Posted by We can’t tell you how much of our life we’ve sunk into looking at Test match scorecards, thinking about them a bit and then talking to people about what’s been going on in those games. This colossal time investment in one of our greatest passions has been almost infinitely less valuable to international cricket than someone sticking the Big Bash on as background TV for half an hour.
This dynamic is what shapes our sport. We do of course watch cricket on TV as well, and we do sometimes go to a match, but the main way we engage with cricket – the thing we get most joy out of – is fundamentally worthless to it.
As much as we resent it, we can see why administrators allow their decision-making to be steered by the more measurable stuff – the WhatsApp messaging and pub chat metrics are pretty hard to get hold of.
South Africa v Pakistan probably scored quite well in those invisible areas. Any time Kagiso Rabada’s colourful batting makes the difference at the business end of a Test match, you’ve had an experience. Australia v India, in contrast, delivered in almost any area you care to think of – measurable or otherwise.
Crowds were beyond healthy and we assume the TV audience was sizeable too, but picking up the scores each morning and not writing about the match until it had finished, we were struck that it was also a very big hitter when it came to all that wonderful but ostensibly worthless stuff.
We’ve talked before about why ‘overnight’ is such an important part of a five-day Test match. We thought we’d revisit that idea for this match to better highlight why the supposedly dead time between stumps and the start of the following day’s play can feel so valuable.
There are 120 hours in a Test match.
Christmas Day
The first thing worth pointing out is that really, in many ways, a Test match begins even before a ball is bowled. Pitch previews, team selections and weather forecasts combine with the ongoing story of the series to give us any number of things to ponder before thumb and coin decide the initial course of the match.
What would Sam Konstas do? Have Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma had it? Could Jasprit Bumrah possibly maintain his standards?
Day 1 – Australia 311-6
Sam Konstas could do a lot. In not very long. He could even give Bumrah a scare – albeit not one that slowed him for too long. The young opener wasn’t quite noticeable enough that Virat Kohli didn’t try to walk straight through him though.
One for real connoisseurs of “Did you spill my pint, mate?” body language, that one.
The day finished with Steve Smith 68 not out and a return of that fading feeling: ‘Of course he’s going to make a hundred’. Was that true though or was it just a flashback?
Day 2 – Australia 474, India 164-5
100% true. Of course Smith made a hundred – 140, in fact. Funny how quickly and comprehensively a sense of eye-rolling inevitability can wash back into your brain.
In contrast, Rohit made 3 and Kohli a nondescript 36 – the latter part of a late-in-the-day clatter to Scott Boland that made for a very ugly scorecard for the tourists.
Day 3 – Australia 474, India 358-9
Hello. What happened here? India were still more than 100 behind, but a margin like that was quite the development given they’d been transparently flirting with skittlement.
Nitish Kumar Reddy progressed from repeatedly top-scoring with 42 to top-scoring with 105 not out. Pretty handy from a number seven who’d walked out at number eight. What kind of a cricketer is he exactly and will India continue to find a way to make use of him?
Day 4 – Australia 474, India 369, Australia 228-9
Can Jasprit Bumrah possibly maintain his standards? The frequency of yeses on this one is the story of the series for us. It feels like a return to an earlier era, when Test teams had far more obvious star players.
In any era, there are players who are better than others. Maybe it’s a perception thing, but Test cricket has felt more of a team game to us for the last decade or so. The outliers haven’t felt like trump cards in quite the way they used to. Australia and South Africa have tended to field two or three high quality fast bowlers. India, at home, have played two or three match-winning spinners. The match-winning contributions have generally been a little less concentrated.
Not so with Bumrah, who has that Shane Warne, Shoaib Akhtar, Brian Lara quality where he can defy conditions and circumstance to win a match for a team that has otherwise been massively outplayed. It is good to have an overnight to admire his work and talk about that possibility without distractions such as ‘further Test cricket taking place’.
Day 5 – Australia 474, India 369, Australia 234, India 155 all out
Nine runs for Rohit, five for Kohli. That a touring team could almost hold out despite increasing evidence that they’re routinely surrendering two batting slots each match is astonishing really.
Seven wickets in the final session to win a Test match is pretty astonishing too – as were a couple of the shots.
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Nice summation KC, and while not a criticism in any way, so much more could have been added such was the nature of the match. T’was a stonker, as they say somewhere. Basically the best of a 5 match test series wrapped up into one match. This means of course that the 5th test will be an utter anticlimax.
As an aside as one does, I’m guessing the pitch in Zimbabwe was a tad flat to begin with considering both Zimbabwe and Afghanistan recorded their highest test innings totals ever with two of the Afghan batsmen trading highest test scores by an Afghan batsmen, Mr Shah hitting 234 with Mr Shahidi later reclaiming the title with 246. While the match was a high scoring draw, it did include a batting collapse of 60 for 7. So another test not without incident.