Australia vs India: Epic Clash in Adelaide, After a Complicated Year. Cricket Test

Australia and India: Duel in Adelaide Amid Uncertainty

At the end of a year marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, Australia and India face each other on the same stage where they began their previous encounter in 2018: the Adelaide Oval. The sight of the old scoreboard and the fig trees at the north end of the field offer a sense of continuity intrinsic to test cricket, and will be a striking backdrop for the teams of Tim Paine and Virat Kohli in the first day/night Test for the Indian team away from home. There will be much more to celebrate in the encounter of two of the most powerful cricket nations than at any other time they have crossed paths since they began almost constant contact 20 years ago. Not least is the fact that the series is happening. Without dismissing the enormously influential financial forces that have driven India and Australia to play no fewer than 12 Test series against each other since 1999, the same number of encounters that Australia has had Ashes series against England during the same period, all participants and spectators will have had moments this year when they weren’t entirely sure the series would happen.

In the harsh months of March, April and May, where the world was almost completely without sports, there was plenty of time to reflect on that somber possibility, and more recently the issues in question had a lot to do with the obstacles to organizing the series, even when there was so much goodwill between Cricket Australia and the BCCI for it to happen. In a year in which its leaders have faced pitched battles with state associations, state governments and rights-holding broadcasters, CA has been grateful that India’s administrators and players never raised major issues about the tour.

Instead, the obstacles for CA’s interim chief executive Nick Hockley and chairman Earl Eddings largely had to do with finding a point of entry for the chartered plane carrying the touring team. From initial plans to land in Perth, the plan moved to Adelaide and then to Brisbane before finally being picked up by Sydney, Canberra, the New South Wales government and the SCG Trust. Anxiety levels were never higher than during a long and, ultimately, unsuccessful negotiation with the Queensland government. Even after the arrival of the Indians, there was a chance that the series would be turned upside down by a Covid outbreak in Adelaide. For a long time, Adelaide Oval had been scheduled to host at least one and possibly two tests, given the prolonged quarantine Melbourne faced for most of the year, which kept a cloud over Boxing Day until late October. But the outbreak that forced a tough though brief quarantine in South Australia caused contingencies to shift to begin the test series with a day/night test at the MCG and then continue playing a more traditional match from December 26 onwards. All these permutations were at the forefront of the mind of Adelaide Oval curator Damian Hough, who has dealt with rock concerts and changes of football matches in the past, but this year has prepared a test match strip with a Christmas parade instead of Sheffield Shield matches as a prelude.

“One thing we’ve learned with Covid is to be more in the present,” Hough said. “We like to plan months in advance. We still had plans, but we had to live in the moment a little more,” he said. “[A U2 concert last year] was a much bigger challenge than what we’re going through this year. I never thought I’d see a Christmas parade at the Adelaide Oval, so it’s a unique year.”

Damian Hough

“We are fortunate enough to be able to give Australia [training] in the center of the field on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so that was our only preparation, and it seemed to go really well, the feedback was positive. We have the recipe that seems to work… we are simply sticking to the game plan.” More than anything else, those sessions in the middle of the field are shaping up as an invaluable competitive advantage for the members of the Australian team who arrived before those who played for Australia A against the Indians on a different surface at the SCG, something Paine did not hesitate to affirm.

Paine: “We’ve been very lucky to come to Adelaide early. We trained three nights in a row in the middle of the field at Adelaide Oval, which I think will be a big advantage for our team. It’s the most difficult thing about the Test with the pink ball; you usually have it once a year. Sometimes with a Shield match, this time without one. So you’re practically learning on the go, in real time, when you go out on the field.” “To try to adapt to conditions that are so strange to us, with the lights on and a pink ball. So it’s strange. But we’ve managed to have three nights in the middle of the field at the Adelaide Oval, which has been fantastic for our group, batsmen and bowlers, to get an idea of what it’s like again. It revives your memory of last year, it’s going to be a big advantage for us tomorrow.” Kohli’s adjustment, who didn’t even play in the SCG warm-up match, will be as critical as any other factor for the result in Adelaide. It will also be accentuated by the fact that this is Kohli’s only test match for the series, making it an even more unique event before Ajinkya Rahane takes over as captain for the remaining three matches. With artillery like Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc, and Nathan Lyon, the Australians have enjoyed considerable success in dismissing Kohli early in each of the previous two series. However, get past that phase, and Kohli has shown that he can damage even the most presumptuous of attacks. “Everyone has big plans to get all the best players out, don’t they?, but that’s why they’re the best, they can adapt, they can change with what you’re doing, and Virat is certainly one of the best players, if not the best player in the world,” Paine said. “There’s going to be a moment in this, well, there’s only one test really, so hopefully not, but when you play against players as good as Virat, sometimes they get away from you, that’s the game.” “But we certainly have implemented plans that have worked well against him in the past; hopefully they work early enough this week, but if not, yes, we have a couple of different plans. The good thing about our attack is that they are all different, we also have Nathan Lyon and now you bowl Greeny, we have some different angles, some different speeds and obviously Nathan’s spin, as well as Marnus’, so we have a lot of different options to bowl at him if he were to come in and settle.” There is something refreshing about tactical discussions and plans on the eve of a test series, rather than the Covid protocols, border restrictions and financial shocks of the year to date. Paine, who values his Test career more than most after being a phone call or two away from retiring from cricket altogether in 2017, had no idea about “bubble fatigue” at this point, when asked if such considerations might shorten what remains of his time at the top of the game.

“Absolutely not. I love it, to be honest,” Paine said. “I don’t think this hub has been as strict as perhaps the IPL or the one in England. I’m sleeping very well at night; my kids are at home, which is good in a way, but I certainly miss them. But I sleep better here and feel fresher here than at home, so life in the operations center might make me play longer, if anything.”

Tim Paine

You don’t know what you have until it’s gone. If in recent years there has been a touch of fatigue over the frequency of meetings between India and Australia, the events of 2020 have ensured that this latest chapter is as vivid as any sporting competition can be when so many around the world remain locked down by a pandemic.