Australia v India First Test, Day Two Report Card

Featuring confounding factors, algorithmic drinking problems, snake pits and being mean to Virat Kohli

Confounding Factors
Grade: D+

Weirdly, the second day of the first Test contained only 3/17th as much cricket as the first day. (That is, if you assume it is wickets that primarily define the sport, which we do down here in Australia, as evidenced by the fact that we always give them primacy when announcing the score. Runs? Pshaw. Who needs them? Wickets are what we’ve come to see. Don’t keep me waiting to hear how many have fallen with your interminable blathering about the tally of runs.)

The reason for the lack of wickets on the second day? Well, the predominant theory was perhaps best summarised by Mark ‘Junior’ Waugh, on commentary in the final session.

“This pitch seemed to be quicker yesterday evening (when Jasprit Bumrah was bowling) but this afternoon (when Jasprit Bumrah was not bowling) really appears to have flattened out.”

Now, to be clear, I’ve added the parentheticals to that quote. Mostly because most of the ‘pitch flattening out’ chat seemed to be otherwise ignoring Bumrah as a confounding factor (to use both the statistical terminology and the terminology used by people who aren’t data nerds, but who still know what ‘confounding’ means).

Algorithmic Drinking Problems
Grade: C

Of course, I’m exaggerating for comical purposes, the conflation of Bumrah’s absence from the attack with the perceived flatness of the pitch, as is my wont. Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins didn’t suddenly overnight become hapless duffers incapable of knowing which end of the ball to hold. (The round end, for the record.)

Furthermore, even Bumrah himself struggled to wreak as much havoc on the second day as he did on the first. (Sure, he still got Alex Carey from the first ball he bowled, but who among us hasn’t?)

In fact, most of the first session was spent watching Starc and Hazlewood knock it around without a care in the world, putting on the highest partnership of the Australian innings to drag the team into triple figures. So close did they get Australia to India’s first innings total that WinViz suddenly pronounced the home side as favourites to win the Test, which seemed a) startling and b) evidence that an algorithm can have a drinking problem.

The last wicket partnership and the absence of any threat of it being broken soon saw the question being raised to Allan Border in the commentary box: ‘Who is the best number eleven you ever batted with?’

Border threw out a couple of names (‘Merv Hughes’, ‘not Bruce Reid’), but, to me, failed to wrestle properly with the philosophical aspect of the question.

What, philosophically speaking, even is a ‘best number eleven’? Is it the best batter coming in at eleven? Or is it the platonic ideal of a number eleven and, hence, a terrible batter? Or something else entirely?

Let’s define our terms, AB, before we charge into trying to unravel this conundrum.