The grand Australian batting plan when playing at home with the Kookaburra is for the top order to gobble up at least the first 180 deliveries, so their opponents’ known-nemesis Travis Head can walk in around the 30th over mark – not earlier.
Fox Cricket wrote, “According to the Australians, batting becomes easier after 30 overs, which has been earmarked as the ideal time for the likes of Head and Mitchell Marsh to pounce on a fatiguing opponent….Smith and Head pinpointed the 30-over mark as their sweet spot, the ideal time to start their innings.”
Head’s last 8 centuries have all resulted in Australia wins, and they haven’t won a Test since 2018 if he isn’t a part of the team.
But pivotal to this plan at home is negotiating the new Kookaburra ball, that debuted in 2021, and has been a headache for most batsmen, with Fox noting that its also led to “shorter Test matches and lower batting averages.”
Dubbing it Head’s Goldilocks’ period, Fox wrote that when the leftie walked in, in the 34th over on Sunday, “the Kookaburra wasn’t too shiny or too soft.”
Head told Fox at stumps, “At No. 5, I’m watching the overs tick up. I think we were at the 30-over mark when I was able to come in, and we’ve talked about that, the 30-over mark. The top order did a really good job to be able to get us through that period and then (Smith and I) were able to go about our work.”
The openers Nathan McSweeney and Usman Khawaja and one-drop Marnus Labsuschagne, absorbed 158 deliveries, and it was this wearing out of the Kookaburra that Smith credited the top three with.
“If we can sort of get to 30-odd overs when Travis comes in, it makes a big difference to the team,” Smith had said at stumps.
The Indian team, on the other hand, hasn’t quite completely gotten to grips with this 30-over-mark. In the first innings at Perth, they were 6 wickets down by the 32nd over, but when they weathered the storm in the second, they managed an opening partnership of 200 in 60 odd overs, with KL Rahul gobbling 176 deliveries and Jaiswal soaking up 207.
In the first innings at Adelaide, India again lost 6 wickets by the 33rd over, and were 7 down by 30th in second essay.
On a rain-interrupted Monday, India have reached 51/4 but it’s only been 17 overs. Just reaching the 30-mark seems to be proving tough, and Sunil Gavaskar speaking on ABC comms, stressed, “It’s all good to be positive. But you also gotta be practical. You cant be looking to score 25 off the first over… Literally, when your opposition has got 445, your job for that one hour was to try and stay at the crease.”
The 30-over mark has, as a corollary, been where the challenge starts steepening up for Indian bowlers. “Between the 46th and 80th overs in Adelaide and Brisbane, Australia has clobbered 3-353, scoring at faster than five runs an over,” Fox wrote.
Indian bowling coach Morne Morkel, had also reiterated that India’s execution with the older ball needed extra focus.
“We’ve got the game plans, but are we executing those game plans with a softer ball from both ends? It’s something we need to discuss and get better at. From over 50 with that soft ball, at the moment that’s where we’re leaking,” he had said after Day 2.
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