The Battle For Modern Test Cricket
A Hyperbolic Ashes Preview
One of Australia’s earlier Test Captains, Warick Armstrong was called ugly, and unattractive, but was wildly efficient and is statistically one of the game’s greatest all-rounders.
And when cricket was reaching its first chasm, the “pseudo-pro” age, it was Armstrong who kept Test Cricket together in Australia and arguably all the parts of the world it was played.
The story is not so different today.
BazBall has its fans, but like TikTok and junk food, just because something is popular doesn’t make it nutritional. Three-day tests and a disregard for one’s wicket are the end game of the homogenisation of cricket.
One Day Cricket was the commercialisation of the sport, literally designed to facilitate the delivery of television advertising. T20 Cricket was the privatisation of cricket, an oligarchy rebellion against cricket’s monarchs who for too long had hoarded the means of production. And BazBall is a cricket Futurist’s wet dream. No longer played by bodies of all comers, with minds as unique as their techniques, but by athletic automatons who swing hard and bowl yorkers.
Unlike Stars Wars, this series isn’t about a new hope but an old one, in a new form.
Predicted Top Run Scorer: Steve Smith
If you prefer your Test cricket left-handed and looking like Hayden, Lara, or Sangakkara you may be shocked to realise that Steven Peter Devereux Smith IS Test Cricket.
Slow starts, long innings, deep analysis, and obsessive but never compulsive (until his brain literally explodes) stroke play, he’s the closest to Bradman, since Bradman, and nothing is more Test cricket than The Don.
Smith’s 1,627 in the last decade of Ashes cricket in England is 503 runs more than the nearest Plucky Pom (Joe Root) and his average of 65.08 is more than 20 runs better than elegant but long-forgotten Ian Bell’s 45.07.
England is Smith’s holiday house. He left school at 17 for an early gap year playing at Sevenoaks Vine in the Kent Cricket League and has been returning to plunder runs ever since.
Why would this Ashes be any different?
Leading Wicket Taker: Pat Cummins
This is Cummins' “Armstrong” moment. The moment he unites not only Australian cricket but Australian energy policy via the accumulation of wickets and wins. What was once a slur, “Solar Panel Pat” will be the catchphrase of Australia’s green energy revolution, forcing Alinta to commit to only renewable resources and practices in a ploy to get Australia’s most recent conquering Ashes captain back in their advertisements.
Cummins is also the perfect Gentry-Trojan-Horse. 6-foot-4, thick lashes of dark hair, perfect teeth — you could pick him for England on looks alone. Instead, he’s an Australian Test Captain that not even the English Press Pack could even hate, despite the fact he will be tearing a reckless home XI batting line-up to shreds.
5 Tests in England for 29 wickets at an average of 19.62 and a strike rate of 43.6 makes him arguably the best bowler in English conditions for the last decade of any bowler to have delivered more than 200 overs.
Jofra Archer’s body gave way at the 150-over mark (22 wkts @ 20.27Ave / 42.5SR) and he won’t be there at all this series. Stuart Broad’s 66 wickets @ 25.09Ave / 45.8SR does seem mightly impressive, but video evidence suggests that 29 of those wickets were David Warner alone, and SURELY Lil’ Davey hasn’t made himself deserving of an all-included swansong that guarantees Broad another 10 wickets at an average of 0 and strike rate of 1.
Predicted Series Result: 2–2, 2–3, 0–5?
Predictions are a mug's game, far more so before a Test series where most of the time the opponents haven’t faced off in these conditions in at least four years, if at all.
BUT… Australia has just won the ICC WTC Final, justifying their decision not to partake in warm-up fixtures against Minor County 2nd XIs hosted on sheep paddocks in near zero degrees conditions. Instead, morale is boosted by completing cricket’s “Cycle Triple” (Test, ODI & T20 WC Titles in an allotted two-year window) and riling up pedantic English scribes in the process. Pre-Series score AUS 1 : ENG 0.
The cop-out answer is… whoever wins the First Test in Birmingham, will win the series because never has a media pack been so ready with hyperbolic reactions.
Despite the reasonable belief that sporting squads are capable of blocking out the “outside noise” inside looks offered by documentaries such as The Test, suggest other — and no media furnace is more furious than an Ashes Media Pack.
If BazBall flames out in the First Test, in front of the loutish Birmingham Brogues, all goodwill will be lost. The Old Guard will dust off their monocles and Harris Tweed smoking jackets and lament the death of English Test Cricket at the hands of two brash Kiwis. (Regardless of the fact, they’ve been regaling the pair for the last 18 months.)
Alternatively, if BazBall does manage to usurp the strictures of history then confidence will swell. Australians in awe of such a dominant display of Test cricket reminiscent of the 16 in-a-row performances by Steve Waugh’s and Ricky Ponting’s generational XIs may even cede their alliances and cheer for the destruction of Australian Test Cricket as each Baz Ball innings produces 6, 7, perhaps even 8 runs-an-over production rates.
On paper, Australia is the better side in neutral conditions. England USUALLY has the home advantage, but are asking for HARD, FLAT pitches?! This is a pre-amble to an English series like we’ve never seen before, but of course, that’s what we say every time cricket heads back “home.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same…
The head predicts 2–2. The heart predicts 2–3. The GUT predicts 0–5. Australian Test Cricket forever.
In Cummo futurum, “In Cummins, the future”
