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Follow UsIndia came to this Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-25 after a 0-3 defeat against New Zealand at home. There was anger and frustration, and up ahead was a series that had become the most awaited thing in the Indian Test calendar.
In that context, the enormity of this Perth victory grows even more because not only did India win on probably the quickest surface in world cricket, but they also trampled the Australians in their own home in a manner that very few visiting teams have.
It wasn’t just ‘good bowling’ and ‘resolute batting’ that won India the Test by a whopping 295 runs. Many things and geniuses combined to hand them their biggest-ever victory by runs on Australian soil.
Hit the wicket win the match
If there is one data set that tells the defining story of this Test match, it has to be about the percentage of deliveries from each bowler that were hitting the wickets.
On a pitch like Perth, where pace and bounce are readily available, LBW or clean bowled is a rare form of dismissal, with caught behind by the keeper or the slip fielders being the most common.
By bringing the wickets into play by altering your length and being fuller, you are increasing the possible modes of dismissal on every single delivery. Jasprit Bumrah, who had the highest percentage of his deliveries hitting the wickets, was also the highest wicket-taker in the Test and the Player of the Match. Four out of his eight dismissals were LBWs, as he pinned batters inside the crease with vicious in-seaming deliveries.
When you compare it with Australia, they managed only one LBW throughout the game (Dhruv Jurel), and even that was a marginal call as only a tiny fraction of the ball was found to be hitting the stumps on ball tracking.
In fact, not only Bumrah but even Harshit Rana, Mohammed Siraj and Nitish Reddy hit the stumps more than every single Australian bowler except Mitch Marsh, who looked quite threatening until Reddy and Virat Kohli swatted him away.
This strategy from the India is also contiguous with their bowling plans during the last tour of Australia, where the straight and leg stump line proved to be falling for many Aussie batters. Here, it were the straighter deliveries pitched on the fuller side of the good length which made life hard for home team. Indian pace bowlers, who aren’t as tall as the Australian quicks, harped in on that length and benefitted massively by hitting the stumps as eight Australian wickets were either LBW or bowled.
Australian Top four is made of thermocol
16/5 vs Pakistan at the MCG
24/4 vs the West Indies at Gabba
34/4 vs New Zealand at Christchurch
31/4 vs India at Perth
17/4 vs India at Perth
These are some of the collapses of the Australian top four in their last four Test series. If you go back to the 2023 Ashes, you could probably add a few more in there.
So, to say that the Australian top four have been as lightly blown away as a building made of thermocol won’t be an overstatement. If not for individual performances bailing them out, they could have been in trouble even against Pakistan and West Indies on a couple of occasions.
In the Perth Test, Usman Khawaja (8 & 4), Nathan McSweeney (10 & 0), Marnus Labuschagne (2 & 3), Steve Smith (0, batted at five in the second innings) and Pat Cummins (who scored 2 as a night watchman in the second innings) could only score 29 runs combined.
As Bumrah and Siraj blew away the Australian top four on both occasions in the Test, Australia suffered the worst performance by its top four batters across two innings of a Test match in its 177-year history of playing the game.
The reasons behind such an embarrassing performance (apart from India’s brilliant bowling) are simple — Khawaja, Labuschagne, and Smith are on a downward trend in their Test careers, and there’s a musical chair going on for the second opener’s spot after David Warner’s retirement.
If not for Marsh, Travis Head and Alex Carey in the lower order, things could have been even more worse. Marsh has been their best batter ever since his return to Test cricket (averages 44.61) after four years in the Leeds Test in July 2023. If the filter of 10 innings since then is applied, none of the Australian batters except Marsh average over 40, with Smith averaging 31. Marnus 28.4 and Khawaja 31.1.
With the new Kookaburra ball doing much more and the next two Tests being played in Adelaide and Brisbane, it won’t just be the Indian batters who’ll be practising hard to get in touch with the foreign conditions. The Australian top 4 will be more troubled as they prepare themselves for a stern test.
The discipline to extract most out of the conditions
After getting bundled out for 150 in their first outing of the tour, the Indian batters responded in a manner that made people wonder if it was the same team that folded in the first innings. Yashasvi Jaiswal and KL Rahul alone added 201, the highest opening partnership for India in Australia ever!
Jaiswal was dismissed in the first innings after playing an on-the-up, away-from-the-body drive that would have earned him a boundary eight out of ten times in Rajkot. However, you have a look at him the next day, and you’d know that adapting to a new, challenging situation isn’t a big deal for the Mumbaikar.
When India came out to bat in the second innings, the pitch had considerably eased out and it felt like batting on a different surface altogether. While bounce was still there, the seam movement had reduced. That’s when the Indian openers needed to balance time and runs. Jaiswal and Rahul did exactly that.
In the second innings, Jaiswal’s hands were no longer hard and callous as his willow met the ball. He held it softly, and, as a result, edges fell short of the slip cordon. He was playing much closer to his body, watching the ball until the very last moment and playing it late in a fashion that would have made Kane Williamson proud. His leaves were the star of the show.
Meanwhile If Jaiswal’s doggedness showed through in his leaves, it was Rahul’s pillowy hands that made it seem as if he was playing with extra padding on his bat. He was adamant about not hitting anything hard, letting the ball come to him, and then he played it with hands so soft that the ball could almost cuddle with his bat.
As a result, by the end of the second innings, India had not only scored enough for a mammoth lead but also batted time as the conditions were now slowly moving in favour of the bowlers, especially with the new ball. Cracks had started to open up, and by the third session of the third day, the pitch had also quickened back.
Bumrah and Siraj used those conditions beautifully to pulverise the Australian top order yet again, getting the hosts three down for almost nothing as they began an improbable chase on Day 4.
Getting conditions in your favour in a Test match is one thing. But very few make use of those conditions in the best manner possible. India have now done that down under in almost three tours in a row. The results are there for everyone to see.
With four Tests left in the series, what would worry Australian fans and experts a lot would be how Marnus had to come in and bowl like a specialist bouncer bowler so often. Cummins and his men looked devoid of extra motivation to change the pace or course of the game on Day 3 when nothing was going their way.
While it could be because Cummins knew by then that the result is a formality so why waste your main bowlers in a long series, you are not accustomed to see such defensive and negative tactics from an Australian side. Cummins has already said that there won’t be a lot of changes in the next Test. So something definitely has to change drastically within two weeks for this same bunch to stop the Indian cruise in the Border Gavaskar Trophy.
