Australia punished for poor memory as Team India ambush Cummins and Co with memorable performance in Perth

The clock had just ticked over to 3.47 pm local time on a blistering Monday afternoon in Perth when Harshit Rana delivered the final blow with a ball that was worthy of the occasion. Operating from round the stumps, the debutant paceman angled the ball in towards the left-handed Alex Carey, then got it to nip away from Australia’s wicketkeeper-batter.

Having played the line of the ball, Carey was stunned when the ball snaked past his outside edge and hit the off-stump. That dismissal signalled the end of one of Australia’s most underwhelming Test displays at home, Pat Cummins’ side soundly beaten by 295 runs with nearly four sessions to spare in the first of five Tests.

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The Optus Stadium had become something of an Australian bastion since it debuted as a Test venue in December 2018. Admittedly, it had staged only four previous Tests, but the home side had won each convincingly. That record, combined with the perception that India are susceptible to pace and bounce, was one of the primary reasons for this series kicking off in the Western Australian capital. How ironic then, that in the most Australian of venues, it was India who did all the heavy lifting in a stunning turnaround of form and fortunes.

Australia’s preparation was hailed in the build-up to this game, even though their last Test was against New Zealand in Christchurch at the beginning of May. A surfeit of white-ball cricket in the interim was interrupted by stints for their respective state sides in the first-class domestic Sheffield Shield competition, in which every member of the 13-man squad barring Cummins played at least one match.

Even though Marnus Labuschagne, the experienced No. 3, was coming into the series with just one score of more than 10 in his last eight Test innings, and even though Steve Smith, the former captain, dropped back down to No. 4 after an unsuccessful run as opener, Australia felt they had all bases covered.

They believed Nathan McSweeney, making his debut, was the right choice as Usman Khawaja’s opening partner. They were convinced Optus’ reputation and India’s perceived weakness against bounce would work to their advantage. They perhaps felt – but one can’t say this with any conviction – that they had the tools to at least negotiate, if not dismantle, the genius of Jasprit Bumrah. How wrong they were on all counts.

This wasn’t a typical Optus surface, primarily because the rain in the days heralding the start of the five-match series didn’t allow curator Isaac McDonald to prepare a surface entirely to his liking. There was pace on day one, sure, but as the match wore on, the lateral movement became less pronounced and the surface got slower.

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In a way, therefore, India being bowled out for 150 at tea on Friday’s day one worked to their advantage, because Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj and new boy Rana were able to exploit residual assistance before the track slowed up and allowed India’s batters to bed in for the long haul in their second innings which spanned 134.3 overs.

Australia taken by surprise in Perth

Australia will admit, if only in private, that they were taken by surprise at how quickly India adjusted to the conditions and therefore were able to outplay them on their own patch. Little went right for Cummins and his colleagues; the top order was blown away in both innings by Bumrah, their hesitancy and uncertain footwork just the weaknesses the magician was looking to exploit. He was relentless as a bowler but also exceptional as a leader and a tactician, which means he has left his regular captain Rohit Sharma, who has rejoined the team, with a tough act to follow.

There is talk of fissures in the Australian team, a batters vs bowlers’ cold war, after Smith and Co. mustered only 104 in response to India’s 150. At Monday’s press conference, Cummins debunked that theory, but it is clear that Australia have been pushed on to the backfoot, if not rattled.

They have ten days to rediscover their mojo before the pink-ball Test in Adelaide and are likely to begin their preparations for that contest at least a day ahead of schedule, in deference to where the series stands at the moment and how they were tamed by the Indians, themselves coming off a series to forget at home against New Zealand.

Do the Aussies have it in them to bounce back? Anyone who thinks otherwise isn’t in touch with reality. There are few sporting nations more proud than the Aussies, and this is nothing if not a serious blow to their pride. In front of the biggest crowd ever in a Test at the Optus, they were embarrassed and humiliated by an Indian XI that included five players playing their first Test in Australia.

Their batting was made to look pedestrian, their famed and feared bowling unit was shown up to be bereft of imagination, creativity and ideas when India batted them out of the contest in the second innings.

The logical conclusion must be that the road from here on for the Aussies heads in only one direction – upwards. This is as much of a rude reality check as India’s surrender to New Zealand earlier this month was, and Australia will plot ways and means to get their own back in a fortnight’s time in Adelaide.

Australia remain formidable team despite Perth Test loss

Despite their meek display in Perth, Australia are still a formidable force and this defeat, however humiliating, should and will not define them. But they need the big batting guns within the side, and especially Smith and Labuschagne, to lead the way in countering the class of Bumrah, operating at a stratospheric level currently.

There are unlikely to be sweeping changes in personnel, no knee-jerk reaction to what is just a solitary, if not isolated, defeat. Australia will stick to the tried and tested for now, and continue to invest in opener McSweeney, who can’t have become a poorer batter for two failures on debut.

They will look to Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon to continue to inflict the damage they have consistently produced for the last decade. But they will now be even more alive to the possibility that India won’t surrender meekly. Australia should have known that after the Brisbane miracle of three years previously. In case they had forgotten, they received a rude reawakening this week in Perth. It’s up to them now to respond, in kind.