AUSTRALIA'S young swing bowler came up against a batsman who likes to swing from the hip yesterday. Had they been in a bar, and not in the middle of a pulsating MCG, James Pattinson and Virender Sehwag might even have taken a swing at each other, so steamy was the atmosphere when they crossed paths.
Sehwag, running into the line of Pattinson's follow-through, waggled his bat in the fast bowler's personal space. Pattinson, furious, shot back some choice words at India's renegade opening batsman, while his wingman from Dandenong and Victoria, Peter Siddle, flew in to lend support. Sehwag pointed Siddle back to his fielding position, and an international incident of Lillee-Miandad proportions was avoided.
Fortunately, the only blows were of bat on ball, occasionally of ball on Sehwag's body and, in the end, of ball on stumps that splayed in all directions to signal Pattinson's triumph and coming of age as a Test bowler.
Pattinson's conquest was significant not so much because he got his man, but because he had to do it on his own, against one of the world's most destructive batsmen.
Whistling through New Zealand's suspect top order in his first two Tests was one thing, but taking on Sehwag in a belligerent mood, as the new local hero in his first Boxing Day Test, was a challenge on a different scale.
More than that, Pattinson rebounded from two monumental disappointments, after Sehwag was twice put down off his bowling.
Mike Hussey used to catch like a Venus fly trap in the gully but since last year's Ashes Test in Adelaide his hands have been less sticky. Sehwag was batting as if his feet had roots, and had just crashed Pattinson through the covers. The next ball was steered in the air to gully. Hussey dived but couldn't hang on.
The most testing moment of all for Pattinson, one that not long ago might have caused the 21-year-old to drop his bundle, came in the first over of his second spell. Sehwag, on 58, drove hard at a ball seaming away from him and edged towards first slip. Brad Haddin flung himself horizontally to his right, too far in the end, and the ball clanged into his thumb and hit the grass.
You don't have to have witnessed Sehwag's world-record 219 in a one-day game against the West Indies earlier this month to know how costly Haddin's drop could have been.
The world's most watchable batsman, who breezed past 8000 Test runs yesterday, scores at a rate of 82 per 100 balls, taking the pressure off his more risk-averse batting partners, in this instance the world's second most prolific Test batsman, Rahul Dravid.
On this occasion, Sehwag's second reprieve meant the young colt, Pattinson, had to find within himself another 4.1 overs of gut-busting effort. There was a roaring appeal for a catch at short-leg, after which Sehwag called for treatment on his hip where the ball thudded into him, and a nasty short ball that was barely controlled into the ground.
Finally, Sehwag chucked the kitchen sink at a wider ball and dragged it onto his stumps for a typically entertaining 67, in 83 balls.
There would be no repeat of his astonishing 195 on Boxing Day eight years ago, but limiting the damage could not mask the troubles with Australia's wicketkeeper.
It's one thing to have turfed a catch he should have gloved, but Haddin's batting the previous evening suggested he is also wrestling hard with his natural strokeplaying instincts, after being condemned for ill-chosen shots in recent collapses. In Haddin's important 72-run stand with Siddle, the fast bowler looked the more comfortable of the batsmen. And when Haddin did attempt a more expansive shot, to a tempting half-volley from Zaheer Khan, he got out to it.
On this issue, the selectors are stuck in a twilight zone. Haddin's natural successor, Tim Paine, has just had a third round of surgery on his badly mangled hand and the best-case scenario is that he will be available again next summer. Seemingly, they are reluctant to to muddy the wicketkeeping waters by promoting Matthew Wade to the Test team, and so have stuck with Haddin and even promoted him to vice-captain while Shane Watson is hurt.
That Pattinson rose above the disappointment said much about the head on his broad shoulders, and his spell of 1-7 from five overs should be cherished alongside his two five-wicket spells against New Zealand. When he said he would not be intimidated by India's batting royalty, he wasn't kidding, and he was the most dangerous of Australia's bowlers on a testing day.
The trouble for Australia was that the noise of 52,000 celebrating Sehwag's dismissal was indistinguishable from the roar that welcomed the new batsman to the crease. A bloke called Sachin Tendulkar was in the house.
