India’s spin twins haunt Australia yet again despite years of planning

Y ears of planning. Years of forethought, deliberation, anticipation. All unravelled in less than 33 overs of a slightly extended session, Australia bowled out for 91 and losing the first Test at Nagpur before tea on the third day.

At the top of Australian cricket, this tour has been on minds for an age. The 2013 men’s team came for four Tests in India and lost the lot. The humiliation stung. There was much thinking and theorising before the next attempt in 2017. Steve Smith made three hundreds, Steve O’Keefe pulled out a singular performance, Nathan Lyon had his best innings return and Australia closed the gap to a 2-1 loss.

That gave two points of reference, but a coincidence is easily misread as a sequence. Graph a line between them and it did show improvement. From then, there were A tours, spin camps, roughed-up practice wickets. Progress in Pakistan, then in Sri Lanka.

Which meant the 2023 tour, the next point in the India dataset, was supposed to be another step towards parity. Seven players in the XI in Nagpur were also there in 2017. Those who weren’t – Todd Murphy, Marnus Labuschagne, Scott Boland and Alex Carey – were some of the strongest performers in the six years since.

But the illusory sequence came to an end. Really that happened on the first day, when Australia’s first innings crashed to 177. Smith and Labuschagne had a partnership, Handscomb and Carey had a partnership, neither lasted for long enough, and nobody else did anything. It was a patent example of insufficiency.

Missed chances and elusive opportunities while bowling attracted attention, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered had India’s lead of 223 been a hundred runs fewer. Australia had no way of playing India’s contrasting finger