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You’d immediately assume that Australia’s openers - Usman Khawaja and Nathan McSweeney - have been quite a horrific opening partnership for Australia in the series. Shouldn’t they have rather attacked the Indian bowlers, taking the game on?
Nope, that’s where the management plans have been quite decisive, telling the two openers to blunt the new ball to see off difficult opening bursts.
They did it in Adelaide, where they played the waiting game, blunting the ball. They for sure did that here in Brisbane, almost batting in a manner that Cheteshwar Pujara used to do so successfully for the Indian team.
What it did was enable the middle order to play their natural game.
In the case of the troika of Travis Head, Mitchell Marsh and Alex Carey, it was the perfect plan to maximize their potential. From that perspective, Khawaja and McSweeney have been the perfect possible foil at the top of the batting order for Australia.
They have batted time, they have taken the sheen out of the new ball, and have, in return, allowed Head to bring out his ‘A’ game. But in the case of the Gabba Test, you can’t just credit the two openers for blunting out the game, you have to credit one ugly-looking Steve Smith.
Smith hasn’t found his ‘hands’ for the longest time now. India have had his number. Smith isn’t the same anymore. All those thoughts and opinions had surrounded the batting ace in the longest format. But at 75/3, he could have fallen to these thoughts and opinions or could have ‘found his hands’, and Smith did the latter.
Sure, Head’s trailblazing start played into Smith finding it much easier to bat at the crease, but if Smith had not ground that session, the left-hander couldn’t have played such a knock. If you want to draw a parallel, if Pujara didn’t walk on fire, Rishabh Pant couldn’t have even walked the last time India were in Australia.
Smith walked on fire so that Head could run.
Head might not have faced Bumrah first up, but it wasn’t that Rohit Sharma didn’t introduce Bumrah into the attack quite a few minutes after Head entered the crease. It wasn’t that India tried bouncing him out, it wasn’t that Bumrah’s angles weren’t tried, but the reality was that Head was ready for it all.
In his first 30 balls at the crease, the left-hander scored 17 runs but was very effective in putting anything on that back of the length area to the ropes, evidenced by his strike rate of 75.
Only Akash Deep’s fuller deliveries probed the left-hander to find answers, and he constantly tried to play at it, and was beaten thrice while at it. But once he went past that 30-delivery mark, for the next 60 deliveries, there were only three deliveries that really drew an edge or went past his bat.
India’s plans were so focused on getting Head out that they forgot that Smith, on the other hand, was also capable of a big score. It was that session that really activated Smith, as Head was at his aggressive best, bringing up his half-century in 71 deliveries.
In that mini-session post lunch till the drinks break, Australia had raced themselves from 104/3 to 150/3 in just 11 overs. That’s scoring at more than four runs an over, a session where India looked absolutely flat. Once Smith got to his half-century, even he teed off, as Australia got to 200, and soon after, the partnership turned to 150 off 209 balls.
Heading into the tea, the partnership brought the heat to the Indian team, scoring 76 runs in 14 overs, striking at 5.4 runs/over on a surface that became much better to bat on. Australia went into the tea on 234 but, over the next 10 overs, absolutely flattened the Indian bowling unit, reaching the 300-run mark.
66 runs at 6.6 runs/over.
Runs, which felt like a tough task, suddenly started flowing from both ends, a byproduct of how Australia set themselves up. Smith, who was on 38 off 105 not too long ago but batting alongside Head, managed to accelerate his runs to knock 12 off the next 23 deliveries.
From there on, Smith smacked his next 50 runs off 57 deliveries, which was all possible because of the hard work early in the day. It was a similar batting pattern that the duo employed against India in the final of the World Test Championship 2023.
At one point, they were 76/3 in that final, and that 285-run partnership gave Australia the perfect platform to win the last remaining title in its trophy cabinet.
Here, they were 75/3, and the 241-run partnership certainly changed the course of the Test after Australia were put to bat first in the trickiest of conditions.
While on paper, Head might have been the only one with 150, his century is as much as Khawaja, McSweeney & Labuschagne’s century, given how they had set up the perfect platform for the trailblazing innings.
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