Australia vs India: The Test that revives cricket after a chaotic year

Australia and India: Duel in Adelaide Amid Uncertainty

In a year marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, Australia and India face each other in the same setting where they began their last encounter in 2018: the Adelaide Oval. The view of the scoreboard and the Moreton Bay trees at the north end of the field provide a sense of continuity inherent in Test match cricket, and will be a backdrop for the teams of Tim Paine and Virat Kohli in the first day/night Test for the Indian team away from home. This series, which began 20 years ago, has a special significance, mainly because its realization is an achievement in itself. Influential financial forces have driven India and Australia to contest at least 12 test series since 1999, the same number of encounters that Australia has had Ashes series against England in the same period. There were times this year when the celebration of the series was not entirely assured. In the difficult months of March, April, and May, when the world was almost without sports, there was a lot of time to reflect on that gloomy possibility. Recently, the problems at hand had a lot to do with the obstacles to organizing the series, despite the goodwill existing between Cricket Australia and the BCCI for this to happen. CA appreciated that the administrators and players of India never raised major problems about the tour. The challenges for CA’s interim chief executive Nick Hockley and chairman Earl Eddings were related to finding a point of entry for the chartered plane carrying the touring team. Initial plans to land in Perth were moved to Adelaide and then to Brisbane, before finally being embraced by Sydney, Canberra, the New South Wales government and the SCG Trust. Anxiety levels were never as high as during a long and, ultimately, unsuccessful negotiation with the Queensland government. Even after the arrival of the Indians, there was a possibility that the series would be disrupted by a Covid outbreak in Adelaide. For a long time, Adelaide Oval was scheduled to host at least one and possibly two tests, given the prolonged lockdown Melbourne faced for most of the year, which kept a cloud over Boxing Day until the end of October. But the outbreak that forced a hard though brief lockdown in South Australia caused contingencies to change to begin the test series with a day/night test at the MCG and then continue playing a more traditional game 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 party 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 are going through this year. I never thought I would see a Christmas parade at the Adelaide Oval, so it’s a unique year.”

Damian Hough

“We are fortunate 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 very 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.

“We were very lucky to get to Adelaide early,” he said. “We trained three nights in a row in the middle of the Adelaide Oval pitch, which I think will be a big advantage for our team. It’s the most difficult thing about the pink ball Test; you normally get it once a year. Sometimes with a Shield game, 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 foreign. But we have 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. Go back over your memory of last year, it will be a great 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 intensified 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 the captaincy 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, past that phase, Kohli has shown that he can damage even the most presumptuous of attacks.

“Everyone has big plans to get 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 really only one test, so hopefully not, but when you play against players as good as Virat, sometimes they get away from you, that’s the game.”

Tim Paine

“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’re all different, we also have Nathan Lyon and now you bowl Greeny, we have a few different angles, a few 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’s something refreshing about tactical discussions and plans on the eve of a test series, rather than Covid protocols, border restrictions and the financial impacts of the year to date. Paine, who cherishes his test career more than most after being one or two phone calls away from retiring from cricket altogether in 2017, had no idea of “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 sleep very well at night; my children 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 hub might make me play longer, if anything.” 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.