A Day of Mysterious Motives

What was the deal here? wonders GH

Storms outside, brainstorms inside. This last day of a Test match with an indeterminate countdown clock was one of the oddest in memory - not quite Brisbane 1950, but in this era of rationalism and resource management perhaps as near as we might come.

When there is scope for cricket but not really for a result, cricketers talk of ‘junk time’. Sometimes it’s fun: after all, junk runs and wickets count as much as those wrested from the fiery furnace. But today felt like junk time that dare not speak its name, which none of Pat Cummins’s Australians could quite find a constructive way to approach.