Adelaide offers relief for weary Test side

If Australia’s burned and battered Test outfit are searching for a salve ahead of their next daunting assignment – the world’s top-ranked team, India – it might loom in the form of Adelaide Oval’s drop-in pitch.

While India’s reticence to engage in a day-night fixture to begin the upcoming four-Test Domain series was founded in their lack of exposure to the pink ball under lights, it was also suspected they feared prevailing conditions might cater a little too kindly to Australia’s strengths.

That being seam bowlers who revel in the Adelaide pitch’s extra grass cover that serve to cushion the susceptible pink ball against premature wear and tear.

However, the early evidence tendered by the opening JLT Sheffield Shield fixture between South Australia and New South Wales is that Adelaide Oval remains a happy hunting ground for seamers even when conditions are produced for day games featuring the traditional red ball.

While persistent rain and numbing chill meant Adelaide this week more often resembled Headingley as a cricket venue, the continued dominance of ball over bat at a ground long regarded as a quicks’ graveyard meant no batter from either side ever threatened to post a century.

The nearest was Blues’ skipper Peter Nevill (72no) and his captaincy rival Jake Lehmann (61), with next-best being Blues’ opener Nick Larkin (60) and No.10 Trent Copeland, who contributed an invaluable 55no in contrast to his better qualified top-order teammates.

It was, however, Copeland’s subsequent efforts with the ball that proved most instructive, both in the weather-marred game’s outcome and the portent it provided for the first Test against Virat Kohli’s India that starts on December 6.

In addition to his six first-innings wickets, Copeland snared 3-45 and – with new-ball partner Sean Abbott (3-29) – reduced SA to 5-41 and seemingly headed for a stunning defeat on Friday until Lehmann (33no from 126 balls) and Joe Mennie (12 no from 51) survived a testing final hour to salvage a draw.

The absence of a day-night Test match in the first half of the Australia summer means the early Sheffield Shield rounds are likewise red-ball only.

Yet the character of the Adelaide pitch – while sporting significantly less grass than when Copeland snared 6-24 with the pink ball in the corresponding season-starter last year – suggested it will remain a seamer’s deck regardless of the ball used, and the hours played.

Which will gladden the hearts of Mitchell Starc and others in the fast-bowling fraternity who have toiled on benign surfaces against Pakistan in the UAE, and for Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins who continue to find fitness and form in the Toyota Futures League.

“There’s definitely less grass than there has been for the pink-ball games,” said Copeland, whose 6-86 in SA’s first innings included his 300th wicket of a first-class career stretching back to 2010.

“I think they would leave, traditionally, around nine millimetres of grass on it for pink ball games.

“It certainly looks like there’s less, but in the mornings of (days two and three) it’s had grass that really stood up and took a bit of the seam.

“I remember when I first started playing at Adelaide Oval, if you won the toss you would always bat first, and it was tough times for the bowlers.

“Finding a way to get wickets then, compared to finding a way to get wickets now, it’s very different.

“I think over the last four years the groundsman here has done a fantastic job.

“How many drop-in wickets in the world are you seeing offer a good contest between bat and ball, for spin, seam, pace in the wicket and guys who bat well can score runs?”

Certainly Adelaide will present a vastly changed proposition from Kohli’s previous Test experience there in 2014, when the skipper scored a masterful 141 on the final day and his team finished 48 runs shy of an unlikely 364 victory target.

No team has scored more than 250 in the second innings of an Adelaide Test since that match, which was the most recent occasion the ground hosted a day-time, red-ball Test.

The altered nature of the Adelaide Oval pitches over that period is reflected in the potency of bowlers, both pace and spin, on a surface that continues to defy the moribund reputation of drop-in wicket blocks.

In the five years preceding the historic first day-night Test against New Zealand in 2015 – when the extra grass cover was first revealed – the seam bowler with the best first-class strike rate was Test quick Peter Siddle, who claimed his 26 Adelaide scalps at the rate of one every 50 deliveries bowled.

Over the past four seasons, that benchmark has been bettered by Starc (strike rate of 27.57), Hazlewood (37.61), Victoria’s Scott Boland (32.21), Tasmania’s Jackson Bird (43.85), SA’s Chadd Sayers (44.92) and Copeland’s 30.6.

If it wasn’t for the complementary reality that spinners Nathan Lyon (strike rate 51.04) and Adam Zampa (51.64) have also proved highly effective at Adelaide over recent summers, then Australia might consider going into the home summer’s first Test with an all-seam attack.

And as Copeland noted in the wake of his all-round triumph against South Australia, it’s not simply raw pace that might appeal to the national selectors as they mull over a line-up to end Australia’s run of five consecutive Tests without a win.

He cited the performances of Bird (whose 10-wicket haul against Queensland this week also included his 300th first-class scalp) and Sayers (who reached 250 amid his 5-101 in NSW’s second innings) as evidence that – when conditions favour – control can be as incisive as velocity.

“There's a lot of good bowlers in this country who take wickets regularly and it's not all about pace,” said Copeland, who made the most recent of his three Test appearances against Sri Lanka in 2011.

“But I think it’s being able to be a bit of a chameleon – adapting to whatever’s served up.

“You just need to have a proper skills set in your bag, a (South Africa seamer) Vernon Philander-type bowler that doesn’t bowl rapidly.”