A Tour Where Little Has Gone Right for Australia

Shikhar Dhawan will not take part in the fourth and final test between India and Australia starting Friday. Shane Watson, though, will probably play in Delhi.

Two weeks ago, that would not have been newsworthy. But how things have changed.

Flash back a few weeks, and Dhawan, 27, was a just fringe player whose international experience for India was confined to a few games in the shorter formats a couple of years ago. Watson, 31, was well-known as the vice captain of Australia.

But then Watson was one of four Australians who were dropped for disciplinary reasons from the third five-day test, in Mohali, India. Dhawan played there and produced one of the greatest debut performances in the 136-year history of test cricket.

It was the second outstanding batting debut in just a few days; on March 8, the New Zealander Hamish Rutherford struck England for 171 runs in Dunedin, New Zealand. Dhawan eclipsed that and had an even bigger impact when he scored 187.

He was called up to replace the veteran Virender Sehwag, who was dropped after a run of low scores. “You’ve been performing well on the domestic circuit,” Dhawan’s legendary teammate Sachin Tendulkar said when presenting him with his Indian cap. “We’d like to see your gutsy nature and shots over here.”

Dhawan took the words about shots seriously, playing an innings that even Sehwag â€" perhaps the most aggressive opening batsman in the history of top-class cricket â€" would have been impressed with.

Going in after lunch on the third day on March 16 and facing Australia’s total of 408, Dhawan scored rapidly from the start. “I wasn’t really playing in a hurry. The fours were coming on their own after the ball hit the bat,” he later told reporters.

And they came fast. Dhawan became the first debutant to reach three figures in a single session; his first 100 runs were scored from 85 deliveries before tea, and he reached the century mark faster than any other debutant in test history. (Only 95 have done so.)

By the close he was 183 not out, the highest-scoring debutant ever for India. The all-time mark of 287 not out, set by Reg Foster of England in 1903, was in sight.

He fell early the following morning, but the extraordinary speed of his scoring meant India had time to win despite Australia’s healthy first-innings score. Despite losing a day of play to rain, India won, giving it a 3-0 lead in the four-match series.

Dhawan, though, did not bat in the second innings after breaking his hand in the field.

The injury knocked him out of the final test, in his hometown of Delhi, and it will also keep him out of the first month of the Indian Premier League, where he is due to play for the new Sunrisers Hyderabad franchise.

India will not play another test until later in the year. The injury leaves Dhawan, for now, in the record books placed uncomfortably alongside two men who made centuries in their only test matches â€" the West Indian Andy Ganteaume in 1948 and Rodney Redmond of New Zealand in 1973.

Watson, who made headlines back home for the wrong reasons, is not just scheduled to return from his suspension Friday; he could be Australia’s captain. The incumbent skipper, Michael Clarke, missed training with a back injury Wednesday, and Watson is poised to take over for the first time.

Australia’s opening batsman, Ed Cowan, was adamant that the team would not be bothered by the change in leadership.

“In his own words, he has probably decided to come back with full focus, and we will accept him because he is such a great player and a good leader,” Cowan said about Watson on Wednesday.

Australia, though, will certainly miss Clarke’s batting. He is the only Australian to have scored 100 or more in an innings during the first three tests. His absence would leave the visiting team’s top-of-the-order batting still more exposed after its collective failure in the previous three matches. Australia’s top four batsmen between them have scored 568 runs in 24 innings, an average of less than 24 per dismissal, vastly below what is needed from a test team’s specialists. India’s batsmen, on the other hand, have scored six centuries among them, with two going on to pass 200.

There is an even bigger gap between the performances of the two teams’ spin bowlers. Australia’s spinners have taken only 14 wickets for 827 runs, an average of a little less than 60. The Indian spinners have taken 48 wickets for 1140, with Ravichandran Ashwin claiming 21 of them.

“We have been unified by what happened in Mohali, and there is no doubt the tough decisions needed to be made if we aspire to be the best team in the world, which we do,” Cowan said.

First, though, Australia needs to avoid being swept in a series of three or more matches, something that has happened only three times in its history, the last being 31 years ago.

It has played 77 series, inflicting 15 sweeps of its own, since going down, 3-0, to Pakistan in late 1982. The Delhi crowd would like most of all to see Dhawan playing in his hometown and celebrating his status as India’s newest hero, but in his absence a sweep of Australia â€" which beat India 4-0 in Australia last year â€" would be a great consolation prize.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 22, 2013, in The International Herald Tribune.