BRISBANE: Sunday at the Gabba was mainly a rerun of the Travis Head Experience, this time in extended format.
By Head’s side stood the formidable Steve Smith, who battled inner demons to rediscover his poise, technique and, eventually, fluency. Both scored centuries — Head his ninth and third against India, Smith his 33rd — to completely overwhelm India’s Jasprit Bumrah-led bowling attack.
In the form of his life, the left-handed Head, Australia’s middle-order enforcer, reprised India’s Adelaide nightmare with his second consecutive ton. He did all this while looking like he was coasting on Queensland’s Bruce Highway, pressing the pedal to the metal while reclining in a plush leather seat.
Head’s innings was batting magnificence made to look easy. He continued from where he left off in Adelaide, conjuring up a 152 off 160 balls (18×4) and adding 241 runs off 302 balls for the fourth wicket with Smith (101 off 190b; 12×4).
By the end of it all, India looked tired, dispirited and bereft of ideas, but their task on the field is not over yet. Stumps were taken with the Aussie tail still wagging at 405/7 and Alex Carey batting on a well-made 45.
Only Bumrah the Magnificent (5/72 off 25 overs) stood tall with his 12th five wicket haul from just 43 Tests. He started off by disrupting the Aussie openers’ plans of blunting the sheen on the Kookaburra, then returned with the second new ball to limit the considerable damage by getting rid of Smith, Head and Mitchell Marsh.
Bumrah lacked any real support, however, in spite of Akash Deep looking penetrative in patches and earning praise from Steve Smith. When the ball got old, conditions eased and the pitch seemed sterile, India’s lack of bowling depth stood exposed.
Head and Smith’s partnership brought back memories of the 285-run stand between the two in the World Test Championship final against India at the Oval in June 2023, and now, like then, they came in with the side in trouble after Marnus Labuschagne’s dismissal. At the Oval, Australia were 76/3, on Sunday here they were 75/3.
India bowling coach Morne Morkel explains why India chose to bowl first in Brisbane
The early damage was thanks to the genius of Bumrah, who made the still new ball his ally and rectified some errors from the first day. This time he found the fuller length straightaway, the five to eight metre mark, drawing Usman Khawaja forward and regularly beating the bat, both off the inside and outside edge. Bowling around the wicket, he found success in just his second over, getting Khawaja to prod at one. The batter was stuck in his crease and edged to the ’keeper.
The compact McSweeney, who kept leaving balls at length on the first day and evaded facing Bumrah, was dislodged with a back-of-a-length ball that came in with the angle and straightened after pitching, forcing the batter to play and edge to Kohli at second slip. Meanwhile, Labuschagne wafted at an innocuous Nitish Reddy delivery and paid the price.
That set the stage for the Travis Head special. By this stage Steve Smith was still his fidgety, scratchy self, still looking for his first century in 25 innings. A return to an altered, exaggerated back-and-across trigger movement seemed to help. Smith shouldered arms to a Siraj nip-backer and was saved by the ‘umpire’s call’. Akash Deep foxed him time and again, but Smith survived. Head’s entry ensured India’s full attention and Smith could slip “under the radar,” as he said later.
India immediately went on the defensive to Head, with a deep point, square leg hanging back, a deep gully, mid-on and mid-off back, but it’s impossible really to cut off Head’s scoring areas. Luck was with him too, and he survived some early jitters. After lunch, with the ball softer at 43 overs old, Head got into his act, racing to his half-century and taking a special liking to Ravindra Jadeja and Mohammed Siraj.
India’s attempts to bowl short to him didn’t come off, and Head kept pulling or ramping those deliveries over the slip cordon. He unsettled Jadeja’s lengths and India’s fielders followed the ball. Plugging every new gap created large gaps to exploit.
Australia scored 130 in 27 overs between lunch and tea (overs 43-70) and 63 in the first 10 overs after tea. Head had taken the game away from an increasingly nervy India. Captain Rohit Sharma even dropped Head on 112, but the second new ball and a burst of wickets from, who else but Bumrah, stopped the rampage.
Steve Smith: ‘I had a great seat in the house to watch Travis Head bat’
It’s now clear Head’s repeated onslaughts have left the “scar” which captain Rohit denied after the Adelaide loss. “He’s in pretty good form, playing back to-back innings in that fashion, we can only give him a lot of credit,” India’s bowling coach Morne Morkel said. “Our plan was to bowl a little more over the wicket, bowl a straighter line. We felt he played it quite nicely in Adelaide when we came around the wicket. We were lucky there was a little bit of bounce, but the margin to him is just so thin.”
A delighted Smith said he had the “best seat in the house to watch Travis Head go about his business”. “He’s doing it consistently at the moment, which is great. It was nice to get a partnership with him because the scoreboard moves extremely fast.”
India are now behind in this game, and seeing the conditions the decision to bowl first may come back to haunt them.
