Pat Cummins has become the smiling assassin. Never mind the nonsense about Captain Woke or Captain Planet, he has morphed into Captain Ruthless.
His demolition of India’s lower order on the way to a series-levelling 10-wicket victory over India on Sunday in Adelaide, with eight sessions to spare, unveiled the shock and awe Australia will attempt to take to Brisbane this week.
Stung by their insipid performance in Perth, when an underdone Australia raised the white flag, Cummins led from the front as they restored pride in the baggy green.
Caught on the back foot in Perth with almost no cricket behind them, Australia lacked aggression. That didn’t mean reverting to the old school nonsense of sledging. It meant playing with ruthless intent.
Mitchell Starc continued as the pink ball miracle man of Adelaide with his first innings 6-48 and player of the match Travis Head took the game away from India with his blazing, run a ball 140.
But it was Cummins the enforcer who laid bare Australia’s intent with a short ball barrage which netted him 5-57 and left India very much on the back foot in every sense.
Five of the seven wickets Cummins claimed for the match were a direct result of short balls.
And a sixth, returning captain Rohit Sharma, was hit on the grill by Starc on Saturday night before being cleaned up by Cummins with what could very well be the ball of the series, leaving Sharma and flicking the top of this off stump.
The first of Cummins’ wickets was the dangerous Rishabh Pant in the first innings, fending at a short ball which lobbed from the shoulder of his bat to Marnus Labuschagne in the gully.
Cummins claimed the first wicket of India’s second innings when KL Rahul gloved a hook to be caught behind on Saturday evening.
But it was on Sunday that Cummins signalled there would be no way back for India. Ravi Ashwin, Arshit Rana and Nitish Kumar Reddy all fell to short balls from the Australia captain.
Pat Cummins. (Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)
Ashwin received three short balls in a row and tried to hook them all, missing the first two and gloving the third.
Rana was dropped fending away a short ball from Cummins, received a thud in the helmet from Starc in the following over and then was out fending another brute of a ball from Cummins.
Watching his support disappear from the other end, allrounder Reddy decided he’d slice a short ball over the slips, only for it to lodge in the safe hands of Nathan McSweeney at a perfectly placed short third man.
But for all the might of Australia’s thumping 10-wicket victory, the series is only all square after India’s equally thumping 295-run victory at Perth Stadium.
Australia still have history ahead of them, needing to be the first team since 1997 to come back from 1-0 down to win the series. India have won their last four against Australia, who must win the series to reclaim the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
So no one was willing to say “I can’t wait to get you to the Gabba” like former captain Tim Paine did in Sydney four years ago, only for India to inflict an unlikely defeat in Brisbane to claim the series.
The Gabba is not the fortress it was. Australia hadn’t lost at the Gabba for 32 years before that Indian victory. However that was because the first Test of almost every season began at the Gabba, allowing the Australians to trounce the unacclimatised visitors on the fast and bouncy pitch.
Australia’s two losses there over the past four years, against India and the West Indies last summer, came later in the season when sides had acclimatised to Australian conditions.
This is what makes the Perth thumping so disturbing. It should have been Australia’s natural advantage. Day/night Tests in Adelaide are certainly Australia’s natural advantage. They have now won eight from eight and the swinging Starc has dominated.
The Australian team which turned up in Adelaide is very different to the one which arrived flat-footed in Perth.
It is like Australia had to reacclimatise to their own conditions given how little cricket most of them had played. The clipboard and the spreadsheet were stretched right across what was coming this five-Test summer and how to keep the team fresh, instead of how to succeed in Perth.
Pat Cummins celebrates his fifth wicket after removing Nitish Kumar Reddy. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
So in Adelaide reputations have been restored and careers reversed back from the cliff.
Marnus Labuschagne played one of his most purposeful innings in a year, getting past 10 for just the second time in 11 innings.
In his second Test, Nathan McSweeney’s 39 across almost three hours built the foundation for Head to launch his audacious innings.
And doesn’t Head love playing in Adelaide! That was his third century at home in as many Tests, giving his local crowd plenty to cheer about.
Outside of Adelaide, the blazing 89 he scored during the second innings in Perth was the first time he had reached 50 in 17 innings. His only century outside of Adelaide in his last 45 innings was the match-changing 163 which set up the World Test Championship final against India at the Oval last year.
Head is a microcosm of his country, brilliant on their day, but which team will turn up in Brisbane, the side that shuffled into Perth, or the one that bounced into Adelaide?
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