Sam Constas faced one of the toughest challenges of modern cricket in the first 18 balls of his Test career. As the youngest opener in Australia’s 147-year Test history, the bowler standing at the other end was none other than Jasprit Bumrah. The 19-year-old Constas managed just 2 runs in those 18 deliveries, as the Indian pacer relentlessly tested him.
But everything changed in Bumrah’s fourth over. In the second over (third of the match), Constas hesitated to play a scoop shot, inviting criticism for attempting such a risky move early in the game. However, he answered those doubts emphatically in the seventh over. On Bumrah’s first ball, Constas executed a scoop over the keeper’s head that narrowly missed being a six. On the next delivery, he played a reverse scoop for a full six. Having passed Bumrah’s 18-ball examination, Constas began turning the tables on the Indian bowler, scoring 14 runs in that over. It was only the third time in Bumrah’s Test career that he conceded 14 or more runs in an over. To make it more remarkable, it was the first six Bumrah conceded in his last 4,483 deliveries in Test cricket.
Just two overs later, Constas delivered an even bigger blow. With one six and two boundaries, he scored 18 runs off Bumrah, setting a personal record for the Indian pacer—never before had Bumrah conceded so many runs in a single Test over. Prior to this, his most expensive over in Tests was 16 runs, a mark he had hit twice: once in Melbourne in 2020 against Nathan Lyon and Josh Hazlewood, and earlier this year in Visakhapatnam against England’s Zak Crawley.
Constas, who scored a fifty in just 52 balls, eventually fell for 60 off 65 deliveries, trapped LBW by Ravindra Jadeja. In doing so, Constas claimed another record. His strike rate of 92.30 in his debut innings as an opener is the highest for any debutant opener in Test cricket.
The previous record-holder was an Indian. In 2018, Prithvi Shaw set a strike rate of 87.01 during his 154-ball 134 against West Indies in Rajkot.
If you consider all opening batters, Constas ranks third. However, the two players ahead of him did not score fifties. England’s Mark Stoneman had a strike rate of 133.33 with 8 runs off 6 balls against West Indies in Edgbaston in 2017, while Bangladesh’s Shamsur Rahman had a strike rate of 97.05, scoring 33 runs off 34 balls against Sri Lanka in Mirpur in 2014.
