The Two-Tone Test

GH watches India turn the screw

In Perth, the light comes early and gets in everywhere, under the heaviest door, between the thickest curtains.  For the visitor it’s startling, a shock to the system, preluding the city’s brilliant skies and sharp shadows.  Sleep comes hard.  Rest is elusive. Gradually the jolt wears off - usually by the time you’re leaving.

So it’s been with this First Test, in whose initial four-session surge of manic energy twenty wickets tumbled, but whose last two sessions this afternoon featured exactly none.  Yesterday everyone was staring daggers at the pitch, muttering about the unseasonal rain, quibbling about the seam movement; but, really, nothing assisted the bowlers so much as the batters. At tea yesterday, Australia seemed on the crest of a wave. That wave then crashed, leaving India to surf its way through today.