India's 44 balls of darkness

44 balls of darkness is what it took to open up India in the series. Over a five-Test series, we don't usually see changes occur as quickly as they did today.

India were already behind in this game. They had to survive the new ball, build towards something. Then, they had a chance, at the very least, of keeping the series alive all the way through to the end.

Instead, over 44 balls, they played a huge part in burning down their own house. The thing is, it might have happened anyway. Mitchell Starc's induckers of death were always a problem early on. There was definitely lateral movement off the surface, and some of those balls were just spiteful for no good reason at all.

But India lost wickets through half-volleys on the pads, a throwdown wide of the wicket, and a push at a soccer ball. That is quite a self-inflicted way to open up a Test that was on the verge of drowning.

In 44 balls, India turned this from a possible dead match into a live one that they may not survive.

The pre-lunch session was gloomy. No opening batters want to go out and play at that time. There's also the scoreboard pressure. It's not a 500-600 run total, but 445 runs in this series, on a wicket with a little bit of assistance, certainly isn't a situation you want to be going up against.

There's no way for an opening batter to not look at the fact that lunch was also coming up. Then there's unpredictable bounce that you have to deal with. The ball is moving around. Because there is a new ball as well, there is no doubt that it is swinging.

Also, from what we've seen in this Test so far, this is specifically a new ball wicket. On top of all of that, you have bowlers who are better suited to these conditions. A lot of things were stacked up against India.

However, what we saw doesn’t quite follow that. For instance, Yashasvi Jaiswal walks out and decides to attack the very first ball. We get it—he’s an exciting talent; when he sees a ball, he’s going to hit it. Still, it felt like quite a decision to go after that first ball.

Then he flicks the second one in the air. Maybe it was a mistake, or perhaps he tried to keep it on the ground. But again, it looked like he saw what he thought was a weak ball and went for it. So, he essentially tried to hit two boundaries in two balls: the first was sliced through the cordon, and the next one was chipped to square leg—and he’s out.

Of course, now there are question marks about Jaiswal outside of Asian conditions. There are also concerns about his struggles against left-arm seam bowlers.

But when you watch a batter receive what is essentially a throwdown on leg stump and chip it straight to a fielder, it’s hard to attribute that to the left-arm bowler or the conditions. He simply made a mistake—a really bad one. He scored four runs off two balls but made two mistakes in the process.

At the start of the next over, we saw how difficult this wicket could be. KL Rahul was hit on the wrist when Josh Hazlewood got the ball to bounce 70 centimetres (if I’ve got that right) higher than expected. The ball cannoned into the top of his wrist—a nasty delivery to face at the start of your innings.

Suddenly, you’re left thinking they’ve just given away a wicket off a completely innocuous delivery. Yet, this pitch is spiteful and perfectly suited to the Australian bowlers.

Before and after this, we had Shubman Gill. He tried to drive his first ball for a boundary, just like Jaiswal, and then attempted it again off his third ball. It was a bizarre innings from someone who can occasionally be a nervous starter. I don’t think he’s fully suited to batting at number three because of that mentality.

If the first shot was a bit reckless, what do we make of him doing it again two balls later? Sure, it was a ball to be driven—overpitched and wide—but it’s hard to believe it was part of Australia’s plan. If anything, they might’ve wanted it closer to Gill or a little shorter.

But the shot itself was remarkable because his psychic came out deciding he was gonna play a shot at the ball. And yet, when you watch it, he makes a very late decision to play the shot. It's almost like he told his hands he was going to play the shot, and no other part of his body. His head isn't going out towards the line, and his feet aren't moving all that much.

In the end, it's almost his bottom hand that does all the work when it suddenly realizes that this should be hit for four. So, he faces three balls, plays two huge drives, and he's gone as well. It's very similar to Jaiswal's innings.

On the face of it, his dismissal was more conventional—an edge into the cordon. But have a look at the super slow motion. It doesn't really look like an edge. It kind of looks like he just bottom-hand scoops it because he decided it had to go for four at the last minute.

Those are two incredibly soft dismissals when you've just seen KL Rahul being hit on his wrist at the other end.

Having seen all of that, the most experienced player and the legend of the batting line-up, Virat Kohli, comes out and tries to drive his first ball. I get it, Australia's pace attack worked out they needed to bowl a bit fuller.

But the dangerous full balls weren't the ones getting the wickets. Also, just because the opposition is bowling fuller doesn't mean that you have to drive every single one of them. You can leave; you can get your eye in. It's a tricky session before lunch. You've already lost two wickets. You don't have to drive the first one you see. Wait for the second one, perhaps, which was an even better ball.

Especially when Kohli gets to the other end and gets another ball that just takes off. Australia were only bowling half-volleys that India were desperate to get out to, or length balls that were spitting up. It was really tough to bat. You don't need to help the opposition at any stage there. Kohli was lucky to survive the one that sped up at him, because that could have gone absolutely anywhere.

At the other end, KL Rahul is doing the exact same thing. He's trying to survive the odd ball that's pitched up. When he gets a ball that's overpitched, as Australia were trying to bowl full and giving some error deliveries in the process, he plays a checked drive. Essentially, the difference is he doesn't go all in. He's not trying to smash it away. He's just trying to take a couple of runs from a mistake by Australia, with his head over the ball and his foot in roughly the right position.

It's still not easy for him. KL Rahul still edges one towards the slips, but because he has soft hands, it doesn't carry.

But he does go into a proper full cover drive when he gets another overpitched ball the next over. The difference between what we saw on Jaiswal's first ball or from Shubman Gill's couple of balls is that he was completely in control of the ball, got his head over the line, got his foot to it, and drove through it.

It doesn't mean that he didn't have some luck to survive, because there were still things going on, and there was another edge that went through the cordon. But when the ball was in his favour, he made a series of good decisions to try and get runs off it.

We get more clues the next over that this is not particularly easy when Kohli faces another ball that rises sharply. Again, Australia are bowling half-volleys or balls that are just spitting up, and India look like they are riding Bucking Broncos half the time when they're not trying to drive everything to the boundary.

In the eighth over, Australia bowl an actual, proper short ball, not a ball that just leaps up, and KL Rahul plays a fine pull shot that should go to the boundary. But Starc is all over it, and he saves the ball. It means Kohli is on strike to Hazlewood.

Now this is where Test bowling gets a little bit tricky. Sometimes we can overanalyze and say they were targeting Kohli just outside off stump, on a good length, with the ball occasionally rising. Perhaps Hazlewood bowled a sucker ball, a bit wider and fuller, to see how Kohli would respond.

The other option is that Hazlewood just bowled the wrong ball. Maybe it was a little wider and fuller than what he wanted. But it didn't matter, because Kohli had three options.

The easiest one, of course, was to leave it. There was no reason he had to play it. It was overpitched and wide. Of course, as a Test batter you probably think you can cash in on that. But leaving a ball like this is very normal, especially in this position.

The other option is to go into a full cover drive. Try and get your head right out over the line, get your foot in, and play a full-blooded shot to it. It's probably not ideal in that situation, but it was a ball off which you could easily play that shot.

If you just wanted to cash in on a wide full ball, you could do what Shubman Gill did, but in a better way by trying to lash the ball through point. Keeping your head still, staying inside the line, and just trying to whack it as hard as possible through point.

Those are all options for this ball. Instead, Kohli kind of plays a 'pushed on the up' drive. He could have put a bigger step in and played a proper drive. He could have gotten his foot more out towards the line and played a proper drive. He could have lashed it. He could have left it. He had many different options. In the end, he just pushed his hand at it until he's poked it through to the wicketkeeper.

It’s not that Australia had nothing to do with these wickets. Perhaps the Mitchell Starc one straightened a little more. Maybe they are trying to bowl a bit fuller early on to Shubman Gill because they see a weakness there. To Kohli, they’re trying to bowl outside off stump. But that wasn’t the delivery that they were bowling earlier to him.

It’s hard to look at any of these three dismissals and not think that India played a massive role in them. It was like their batting hadn’t fully comprehended what they needed to do in this little session. They just went out there to bat as if it was the middle of the second afternoon of day two in the sun.

It felt like these 44 balls were them batting on another wicket, on another day. That's how long it took Australia to completely dominate India.

If you look at a five-Test series on paper, we are scheduled to have around 2250 overs. Obviously, we would never assume to have that many. At times, you’re going to get an over or a cluster of overs that have a big impact on the series.

But usually, it would be an hour, or a session, or maybe even the first part or the last part of a day. That’s how we see these things in a five-Test series. And maybe they change the direction of the entire thing.

Think about where we were before India came into bat. Australia had made a decent total, but all the signs pointed to it being a new ball wicket. After surviving the new ball, you could definitely still make runs on this wicket. India come out, and they want to drive absolutely everything.

Before India faced a ball here, the most likely result of this Test match was a draw. Australia had already made a score, and rain was forecast. This meant there was a good chance that the series would be alive until the last Test.

Then, we had 44 of the scheduled 13,500 balls for this Test series happen.