Needed: immediate relief for Team India’s nagging ‘Head’ache

What must it feel like to be Travis Head right now? To be sitting on two big centuries from as many Tests, knowing that at least two more innings remain against his favourite opposition? To be aware that he has got into their heads and under their skin, he has thrown them off their equilibrium, that he has repeatedly looked them in the eye and forced them to blink each time?

What must it feel like to be Travis Head right now, secure in the knowledge that his top-order batters leave ego inside the dressing room and walk out armed with smarts? That they aren’t trying to bash Jasprit Bumrah out of the attack but tire him out selflessly so that the pretty stroke-makers that come a little lower down can have a ball?

Pretty nice, one suspects.

To say that Head has been the difference between Australia and India in this Test series so far might appear unfair to Bumrah, India’s indefatigable champion who has single-handedly pushed the opposition into a corner. But Bumrah has by and large ploughed a lone furrow, at once the shock and the stock bowler. Head, on the other hand, has received pockets of support at various times from other quarters, which has allowed him to do his thing without compunction, without taking a backward step.

This Travis Head, he wasn’t always this consistent, you know? Many might argue that he still isn’t, but you won’t find any Indians in that list of ‘many’. For a year and a half now, in England and India and now in Australia, he has toyed and teased and tormented and deflated India’s bowlers, their fielders, their batters, their millions of fans. He has done so with flair and panache, with unfettered aggression and supreme self-belief and confidence. He has done so on his own attacking terms, effortlessly grabbing the momentum, snatching the initiative and transferring the balance of power from the time he strides purposefully towards the batting crease.

First taste

India’s first taste of the Head mayhem came at The Oval in June last year, in the final of the World Test Championship. They had had a first look at him in Adelaide in December 2018 when Head made a counter-attacking 72 in the first Test, but that was about all as his bat went subsequently cold in that series. They were perhaps not all that prepared for his brazen counter-punching in the English capital when, from 76 for three, he rescued Australia with the impregnable Steve Smith for company.

Smith is the kind of batter who is happy to play second fiddle, to sail in his partner’s wake even though he has a bushel of runs, a magnificent array of centuries, an average to marvel at and envy. When he receives a partner in the Head mould, unafraid to dictate terms, he views it as a blessing because he can just sail in his wake. At The Oval, while Head danced and punched and swayed occasionally but seldom ducked, Smith went about his business without fuss. Runs came at both ends, in a torrent when Head was on strike and at a slightly more stately pace with Smith fronting up. By the time India eventually broke through, the game had gotten away from them. Spectacularly quickly. Head and Smith put on 285 for the fourth wicket, the former lashing a punishing 163 off 174. Quintessential Head, we say now, but we didn’t know it then, did we?

Until the doomed final of the 50-over World Cup in Ahmedabad on November 19. India were the team of the competition, majestic and all-conquering, not so much working their way through the draw as sweeping to the top. They were entertaining, they were exciting, they were exceptional. Australia were their first victims, in Chennai on October 8. They also would be their first conquerors on the night that mattered. Thanks to…? Travis Head, of course.

India’s 240 wasn’t flash. It was runs on the board, true, but hardly threatening, hardly the total that allowed Rohit Sharma to strike the balance between attack and defence. Australia wobbled, at 47 for three, when Bumrah and Mohammed Shami struck in tandem but that was as good as it got for them. Head pummelled them, silencing the massive gathering at the Narendra Modi Stadium, going after the Indians with such gusto that you wondered if his onslaught wasn’t personal. With scarcely a wave of his bat, he despatched the ball deep into and beyond the sprawling outfield, pulling his team to within one stroke of the title when he finally relented, falling for 137 in 120. Twice in two finals, in the space of five months, Head had left India heartbroken, their aspirations of securing a first ICC title in a decade left in a pile of unspeakable disappointment.

When India arrived in Australia nearly five weeks back for their first five-Test series down under since 1991-92, it’s impossible that they hadn’t planned for Head. After all, the left-hander’s batting is singularly uncomplicated. The offside is his playground; it’s not that he has no strokes on the other side of the pitch, but left to himself, he’d rather keep picking the bowlers away on the off, mainly off the back-foot square but also through covers and to third man with deft ramps that contrast sharply with crunching cuts when he doesn’t hold back.

He loves shortness in length. Width too, needless to say, but the length more than the line is his ally because he loves to stay leg-side of the ball and therefore makes his own room. There are no genuine chinks visible, but there must be, because otherwise he would be picking off bowlers of all teams, right? India, though, haven’t been able to find a way through the Head mania. It needed a magic ball from Harshit Rana on debut to consign him to a single-digit score in the first innings of the series, in Perth. Since then, he has been on a mission to make up for that cheap dismissal.

Three further outings have brought him 89 off 101 balls, 140 off 141 balls and now 152 off 160 deliveries in the first innings in Brisbane. They speak to total dominance; the helplessness of the bowlers can be well imagined, because the margin for error is so minimal. Oftentimes, bowlers don’t even think wicket when they run into bowl; it’s as if their first objective is to keep him quiet and they have singularly failed in that regard, which has further contributed to their frustration and played right into Head’s hands.

What makes him special?

So, what is it that makes Head so special? “The way he’s able to put the bowlers under pressure from the outset is quite incredible,” Smith, who shed a lean trot with a hundred of his own at the Gabba on Sunday, gushed after their 241-run partnership. “He’s got an unbelievable eye. The areas in which he scores, it’s tough to put fielders in those positions, in a way. You saw them put the deep point out but he finds ways to hit it past him. He’s batting beautifully. He’s confident. It’s nice to get into partnership with him. The scoreboard moves extremely fast. I was just in the sheds with him and he goes, ‘Geez, that went quick today’. And I was like, it did, it sure did. It was cool to play with him today.”

Cool for Smith, cool for the Aussies in the dressing room and out in the stands, but definitely uncool for the Indians. True, Head has benefited from the likes of Usman Khawaja, Nathan McSweeney and Marnus Labuschagne batting enough balls for him to not have to come out when Bumrah is fresh or the ball is still relatively new and therefore holds the potential for lateral movement. But what he has done thereafter is entirely on him. You can sense the buzz in the stands when he takes guard, you can also sense a certain dread in the Indians – perhaps imagined, but you don’t need an active imagination to believe so, right? – because in some ways, Head is like a revolving door and no one quite knows what is going to come out.

Head is neither invincible nor unconquerable, and India can’t expect Bumrah alone to keep doing the damage all the time. Like all batters, he is vulnerable outside off so long as the length is ideal. One of the keys to getting the very best out, or the one-time very best, which is what Virat Kohli is fast resembling, is to stay patient, keep hitting the right areas and wait for the inevitable mistake. Head hates being kept quiet for any period of time, so prudence dictates that bringing his scoring to a standstill will eventually bring rewards. But India haven’t showcased the discipline to keep plugging away, and once Head has got away to a start, damage control has been impossible to implement.

In Melbourne and Sydney over the next three weeks, India must not only come up with solid plans but also ensure that the implementation of those plans is spot-on. There is no point poring over videos and sitting on numerous bowling meetings alongside bowling coach Morne Morkel if the gap between planning and execution is vast. In the past, India have had trouble with specific batters from the opposition – Zaheer Abbas and Javed Miandad, Graham Gooch and Joe Root, Viv Richards and Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden and Smith himself, Hashim Amla and Jacques Kallis… Add Travis Head to that list, already.