MARTIN SAMUEL’S VERDICT
Will hosts play last Test for laughs, too?
IT’S not that the wicket wasn’t poor. It’s not that the batting wasn’t abysmal. It’s not that too many matches like this won’t kill test cricket. And nobody is happy with three days of dead air, least of all the broadcast rights holders.
sometimes, though, you just have to laugh. Like when Jonny Bairstow came in, played all round his first delivery, looked to be out plumb lbw and survived on appeal only because the tracker showed the ball defying the forces of gravity. then, next ball, he played down completely the wrong line again and was clean bowled.
He looked behind him, as if surprised someone had left a set of stumps there. He pulled a face like early Saturday Night Live era steve Martin. Oh, it was ripe. You’ll pay good money for a routine like that when the comedy clubs are open again.
Now, we can get all serious and ask how is it that the ICC can’t be bothered to investigate back-toback tests in which a wicket has been prepared almost with wilful incompetence, we can debate whether producing pitches that so nakedly advantage ball over bat, home over away, undermine the entire ethos of test cricket.
Or we can delight in the fact that yesterday was a gleeful cavalcade of chaos — and worry about consequences later.
Joe Root took the ball with an average of 47.34 as a test match bowler and was rewarded with first- innings figures of five for eight, against the best, most spin-proficient batting line-up in the world. Hysterical stuff.
Root had only taken more than two wickets in an innings once in his test career — four in the second innings against south Africa in Port Elizabeth in January 2020 — yet here he was reborn as Ravichandran Ashwin.
that’s how much of a mess the hosts had made of the Ahmedabad pitch.
It was a riot. It was carnage. It was tremendous fun. Not if you were planning to spend the weekend watching cricket, mind. Not if you were one of the 150,000 or so who had obtained tickets for the last three days at the new Narendra Modi stadium. those folk may have been a little churlish in the face of such an extreme outcome. But for those who appreciate the old custard pie in the face routine, what better way to spend a thursday?
Remember the 1999 Open at Carnoustie? the R&A for some reason decided to take what many regard as the toughest course on the Open circuit and make it unplayable. Heaven knows why, because the 1998 Open had been won by Mark O’Meara at level par, so it was not as if there had been a source of embarrassment.
For months before the professionals arrived, locals said they could smell fertiliser as the rough on the course was souped-up and left to grow.
Having then set up like a Us Open, the weather arrived on saturday and blew the field to oblivion. Viewers tuning in were greeted with the sight of the monthly medal at the local municipal, players trudging through what appeared to be broccoli with faces like thunder.
Balls were lost, cards ruined. Marvellous stuff. Unless you really like golf, of course, and want to see it played well by the finest protagonists. ‘Carnoustie was set up so nobody could win,’ it was written. ‘And nobody did.’
that is very harsh on Paul Lawrie, the 1999 champion. He may have been a relative nobody when he triumphed but he had already won the Qatar Masters earlier that year and he was in Europe’s top 10 in 1999, 2001 and 2002. No European player won a major tournament after him until Padraig Harrington at the Open in 2007.
Yet there is a wider point. the best sport is judged by the quality of the eventual champions. the similarly rogue Us Open at Chambers Bay in 2015 was rescued by the fact it went to Jordan spieth. this year’s Australian Open tennis was given credibility by Novak Djokovic and Naomi Osaka.
Lawrie never finished better than tied 15th at any other major. Everyone loved the carnage at
“How is it that the ICC can’t be bothered to investigate?”
Car-nasty, but it is still recalled as misadventure.
so Root’s five for eight rather blows this, too. For if we had been looking at Ashwin’s figures, even those of Axar Patel, it would be possible to imagine this as more comedy English batting and giggle away.
Yet Root the mystery spinner rather suggests a deeper malaise, a wicket that appeared trying on day one, deteriorating dramatically on day two.
And yes, 21 of 30 wickets fell to balls that kept straight. Yet they didn’t all keep straight. that’s the point. some turned erratically, others came on fast, few batsmen could work out what they were playing and the shortest test since before the second World War ensued.
Watching at home, we loved it. ‘You can’t take your eyes off it,’ roared the commentators excitedly. But you will be able to today — and tomorrow and sunday — because it won’t be there.
so all those people the sport hoped to win over via terrestrial television can watch rerun episodes of Countdown instead. they won’t have as many laughs but at least contestants know what they are getting.
And the fourth test? India lead the series 2-1 now and the only way they can miss out on the World test Championship is if the great randomiser throws up a track on which any pie- chucker can take a wicket and they lose.
Let’s see if the hosts are happy to play this one for laughs, too.