World Test Championship Final Report Card, Day One

Featuring swaggering bravado, soddin' Bazball, clarifying The Simpsons and solving problems

Swaggering Bravado
Grade: C

Australia’s warm-up for the Ashes and India’s warm-down from the IPL continues with the World Test Championship Final, a contest to determine once and for all, which is the greatest Test cricket nation. (By ‘once’, I mean ‘it happened previously, but New Zealand won it, so we should probably just ignore that’ and by ‘for all’, I mean ‘the entire idea could well be killed off by the ICC in favour of, I dunno, a second T20 World Cup so whoever wins this one may hold the mace-trophy in perpetuity’.)

India strutted to the middle of the Oval, full of intimidatory tactics. They omitted the number one Test ranked bowler, Ravi Ashwin, from their starting eleven. Presumably as an act of swaggering bravado (bravido? No). Don’t even need the best bowler in this format to beat you lot, they were saying. Magnificent stuff.

Then Mohammed Siraj had Usman Khawaja, Australia’s most prolific batter during the two-year qualifying period, out without adding to that prolificacy. Think you’re all that, Ussie? Well, you’re not.

And when the number one ranked Test batter, Marnus Labuschagne, made his way to the crease, India also treated him with scandalous disrespect. Not only did they hit him on the thumb twice (superb accuracy from the India bowlers), they also reviewed him twice for LBW, with Rohit Sharma indulging in a stretched out, behind-the-back, T-sign. Quite literally, a flex from the India captain.

Soddin’ Bazball
Grade: D

India’s in-your-face domination saw Labuschagne and David Warner struggle to just 22 runs in the first ten overs.

22 runs in 10 overs?! The English public must have been ready to storm the ground in apoplectic fury. “Where’s me soddin’ Bazball!” they cried. “I didn’t pay sixty quid to watch 2.2 runs per bloomin’ over.” (Pretty sure I’ve nailed the accent there.)

The dominance of ball over bat couldn’t last, however. Australia had correctly assessed that, because of India’s IPL-centric preparation, they would only have twenty overs of high-intensity cricket in them for the innings. And so it proved, despite both Warner and Labuschagne falling on either side of lunch. (Not literally falling. They just lost their wickets, and walked off, heroically upright.)

Of course, because of India’s sluggish first session over rate, those twenty overs did take us more or less to the lunch break.

Question: How many points do India need to lose to a slow over rate for South Africa to be subbed in halfway through the Test?

Clarifying The Simpsons
Grade: F

Of course, during the lunch break, Channel Seven showed us football chat. Forty minutes to fill. Can’t possibly do it by talking about the sport you’ve flown to the other side of the planet to cover.

James Brayshaw, a man who’d started the broadcast by shouting at me about grand finals and players being ‘up for it’, and former Australian cricketer, coach and janitor Justin Langer initiated an impromptu Algonquin Round Table with a football boofhead who I think they were calling ‘the Trash Compactor’ (?). I have no idea why.

What an enormously frustrating way to make the already frustrating longest break in the day’s play feel even longer.

To reinterpret and clarify the famous Simpsons’ quote: “When cricket’s not on screen, all the commentators should not be asking ‘where’s football?’”.

Solving Problems
Grade: A

After Mohammed Shami bowled Labuschagne shortly after lunch (cue a reinterpreted and clarified quote from the other great 1990s comedy show, Seinfeld: “That’s a Shami.”), Travis Head arrived at the crease.

He and Steve Smith then put on an unbeaten 251 run partnership to take Australia to stumps with the score 327/3. Head scored 146* from 156 balls in a typically thrilling and terrifying knock. Watching Head bat in this manner is fun. I can see why having a team full of such lunatics must be so exhilarating for England fans. On the other Head, having more than one of them going at a time might just do me in. Fun, yes. But fun in the way that surviving a home-made rocket launch is fun.

Which is why the far more sedate innings of Steve Smith was appreciated. During the innings, Smith’s head popped up on screen at one point and told us all how he liked ‘solving problems’ while out in the middle.

A bowler will come at him with Goldbach’s conjecture and he’ll cobble together a proof. A close fielder might throw forth the Riemann hypothesis from under the lid, and he’ll provide a counterexample. Fermat? Easy. Just scribble a proof in the margin of the scorecard. Plenty of room.

Classic Smith. He’s 95* from 227 balls. No problem.

As always, my report card for the first day of each Test is available to everybody. The rest of the Test is behind the paywall. Breach that paywall with the special offer above, which I’ve extended for one final day.