India vs Australia: Hosts' batsmen have long way to go after poor Test series; Justin Langer's 30-run benchmark not the solution

Just before Australia’s Test tour of the UAE against Pakistan, newly-appointed coach Justin Langer and high-performance manager Pat Howard had forged a new metric to overcome Australia’s batting deficiencies. The crux of the metric was that ‘30 was the new 50’. It was derived to prevent the raw batting unit from avoiding collapses. Six Tests on, and the illogical yardstick has become the laughing stock of the nation. Howard has already moved on, but after a 2-1 loss to India , Langer has received a reality check on how far the batting standards have plunged in the past few years. India are the No 1 team in the world and Australia are missing the two batsmen who have scored 39 percent of their runs in the past four years, but the lack of emerging talent and the inability of Usman Khawaja and Shaun Marsh to take their game to a new level have exposed the lack of depth in Australian cricket. [caption id=“attachment_5848211” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Opener Aaron Finch gets his stumps destroyed by Ishant Sharma at Adelaide. AP[/caption] To put it all into a statistical context, the series against India is the first time in a four-Test series at home that an Australian batsman has not scored a hundred. It is the first time in 31 years that the mighty Australians have had to face the ignominy of having to bat the second consecutive time to save a Test. An uninterrupted Australian innings has averaged 253, the lowest number in the last decade on home soil. So who is to blame? The buck starts at the top of the order. Khawaja is the most senior statesman and had livened Australian spirits ahead of the summer by scoring a defiant 141 in a marathon nine-hour knock in Dubai. There was an inkling that he could resurrect the Australian batting in the absence of Warner and Smith, but the stylish batsman has gone backwards since then. In each innings, he has negotiated the first 30 deliveries but has only registered one half-century. Marsh, the second most senior batsman, has averaged 26.14 with one fifty. On a brighter note, 26-year-old Marcus Harris has shown promise and Travis Head too has shown glimpses of his ability to survive at the Test level. But perhaps the most daunting statistic is that all of the top six batters have managed to negotiate the first 30 deliveries on a regular basis. Khawaja has faced 30 balls in seven innings, Harris six, Head five and Marsh four. Despite overcoming those barriers, the fact that the top six have only managed to conjure up seven fifties and no centuries is a reflection of the inadequacies in their techniques and concentration. It almost gives one a feeling that once a batsman has faced 30 balls or scored 30 runs, he has accomplished the goal and any runs thereafter are a bonus. It also indicates that the defensive techniques are not strong enough. Shot selection has been a major issue. Peter Handscomb has guided balls to second slip, Khawaja has recklessly been caught trying to loft spinners, Head has thrown the kitchen sink outside the off-stump and Marsh has pushed incautious deliveries to slips. As Brad Haddin stated on Day 3: “The toughest period is being negotiated so it cannot be too much on the technique, it is about getting adequate time in the middle.”

Apart from Perth, all the other surfaces have been relatively batting friendly. The ball has not swung prodigiously, it has not spun viciously, nor has it reverse swung at all, and the hosts have only managed to cross 300 in the first innings just once. In Adelaide they gifted wickets on Day 2, in Melbourne they were reckless on Day 3 and in Sydney, it was pure embarrassing.

As India found out in England earlier this year, having a lethal bowling unit doesn’t always equate to victories. At the end of the day, the batsmen need to post sufficient totals. The bowlers have toiled, but eventually, even they have been impacted by having to play the ‘catch up’ game. After the second match, Lyon was threatening to break the series wide open, but the slow-natured surfaces on the eastern seaboard have neglected his impact. Pat Cummins has been the ‘Player of the Series’ for Australia, but without runs on the board and the lack of support from his peers, he has not been able to dig his team out of a hole. Mitchell Starc has been a huge disappointment. He has now gone nine Test matches without a five-wicket haul. He has not produced a deadly spell nor has he threatened to blow a Test match wide open. Josh Hazlewood too has been off color. Far too often he has over-strode for a wicket and erred on the fuller side. To sum it up, the Indian pacers have out-bowled the hosts. Overall, the resurrecting phase has hit a roadblock. Perhaps it was the all-round class of India, but there is no hiding from the fact that Australia batting has a long way to go and conjuring simple metric is not the solution.