The Heat is On

Feisty first day in the fifth Test comes to confrontational end at the SCG

Konstas gives Bumrah’s first ball than the flamingo treatment at the SCG

There were no ramp shots in the three overs of Australia’s reply in the final Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground. But 19 year old Sam Konstas still got under the Indians’ skin in that short time frame, as he had in Melbourne. After India had been dismissed for just 185, Konstas advanced up the pitch to Jasprit Bumrah’s first ball and whipped him over mid wicket for four, and there were further adventurous shots to come - a couple of backaway swishes, and another saunter up the pitch to confront India’s brilliant bowler and stand-in captain.

But an even clearer sign of Konstas’s confidence and bravado came in the day’s last over when Usman Khawaja wasn’t quite ready to face Bumrah. Bumrah held his hands up in exasperation and Konstas strode towards Bumrah from the non-strikers end and clearly fanned the fast-bowler’s flames. The umpires had to step in. The verbal spat had the desired effect of ensuring that it would be the last over of the day. Although Bumrah had the last laugh as he dismissed Khawaja with the day’s final delivery. The first session on the second day promises to be X-certificate.

My mind retraces to the piece I wrote about Konstas for the Sunday Times last weekend. It began by citing Ollie Pope’s attempted ramp shot on the final day of the third Test in Hamilton on December 17^th as idiotic. It quoted the peerless New Zealand commentator Ian Smith as suggesting Pope should “go and sit in a cold, dark room and put some electrodes on your head. If England play like that in the Ashes, Australia are going to mop them up. Imagine being infront of 90,000 people at the MCG and trying to ramp Mitchell Starc!” We alleged cricket experts nodded sagely in agreement. Pope you dunderhead!

At a packed MCG on Boxing Day – nine days later – not only did Konstas ramp Bumrah – the world’s no1 ranked bowler – but he did it six times inside the first ten overs of the match, taking 34 runs from Bumrah’s opening spell with an array of outrageous shots including a reverse ramp for six. And in his first Test innings. “No one has ever done this to Bumrah!” declared the Indian commentator Harsha Bogle.

It was genius and madness combined and Konstas’s rollicking 60 set Australia on the road to a commanding first innings total of 474, their highest of the series. The famous quote from CLR James, author of the classic memoir Beyond a Boundary, seems apt at this point: “What do we know of cricket who only cricket know?”

Had Australia, partly by default, finally embraced ‘Bazball’ I wondered? Bazball can be loosely defined as ‘fearlessly confronting danger head-on.’ It teeters between audacity and recklessness. The ramp shot is its emblem. If it comes off it’s brilliant. If it fails it’s a crime.

This has never been the Australian ‘way’ before. Traditionally Australian cricketers are uncompromising, gimlet-eyed, will give the enemy nothing. Once they have their hands round their opponents throat, they will continue to squeeze until all life has expired. Scoring runs – the foundation of winning matches – is not ‘fun’, it’s an obligation. Their leading batter Steve Smith lies awake at night calculating the most efficient way to prevail. He works out the angles, the likely spaces, achieving the maximum output for minimum risk. His bat is a wand, magicking the ball into gaps with his body inline, protecting the stumps, a second line of defence. Play the ball on its merit, keep your wicket under lock and key.

The ramp shot is anathema to (most) Australians. It is premeditated and exposes the stumps. It is like leaving the front door wide open with the jewels in full view. If your timing is fractionally out, or the ball (the burglar) is not where you expected, you’ve lost everything, including your dignity. Rishabh Pant found that out yesterday, top-edging an attempted ramp to be caught at third man and finishing up prostrate on the ground. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!!” proclaimed India’s patron saint of batting Sunny Gavaskar on commentary.

Ok, not every Australian Test batter has accumulated runs conventionally. Adam Gilchrist wielded his bat like a samurai sword in the early 2000s, slicing the opposition to ribbons, and in the current side Travis Head bats in a liberated style, giving the bowlers a glimpse of the stumps as he seeks to flay them through the offside. But these are exceptions that prove the rule and they bat in the middle order when the ball is soft and the bowlers are tiring. Even David Warner who hailed from T20 rarely if ever brought white ball methodology to the Test arena.

So the question is, why Sam Konstas, why now? To start with, traditional tactics hadn’t been working. Watching Australia’s top order trying to eek out runs in the previous Tests in this Border-Gavaskar series has been excruciating. Bumrah had had them on toast (25 wickets so far at an average of 13.12.) It was time for something different, as their thoughtful coach Andrew Macdonald publicly acknowledged.

Konstas ramps Bumrah at the MCG

After a healthy run of scores, including a lively hundred against the Indians for the Prime Minister’s XI, Konstas was confident and ready. He had been mentored by the former Australian all-rounder Shane Watson whose recent book Winning the Inner Battle, would be invaluable to any wannabe international athlete. Konstas even regularly spouts the book’s sub-title – “bringing the best version of you, to cricket.”

His fearless appetite for the battle ahead was clear in his forthright, pre-Test interviews and the way he jogged out to the middle ahead of his opening partner on the first morning. He played and missed at four of Bumrah’s first six searching deliveries. He was scratchy initially, but it was clear he understood his role. To play his way, disrupt, not be dictated to. That is one of the mantras of new age batsmanship. Averages and consistency are secondary. Making an impact is the priority.

After the early forays, he recognised the ramp shot as the solution to Bumrah’s robotic line just outside off-stump. He is perfectly set up for this with a split grip, his bottom hand able to quickly manipulate the bat like a chef tossing a pancake out of a frying pan. There were two failed attempts and then three brilliantly successful ones as he did the hokey-cokey across the crease and flipped the ball into space behind the wicket. Konstas backed away and glided an attempted yorker to the third man boundary. The deadly slower ball was launched over long-on. Eighteen off Bumrah’s sixth over. He was flummoxed. Moving targets are the worst for bowlers.

It continued in that vein, augmented by the occasional conventional shot, for a memorable ninety minutes and a debut fifty before the wily Ravi Jadeja snared him lbw. Australia were 89-1 after 19.2 overs. Konstas’s arrival was serendipitous. His impact had been seismic. Will it be longlasting? Well, the genie is out of the bottle now, as we saw with Konstas’s approach at the SCG (although two fielders were posted by Bumrah for possible ramp shots last night.) A penny for Ollie Pope’s thoughts.

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