Loading
One ball remained. Cummins delivered it. It was full, but not too full, on that length that bets runs if there is no movement against wickets if there is. The odds this day had favoured batsmen, but suddenly, this Cummins delivery swung and seamed down the line of off stump, hitting the top of it, the grail of all seamers, pruning off the bail. Given six more looks at the same ball, Rahul would still miss it.
If his delivery ever comes up for auction, buy it. It belongs in a collection.
This is a Cummins thing. He is his own team’s best bowler, but he is also the bowler of the best balls. Mitch Starc’s best are unplayable, but you can see them coming.
Cummins produces them out of nowhere and just when they are needed. He’s done it repeatedly, at least twice to England supremo Joe Root. One of them, at Manchester in 2019, as good as saved Australia the Ashes. Before he was the captain, he was Postman Pat, who delivers. He still is.
It wasn’t the day’s biggest wicket. It wasn’t even the turning point in the day’s play. That would come a couple of hours later.
India’s next pairing produced more than 100 as Jaiswal moved into his youthful pomp and Kohli set about establishing himself at the crease, resisting temptation outside off stump with the discipline of a Buddhist monk. He even had his own chant.
The pitch’s sting drawn, Australia’s fell back onto more prosaic weapons, patience and perseverance. At least they had the afternoon for it. Temperate weather made for a temperate mood. At fine leg, Sam Konstas doffed his cap to the crowd and led them in overhead handclaps, making their frolics his the way Merv Hughes once did. He’s revelling in this Test cricket crowd.
Sam Konstas lifts his cap to the crowd.Credit: Getty Images
Cummins rotated his quicks, with himself as thread. Boland was plugged in for Josh Hazlewood and nothing was lost. It never is.
Cummins does not tire, nor miss a trick. At mids-on and off, he dives as often and well as Melissa Wu. The subtext of Australia’s endeavours was a message to India that much as they might feel themselves to be in a rhythm, they’d better not make even one misstep.
They did. Jaiswal’s run-out was calamitous, and was probably his own fault, but Kohli could have sacrificed himself to the man who looked good for at least a century. Instead, he turned his back. Cummins was the fielder, of course.
Loading
Perhaps Kohli’s egocentricity played on his mind, perhaps it did not, but an over later, he fished in the stream he had so fastidiously ignored, outside off stump. This is Boland’s territory, staked out long ago. He and the MCG patrons who stayed to stumps were alike in that they waited until their good thing came. The nightwatchman was a bonus.
Neither Cummins’s pre-tea pearler nor the late trio of wickets by themselves won this day for Australia. But they were a reminder than even in the most unpromising session of Test cricket, against the most resolute opponents, the next twist is only ever one inspired moment away, or India’s case one outbreak of leaving of minds, or on this day, both.
