New Perth stadium passes first Test with flying bouncers

[OzGirl]

© Frozen in Motion/REX/Shutterstock The wicket was always the most important variable during the second Test in Perth.

 

Lean back with a satisfied sigh, a post-schweppervesence exhalation. Smack your lips if it takes your fancy. For those who care even a little about Australian cricket, that was exactly what was needed.

 

Not the win, in a parochial sense. Nor the verbal back-and-forth that spilled over, with players inspired to amateur thespianism by the newly attentive stump microphones. But a cracker of a Test match, following one in Adelaide that was excellent in a different way. A series full of interest and intrigue, set up at 1-1 heading into Boxing Day and the New Year.

 

It was what Perth needed, too. An excellent game on a new surface in a new stadium, proving that three years of labour from Waca curators has produced a drop-in pitch better than the one in the middle of the Waca ground. The crowd was disappointing – 80,000 over five days in a ground that could almost hold that many at once – but the wicket was always the most important variable.

 

Rapidity, carry, cracks that brought the occasional randomising ball into play, and India had the bowlers to take advantage. Cast your mind back: when was the last time a visiting pace attack in Australia roughed up the home side? England and South Africa had series wins via nicks to the cordon. But when did an entire battery roll into town and bounce Australia out?

 

Mohammad Shami in the third innings was electric. Six wickets, all to the short ball, as Australia built a lead. He drew Travis Head and Shaun Marsh into poor shots on the third evening, but after lunch on day four did the damage with his own brutishness.

 

Not that long ago he was battling at club level and sleeping in a tent. Now he charged through batsmen in the city that fast bowlers dream of. Shami is short, solid, bearded: too small to be accurately called barrel-chested, he somehow gives the impression of being just that. He brings to mind a Tolkien dwarf hewing gems beneath the earth. Chris Gaffaney is not a large man, but Shami running in to bowl was passing him below the brim of the umpire’s hat.

 

From ground level Shami was at his most intense. A walkway encircles the Perth Stadium playing arena, behind the omnipresent gambling signs scrolling on the boundary boards. The walkway is sunk, so you actually stand a couple of feet below the grass. Your view of the cricket becomes subterranean. From there, Shami’s bouncers took off like launched rockets.

 

Tim Paine had been staunch and stolid but was blasted out, a scorcher at the face that the Australian captain could only leap and fend. Usman Khawaja had one jump from a length. Aaron Finch resumed after retiring hurt and was greeted by a ball at his ribs. All three were out via the glove, a fast bowler’s dream. Nathan Lyon was clattered in the helmet and holed out next ball.

 

But that was all after lunch on day four. Paine and Khawaja’s quiet partnership, batting through the preceding session, was the key. It will easily be forgotten but its uneventfulness was what made it vital: 58 quiet runs, carrying the fourth-innings target from tricky to distant. India bowled excellently throughout, but the endless play-and-misses didn’t go their way. By the time Australia ended at 286 in front, it was always likely to be too much on the wearing surface.

 

So it proved, Australia’s fast bowlers taking their turn at blasting, before Lyon put in another artful performance to prove that spinners could benefit as much as faster operators. Dismissing Virat Kohli with a ball that drifted wide, foxed the batsman, and skipped on straight to take his edge, will end up in Lyon’s hall of fame. Once again he’s leading the world for wickets in a calendar year, with 48 to his name and one Test to play.

 

The fifth day was really a mop-up operation for the last five wickets, considering the weakness of India’s tail. A margin of 146 runs sounds substantial, but as with many of their recent tours, India could rue fine margins. The decision to play Umesh Yadav ahead of bowlers who could match him with the ball while offering much more with the bat was one.

 

The other was Kohli again not having his fellow batsmen go with him. We’ve covered his first-innings masterclass in quite enough detail, but had it been supported with even another 50 runs in partnership, it would have drawn the teams level and made Australia’s second innings a far more nervous reply.

 

It’s no good getting too sucked in by false tonics. A win alone doesn’t mean all is well in Australian cricket, where barely a first-class batsman averages 40 and where bowlers for years have struggled to make an impression away from home. The Test team thought they’d turned a corner in Perth in 2010, after a thorough win over England. It turned out to be paper over a Waca’s worth of cracks.

 

But a match like this, where bowlers dominate and batsmen battle, where the best of great players is on show, and where the contest runs into the final day, that alone lifts the spirits, sending those of us who love cricket into the festive season with a bit more spring in our step and summer in our hearts. What else, in the end, is any game for?

 

https://www.msn.com/en-au/sport/cricket/new-perth-stadium-passes-first-test-with-flying-bouncers/ar-BBR8Q5w?ocid=spartanntp