have played together on the T20 circuit, apparently, and Starc, having being subjected to some bowling that threatened his person, and some follow-up words from Rana, was heard to exclaim, “I can bowl faster than you—and I have a long memory…”
The rest of the day is spent watching Jaiswal and Rahul capitalise on India’s unexpected first-innings lead, with Jaiswal moving to within ten of a century by stumps. India’s first wicket pair eclipse their team’s entire first innings by accumulating 172 runs without being parted. The highlight for the Australians was observing Labuschagne ambling up to the wicket and slinging down 130 kph bumpers in a futile effort to slow the scoring. With his batting in what we hope is temporary abeyance, this may have been a tactic to demonstrate his versatility as a cricketer. I’m not sure it was successful. Later on, he tries bowling wide of the leg-stump to Nitesh Kumar Reddy, and is rightly pinged by the umpire for deliberate negative bowling.
Day 3—Sunday
Today is warmer, touching 36 degrees in the mid-afternoon. India take full advantage by confining Australia to an unpleasant day in the field. Jaiswal moves methodically to his century, and becomes only the second player after Gundappa Viswanath in 1969 to score a duck and then a century in his first Test against Australia.
Jaiswal and Rahul take the Indian total to 201 before they are separated, but not before they set a new record for the highest opening partnership in the third innings of a Test in Australia by a visiting team. Strauss and Cook (188 in 2010) are relegated to second place.
Jaiswal’s aggression is on full display, hitting three sixes in his 171. In his fifteenth Test, he now has 39 sixes, which puts his well ahead of anyone else at this point in their careers. Before his advent, Kevin Pietersen (28) led the list, followed by Shimron Hetmyer (27), Harry Brook (26), Tim Southee and Colin deGrandhomme (both 24).
The commentary reflects on the advancing age of this Australian team, with little regeneration. I calculate that the average age of the Australia team in its series against India in 2018-19 was 29.65 years, with India’s being 29.23. By 2020-21, when India toured Australian next, the average ages were 29.87 and 30.61 respectively. For this Test, it is Australia 33.11 (with only one under thirty), India 27.10, although to be fair Rohit Sharma, Ashwin, Jadeja and Shami may all return at some stage.
Australia’s poor day in the field is not helped by their concession of no fewer than 55 extras, including 22 byes, 11 no balls and 7 wides. This is the most Australia has ever conceded in an innings before a home crowd, and only second to their efforts at Cape Town in 2009, when they let go 62 sundries.
Australia commence their forlorn pursuit of 534 by slumping to 3-12 at stumps. I look up their fate when plumbing these depths (or worse) in the fourth innings of previous Tests, and discover that the record is four losses and a draw. The draw, I see, was at the Oval in 1956, when a day was lost to rain. Ending at 5-27, it was hardly “circle-the-wagons stuff,” and Australia could consider themselves lucky to have escaped. With over two full days still available here, and this being Perth, a repeat of the Oval Houdini act is unlikely.
Day 4—Monday
The ABC’s mascot quokka waiting patiently for play to start:
As expected, India wrap up this first Test with a session and a day to spare, despite some resistance from the belligerent Travis Head, and some steady batting by Mitchell Marsh and, for the second time, Alex Carey. India win by 295 runs, Australia sixteenth-heaviest loss by runs, and a specific margin that has never been suffered by Australia before.
Bumrah excites some interest when, at one stage, his career bowling average falls to 19.94, but he unable to sustain that, and finishes the match at 20.06. The way he is bowling at present, I would not bet against him being able to reduce it to under twenty during this series. Apart from the legendary SF Barnes, the only bowlers who have been able to reduce their career bowling average (even temporarily) at the end of an innings to less than twenty after taking at least 150 career wickets are Waqar Younis, Ian Botham, Ray Lindwall and Shaun Pollock.
What are Australia’s chances of fighting back to win the series now that the First Test has been lost? Of the 85 series with a minimum of four Tests where there was a result in the first, Australia lost that first Test 28 times. In in only seven was Australia able to fight back to win the series (1897-98, 1901-02, 1909, 1930, 1936-37, 1968-69, 1997).
Australia’s main concern is to re-assert the batting dominance of days gone by. As an indication of the decline of the upper and middle order, dividing the careers into averages by chronological quartile is most instructive:
The crowds at this Test exceeded anything achieved before, with 96,463 attending—a record for Western Australia, taking into account that the old WACA ground had a capacity far below that of the new stadium. For the first time over 30,000 attended a single day (the first), which was repeated on day two.
The ABC commentary team, from left, Ric Finlay, Damien Peck, Ben Cameron, Mitch Turner, Glenn McGrath, Clint Wheeldon, Darren Lehmann, Jim Maxwell (absent: Sunil Gavaskar, Harsha Bhogle, Tom Moody, Alison Mitchell, Corbin Middlemas).
Ric Finlay serves on the ACS general committee, and as cricket statistician and scorer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
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