Head is stupid good, the KS catch, plus Ashwin and green pitch

Day one from the WTC 2023 final

Travis Head 

This innings is a combination of so many different things. Head timed balls where he seemed to barely be trying to score, but still hit a boundary. 

And yet, what happens next? Well, he times this ordinary shot so well that the ball races over the outfield and one of the world’s fastest fielders doesn’t stop it. Yes, this is Ravi Jadeja, not putting in his best work. But still, he is on the boundary to stop this, and he barely gets to what is a push. 

The ramp. Nothing unsafe with it. Head tried unsuccessfully to hook twice from outside off, but this time he arches back and directs it over the slips.

But when he wasn’t doing this, it was attacking hard. In the air, over the keeper, launching with joy and power. The kind of innings late career Travis Head has become known for, the new Gilly kinda dude. These shots change the direction of the match very quickly. 

In between incredible timing and aggressive swings, he did this. He was hit on the head a couple of times, fell on his arse and then also got this ball here which appears to have hit both of his nipples and he almost ended up catching it. 

It was a remarkable innings in almost every way. 

Consider who was playing in this match, just the batters if you want. Shubman Gill who is amassing a fan club almost as quick as he bats. Usman Khawaja is the comeback freak. David Warner facing the ghost of Stuart Broad. Cheteshwar Pujara is one of the best batters for Sussex. Rohit Sharma is the current captain of Mumbai Indians. Marnus Labuschange basically clocked a concussion substitute right out of the box. Steve Smith, who’s going for best since Bradman. And Virat Kohli. He goes ok too. 

And we’re sitting here talking about Travis Head. It really was that kind of day. 

He made 27 runs from his first 16 balls. At that point, India were on top. And this changed things really quickly. 

But this is what I found really interesting early on, he was incredible if the ball was slightly off line. This is what Head does best right now. You can’t give him any width at all, mostly he just makes his own anyway, but you can see if you are slightly too straight he takes you down too. And because he hits the ball so hard, or times it so well, everything goes to the rope.

But he gave plenty of chances. For instance, this was a three-ball spell where almost everything he did was wrong. A crab-like movement that didn’t work, a short ball he struggles with entirely and a weird waft off another short ball. 

This pattern continued right through the day.  Like Jadeja was all over him at times as well. And India would put pressure on, but what usually happened was that Head would find a boundary. 

And he never just found one, there were usually a few in a row. From him putting pressure on, from micro errors by India, or just by him willing to take a risk, they couldn’t keep any pressure on him. 

And then that would explode into him smashing the ball absolutely everywhere. These two shots are back to back, and of course, they also represent something else. 

They started by attacking him on a length, and after he was in for a while they usually tried to go a lot shorter. I mean this looks like a Jackson Pollock painting, if he kind of stopped halfway through. 

And to be fair the TV coverage was all over this. This is a particularly pretty way of showing this, but you can tell that after a while India decided to just go short. 

Considering how short they went, Head did not actually score many boundaries from it, only four. 

But it was quite clear he was not on top of it. If you look at how often he was in control of each length, you can see he had no problem with the full ball. Against length, he held his own. But even at the back of a length, you can see he’s not as in control of each ball. Once you get to short balls, he’s only in control of 50% of the short ones.

And if you need visual proof of that, you won’t get a better look at it than the over he made his hundred. 

Three shorter balls in one over, the first one he does well enough to not get killed by. The second he clips to a ring fielder. And then he brings up his hundred off the edge.  This was a man with 100 runs, but he never got anywhere near conquering the short ball. 

Even after he was 100, he still nearly dragged a Siraj ball back onto his stumps. And like it is easy to get fixated on the short ball for India, we can look at the many near misses or almost concussions of his innings. 

But the real problem is he can still launch a seamer over cover when he wants to, or uppercut the short ball he was scoring off at a run-a-ball. Will take any error of length from a spinner. Or just slashes one hard enough in the hope a fielder won’t get it. 

Basically Travis Head is following the Bazball way, and he was pre-Baz as well. He will make mistakes, but while you are thinking about them he’s slashing a bunch more boundaries, and by the time you look up at the scoreboard, your decent start is gone.

Today should have been a Steve Smith day, he made runs, he controlled the tempo, and it was made for the biggest stars. But he was cast as Robin. Instead, it was Travis Head’s day. There were stupid shots, good shots, and many that were stupidly good. 

KS Bharat

This is the two biggest teams in the world. The number-one-ranked bowler was left out. Millions watching at home. A huge vocal crowd. Legends everywhere, and Sreesanth. Warner batting. Virat pumping up the fans. And the first session was all about KS Bharat. I mean not really, but he was involved in an awful lot. 

I mean, I am stretching this a little bit. But probably the least talked about player in the entire match, suddenly had a bizarrely big role. And I am not talking about how Mohammad Shami was swinging the ball late and Bharat was fumbling them. 

Nor am I talking about the fairly routine catch of Usman Khawaja, though that is part of the job, and he ticked it. 

It was really two things. The first was where Marnus Labuschagne was standing.  Perhaps I am getting a bit obsessed with this, but it is clear that Marnus is another one of these new batters who is batting down the wicket. 

You can just see how much he was down the wicket. This was a clear plan, and as the ball was moving around he was going to hang on to this until the pitch evened out. And being that India wanted him LBW, and to trap him on the crease, that is harder to do when you start a meter from the stumps. 

So it meant that KS Bharat had to come up to the stumps. On a greenish wicket, inside the first session when you’ve sent the opposition in, and your keeper is being brought up. It shows how quickly cricket has changed. 

That wasn’t really what people were talking about. Of course, that was this catch. But before we get there, it is worth looking at what Warner was doing. 

At this point, he was basically attacking on length. He said before the match he wanted to attack more, and he followed that. But he was basically looking for anything full or short, and then cashing in. Shardul had been bowling beautifully., swinging the ball away from right-handers, and then the odd wobble ball looking for LBW. But also the occasional short ball. 

That is what Shardul gave him. Coming from wide as hell, partly legal he’s so far out there. And he goes short, and with that angle, it comes in. If you are paying attention at this point Bharat has barely moved. And then he launches and not only takes this catch, but in the end, he does it pretty easily taken. 

But let me show it to you this way. This is where the ball starts, and then this is where the catch is taken. And it’s not just a dive, it’s really good footwork that got him there.

This wicket was more important to India as well, because remember they sent Australia in, and coming up to lunch Australia were one wicket down. Now you look at the numbers, and it suggests that Australia were struggling to control a quarter of their balls. I have the number as 34 balls Australia didn’t hit where they wanted to. That should be about three wickets on average. So if Warner hadn’t feathered his, India would have been a long way back. 

There was a lot of talk about the wicket being green. But it was the swing and inconsistent bounce that caused the most trouble early on. This looked like a pretty normal Oval June wicket from my time coming here. But considering some were bouncing weirdly, others swinging and a few seaming, it was tough to bat on. 

But at the same time. India essentially got two lucky wickets. Shardul’s worst ball was one, but also Mohammad Shami got Marnus out his first ball after lunch. And again, despite all the good bowling he’d done so far, essentially Marnus played a loose shot to a half volley that maybe moved back a little bit. It meant that basically, Australia had lost three wickets in the first session, which seems about fine. It turned out, it was the fourth that was the issue.

Ashwin and the green pitch