NAMED Player of the Match in his hometown test, Australian men’s batter Travis Head scored the only century in three days play in the Adelaide pink ball test.

Taking the second test by 10 wickets, Australia levelled the series with a big win in front of a record crowd of 135,000 spectators across the less than two and a half days.

Head’s score of 140 off 141 balls was the difference in the match with no other batter producing more than 70 runs in any of the four innings. 17 fours and four sixes were included in Head’s innings, showcasing how comfortable and freely he was batting.

It’s a familiar feeling for Head, who has now enjoyed three consecutive test centuries at Adelaide Oval, with the last couple coming against the West Indies the past two years.

He also managed a match-winning 163 off 174 balls against India in last year’s World Test Championship final at The Oval, coupled with the 2023 ODI World Cup final scoring 137 runs of 120 balls against the same opponent at Ahmedabad.

Before Head got a chance to bat in the test, it was Mitchell Starc’s career-best test figures (6-48 off 14.1) that kept the Indian batters to a more manageable total compared to their second innings in Perth. One of the moments of the test was Starc’s first ball wicket of Yashasvi Jaiswal, one of the big scorers from the first game.

Nitish Kumar Reddy was impressive again with the bat for India, with opener KL Rahul (37 off 64) and number three, the returning Shubman Gill (31 off 51) both making starts.

After Usman Khawaja was dismissed for just 13 in the first innings, the Australians could have disintegrated like they did in Perth. The efforts from Nathan McSweeney (39 off 109) in his second test and Marnus Labuschagne (64 off 126) during the first night’s play were imperative to the side’s chance at posting a large total in the first dig.

Being bowled by Mohammed Siraj, the platform that Head left for the rest of the side to start batting from was significant with Alex Carey (15 off 32), Pat Cummins (12 off 22) and Starc (18 off 15) all able to chip in to take them to 337 runs for India to chase in their second go.

Netting just 175 runs to add to their first score of 180, India’s all-rounder Reddy was again the top scorer with another 42 runs. Only three other batters made over 20 runs for the tourists in this innings, with Jaiswal (24), Gill (28) and Rishabh Pant (28) combining for 80 runs.

The performance that seems to have flown under the radar in this test was the Australian skipper Cummins’ five wicket haul on Day Two, which saw the back of Rahul, Reddy, Rohit Sharma, Ravichandran Ashwin and Harshit Rana. This spell of Cummins’ signals what might be a return to form after netting two wickets in the first innings and three from the last match.

On the morning of the third day, McSweeney and Labuschagne only required 19 runs to win, which was notched up during the first session of play on Sunday.

The Border-Gavaskar series moves to the Gabba, where India will be looking to find the form from the Perth test, whereas the Australians might regain Josh Hazelwood for what they hope is another big win.