About ninety minutes after earning Man of the Match honours in the Adelaide Test, Travis Head was milling about on his favourite ground, nursing a beer while alternating between chasing his daughter Milla and chatting with friends in the stands.
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The dashing batter had batted with fire a day earlier when scoring a match-winning 140, then found himself the centre of a storm after the furious send-off he received from Mohammed Siraj, but the Australian looked at peace with the world.
If it is true that both Head and Siraj will be called to front a disciplinary meeting into the incident — and Australian captain Pat Cummins said he had not heard that being the case on Sunday afternoon — the South Aussie was treating it like “water off a duck’s back”.
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Cummins described the 30-year-old, who has now been named the Man of the Match in eight of his 51 Tests, as a player of unique capabilities who he personally would hate to bowl to. And the Aussie skipper was clearly as awestruck as everyone else at Adelaide Oval.
“It’s great. It feels like every time he walks out, the game is kind of in the balance and it can go one of two ways. Within the space of a session or so, he really took the game out of their hands and just put the pressure right back onto the opposition,” he said.
“He hits into weird areas and if he feels like there’s a small opportunity, he’ll up the ante and again and just take the game away from the opposition. It was amazing.
“He’s done it time and time again for us in many different formats. And he’s super impressive, for sure. It’s always exciting. There’s always something going on. He’s all over the crease. He’s playing balls through the onside from off stump.
“(We are) so lucky he’s on our side because I, as a captain, I wouldn’t know how to bowl to him.”
From the despair in Perth where Australia was beaten by 295 runs, the hosts now head to Brisbane with the Border Gavaskar Trophy squared as they seek to wrest back the trophy for the first time in a decade while crowning their reputation as a generational side.
There is much for the Aussies to look forward to and, importantly, they will arrive at the Gabba feeling fresh given the 10-wicket win.
After a heavy workload in Perth for the bowlers, they bowled only 81 overs for the Test in Adelaide. Mitch Marsh, who entered the match under an injury cloud, was only required to contribute four overs, while Nathan Lyon bowled just one over in the first innings.
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Cummins is also back to his best and was superb in Adelaide when taking 5-57 from 14 overs in the second innings to finish with seven for the match. And there is further good news in terms of depth with Josh Hazlewood to bowl in the nets in Adelaide on Monday.
This means that as impressive as Scott Boland was, and he starred when securing five wickets which included the scalps of Virat Kohli, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill, the Victorian is a prospect to return to his duties as 12th man again at the Gabba.
Mitchell Starc was also dominant in the first innings when securing his career best figures, with the Australian skipper delighted with the depth of his bowlers.
“It was amazing. Some of the talk this week was around … do we have enough bowling? And particularly on day one, I thought it was a Herculean effort from Starcy and Scotty,” he said.
“It was hot. It was close to 40 degrees out there (and) humid, and they basically just kept rotating … and bowling all day. (It was a) huge effort from those guys (and they) showed their class.
“I feel very lucky as a captain to have those guys, and then having some like Nathan Lyon, who we didn’t even need to call on. It feels like I’ve got a lot of tools at my disposal, so I feel very lucky.”
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He also praised the deeds of Marnus Labuschagne, who had been under immense pressure given a sustained form drought, and rookie opener Nathan McSweeney for the pluck they showed when batting under lights on Friday night, describing it as a pivotal session.
“Absolutely. That was really gutsy, what those guys did on the first night,” he said.
“You look back to Perth (and) it’s those small moments that, if you win them, suddenly you wake up the next day and it’s a different day.
“So I think that was a really good lesson. That was super gutsy to get through that period. And it meant that some of the other guys later on could cash in.”
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