IND vs AUS: How Matthew Kuhnemann and Usman Khawaja helped Australia rediscover their bark and bite

The returning seamer Mitchell Starc was the first hero, despatching a first over of pure left-handed wickedness to tone-set the resurgence. Not yet optimally fit, he frazzled Sharma with both inward and away movement. And from Sharma’s jailbreak shot began his side’s implosion. Pause a moment for stand-in captain Steve Smith, who had the leap of faith to introduce two-Test-old Matthew Kuhnemann as early as the sixth over. With the sixth ball, he removed Sharma, masterminding a collapse that soon had India reeling at 44/4.

Career-best first-class figures for Matthew Kuhnemann! 👏#INDvAUS pic.twitter.com/lmC6KTgOFD

— cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) March 1, 2023

The Queenslander who averages 35 in first-class cricket says he often pinches himself in the dressing room. “I am still getting used to the reality that I am sharing the dressing room with all these legends of Aussie cricket,” he would later say. Or that he was playing against two of his idols, Jadeja and Ravi Ashwin. Or that he has never bowled on a surface with such ripping turn and biting bounce. But the moment did not overawe him when Smith handed him the still-shining SG ball.

He straightaway found his rhythm, striking a delicious angle from around the stumps, bedding into the perfect length, wherein he is neither full enough to drive not short enough to cut, harnessing the mild breeze for inward drift and coaxing both spin and bounce. On such a helpful track as this, he did not get over-excited, resisted the temptation to experiment and was keener on the Jadeja mantra of pounding the ball at one spot, mixing his pace and length. It turned out to be a day when he out-bowled the man whose footage he watches every day. He beat Sharma with length, pulling it back by a fraction when the latter decided to step out. He foxed Gill with both turn and length, creating the illusion that the ball was there to be driven but was not quite there.

No other bowler from either team made the pitch look as vicious as Kuhnemann did. With the new ball, he cajoled extra bounce; when the ball got older, he made the ball skid and keep low. He attributed this variance to the ball getting softer, but he was under-cutting the ball to exaggerate the variable-bounce effect. With the newer and the oldish, he found turn, sometimes rasping turn, and it was he who dwelled permanently on the mind of India’s batsmen.

A second half-century of the series for Usman Khawaja 👏

– 102 balls
– 4 fours

Scorecard: https://t.co/Be6MzMOseU #INDvAUS pic.twitter.com/pezWL8Tv98

— 7Cricket (@7Cricket) March 1, 2023

The stage was then set up for Nathan Lyon to nibble at the two pillars of India’s batting, Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kolhi. Smith would have flirted with the idea of introducing Toddy Murphy, faster and quicker than Lyon. But he summoned Lyon instead, aware of his history with both Pujara and Kohli. He nailed Pujara with the second ball, and in the next over Jadeja. The Jadeja dismissal was the moment Australia began to sniff the kill, where they really found a ray of light into the darkness that had wrapped them on this tour. Yet, they were careful to not let the pressure drift, wary not to let the discipline ebb, conscious not to let India off them hook, as they had repeatedly contrived in the last three weeks. All boundary channels were blocked, boundary balls were not fed, the fielders kept the intensity, chirping and chatting away, copping blows on their bodies, lunging and diving to stop every run; all the bowlers sustained the intensity and hostility. This was a vintage show of bark and bite.

Even when Virat Kohli and KS Bharat stitched a fightback, they did not panic. They gnawed away until Murphy trapped Kohli in front. India could muster only 39 more runs after their talisman’s exit with Kuhnemann nabbing the first five-wicket haul of his career. It could not have arrived at a riper moment. But when they galloped in glee to the dressing room, soon after lunch, they knew their job was not even half done. The condescending refrain at that time was if India could put on just 109 on board, how much could Australia’s batsmen. That was perhaps the more pressing concern too, given how they had folded up in Delhi and Nagpur.

But here, they batted as resolutely and comfortably as they had in the entire series. They lost Travis Head in the second over and had Labuschagne bowled off a no-ball. But Khawaja and Labuschagne did not wither; Khawaja was a portrait of composure as he dulled the firecrackers that burst off the surface. Ashwin had him groping in thin air repeatedly, but he remained undaunted like a soldier on war-front, aware that one bullet would have his name on it, but until then he would battle on defiantly. He relied on nudged singles and swift running between the wickets, on grafting runs rather than hitting boundaries. He struck just four fours in 147 balls—two through the off-side when the ball was over-pitched, a reverse sweep and a flick, the latter when Jadeja strayed into his body. He showed his subcontinental peers how to bat on this surface. There were demons still, but there were means to quieten them. He was aghast at his dismissal, sweeping Jadeja straight to Shubman Gill at deep midwicket. But that was a rare slice of indiscretion on an otherwise flawless day.

The match is a long way yet from conclusion, with potential twists and turns, but Australia showed on Wednesday that they have rediscovered the virtues that made them, of their courage to not yield or surrender And in their resurrection, they have breathed life too into what was unfolding as an utterly lopsided series. And they had a host of heroes, from Smith and Kuhnemann to Lyon and Khawaja.