“All Test cricket will now be held in New Zealand”
Before the start of the fourth Test at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, two prime ministers (including one who coincidentally bore the same name as the stadium!) were given a free ride around the playing arena at the back of a car that had giant cardboard cricket bats protruding from the back for some reason.
This was by far the most interesting thing that happened in this test.
Here are the scores of the fourth test between India and Australia.
No Baggy Green
Rating: D-
Australia won the toss and, on flat ground, Usman Khawaja bowled calmly without the threat of any of the Indian bowlers, eventually reaching a century.
Later, Cameron Green – the biggest pup in world cricket – also scored his first century for Australia, cutting Ravindra Jadeja for four to raise the ton.
Good puppy. Good giant pup.
Probably the only disappointment was that the big round didn’t make the leap wearing a baggy green. Or, for that matter, wear clothes a size or two too big for him, so that he was a baggy green. Or, ideally, both.
Well, maybe the next century of testing.
(And, yes, we know it’s hard to find clothes that are too big for Cameron Green, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try!)
Australia’s Cameron Green celebrates after scoring his century. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
Secret Strain Sessions
Grade: B+
With all the effortless running scores, this was the kind of test where you could easily doze off for a session or two and feel like you didn’t miss a thing.
Why, at some point, I feel like saying, on the twelfth or thirteenth day, I watched an entire episode of Australian survivor and returned to find the same partnership still going.
Good cricket test. This is in stark contrast to those terrible Bazball tests, where even a twenty-minute drowsiness puts you at risk of waking up in a transformed hellscape where everything you’ve known before is gone forever.
Still, if you wanted to make a round more frantic, why not have a secret stump session, where the field team is allowed to give the stump to a secret defender to hide behind the back of his shirt. During this time, the batter is only allowed to leave the ball if he can tell the umpire or opposing captain who has the missing stump.
Batters always insist on knowing where their stump is. Let them prove it.
Nonsense comment
Rating: A
With the cricket wonderfully calm, the commentators did their best to capture our attention.
Matthew Hayden tried a Ferrari analogy which was very detailed but came to nothing (perhaps because of a broken carburetor? I don’t know much about cars).
I’m quite certain that Hayden knows infinitely more about the stick than I do in a Test match, yet every word he says makes me doubt that obvious truth. A gift.
As mental as Hayden was, however, Sunil Gavaskar effortlessly edged him out, at one point, diving deep into Mark Waugh’s playbook and firing an “I haven’t seen him much” on Steve Smith.
Wonderful stuff from Gavaskar. I wish he had expanded it more.
“That Kohli guy. What is he doing ? »
“That guy from Stokes?” Is he a bowler or a batsman? A bit of both? Eh. Good for him.”
And so on.
With the bat dominating the ball for the first time in this series, however, it also gave Indian commentators an opportunity to indulge their favorite pastime of spouting lyrical enthusiasm over the batting game.
Example of comment:
*Hitter hits a boundary*
Indian commentator: “This sublime genius, his unequaled skill giving us a glimpse of celestial realms, the crackle of the bat a transcendent song welcoming us into a higher state of bliss, the moment of his firing a hint of the mechanical nature of the cosmos, ticking with the ordered beauty of a wisdom greater than we dare to contemplate.
Australian commentator: “Yes, but also crap bowling.”
Virat Kohli bats. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
Muscle hiccups
Rating: D
With no other way to dismiss Indian batters, Australia dipped into their Cricket Australia-approved bag of tricks and retired the rarely used tactic of letting opponents bat for so long they cramped up.
Ruthless stuff from the Aussies, but also effective stuff as Shubman Gill eventually succumbed for 128 after suffering muscle hiccups.
Later, Virat Kohli also suffered a cramp after scoring just 186 runs which robbed Australia of any chance of victory.
India finished their first leg 91 points ahead of Australia with just fifteen minutes left on day four. Should the six days lost earlier in the series have been added to the end of this event?
It still would have been a draw, of course, but at least we would have seen, I don’t know, Mitchell Starc and Todd Murphy put 200 together.
Night watchman (Kuhne) man (n)
Grade: B+
As the final day approached, India therefore had their eye on the New Zealand-Sri Lanka test which was taking place simultaneously.
For India to definitely join Australia in the final of the World Test Championship, they had to either win this Test or have Sri Lanka not win their test.
It was multi-dimensional cricket, across different hemispheres and partially shared time zones. A fascinating contest that required serious concentration and thought.
Or, if you were Australian and already qualified for the final, you just had fun and opened your baton with Matt Kuhnemann as your night watchman. A kuhnemann night watchman!
Can a man named Kuhnemann score a century of testing? Maybe, but not this Test, robbed of an opportunity by an LBW that Travis Head refused to let him see again.
Nonetheless, with New Zealand sneaking home against Sri Lanka in a last-gasp, two-wicket thriller (just a week or so after a thrilling win after trailing England), neither India nor Australia couldn’t care to craft anything in this Test, and it crumbled into a tedious draw.
All Test cricket will be in New Zealand from now on, I say.
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