Not since Alexander the Great has a Greek teenager made such a startling impact on the world. Not since David Hookes in the Centenary Test in 1977 has a debutant appeared on cricket’s biggest stage and given it a shake-up as audacious as this.
Bazball is a reinvention of Test cricket, but on Boxing Day, Konstas inverted the game altogether. One orthodox backfoot defence in mid-morning was greeted with a round of applause because it was now the novelty. More than a first impression, it was meteorite’s crater.
The precocious Konstas is a player of his time, but nothing in his short career quite foreshadowed this. From the moment he literally ran onto the ground, leading Usman Khawaja by 50 or more metres, everything he did was amped up. Khawaja smiled as he might at his dog on a walk.
Pre-match, Konstas said he had a plan. Its rudiments as now unveiled were adapted from Bazball, parlaying T20 skills into the five-day game. Its effect is total disruption. It took him eight balls to get bat to one, but from the 11th he tried to scoop Jasprit Bumrah over the heads of the slips, and everything tumbled out from there.
Eventually, Konstas did scoop Bumrah for six, the first from the Indian great for four years, and he nearly repeated the dose over long on. Bumrah’s first six overs cost 38; an almost unprecedented cutting down to size.
The smile Khawaja now gave Konstas was veritably paternal, and why not: at 38, Khawaja could be his father.
Konstas the disruptor.Credit: Christopher Hopkins
The Indians were laughing, too, at first, until it wasn’t funny any more. Konstas’ effrontery riled Mohammed Siraj, and he awakened in Virat Kohli old demons he looked to have subdued long ago. More should be heard about that shoulder bump; let us see now who really runs cricket.
This was all the work of a teenager whose face was so fresh it posed the question: is he growing a moustache or has he not shaved yet? That same face looked straight at Spidercam at the first drinks break to answer a question about his duel with Bumrah thus: “Hopefully he comes back on.”
The appeal of Test cricket as traditionally played is that it is an elegant game. This is the post-modern version. It’s not pretty as we have been conditioned to think of it. It’s not meant to be.
Konstas attacked nearly every ball, no matter its pace, line or length. Missing one did not deter him from launching at the next. If he missed again, he doubled down.
Usman Khawaja finds the funny side of Konstas getting hit in the groin. Credit: Christopher Hopkins
He used the air. He used the outfield. He used the full width of the crease and every part of the bat. He used the space behind the cordon, not so long ago Test cricket’s fallow land. Forced to station a man there, Indian captain Rohit Sharma left a gap at third slip, where Konstas should have been caught, but wasn’t.
And he used the excitement he was stirring up in the crowd, at one stage calling with a gesture for more noise still, the way tennis players sometimes do.
The MCG was bubbling and India looked at a loss; why did none of the quicks try a bouncer, for instance? It wasn’t easy out there on the first-day pitch – one of Konstas’ keepsakes was a whack in the euphemisms – but he muddled the Indians into thinking that they had the rough deal.
Two things should be noted. One is that within this chaotic Konstas package was a large measure of calculation and skill. The skill is his keen eye and fast hands, which catch up with balls bowled at 140km/h plus. In this, he is the heir of Glenn Maxwell.
The calculation is between the plentiful runs to be made this way and the greatly heightened risk of dismissal. For all of history, batsmen have erred on the side of caution and that has been Test cricket’s governing dynamic, but no longer. Konstas could easily have been out for nought and two and many times thereafter, but that’s not how 19-year-olds now think, or at least this 19-year-old.
The rest will be history. Konstas won’t ever have the element of surprise again, and he surely knows it. Australia must take him on the same terms they’ve learned to take Travis Head. It won’t work every day, and some days he will look plain silly; think of how the reviews would have read this day if he had played his first scoop into his stumps.
He’s asking as Maximus asked in Gladiator, and Bazballing England, and last weekend Ange Postecoglou at Tottenham Hotspur: “Are you not entertained?” And yes, we were. But England will also attest that ultimately to entertain by itself does not sate the competitive drive; you must also demonstrate substance. And win.
Subtlety did for Konstas eventually, left-armer Ravindra Jadeja sliding one between bat and pad as he has often before. This will have been duly noted. But though still a teenager, Konstas is clearly not one to brood or sulk. While Australia’s innings proceeded to lunch, he signed autographs, took selfies and did TV interviews.
The last effect of all this abnormality was to allow normal service to resume. Khawaja could puddle along at his usual sleepy pace without bogging down the innings because it already had a flying start, and Marnus Labuschagne with a buffer was a different player to Labuschagne exposed to the new ball.
PS. Alexander the Great conquered the known world, but was done at 32. Fortunately, it was several millennia ago.
