Geoff Lemon's Blog, page 30
February 28, 2023
Smith the key as Australia patch together team for third India Test
As Australia headed to India this year to contest the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, one thing they were relying on was experience. David Warner and Steve Smith would lead the batting on their third Test tour to the country, after 22 seasons of IPL between them. Nathan Lyon and Mitchell Starc couldn’t boast such IPL records but would also make their third Test trip. Patrick Cummins would lead the side after making his return to Test cricket in 2017, waking up Indian batters with bouncers on a Ranchi track that was fast asleep.
The best-laid plans of mice and men. Starc started the tour injured, denying Australia the benefits of his reverse swing and his lower-order runs. Warner started poorly before having his arm broken by Mohammed Siraj and being sent home. Cummins meanwhile started the tour knowing that his mother was ill, without knowing that he would have to leave after the second Test as she entered palliative care.
Continue reading...
February 21, 2023
David Warner exit leaves Australian Test team looking balanced in India | Geoff Lemon
Management gets a convenient chance to try Travis Head at the top without being seen to have made a definitive call on Warner
So David Warner is heading home, arm busted and ambitions dented but that radiation-proof determination surely intact. Anyone who knows the feeling of broken bones could see what had happened as soon as he was hit by a Mohammed Siraj short ball during the Delhi Test. The way he yelped and flinched when the physio gently squeezed his arm reflects exactly that bright flash of pain that seems to start in the marrow and end between the temples.
It was strange then that the initial response from Australia’s captain and coach was that he might recover for the third Test a little more than a week away. The elbow fracture sustained is small – at the team hotel on Tuesday night Warner sat comfortably and only wore a light compression bandage around the injury. But even a tiny fracture hampers all movement anywhere near it. It radiates discomfort. It throbs like a bad tooth. He was never going to be able to hit a cricket ball so soon.
Nursing him through the series might have made sense had Warner been the gun player in the line-up blazing runs, but this felt more like making a point that he remains firmly the first-choice opener. Now team management gets a convenient chance to try Travis Head at the top without being seen to have made a definitive call on Warner. The latter’s declining returns have been talked about plenty: his fighting 200 against South Africa’s pace in the Boxing Day Test ensured he would join this India tour, but it is also his only time past 50 in his last 15 innings. His career has never seen a streak that quiet.
His two cheap dismissals in Nagpur helped set the tone for Australia’s substandard batting across the match. Those who only follow cricket from the scorecard will think the same of his 15 at Delhi, but that innings weathered a fierce opening hour, added a 50-run opening partnership, and gave the stability for Usman Khawaja to get set and go on to top score. Even the fetishists of hard noses and hard edges can’t credibly complain about getting out after your arm gets broken.
Still. In a small sample size, Warner didn’t show a method for India that inspired confidence. He is a player that Australia want batting for a day, not an hour. With Cameron Green coming back, Peter Handscomb managing the conditions well and Head seeing the ball the way he is, Warner’s absence leaves the side looking balanced in these conditions.
Head as an opener could work because he loves thrashing pace bowling, and the scant few overs of it that any Australian might see will come at the top of the innings. Even when the spinners follow up, a newer ball might suit his attacking shots. His style in these conditions is a gamble that could equally fail, but his bright start in the second innings in Delhi suggests he might pull off a couple more such efforts.
That isn’t a viable option after this tour, though. Head’s propensity for thrashing the ball between cover and backward point would be a liability in England, where the ball swings and seams early while a cordon of catchers waits for the inevitable. His spot at number five has been perfect, facing an older ball while he either presses home an advantage or counterattacks in difficulty.
February 20, 2023
Australia seek cure for Delhi hangover as headaches mount on tour of India | Geoff Lemon
With a nine-day break before the third Test begins coach Andrew McDonald hopes his under-fire team will be able to find clarity
The morning after the night before is when clarity kicks in. You shuffle into the main part of the house and suddenly you can see the snowdrifts of bottles that you didn’t notice accumulating. You spot the burn marks on the carpet, the crack in the bottom window, the slice of chocolate cake smeared along the blade of the ceiling fan. You know that this version of you is the person who has to deal with it. With clarity, nothing is clearer than regret.
The morning after Australia’s match-surrendering batting collapse in Delhi, regret was palpable. Not just at failure but failure from a position of strength. Walking in to speak to reporters at the team hotel, it was palpable from coach Andrew McDonald. “It’s a lot of hard work to get into that position, and that’s the real disappointing part,” he said. “Those positions in India aren’t handed over easily, and we had one. We had a really good look at it. That’s the frustration and within the group we know how much we’re going to need to invest to get back into that. Are we prepared for that? Yeah, we are. Are we up to that challenge again? Yes, we are.”
Continue reading...February 19, 2023
Australia swept aside by India in manic parade of cross-batted wallops | Geoff Lemon
Visitors have gone 2-0 down, largely thanks to a preconceived idea of playing sweeps to India’s spinners, come what may
Australia’s batting collapse in the first Border-Gavaskar Test in Nagpur came while trailing badly with no realistic route back. It was not ideal but broadly made sense. In Delhi, their collapse was the second surrender of ascendancy in the match. In the second innings, they allowed India’s last three partnerships to reduce Australia’s three-figure lead to a single run. In the third innings, the visitors were 66 ahead on a pitch where 180 might well have been enough only to lose their last nine wickets for 59.
Over the previous year and a half, as Australia prepared for and undertook a multi-series Asian odyssey to Pakistan, Sri Lanka and now India, there has been a formula to questions about batting preparation. The paraphrased answer was like this: “Everyone is different, so guys will be coming up with their own plans. Whether that’s the sweep and reverse sweep, or whatever it may be.”
Continue reading...February 18, 2023
Lyon tops the bill for Australia during day-long highlights reel | Geoff Lemon
The off-spinner’s five-for gave Australia control before India fought back in a match that shows no signs of slowing down
Not many Test matches pan out like this. Even England’s current fast-forward approach has periods of normality, where bowlers bowl and batters bat. Over two days in Delhi, all six sessions have been full of incident, and the match in its third innings sits as evenly as can be. There have been eight Tests in history where teams made the same score in the first innings. With Australia’s 263 followed by India’s 262, this was nearly the ninth.
Within nine overs of India resuming in the second innings at none for 21, Australia had suffered a KL Rahul straight six, dismissed him lbw, lost two of three umpire reviews, applauded Cheteshwar Pujara to the crease in his 100th Test match, and given him a reprieve when stone dead lbw second ball for fear of losing the third review. Two overs after that they had bowled India’s captain Rohit Sharma with a ball that crawled along the floor, then nailed Pujara seventh ball.
All of those chances came from Nathan Lyon, bowling off-spin around the wicket and straightening down the line of the stumps. Within six more overs the final review was wasted on an imagined catch at short leg, Peter Handscomb took a real one in freakish pinballing fashion, and Lyon’s morning read four wickets for eight runs.
February 17, 2023
Australia rely on Handscomb to help solve high-stakes puzzle against India
With Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne knocked out, it was Peter Handscomb who carried the campaign against spin
For Australia’s cricketers in India, working out how to bat on local pitches has meant solving a puzzle. One with high stakes, in real time. They cycle through the options: advance to the ball, or sweep to reach its pitch? Reverse sweep to find gaps? Open a stance to avoid being closed off? Attack early to push catchers back? Every choice has threats that it nullifies and new ones it invites, especially with quality purveyors of spin making counter-adjustments at the other end.
On the first day of the Delhi Test, Peter Handscomb appeared to have solved the puzzle. For a time, Usman Khawaja found a way, too. On a pitch that offered sharp turn from ball one even if it was slow enough to sometimes play off the surface, their partnership in the middle of the innings was worth 59, while Khawaja was the consistent presence in helping add 108 beforehand and Handscomb in another 94 afterwards. A total of 263 does not equal cricketing riches, but it was an advance on the previous week’s capitulation in Nagpur.
Continue reading...February 15, 2023
Selection missteps back Australia into a corner ahead of second Test in India | Geoff Lemon
Having picked injured stars hoping they would recover in the shortest possible time, the tourists are left with few options in Delhi
You go to war with the army you have – so goes a piece of unintended wisdom from Donald Rumsfeld as cycled through Natasha Lyonne on Russian Doll. Like any good motto leaning towards truism, it’s something you can take beyond the literal and apply to the trivial. It’s a phrase that you can mutter as you plough into the passport queue at a seething airport, or glance at the other adult trying to control an eighth birthday party.
For our purposes, it can apply to any sporting situation dealing with a lack of resources. Billy Beane could have slotted it into Moneyball, just as it fits for a visiting Test cricket team in Delhi this week. They may have been soundly beaten in the first Test in Nagpur, but Australia couldn’t then and can’t now pick a raft of quality spinners or quality players of spin against India because those players don’t currently exist.
Continue reading...February 13, 2023
Timing is everything as India changes Australia Test venue at the last minute | Geoff Lemon
India’s decision has prompted speculation about the pitch in Indore being more suitable for spinners than Dharamsala
As a foreigner visiting India, you can be confounded by an unfamiliar approach to time. A bus hasn’t arrived, a wifi network is down, you’re waiting on a piece of equipment, and you want to know how long. One genre of answer involves a cosmically flexible five minutes. Another invokes a vague future marker: after lunch, night time, ask again tomorrow. Far from rigid western ideas of timekeeping, something to it is more philosophy than organisation: so much of human perseverance is based on the thought that in the morning, things might be better.
The shrug of the shoulders approach applies at the top of cricket administration as much as it does at street level. Last minute is business as usual. When England hosted the 2019 World Cup, the fixture came out 13 months ahead of time. Australia’s version last year gave nearly 11 months’ notice. India’s T20 World Cup in 2021 didn’t have a fixture until two months out. That one had to contend with the pandemic and a move to the UAE, but their 2016 edition didn’t, and it was even later in announcing its dates. India events drive the planning department at the ICC to distraction.
Continue reading...Timing is everything as India changes Australia Test venue at the last minute
As a foreigner visiting India, you can be confounded by an unfamiliar approach to time. A bus hasn’t arrived, a wifi network is down, you’re waiting on a piece of equipment, and you want to know how long. One genre of answer involves a cosmically flexible five minutes. Another invokes a vague future marker: after lunch, night time, ask again tomorrow. Far from rigid western ideas of timekeeping, something to it is more philosophy than organisation: so much of human perseverance is based on the thought that in the morning, things might be better.
The shrug of the shoulders approach applies at the top of cricket administration as much as it does at street level. Last minute is business as usual. When England hosted the 2019 World Cup, the fixture came out 13 months ahead of time. Australia’s version last year gave nearly 11 months’ notice. India’s T20 World Cup in 2021 didn’t have a fixture until two months out. That one had to contend with the pandemic and a move to the UAE, but their 2016 edition didn’t, and it was even later in announcing its dates. India events drive the planning department at the ICC to distraction.
Continue reading...February 11, 2023
India’s spin twins haunt Australia yet again despite years of planning | Geoff Lemon
Bowling of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja proved unplayable for the visiting Baggy Greens in the first Test
Years of planning. Years of forethought, deliberation, anticipation. All unravelled in less than 33 overs of a slightly extended session, Australia bowled out for 91 and losing the first Test at Nagpur before tea on the third day.
At the top of Australian cricket, this tour has been on minds for an age. The 2013 men’s team came for four Tests in India and lost the lot. The humiliation stung. There was much thinking and theorising before the next attempt in 2017. Steve Smith made three hundreds, Steve O’Keefe pulled out a singular performance, Nathan Lyon had his best innings return and Australia closed the gap to a 2-1 loss.
Continue reading...Geoff Lemon's Blog
- Geoff Lemon's profile
- 12 followers
