The last day of a great Test match such as this is like an episode of Geoffrey Robertson’s Hypotheticals, except that Robertson never performed before a live audience as vast and engaged as this. Tuesday night’s New Year festivities won’t be a patch on this. Nor will Diwali when it comes around.
Unlike TV’s Hypotheticals, the players in a Test match create and choreograph their own sometimes fiendish developments to which they must react and upon which they must negotiate, all against a deadline that rarely comes into play in Test cricket any more.
Geoffrey Robertson
Here’s a transcript:
Mr Cummins, you need at least one win, and India doesn’t, there’s a risk your bowling stocks and the weather will be against you in Sydney. Do you declare overnight?
Yes, but they got us on the last day at the Gabba last time. So no.
Mr Sharma, do you let them bat on and chew up time to bowl you out and make them look a bit timid?
Yes, but Bumrah.
Jasprit Bumrah bowls with a distinctive straight-arm style and celebrated his wickets in a similar manner on Sunday.Credit: Getty / AP
Bumrah, Bumrah.
As the day begins, all are aware that there is only one place left in the World Test Championship final now, so a draw suits neither. Lyon gets Bumrahed. India, met with high-class fast bowling, begin their pursuit cautiously, but suddenly lose three wickets, namely the beleaguered Rohit Sharma, the previously rocklike K L Rahul and the iconic Virat Kohli, to whom the crowd had come to pay obeisance, which is different from abuse.
Mr Sharma, do you hand in your notice? And Mr Kohli, you keep getting out the same way. Do you think you’re gone?
Reflective: India skipper Rohit Sharma Credit: AP
Only static here. Best to cut to an ad break.
We’re back.
3-33 wasn’t in your blueprint, Mr Sharma. What do you do now?
Look at the pattern of this match. The pitch is still good and the runs have come late and plentifully and we’ve got batting to No 9. Cricket is definitively about the long game.
Effortlessly, insouciant left-handers Yashasvi Jaiswal and Rishabh Pant put the innings back together. Jaiswal’s command is absolute, and so is his composure; he is the little maestro, to follow the Little Master.
Rishabh Pant of India.Credit: Getty Images
Pant shows commendable restraint for a man whose way of blocking makes it look as if he is bored with waiting for the ball to reach him. In the day’s most comical moment, after Jaiswal misses a couple of extravagant cuts, Pant admonishes him about overplaying his hand.
For India, whatever the question is now, the answer is to keep going. But, Mr Barrister, you already knew that answer when you asked the question. K.L. is gone, there is no Pujara any more, and this is generation IPL. Cut and pull now, ask questions later. There’s a crowd, and it deserves a show.
Jaiswal and Pant breeze through a session.
India’s Yashasvi Jaiswal plays a shot during play on the last day of the fourth cricket Test.Credit: AP
So, Mr Cummins, what do you do now?
We’re experienced. We’ve been here many times before. We know we have to stay on the job, even when it looks hopeless. We’ve got hundreds of balls and we only need seven.
Nonetheless, Cummins fiddles, switches bowlers frequently, sets patent fields, tries part-timers Marnus Labuschagne and Travis Head … and it works. Head bowls a long hop, Pant holes out to Mitch Marsh. I might have forgotten to mention that Head and Marsh were playing.
Still, there are six to get. Maybe there’s a bowler, a low-key fellow, who is out there now, who could tap in, take 6-7 and put a summary end to all this? C’mon, I know this is Hypotheticals, but keep it real.
But Scott Boland surprises Ravindra Jadeja with a lifter and Nathan Lyon gets first-innings century-maker Nitish Kumar Reddy via a brilliant Steve Smith catch at slip and suddenly the match has a different complexion.
Mr Sharma, over to you. What now?
Jaiswal. Jaiswal, Jaiswal.
Right. This is Hypotheticals; we’re not done yet. It’s time to introduce DRS to the party. First, the indefatigable Cummins lures Jaiswal into a hook that flies from the face of the bat to the wicketkeeper. Snicko flatlines, but Jaiswal is given out anyway, correctly. Jaiswal protests.
Then Akash Deep is caught at short leg from Boland. Both Snicko and a new red mark on Akash’s bat betray him, but he protests, too.
What do you say, Mr Sharma?
It’s not what I say. Just watch the media in India tomorrow. Watch for the mobs in the streets. They know where DRS lives.
Australia has all the answers. They see the job through. There are no more curly questions. The best day-five curveball at the MCG was and remains a straight one – young Shane Warne’s to burrow through Richie Richardson in 1992, after which we all scurried off to read up on what he meant by “flipper”.
It’s been a wonderful Test match, a true epic, one of those rare contests where you don’t want to leave at the end, but instead sit in your seat and let it all wash over you again. Thousands do just that.
So gentlemen, with apologies to Robertson, who would never ask a Dorothy Dixer like this: has the time come for four-day Tests?
Which would have left this one where? Short-changed, that’s what. A story without an ending. Four-fifths of a Test match. Who’d even ask a question like that?
Thank you, gentlemen. Well bowled, Pat. And batted. And fielded. And led.
Player of the match Pat Cummins of Australia poses with the Mullagh Medal.Credit: Getty Images
And thank you, audience.
So Cummins is beatified and celebrates by buying carbon credits in the Amazon rainforest, Smith is finally pardoned for good and Boland stands for Parliament and wins. Well, Sam Groth did.
Meantime, Sharma resigns, Kohli retires to launch himself on the stock exchange, Bumrah’s arm is mummified and put on a display in a museum in Delhi and Indian fans make off with the Shane Warne statue, though whether this is because of disappointment, delirium or idolatory is not clear.
Next week’s episode comes to you from the SCG. See you then.
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