If it's the morning session, it's Southee on the hunt

In India's northern and eastern Test venues, the first hour of the morning is the finest hour for pacers. Tim Southee showed just why

If you are old enough to remember waiting till 9pm for the day’s hour-long highlights reel on free-to-air television, then you have probably not forgotten the mad dash at the stadium to grab a seat before the first ball was bowled. It’s different now, of course, in the age of live-streaming and ball-by-ball commentary, but nothing tops the satisfaction of waking up in time to watch a seamer set up a batter in the morning session on an Indian pitch. We are not talking the entire session, just the first hour or so that guarantees seamers some assistance before spinners take over in conditions often tailormade for them. Several conditions apply though.

New Zealand's Tim Southee celebrates the dismissal of India's Wriddhiman Saha during the Day-2 of the 1st Test match between India and New Zealand, at Green Park International Stadium, in Kanpur on Friday. (ANI)

Location is the most telling factor. You won’t get this window in Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai or Bengaluru where it gets seriously hot by the time umpires say "play". The more northern or eastern the venue, the better. Mohali, Ferozeshah Kotla and Green Park can find ways to confound in the morning. Lahli—still a Ranji venue—makes batters sweat bullets. And if it’s Ranchi, Kolkata or Guwahati—where games start at 9am instead of 9:30—hazier mornings serve a natural cocktail of mist, dew and smog that makes the ball sing different tunes. the nature of the surface often doesn’t matter unless there is variable bounce. It’s more about the SG ball being a natural ally due to a more prominent seam that only a genuine swing bowler can exploit with the right wrist release. Tim Southee ticked all those boxes Friday morning with a relatively new second ball.

Bowling with a tight right groin, something Southee later said needed a fair bit of attention from the physio, can be painful. “But the best painkiller is wickets,” said Southee after finishing the second day of the Kanpur Test with 5/69. First on the morning list was Ravindra Jadeja. It was Southee’s last-second move of pushing square-leg back to the boundary that probably prompted Jadeja into staying back for the short ball. Only to have Southee angle the ball sharply into him off good length. Add to that the tentativeness of batting in the first hour at Green Park and Jadeja wasn’t at all ready for that delivery. New Zealand got the breakthrough they wanted without Jadeja adding to his overnight tally. It only got better for New Zealand.

In came Wriddhiman Saha, 37 and over conscious about his position within the squad because of a below-average batting average. He left well, got across to present the full face of the bat, stayed back to defend but finally fell to temptation and drove at a full-length delivery. It ended up nowhere and Southee’s tactic of hitting away at that back of the length worked like a charm again. “A slightly harder ball” worked in his favour. “But it was also about getting into that rhythm.” Having bowled in T20 mode for more than two months, it takes time to switch to the longest format. But whenever he finds time, Southee keeps working on his red-ball skills. “When you are playing multiple formats, you have to get used to it. And there is a willingness to get better, to try things. It’s about asking tough questions for a long period of time.”

It took Southee all of eight overs (11 overall in an unbroken spell) to force India into a much lower first innings total than they had set out for. And it wasn’t always about landing the ball on an upright seam. Some were scrambled, some came with a wobble. There were different lengths, different release points and variable speeds, things that come out better with maturity. The one that got Shreyas Iyer was no doubt there to be hit, but to Southee’s credit it was also a tad slower (127.8 kph). Axar Patel’s dismissal was as classical as it could get, drawing him into a shot with a ball that left him just enough to take a faint edge. At 32, Southee is rummaging his memory bank to come up with gems like that. There is no secret to his success. “Just a combination of working hard and looking at ways to get wickets,” he said. But when someone nails it so well in those morning sessions, Test cricket in India becomes a different ball-game altogether. In the matter of a morning, Southee did just that for New Zealand.