Sam Konstas leaves India flummoxed and flabbergasted at the ‘G’, becomes toast of Australia on debut

The Indians were in a huddle just inside the boundary rope, Rohit Sharma delivering a last-minute pep talk. Usman Khawaja made his stately way to the middle, taking his time, soaking in the 87,242 spectators crammed into the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Meanwhile, a young man on debut was sprinting towards the middle, shadowing a few strokes, his nervous energy driving him forward as much as the scent of battle energised him.

On Thursday, day one of the Boxing Day Test, Sam Konstas became Australia’s 468th male Test cricketer, and the fourth youngest to represent his country in the five-day game. He should have been tense because that’s the natural order of things. After all, up against him was the No. 1 bowler in the world, the one who had reduced Australia to putty in the first three Tests, temporarily put a halt to the career of the man Konstas replaced in the side, and the XI.

Nathan McSweeney found Test cricket an almost impossible cauldron to conquer in his three opening gos at that format. Konstas only got a look-in because the South Australian captain managed a meagre 72 runs in six innings, falling to Bumrah four times in five completed essays. And yet here he was, ‘owning the batting crease’, looking to dominate the bowling from the get-go.

The first over was the stuff of nightmares. Four times, Konstas plonked his left foot down the track, pushed forward optimistically as Bumrah got the ball to shape away. Four times, he was comprehensively beaten. He could have nicked any of those four balls and no one would have grudged him that. But the cricketing gods smiled benevolently on him, and he came through that examination unscathed.

Perhaps in his mind, he decided that he had to do something different, not do the same things and expect different results. So in Bumrah’s next over, he attempted a reverse scoop. Unsuccessfully, yes, but he had the courage, the audacity, the self-belief, to do so. “The fearlessness of youth,” he was to say later. “Maybe I was naïve, I would have looked stupid if I had got out that way.”

Toying with the great Jasprit Bumrah

He didn’t. As he spent a little more time at the crease, as he got the measure of the conditions, as he played a few more deliveries from Bumrah and got accustomed to the unusual action that has stymied plenty more experienced batters, he was emboldened enough to want to test different corners of the ground. Hence the shove-scoop off Bumrah for four. Followed by the reverse-scoop the next ball for six. And another reverse in the same over for four.

The six was the first Bumrah had conceded for four years in Test cricket – the last man to subject him to that ignominy was Cameron Green, but that was against an older ball, a tireder Bumrah. For Konstas to hit him for six, to third-man not off a ramp but off a reverse scoop, wow. That’s all one could say.

India were flummoxed, they were flabbergasted. They felt Konstas would succumb to a rush of blood, that Bumrah’s quality would out, that it was a matter of time before the 19-year-old wended his way back to the hut, sheepishly. Oh, how wrong they were. Konstas kept targeting the reverse ‘V’, Bumrah and India simply had no answers . Seldom must the crack pacer have felt so helpless, so out of sync, than when this impertinent young lad was getting stuck into him. Where is the respect, he might have wondered? Where is the freaking respect?

“He is a legend,” Konstas was to say later. “I was lucky to get a few shots going today.”

Both statements are steeped in truisms, but Konstas was more than lucky. Having received his cap from former skipper Mark Taylor, who urged him to back himself and his instincts, the rookie right-hander did precisely that. He confessed to a certain premeditation, because otherwise, how do you play the scoop and the reverse-scoop when the ball is coming at you at 140 kmph. But there was method to his madness, and that drove India ragged, drove them to distraction.

Konstas wasn’t finished with Bumrah after the four-six-four routine. In Bumrah’s sixth over, the carnage continued unchecked – a charge down the track, making a bit of room, to drill a four past mid-off. A semi-agricultural mow over long-on for a second six – eat your heart out, Cameron Green – and a steer off an attempted yorker that became a full toss, that flew away to square third-man, away from the fine third-man Rohit Sharma had employed in a bid to stop him from playing the reverse ramp. Eighteen came off that over. Bumrah, him of an average of 10.90 for the series before this game, signed off with an opening spell of 6-2-38-0. Thrown in were five fours and two sixes. It was mayhem at the ‘G’.

Standing up to Virat Kohli

It wasn’t just Konstas’ bat that was doing the talking. He was happy to engage in verbals, keeping his act together even when he was lipping it back to the Indians. There was a face-off with Mohammed Siraj, and then a coming together of right shoulders with Virat Kohli between overs . Konstas was ‘doing his gloves’ when Kohli ‘accidentally bumped into me.’ “I think the emotions got to both of us, but it happens in cricket,” he said, sagely and with a wisdom that belied his age and his lack of experience.

At the start of the year, Konstas was playing for the Australian Under-19 team at the World Cup in South Africa, where he made zero in the final that his team won against India. At the start of the month, he was smashing a Bumrah-less attack for a hundred at the Manuka Oval in Canberra in the rescheduled pink-ball one-day game for a Prime Minister’s XI. At the start of the week, he was dreaming of a Test cap, a crack at Bumrah, a fairytale first appearance in front of his parents and his brothers at the most intimidating or inviting – depending on which team you are representing – cricketing venue in the world.

Now, Konstas is the toast of Australia – 60 off 65 balls, humanising the unplayable and magical Jasprit Bumrah, locking horns with the tempestuous Kohli, and doing it all with the exuberance and nonchalance of the teenager that he is. Welcome, Sam Konstas. Don’t change a bit for at least a little while, until the cares of the cricketing world overwhelm you as they inevitably will.