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

Travis Head's dominance against India in Test cricket has been a game-changer, leaving opposition bowlers and fans in awe.

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.

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?