Over the last year, Michael Hussey’s gravity-defying averages have slipped into the believable 50s. But the 34-year-old, in India for a seven-match one-day series that could prove Australia’s Champions Trophy win was indeed a sign of their resurgence, looks ready to touch the sky again, writes Deepak Narayanan

Two games into the International Cricket Council’s much-publicised Super Series, with Australia having walloped the Rest of the World in both, it’s increasingly clear that games between the world’s best team and the world’s best players aren’t going to provide too much in the shape of contests.

However, as can be expected when you put a collection of the world’s biggest superstars under one roof — literally — there’s a bit of muscle-flexing going on.

In the Telstra Dome in Melbourne, Shahid Afridi and Andrew Flintoff are trying to hit the retractable ceiling. They’re being fed long hops and half-volleys by a galaxy of all-stars willing the ball skywards, but even for two of the biggest sets of biceps in the game, it seems a shot too big to pull off.

Impossible may be nothing, but if Afridi and Flintoff can’t, who can? The next day, Michael Hussey’s facing Makhaya Ntini in the third one-dayer and sends one soaring up; and there it is — casual, inevitable — the distant, echoing ping of ball connecting with fibreglass.

It’s almost like you don’t notice him. If you think he’s batting on 10, he’s probably on 40. He had to score 15,313 first-class runs before finally making it to the Australian middle order, and has smashed over 3000 runs each in both Tests and one-dayers since; but incredibly, even today, Hussey retains the uncanny ability to slide under the radar.

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