If cricket reaches its zenith when the contest is balanced on a knife-edge, the telling moment of the Melbourne Test occurred when Steve Smith and his 100-run MCG average arrived at the crease midway through day three.
Australia was two wickets down in its second innings and 87 runs in arrears.
Waiting in the pavilion, Travis Head and Cameron Green didn’t shape as an intimidating prospect to the Indian bowlers. Jasprit Bumrah was soon to appear for his second spell, everything Indian captain Ajinkya Rahane touched was turning to gold, and Smith’s tail-spinning recent form darkened the chest-tightening atmosphere.
The ensuing period of play was gripping. Smith scratched and fidgeted his way to something resembling a start. Bumrah bombarded his partner Matthew Wade with short stuff to set him up for the full one, but the Tasmanian bided his time gamely and then pounced, punching a resounding drive past the bowler and into the fence.
Wade also fought back with his mouth and confrontational attitude, talking his way into the contest as much as batting his way in.
Tea was only moments away at that point, which was just as well because Ashwin’s final over of the session ended with Wade and Pant face to face by the stumps, like a couple of cocker spaniels fighting over a bone.
“I don’t know what’s so funny,” Wade said to the broadcaster as he walked off.
“It must be my batting.”
After the break, Pant would laugh loudest 29 runs into Wade and Smith’s attempted rescue mission, when the telling blow was struck. It was Bumrah’s 11th over, and after pushing Smith backward, forward, sideways and into two minds, he angled a fuller one towards the pads of the right-hander.
In years gone by, it was the sort of delivery Smith would have flicked through the 45 region, down towards fine leg. But that was precisely where Rahane had placed a leg gully to complement his square leg, so Smith’s mind was doubtless clouded by the risk involved.
Smith shaped to glance rather than flick the ball but instead it clipped his leg. He swivelled to see whether Pant had reeled in the deflection. He hadn’t, so Smith set off for a run. But there was a major problem: the leg-stump bail was off — Bumrah’s cutter had clipped the stump and Smith was gone.
With him went any chance of Australia turning the tables. They finished the day 6-133, two runs in front, unlikely to set India an imposing chase.
Without their captain and best batsmen, down a bowler once Umesh Yadav hobbled off halfway through the eighth over, India still embarrassed the home side in Melbourne for the second time in three summers.
Few positives on another rough day for Australian batsmen
Australia at least started the day well, firing India’s last five out for a meagre 32 and limiting the tourists’ first-innings lead to 131.
That early foray featured Mitchell Starc at his most hostile, including an unpleasant barrage of bouncers at tail-enders Yadav and Ashwin and a witless send-off of Jadeja.
And Australia was lucky, if anything.
Rahane and Jadeja looked likely to bat on with similar results as on day two when, out of nowhere, Rahane departed the only way it seemed likely — run out when a jumpy Jadeja bunted to short cover and called for a single that would have brought up his half-century.
Knowing his team never loses when he scores centuries, Rahane indicated there were no hard feelings and calmly trotted off.
The one other positive for Australia was Wade, who batted like a man determined to keep his spot, and suppressed his natural instincts for the sake of the team.
His first 45 deliveries produced just six runs. At one point he went 46 minutes without scoring.
Elsewhere, the sense was inevitable doom. After lunch, the beaming sunshine and flattened pitch greeting Wade and Joe Burns were considered perfect working conditions, although you could say the same of a well-appointed corner office with an anaconda stretched across the desk, because Bumrah lay in wait.
By the time Yadav caught Burns in no man’s land with a peach of an out-swinger, the Queenslander could have been out four times in the first three overs. His grim fortunes in this series are the predictable result of a very bad idea.
Likewise, Marnus Labuschagne had three lives before he departed for 28, edging to Rahane at slip, squared up by the curve, dip and angle of Ashwin’s arm ball from around the wicket.
Jadeja shot one low and fast into Wade’s pads to end an impressive hand of 40 from 137 deliveries. Head departed in a manner as cringeworthy as his first-innings dismissal, throwing his bat at the first delivery of a new spell from Mohammed Siraj to depart for 17 — another wasted start. Paine trudged off the unlucky victim of a caught behind shout that even motor-mouthed Pant didn’t fully get behind.
Aside from Wade, only Cameron Green, undefeated on 17, and Pat Cummins, with him on 15, left the MCG unscathed. And in the actions of two players, there were signs of an unappealing arrogance and entitlement in this Australian team — perhaps just the by-product of the bubble life, in which cricket is the only thing, perhaps a deeper malaise.
The first was Smith, who at the start of the day reacted to a slightly sheepish version of Jadeja’s Jaddu-sword celebration by suggesting a knife would be more appropriate, since Jadeja had just run out his skipper (never mind Smith’s drop of Rahane before he reached his century the night before). Smith also responded with childish incredulity to his own dismissal, which compelled a second opinion from the TV umpire.
The second was Labuschagne — the beneficiary of maybe a dozen lives so far in this series — lingering an age before finally skulking off following his own demise.
He and Smith are the senior batsmen of their team but evidently neither is the guardian of its ideals of sportsmanship.
A makeshift India, by contrast, has transformed itself in the space of three days’ play from laughing stock to appealing winners. You can thank its level-headed captain for that.
