Pujara
Cheteshwar Pujara does not sweep. And he does not hook.
But he is a magnificent judge of where his off stump is. Its very difficult to dismiss him. Since ball by ball records became available in the early 20th century, Pujara has been dismissed once every 126.4 balls in Australia. His average innings there (rounding off to the nearest integer), is 49(126). Dravid’s is 49(117), Kohli’s 59(111), Tendulkar’s 61(103), Kallis’s 55(119).
Pujara has faced, what is arguably the most complete Australian attack, certainly of the 21st century, but probably ever. Australia’s least experienced fast bowler is Pat Cummins who has 157 Test wickets at 21.2/46.3 (ave/sr) as I write this. Nathan Lyon is an off-spinner with 394 Test wickets to his name taken at the rate of better than one every 11 overs. Hazlewood has 204 wickets at 25.8/56.1 (a record comparable to Gillespie’s at his peak) and Starc has 253 wickets at (26.9/48.3) - a record vastly superior to Lee.
Only 17 Test attacks in a Test have been such that all four of them had had at least 150 Test wickets. And only 2 of them have involved 3 fast bowlers. By the time McGrath, Lee, Gillespie and Warner had gotten there in the Ashes Test of 2005, McGrath was 35, Gillespie had been already finished for a couple of years, and Lee was erratic and profligate (he would end up taking a Test wicket every 53 balls, conceding more than 30 runs for each, a record closer to Umesh Yadav’s than Mitchell Starc’s).
There has never been this combination of pace and Test match experience in a Test attack in Test history. Joel Garner, Michael Holding and Malcolm Marshall all had at least 150 Test wickets by the 1984/85 season in Australia, but Holding was almost finished by then, and there was always the 4th bowler.
This is not a medium-fast attack either. Cummins and Starc are genuinely quick, and Hazlewood is at the upper end of fast-medium, capable of bending his back on the occasional one. Its hard to get an indifferent over, let alone a bad one, from this attack.
Back to Pujara.
He doesn’t sweep. And he doesn’t hook. On a slow wicket, his favored scoring area is behind square on the leg side. AUS decided to cut that off by bringing the fine leg and deep-square leg in, and bowling straighter to him with what might essentially be termed a defensive leg-trap.
When Pujara got full-length deliveries (there were 20), he scored 14 runs. 10 of the 20 came from the fact bowlers and he took 9 off these. The rest was all good length or shorter. That’s 20 out of 176 balls. Pujara made Australia work for his wicket. While he was at the wicket the Indian score advanced from 70 to 195. The batsmen at the other end played more strokes than Pujara, but they were also dismissed more often than Pujara. They made 74/3 in 192 balls (not counting the run out). Pujara made 50/1 in 176.
This is the essential trade-off. It’s possible for a player to take greater chances, but that’s what it is - taking greater chances. It comes with a greater chance of dismissal. Nathan Lyon went wicket less for 87 in his 31 overs. Pujara took 31 off the 42 balls he faced from Lyon. Against Cummins he took 5(46), against Starc 5(50) and against Hazlewood 7(30).
Ajinkya Rahane was playing well. He could do nothing about his dismissal. He got one which started out on the 6th stump, and was short, and with the field set for the straight bowling, Rahane (reasonably) saw a boundary behind square on the off side. He moved back and across and committed to the shot in the correct fashion. The ball cut back in off the pitch, cramped him for room, and worst of all from Rahane’s point of view, sneaked back onto his stumps. There’s less than a third of a second between the time that ball pitch and reached Rahane. He was committed to the stroke and could do nothing about it. He threw his head back and walk off.
Hanuma Vihari, much like Rahane and Pujara, started out competently against the bowling. His defense held up, and whenever Lyon tossed it up, he came down the wicket. He fell to a brilliant bit of fielding which turned a well-judged single into a run out. Josh Hazlewood, the 2 metre high fast bowler made a diving stop and incredibly, flung a sharp direct hit before he fell to the ground after grabbing the ball. It was a wicket out of nothing.
Shubman Gill had made the most of Australia’s early attacking approach with the new ball. He batted against a packed slip cordon and the traditional open areas in front of square on the off-side and through square leg. He nibbled at one outside off stump and was gone. Rohit Sharma failed to keep a drive down against Hazlewood and hit a return catch.
India did well to get to 244. They did everything right. But against a great attack in its pomp, it was not enough. Pujara was fantastically dogged, but was undone by a Pat Cummins special. The joke about Pat Cummins is that apart from being genuinely quick, his strategy as a bowler seems to be to deliver a jaffa every three overs or so. Its funny, because its true.
Once in a while, on a good wicket on a fast scoring surface, a great stroke maker will take an exciting hundred against this attack. But even a fantastic stroke maker like Virat Kohli spent 180 balls over his 74 on the slightly quicker Adelaide Oval wicket earlier in this series.
If the competitive equation interests you, basically, with a debutant (Saini) and a bowler in his 2nd Test (Siraj) in the attack, it will take a lot of things to go right for India and a lot of things to go wrong for Australia, for India to win. To India’s credit (and good fortune), they have in this series so far. But Test matches, and especially 4 Test series, last too long for such luck to hold.
There will be a lot of the usual psychobabble (see an example below). But these people are not describing cricket. The cricket was magnificent. From both sides. It is rarely this good.
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