3 minute read
Australia are in all sorts of trouble at 7-67 in reply to India's 150 in the series-opening Test in Perth, leaving Alex Carey with a huge rescue mission.
Pace ace Mitchell Starc predicts the tricky Optus Stadium wicket will only continue to misbehave as Australia's Border-Gavaskar series opener against India rockets towards an early finish.
A whopping 17 wickets fell on a crazy opening day on Friday, with India dismissed for 150 before Australia were left reeling at 7-67.
Alex Carey (19no) and Starc (6no) hold the key to Australia's hopes of avoiding a sizeable first-innings deficit.
Unseasonable rain in the lead-up to the Perth Test heavily impacted the preparation of the wicket.
WA Cricket head curator Isaac McDonald even predicted the wicket would hold up better than normal as the match wore on.
"In terms of those big snake WACA cracks, I don't think the weather will get us there," he said two days before the start of the Test.
But Starc is predicting the opposite after seeing the pitch start to crack on day one.
"There's some cracks out there. So I wouldn't imagine it will settle down the longer the match goes," Starc said.
Starc said the key now for teams would be negotiating the ball while it was at its hardest.
If they can survive that period, then batters will have a greater chance of scoring runs.
But if the day-one trend continues, the Test could be over within three days.
"When the ball started to get a little bit softer towards the back end of that Indian innings, it probably didn't do as much," Starc said.
"There was still enough there, but it didn't do as much as the brand new hard ball.
"So I guess that's something for teams to take in the second innings.
"If you can get through the testing period, it does get slightly easier.
"That, being said, the outfield is quite slow, so that probably made runs a bit hard to come by.
"That's probably the slowest outfield we'd seen over in the west for a long time."
India are now in the box seat to claim a 1-0 lead in the series, but Starc wasn't panicking about Australia's day-one batting collapse.
"Wickets happen, business as usual, and we'll come out (on Saturday) and try and get as close to that total as we can," Starc said.
Australia's top and middle order will be under huge pressure to perform in the second innings following their meek display on Friday.
Stand-in India skipper Jasprit Bumrah (4-17 off 10 overs) snared openers Nathan McSweeney (10) and Usman Khawaja (8), before trapping Steve Smith LBW for a golden duck.
Marnus Labuschagne posted a painfully-slow two off 52 balls before his innings was brought to a close by Mohammed Siraj.
Mitch Marsh also fell to Siraj, while Travis Head was clean bowled by Harshit Rana.
The horror collapse has left Carey burdened with a huge rescue mission and only the tail to work with.
One positive omen for Australia is the fact that Carey is in hot form, having cracked 452 runs at an average of 90.4 in his three Sheffield Shield games this season.
