There are a lot of interesting things happening in cricket at the moment, just not on the Adelaide Oval.
Most significant is England’s endeavour in reinventing a 150-year-old wheel. They were at it again in Pakistan on Friday, lathering the boundaries while also losing wickets. Eventually, the whole “being unafraid to fail” philosophy of Baz-Ball will be tested by failure itself. Fear will make its comeback. But not just yet.
In Brisbane, South Africa’s batters were ironing out the kinks before taking on Australia in a few days. Dean Elgar made a hundred. Elgar is one of the players who is going to answer the question whether Australia are that good or the West Indies are that bad. At least the Proteas are giving genuine fans something to look forward to.
In India, the best two women’s teams in the world are squaring off in a series to start on Saturday. Healy, McGrath, Verma, Kaur, a lustrous line-up of superstars on both teams: there are no doubts that we are watching the best of the best here, and for a spectacle, the Adelaide Test match is going to have to plead with its viewers,
like Larry Sanders: “No flipping.“
In Adelaide (around rather than on the Oval), things were also spicing up, with managers and administrators and commentators converging around the unhealed scab of 2018 newly peeled away by David Warner’s outburst on the eve of the Test match. It’s mostly happening in unphotogenic locations, but that doesn’t stop it making award-winning drama.
Like Succession or The White Lotus, it is compelling because all the characters are, to greater or lesser degree, villainous. It’s just up to you to pick who you dislike least, and to take pleasure from watching the most venal squirm.
Travis Head celebrates his 150 with Marnus Labuschagne at the Adelaide Oval on Friday.Credit:Getty Images
Cricket Australia’s CEO Nick Hockley finally found something to take a firm principled stand against, but his adversary was only David Warner’s manager James Erskine, who revived old rumours and threw out some smelly old chum to attract the sharks (those sharks being us, the observers and the fans, who, in the never-ending sandpaper scandal, at least find something that gets our passions flowing again).
It’s unclear whether all of these diversions were saving cricket from the event taking place on the Adelaide Oval, or unhelpfully getting in its way. From Jason Holder’s first trundlers, on a placid pitch in perfect Friday weather, to Australia’s steady assertion of dominance under lights, there was precious little theatre to match what was happening elsewhere.
Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne went to work again, padding out their records. Someone was always going to make a pile for Australia, it was only a matter of who was hungriest and who took their chances.
That Labuschagne accepted the friendly offerings is now expected. Maybe he will lose the appetite to bat in about ten years, or maybe he will just keep batting us all into a kind of admiring submission. His energy against weak bowling, a subtle kind of challenge of its own, is unflagging.
Michael Neser is congratulated by his Australian teammates after dismissing Kraigg Braithwaite.Credit:Getty
Head, at No.5, is sneaking up on an impressive record, as much for his style as for his statistics. Like Doug Walters or Mike Hussey, Head provides his team with exactly the acceleration it needs at third wicket down. In last year’s Ashes, he played a string of innings like this, whipping the rug out from under the opposition just when they felt they were about to assert themselves. He did not prosper in Pakistan or Sri Lanka, but that is today’s Test cricket.
Transplant even this West Indian team to the Caribbean, and these players become winners, or at least not losers. It is a mystery only truly known to the participants how dependent on local conditions Test cricket is. It might look like 22 players, six stumps, a ball and a strip of turf, but the decisive factors are none of those.
In Adelaide, with a pink ball, under a sky either blue or black, it is hard to imagine any conditions so heavily weighted in the home nation’s favour. From the outset of this match, the West Indies’ desultory effort in the field suggested that they were a team preserving their energy for batting. Alas, even a depleted Australian attack managed four wickets in the last session.
With all the cyclonic forces around it, the Test match itself rotated calmly toward a steady state of Australian control. Adelaide has a reputation as a social occasion first, with cricket providing a backdrop. This match has served its purpose, then. Look elsewhere, meanwhile, and, as the great Bill Lawry would tell us, it really is all happening.
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