When Travis Head made the walk to the middle, he was oozing confidence. And why wouldn’t he be? He was fresh from a hundred in the pink-ball Test and was batting with a very high degree of domination. The hosts’ innings was delicately placed at 75/3 in 33.2 overs and Head joined Steve Smith who was looking very itchy.
Getting Head at the other end was just what Smith would have wanted at that stage because the game was soon going to enter the passage of play where India have struggled this series.
With the oldish Kookaburra, the visitors have not only found it difficult to make any inroads but also struggled to contain the flow of runs. And Rohit Sharma & Co. now had to deal with their ‘nemesis’, who was in terrific touch.
The match situation was very much in India’s control when Head walked out but what happened next was a rerun of what we have seen plenty of times in the past.
In a matter of 10-12 overs, majority of which were bowled by Jasprit Bumrah, Head got his eye in and started feasting on anything in his radar. The Indian bowlers continued to do him another favour as their lack of execution and proper planning was on display during the post-Lunch session.
Yet again, he wasn’t peppered with chin music early on and was given a very warm reception by the Indian attack. Rohit Sharma shuffled things up in the attack but clear lack of sustained pressure from both ends allowed Head to get well-set when the Indian captain introduced Ravindra Jadeja in the 53rd over. Mohammed Siraj was handed over the responsibility from the other end and it was during this period where Head moved to domination mode and continued to pile on the pressure in free-flowing fashion.
The field was now spread out, easy singles were there for the taking and the bowlers clearly lacked fuel in the tank. Not just the bowlers but even Rohit wore a very helpless look as the visiting camp didn’t seem to have any way of keeping a known threat under check.
It wasn’t the first time Head was doing what he did. But what is more frustrating is the fact that as a group, India are yet to crack the code!
Do they have answers when they run into him again? Doesn’t look like it.
At the end of day’s play, India bowling coach Morne Morkel said they had the plans figured out for Head but it was the lack of execution between Over No. 50-80 which cost them dearly and let the game slip away from a very firm grip.
“Yes we’ve got the game plans, but are we executing those game plans with a softer ball from both ends, that’s something we need to discuss and get better at,” said Morkel.
India clearly didn’t learn their lesson after what happened in the Adelaide Test and if no drastic changes are made to the approach against the left-hander, more runs and tons are in store. He has already scored 392 runs in the four innings and his impact can be assessed from the next best contributor from the Australian line-up: Alex Carey. The wicketkeeper-batter has just one third of Head’s runs. More than Head’s runs, it’s the strike rate – nearly 95 – at which he has been scoring which has hurt India more.
As Steve Smith explained in the press-conference, the change in the Kookaburra ball is suiting Head’s style of play as his numbers and strike rate have drastically shot up since it was changed back in 2021. Unlike the previous version, this ball doesn’t lose its hardness even after getting old and “bounces off the bat a lot harder”.
“I think the ball stays hard. So if you get through that period and, you know, you’ve got some guys like Travis and Marshy and Alex coming in, the ball still bounces off the bat a lot harder than it used to. You know, I think previously you get to those positions where the ball gets a bit softer. You’ll see catches in front of the wicket and things like that. And it’d be a bit more difficult to score. But, yeah, I think theball’s definitely staying harder,” explains Smith.
In Head’s case, however, it seems to be flying off his blade and India seems to have no means to clip its wings.