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This Australia-India Test series will only get more hot-tempered
Adelaide: No longer in direct combat as striker and fast bowler, Travis Head and Mohammed Siraj spoke with each other jovially enough as short leg and number 11 during the brutally rapid finish to the Adelaide Test.
Later on, amid the post-match greetings, the pair even shared a hug.
There is, as both players commented in the past 24 hours, plenty of respect between these teams, forged not only through direct contests, but also over the build-up of multiple relationships as teammates on the Twenty20 circuit.
Travis Head and Mohammed Siraj embrace after the Adelaide Test.Credit: Fox Cricket
And a 1-1 scoreline, after Australia regathered grandly from their humbling in Perth to dish out a 10-wicket pummelling of India with the pink ball, reflects that many swings and roundabouts likely remain in this contest.
Adelaide’s vast margin may not be definitive. India and Australia were locked at 1-1 after two Tests in each of their previous two series on these shores, before the tourists finished the 2018-19 and 2020-21 battles as the stronger and more skilful team overall.
Nevertheless, the fiery exchange between Siraj and Head, as twilight descended on a packed Adelaide Oval on day two, has ensured that this series will only get more hot-tempered while it winds through Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.
Even if these two teams were the friendliest of rivals, there is something about a five-Test series that stretches patience and challenges composure. That much was clear during the previous such encounter undertaken by Australia – the 2023 Ashes in England.
Footage of the team captured in the third series of The Test documentary showed higher levels of frustration all-around, a cumulative effect over six or so weeks of unrelenting battle, plus the noise of the Jonny Bairstow stumping at Lord’s.
There was, too, some chippiness on display from the Australians after they completed their victory in Adelaide: The scale of reaction to their opening defeat had taken the world’s top-ranked team by surprise, with a little haughtiness creeping into the way they greeted a levelling scoreline.
“Last week, we lost a Test match and we were apparently the worst Test team ever,” Marnus Labuschagne declared. “This week, we finish on day three with the series at 1-1.”
For Head, rightfully handed the man of the match award in praise of his coruscating 140 from 141 balls in what was otherwise a bowlers’ game, this series had begun with the realisation that India were looking to get under his skin.
This was not entirely surprising, given how much Head’s destructive brand of batting has become India’s nemesis over the past couple of years – including match-winning centuries in the World Test Championship and ODI World Cup finals, in addition to big scores in each of the first two games of this series.
In Perth he was targeted with lavish wicket celebrations by Jasprit Bumrah and Virat Kohli, who carried on with a celebratory tirade in Head’s direction as he trudged off the field in the second innings. Kohli and Head were later captured in lengthy dialogue at the end of the game, as the Australian asked his friend and former IPL teammate what all the aggro had been about.
In Adelaide, the Siraj send-off, and Head’s curt reply, demonstrated a high degree of Indian frustration about how they still had not found a way to get past the freewheeling left-hander.
Siraj can now expect to be the target of crowd hostility over the remainder of the series, and it will be a test of his patience, and that of his teammates, to absorb those barbs.
“Siraj knows what he needs to do for the team, and he will do everything required – leaving the external factors aside, his job is to take wickets and he will do everything he can,” captain Rohit Sharma said. “[When it comes to] things that happen outside, guys are now mature enough to keep those outside.”
That was just one of several other themes that will develop over the next three games. India have issues, as well, around Rohit. Bumrah did a superb job when Rohit was absent in Perth, and in Adelaide the 37-year-old did not add much with either the bat or the captaincy.
Australia’s pacemen have made useful inroads into the Indian batting, and Scott Boland has maintained the supremacy he established in the WTC final in similar conditions. With Josh Hazlewood potentially pushing to play in Brisbane, Australia’s pace line-up looks much deeper than India’s.
Rohit Sharma and his Indian side were comprehensively outplayed in Adelaide.Credit: AP
At the same time, Nathan McSweeney and Labuschagne can take plenty from how they helped set the innings up for Head. Australia’s batting order has been reshaped in the wake of David Warner’s retirement and while Cameron Green repairs his back, and the foundations held together much better here than in the west.
They were aided, too, by the raucous and enormous crowds that came to Adelaide Oval – 135,012 in all over two and a bit days. It was fitting, in a way, that the week started with Cricket Australia’s incoming chief executive Todd Greenberg being unveiled in front of the oval’s venerable scoreboard, for this Test is now indisputably a showpiece of both national and world renown.
There will doubtless be more twists to come in this series, and probably more verbal exchanges like that between Head and Siraj. But the Australians know from recent history, notably the 2023 World Cup, that they now have the mental and physical reserves to win out over the longest of Test match journeys.
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