You remember all those great battles of the past and a new competition has emerged in this historic Border Gavaskar Trophy.
There is something about a young Indian batsman giving it back to the best Australian players in their own backyard. You want that aggression to continue, those mini-battles to continue to evolve. After all, these skirmishes are the pulse of such an epic and intense series.
You remember all those great battles of the past and a new competition has emerged in this historic Border Gavaskar Trophy. Yashasvi Jaiswal vs. Mitchell Starc. It was brief but intriguing.
It all started on the first day of the main series on a spicy Perth deck. Jaiswal was playing his first knock on Australian soil, and Starc has a long history of making progress with the new ball. That threat increases against left-handers, against whom he creates an awkward angle from over the wicket and often attempts to bowl very full, almost a yorker.
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The first round went to Mitchell Starc. It was a longer delivery, which was just going away, and Jaiswal went with his hands and got caught in the gully. Even in the second innings, the start was not smooth, and those funny looks from the Australian quicks after teasing him gave the impression of Jaiswal’s struggles.
But Jaiswal’s test average stands at 52.48 this year for a reason. They hit him, sometimes with rhythm and movement, other times, but nothing hindered him. Once conditions improved, he found his rhythm and gave Starc more runs than any other player during his 161-run marathon.
He took 51 runs in 69 balls, comprising seven boundaries and a maximum, from his bowling to square the score in this match. Jaiswal responded with a witty reply: “It’s going too slow.” Now, this comment elevated the rivalry from normal levels, and what followed would be intriguing no matter which path it took.
For Jaiswal, the biggest test was yet to come. Opening in a day-night test against Starc’s full-speed transmission sounds like a one-sided affair. To exacerbate Jaiswal’s case, India opted to bat first.
Starc would have posed an identical threat in the second over, but that’s still better than facing him straight away on the first ball of the match on a new wicket. Starc ran in, bowled a Yorker at 140.4 km/h and bowled the ball late to pin Jaiswal in front of the wickets, dismissing him with a golden duck. But like in the first match, Jaiswal was again up for the challenge in the second innings.
He was proactive enough to take advantage of loose deliveries and scored 16 runs off 19 deliveries, with three boundaries, before losing his wicket to Scott Boland. But Jaiswal had handled Starc well, though he got lucky at times, and looked to score runs and spread his lengths, as the pacer often does when hit on boundaries. At the end of the second Test, the contest was still close, but Starc would have gained a psychological advantage over Jaiswal after those initial dismissals in the first innings.
A familiar story followed in The Gabba Test when Jaiswal again bowled the second ball while playing one of his favorite shots, the flick. He was there to bat, but Jaiswal could only find the fielder at short medium. Starc beat him again in the first inning, the third time in the series.
Then the dispute did not last long enough in the second excavation to reach a conclusion. At this point, Starc is ahead in this contest, having been dismissed three times in six innings, but the sixth lasted just four balls. The remaining two tests will present new challenges for both, but neither has left any stone unturned.
Even after the net session was almost over, Jaiswal faced takedowns from a left-arm specialist to attack his kryptonite. Meanwhile, Starc has been constantly bothering one of his fellow left-handers, Usman Khawaja, in the nets and will continue to attack Jaiswal hard. The bowlers usually have the last laugh and Starc can catch him again, but Jaiswal needs to ensure he delays that hit, if anything, something he has failed to do at times.
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