There are balls that deserve to be hit for four. This was by no means that kind of ball. It was the second ball Adam Zampa had bowled on Sunday at Chepauk, and it was the kind of ball he'd have been happy to bowl while beginning his day's work in any ODI, anywhere. It was quick, just shy of 90kph, flat, and the stock-standard white-ball legbreak that's designed not to turn much at all, its primary object the denial of width to the right-hand batter.
This ball pitched just outside off stump and straightened so little that it was still angling into the batter when it reached him: there was a chance it may have clipped off stump if he'd missed it, and the length was such that there was no chance it would have bounced over the bails.
It was the kind of ball most batters would have looked to punch down the ground and pick up a quiet single. With India 57 for 3 in a chase of 200, it would have been a perfectly desirable outcome for the batter.
KL Rahul wasn't interested in the quiet punch for one. He transferred his weight nimbly on to the back foot, instead, and created room to bring his bat scything down, wrists turning over on top of the bounce. The ball ran away into the vast, unpatrolled area between slip and backward point.
The classic late cut is one of cricket's most glorious sights, but it's a rare and subtle thing, a shot that seldom, if ever, enters the realms of social-media virality, lacking the main-character energy of the cover drive and the straight drive, the overt machismo of the pull and the hook, and the holy-smokes-how-did-he-do-that trendiness of the switch hit and the reverse ramp.
The late cut is the kind of shot your granddad loved because he heard a radio commentator describe GR Viswanath playing it and spent the rest of the afternoon imagining how it must have looked.
Rahul is from Karnataka, the land of Viswanath and also of Rahul Dravid, another magnificent player of spin. I have spent many futile hours searching for footage of Dravid's fourth-innings 75 in Kandy, an innings full of daredevilish cuts and punches against the turn of Muthiah Muralidaran (hit me up if you know someone who knows someone who might have recorded it). Seldom has anyone looked in such control against an undisputed all-time great.
Rahul's late cut off Zampa echoed an even better one he had played last month against Sri Lanka in Colombo, against a rampant Dunith Wellalage, who at that stage had figures of 3 for 16 in 5.1 overs. This time there was no doubt that the ball, skidding on with the angle from left-arm around, would have crashed into the stumps had Rahul missed. So quickly and lightly did he move into position, though, that it seemed as if he knew all along that this ball - whose behaviour off the pitch was almost certainly the result of natural variation rather than design on the bowler's part - would not turn, and even that it would keep a touch low.
Shots like these, off perfectly reasonable deliveries, can put bowlers completely off their radar. Spinners in white-ball cricket are always looking to avoid pitching in the batter's arc, and it's an occupational hazard to bowl one every now and then that's ever so slightly short of a length. The best players of spin pounce on these marginal errors, and Rahul is among the best at doing this with variants of the cut.
Since the end of the 2019 World Cup, Rahul has scored 102 runs off 69 balls while cutting, late-cutting and steering spinners, according to ESPNcricinfo's data, without once being dismissed. His strike rate while playing these shots is the fourth-best among all ODI batters who have scored at least 50 runs with them in this period. On top of the list is another terrific player of spin, Shreyas Iyer. It's one of the many things that make India's middle order so formidable in Indian conditions.
How does a spinner respond to having a blameless delivery late-cut for four? Zampa did so in classic legspinner fashion, bowling the wrong'un. He landed a touch too short, though, and Rahul had all the time in the world to unfurl another, even more delicate late cut, placing it much finer this time.
What happened next was one of those things that seem both inevitable and remarkable, coming from a quality international bowler. Over-compensation. Zampa tried going fuller, ended up floating up a full-toss, and Rahul put it away in the prettiest manner possible, bringing back more echoes of Viswanath and Dravid with a wristy inside-out drive that neatly bisected short extra-cover and deep cover point. A forced error, put away most graciously, and just like that, in a match set up by the unhittability of India's spinners on a sharply turning pitch, Rahul had neutralised Australia's biggest spin threat.