You remember all those big battles of the past, and a fresh contest has blossomed into this storied Border Gavaskar Trophy.
There’s something about a young Indian batter giving it back to the premium Aussie bowlers in their own backyard. You want that aggression to keep going, those mini-battles to keep evolving. After all, these skirmishes are the pulse of such an epic, intense series.
You remember all those big battles of the past, and a fresh contest has blossomed into this storied Border Gavaskar Trophy. Yashasvi Jaiswal vs Mitchell Starc. It has been short but intriguing.
It all started on the first day of the showpiece series on a spicy Perth deck. Jaiswal was playing his maiden knock on Australian soil, and Starc has this long history of making inroads with the new ball. That threat heightens against southpaws, against whom he creates an awkward angle from over the wicket and often tries to bowl very full, almost a yorker.
The first round went to Mitchell Starc. It was a fuller-length delivery, just shaping away, and Jaiswal went with hands and was caught at the gully. Even in the second innings, the start wasn’t fluent, and those amused glances from Aussie quicks after troubling him gave the impression of Jaiswal’s struggles.
But Jaiswal’s Test average stands at 52.48 this year for a reason. He was beaten, sometimes with pace and movement on others, but nothing would hinder him. Once the conditions eased down, he found his groove and belted Starc for more runs than any other bowler during his 161-run marathon.
He took 51 runs in 69 balls, comprising seven boundaries and a maximum, off his bowling to square the ledger in this duel. Jaiswal fired back with a witty retort, “It’s coming too slow”. Now this remark elevated the rivalry from normal levels, and what would follow will be intriguing, no matter which way it went.
For Jaiswal, the bigger test was yet to come. Opening in a day-night Test against Starc streaming with full tilt – 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 dig, but that’s still better than facing him straightaway on the first ball of the match on a fresh wicket. Starc ran in, bowled a yorker at 140.4 km/h and swung the ball late to pin Jaiswal in front of wickets, dismissing him on 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 pounce on loose deliveries and scored 16 runs in 19 deliveries, with three boundaries, before losing his wicket to Scott Boland. But Jaiswal had handled Starc well, even though he was lucky at times, and looked to score runs and scatter his lengths, as the pacer often does when hit for boundaries. By the end of the second Test, the contest was still even, but Starc would have gained a psychological edge over Jaiswal after those early first-innings dismissals.
A familiar tale followed in The Gabba Test as Jaiswal again got out on the second ball while playing one of his favourite shots, flick. It was there to hit, but Jaiswal could only find the fielder at short midwicket. Starc had again bested him in the first innings, the third time in the series.
Then, the contest didn’t last long enough in the second dig to draw a conclusion. At this point, Starc is ahead in this contest, having dismissed him thrice in six innings, but the sixth one lasted only four balls. The remaining two Tests will present fresh challenges for both, but none have left any stone unturned.
Even after the net session was almost over, Jaiswal faced throwdowns from a left-arm specialist to tackle his kryptonite. Meanwhile, Starc has consistently been troubling one of his southpaw teammates, Usman Khawaja, in the nets and will keep coming hard at Jaiswal. Bowlers usually have the last laugh and Starc can get him again, but Jaiswal needs to ensure delaying that punch, if anything, something he has failed to do at times.
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