AHMEDABAD: At Indore, Steve Smith revealed that he enjoyed some of the finer aspects of captaining a Test team in Asia. In Australia, if marshalling the troops on the field is a bit like picking between Cappuccino and Espresso, you can play around with Latte, Americano and maybe even a side helping of Affogato in India.
On the third day of the final Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy at Ahmedabad, Smith showed what he meant when he elaborated on the uniqueness of skippering a side in India. "Every ball means something," he had said. "Game of chess, good fun moving people and trying to make the batter think, playing games with them."
He played games with them all throughout Saturday. Two catching mid-wickets. A 2-7 field. A 7-2 field. Asking the 'keeper, Alex Carey, to stand up to the stumps to Cameron Green who was getting the ball to reverse. Removing the traditional slip for Nathan Lyon. Getting Mitchell Starc to open with the round the wicket. Totally shutting down one side, drying the runs on offer. Delaying the new ball knowing it could go for a lot of runs in a short span of time. This was going to be an attritional day and the 33-year-old knew he could never afford the game to drift if they had designs on levelling the series.
The nature of the pitch — there was not a lot of turn on offer and only the odd ball found Starc's still insignificant footmarks outside the right-hander's off-stump — meant Smith had to be at his proactive best to keep his side in the contest. Especially after the start the Indian openers had in the morning session before a soft dismissal sent Rohit Sharma on his way for 35 off Matt Kuhnemann.
Smith predictably began the day by asking two of his most potent bowling arrowheads — Starc and Lyon — to have a crack with a still newish ball. While Lyon asked advanced math questions, Starc's queries were more agricultural in nature. After a few overs, his line of attack was going to be short and into the batter's midriff. That can be a good line of attack to both Shubman Gill and Sharma, both compulsive (and disdainful) pullers.
They almost got Gill to nick through to the keeper but apart from that, the Indian openers made merry under the early morning Sun. Smith had no option after two Starc's overs leaked 24 runs, with one Sharma six over fine leg's head offering an insight into the mindset of what he thought about this line of attack.
The Australian captain knew he had a problem. He had already three men (fine leg, long leg and square leg) out on the boundary and Sharma was still going after it. Even though runs weren't at a premium, these were easy runs. Starc was out, Kuhnemann was in and the focus changed from taking wickets to stopping the bleeding.
In the process, they picked up the first wicket. In the third over of Kuhnemann's first spell of the day, Sharma played an airy back-foot punch straight to Marnus Labuschagne positioned exactly for that sort of shot with the ball slightly stopping. When that wicket fell, India were scoring at 3.52 per over. At lunch, it had dipped marginally. For the next 90 minutes, Smith's big squeeze was in as his proactiveness dried up the runs (to be fair, India were okay playing the long game).
In the next 19 overs, Australia built 93 dots, gave away only 19 singles and conceded only 30 runs. Watching on TV, one may have needed a strong Espresso to follow the day's slow rhythms but Smith, under increasingly hot conditions, was directing his own version of art film. Slow. Unhurried. Abstract. Niche.