2(00)1: A Cricket Odyssey

GH feels a bit weary already

Are you, like Dave, having doubts about the mission?

It is certainly some mission: on Thursday, Australia commence a cycle of as many as twenty-one Tests in twelve months. For reference, their preceding twenty-one tests took thirty-one months, and Australia has not taken a Test match field since New Year. This next year, as Et Al foreshadowed a year ago, will be the definition of gruelling.

Tests in Darwin and Mackay against Bangladesh should not overextend Pat Cummins’s team, at full strength and fresh from their long hiatus. But you get tired simply looking at the schedule beyond: three Tests in South Africa, four at home against New Zealand, five each in India and in England, plus the Sesquicentenary Test at the MCG in March and the World Test Championship Final at the Oval in June (assuming Australian make it).

Throw in half a dozen one-day international engagements in Africa in the second half of September, plus three one-day internationals and five T20 internationals in nineteen days at home against England from the middle of November, too: wherever you are and whatever you’re doing in the next twelve months, chances are that a team called ‘Australia’ will be playing cricket somewhere. It’s not even as dense a programme as it could have been: a year ago, red and white ball cricket against Afghanistan was in the mix, but that’s…ahem….been quietly shelved.

It makes almost no sense to preview such an endless summer, so completely hedged about by caveats would any such forecasts be. This time last year we anticipated Australia’s edge in the Ashes arising from that faithful quartet of Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon, who in the end barely played together; as they’re back again, a year older, one is invited to speculate for how long, and what reliance can be placed on a younger generation who spend most of their time in the medicos’ hands. A broken finger here and a back spasm there, such as the one just suffered by Josh Inglis, and pretty soon we’re looking at the next batter off the rank too. None of the candidates inspires confidence.

Such is the way of it nowadays: scarce are the occasions when any team takes the field with its first choice XI. On Saturday, despite the absolute dominion of their board over their cricketers, India start a series against Sri Lanka absent seven key players including Jasprit Bumrah. So stretched are England, meanwhile, that they have gathered a sixteen for their next Test engagement, with the first opportunity to replace Ben Stokes going to….checks notes….Dan Lawrence? Because he bowls some part-time spin? Oh, and Ollie Pope earns a recall, despite being unable to hit the ball off the square, but who may now play ahead of Emilio Gay. It’s a wonder Jason Arday hasn’t been called up. He must have made a few hundreds at least….