India vs Australia | Takeaways: Nathan Lyon’s road to redemption and Mitchell Starc’s negative line

12/09/2018

Sometime tomorrow India may win the Test match to go 1-0 up for the first time on Australian soil, but this Test has to be remembered as a fine spectacle. After a lot of ebbs and flows, the game is finally in India’s favour, but Nathan Lyon’s change in approach today was a masterclass in the set-up.

Line, Starc?

Much of Mitchell Starc’s success was based on the simple formula of exploiting his terrific speed by bowling in an aggressive manner on the full-length. By pushing his length right up, he targets the stumps and as a result, he gets benefited from his pace and movement. While length is something that comes naturally to him, he seems to have lost control over his line since his last five-wicket haul in Tests against South Africa in Durban in March. He has played five matches since then and has returned 12 wickets at an average of 48.66 at a strike rate of 91.44 - a clear statement that he is not as good as he was last year.

While in the first innings, he was in the control of things and did get the ball to dart around, he lost that mojo in the second and dropped it short and wide. He was bowling in the late 130s. When Australia took the new ball, he also struggled to control the swing and drifted two full balls down leg, which subsequently went for four. His failure to get the line right might have something to do with his run-up as he was leaning back a little bit more while being at the crease. And as Glenn McGrath pointed out in the commentary, Starc didn’t use his run-up properly and overstride resulted in him losing the length. In realisation of this lies Starc’s immense contribution to the team.

Was India’s approach in the second innings right?

Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane batted really well in the first innings to carry India to a position where there was only one result possible - an India win. India were at 260/5 with an effective lead of 275 runs and so they went for a kill post lunch. Rahane, despite being well set in the crease, played a reckless reverse sweep and Rishabh Pant got out the same way he was dismissed by Moeen Ali in the Southampton Test against England. However, the point it, was it required then?

India are playing with four pacers and although Australia are not a great batting unit now, it is blasphemous not to go for a 350-run lead, which means they would start attacking only after securing a 320-run effective lead. There were 120 overs left starting the third session today and had India played another 5-8 overs after tea to score 40 runs before asking Australia to chase, they would have forced them to play negative cricket. Also if India had batted another 20 overs and deteriorated the roughs more, Ashwin could have exploited it more. Given the fact that India didn’t have five bowlers to relentlessly attack through 120+ overs, it was not the best situation available and they gave an easier pitch to bat on instead of 20 overs poorer.

Lyon learnt from his mistakes to win Pujara battle

In the first innings, Pujara came down the track often to defend the deliveries that Nathan Lyon was pitching it up and became quite successful in not being dismissed by that. While Lyon was intelligent enough to do the same, he actually made a mistake by not employing a short leg and silly point which means the threat of being caught there was taken out of the equation. It allows Pujara sufficient downtime to plant his front foot across to set his eye in.

Today, however, Lyon didn’t make the same mistake. He employed a silly mid-off for the Indian No. 3 in the 70th over of the innings which made the latter uncomfortable to advance down the track. So he had to bring in a slight change in technique when he padded from his crease in order to negate the offie. However, for that, he had to either read the degree of spin generated on the ball or smother the ball, which was against his nature. The pressure generated over the course of the duration made sure Pujara was not in his zen zone anymore and on the last ball of the 88th over, a Lyon delivery gripped and turned from the footmarks to which Pujara had to pad the ball from his crease due to the presence of Aaron Finch at forward short leg.