On a redundancy scale, attending the Adelaide Test and noting that Pat Cummins was good is in the realm of noting that the Torrens was wet or the cathedral was spiky. Still, on day four, any one of those obvious things might justifiably have caught an observer’s eye. Perhaps it’s more notable just how natural, how inevitable, it felt that Cummins was indeed bowling at his best in his first match back after a nascent stress fracture cost him the first two Tests of this Ashes series and any match preparation before that.
England observers will spend four years until their team’s next visit pondering explanations for this year’s poor showing, inevitably including much examination of the lack of chances for their bowlers to adjust to Australian conditions. Cummins spent five months in the gym and the nets without once seeing the middle of a ground, latterly powering through what might have been a few months of rehab in the space of a few weeks, then hit the pitch for a Test match like he’d never been away.
His advantage over foreign equivalents is having Australian conditions in his bones. In terms of chemical composition that’s probably literal. A gentle Adelaide Oval track held no mysteries for him. It is him. Cummins is the ultimate flat-wicket operator, the breaker of partnerships, the bowler you need when the going gets tough.
This explains why he wasn’t missed during the first two Tests, when the going was rare and bloody. He returned when required, opening the bowling with two early strikes to dent the unlikely chase of 435 before it had backed out of the driveway, then returning for a crowning third after England’s resistance rose briefly to a level commensurate with the placidness of the surface.
Ben Duckett was the first: from around the wicket, a line outside the left-hander’s stumps, a length short enough to offer no benefit for a reflexive push, but drew one anyway for an edge to the cordon from a man incapable of denying the impulse. Duckett may have got himself out, but was offered the perfect invitation to do so; a Christmas rum cake wrapped in Cellophane. Surely a nibble won’t hurt?
Ollie Pope got worked over for a while, then pushed at a demanding line for a low edge. It would have bounced well in front of first slip but was scooped up by Marnus Labuschagne lunging across from second like he’d almost missed his exit on the freeway. But that early progress was followed by a stand of 71, Joe Root and Zak Crawley looking untroubled in the afternoon sunshine.
It was an interesting test of tactics in the absence of Steve Smith, who at times influences on-field strategy so much that there are jibes about Cummins not being the real captain. Not following the conventional gamble of a part-timer for one over before lunch, Cummins went for Travis Head directly after the break, at a point when main spinner Nathan Lyon had only bowled six expensive overs. It so nearly worked, Root kicking a ball that turned in, surviving a review by a few millimetres on umpire’s call.
If Perth and Brisbane had been hot knives through butter, Adelaide was at least a cold knife and the butter had been in the fridge. It took the right angle of wrist, the right application of forearm, to get something going.
Cummins did, in the channel outside the stumps, a scrambled seam getting purchase, drawing Root in, his bat tractor-beamed into the path of the ball, his loss of agency the reason that he roared in anguish on seeing the nick caught. In thrall to a bowler who got him 13 times, Root had not even been able to be master of his own demise. Both in fact were unusually demonstrative, Root punching the bat, Cummins punching the air. That wicket was the game, was the series, and they knew it.
India's Test and one-day captain, Shubman Gill, could not find a place in their 15-member squad for next year's home Twenty20 World Cup, but wicketkeeper-batter Ishan Kishan returned to the side on Saturday.
Opener Gill has gone 18 innings in T20 Internationals without a 50 and missed Friday's match against South Africa with a foot injury.
Wicketkeeper-batsman Sanju Samson has impressed in limited opportunities and made a breezy 37 as Abhishek Sharma's opening partner in the 30-run win over South Africa in Ahmedabad.
"It's more to do with the combination that we want to play, or what the team management is comfortable with playing," said India's chief selector, Ajit Agarkar. "We felt the keeper at the top at this point gives us a lot more solidity than anywhere else in the team to play different combinations.
"There are only 15 that we could have picked. Someone has to miss out. It's him. It's not because he's not a good player."
Kishan was recalled after he led Jharkhand's successful campaign in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, smashing a hundred in Friday's final against Haryana. The same squad will play a five-match home T20 series against New Zealand next month.
Jasprit Bumrah will lead India's pace attack that also contains left-arm seamer Arshdeep Singh. Varun Chakaravarthy will spearhead the spin department, which also includes left-arm wrist-spinner Kuldeep Yadav. India will also expect Hardik Pandya, their premier seam-bowling all-rounder, to play a crucial role in their title defence in the tournament to be played from 7 February to 8 March at eight venues in India and Sri Lanka.
From 109 for three, still more than 300 runs away, it was a matter of time, and on a wearing pitch, Lyon was always likely to have a say. He did so with the shape of his deliveries, a delicious trajectory that teased out moments of madness. Slowing his pace sporadically for greater dip and greater turn brought him the wickets of Harry Brook, Ben Stokes and, vitally, Crawley, the only player to get fully set for his 85.
Cummins, though, had laid the table. On the final day, he will be the one to pop the corks.
