For a visiting slow bowler, India can be a trap. It is the spiritual home of spin, the still centre of the universe of revolutions, the place where you might find the most dramatic turner since Tina. It is the place tilted drastically to your advantage, like doing high jump on the moon. But if you’re not steeped in how to use the advantage, if you don’t hit the right lengths, if you don’t know how to bowl to players who know how to face you, then the place chews you up and spits you out, as ragged as the cricket ball after 80 overs on those rough pitches.
From his first encounter, Todd Murphy has emerged intact. Innings figures of five for 82 could become more flattering or less when India continue their first innings on the third day with three wickets in hand. But whatever the final analysis, the quiet off-spinner from country Victoria has shown that he is up to the task. KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli have 53 Test centuries between them and nearly 18,000 runs. Murphy put them all in his pocket.
It has been a rapid emergence, after five Sheffield Shield matches for Victoria over three seasons. Selectors had an eye on him regardless, picking him in 2022 for an Australia A tour of Sri Lanka and the Prime Minister’s XI against the touring West Indies. But those sort of fixtures don’t usually mean that elevation is imminent, just that somebody warrants a closer look.
Those in charge liked what they saw. His short entree got him to India, and his work in the pre-series camp in Bangalore was enough to jump him into the team ahead of Mitchell Swepson and Ashton Agar. The evidence so far backs the call.
Several things have stood out with Murphy. There has been the immaculate wrist position, shifting his release point to keep changing the challenge to the batter, but always sending down the ball with a crisp seam. There has been the intensity of the revolutions on it, his gather and release reminiscent of Graeme Swann’s and allowing similar amounts of work on the ball.
Those revolutions created the dip that coaxed a return catch from Rahul, and the drift across right-handers from the line around the wicket that he bowled for much of the day. If the ball landed on the leather it would skid on, if it hit the seam it might grip and turn. Predicting either was fraught. Such were the deliveries that trapped all-rounder Ravichandran Ashwin and debuting wicketkeeper KS Bharat.
Both wickets came from Australia reviewing not-out decisions, where Murphy had the accuracy to pitch in line from around the wicket and the judgment to feel confident that he had. His consistency was underlined by the way that he would occasionally switch over the wicket for a delivery or two and land them without problem. Later in the day his overspinning deliveries started to kick from the surface.
“He’s got a lot of confidence in his game,” the Australian bowling coach Daniel Vettori told ABC radio at stumps. “He hasn’t been bowling spin for that long, but he understands the many different styles of bowling. Particularly it’s his ability to bowl a lot of different kinds of balls. You would think that in this situation he would feel under pressure by the batsmen, but that hasn’t been the case at all.”
That composure is the other thing that stands out. At 22 years old, Murphy celebrated his wickets but otherwise seemed extremely level in temperament, whether doing media or in the middle. During the Bangalore camp, Marnus Labuschagne was asking him for batting feedback in the nets like a senior colleague. His captain Patrick Cummins threw him the second new ball on day two ahead of 100-Test teammate Nathan Lyon.
The former Australian fast bowler and India expert Michael Kasprowicz was impressed. “He comes across as a wise old head. And it’s not the glasses. Playing in India, you learn by doing. One thing I’ve learned about young talent is that there can be a lot of overthinking that goes into selections. There was no big boom and flash, he did his job. It’s exciting that he wasn’t exciting.”
A good debut doesn’t mean that a career to match will follow. Ask Jason Krejza, who at the same ground in 2008 took eight wickets in his first innings and 12 for the match. He played one more Test and took one more wicket. Right now, though, Murphy has joined Krejza on the list of 35 Australian men with a five-wicket haul on their Test debuts. If the match pans out as looks likely, with India an imposing 144 runs ahead and counting, this feat should at least give Australia some cheer. If his teammates produce a mighty effort second time with the bat, Murphy is still a chance to join Clarrie Grimmett and Bob Massie as the only ones on that list to do it twice.
