Cricket marches backwards into the future. It pores over its past to divine its possibilities. As ever more data is collected, ever more patterns are detected, and uncertainty trades at a discount to accountancy. Then reality takes a hand.
The preceding weeks have been dominated by the absences of Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, and thereby the subtraction of their 600-plus Test wickets from Australian aggregates. Joe Root arrived with thirty-nine Test hundreds in his kit bag and was anointed the ‘best batter in the world’ by Marnus Labuschagne, even if England promised ‘balls-to-the-wall’ preparation then played a beer match instead.
Today? Today, it all went to hell. Mitchell Starc took seven for 58, so that Cummins and Hazlewood were hardly missed; Root made 0, but then Labuschagne and Steve Smith, who have been lousy with runs, also failed. In all, nineteen wickets fell for 295 on what was, in all frankness, a very good batting pitch. Bazball, eh? Who knew it was infectious?
It recalled the first day of the last Test summer, which featured seventeen wickets, although it was also a reprise of 2023: England, so freewheeling they might just have returned from Burning Man, versus Australia, like the kids in a classroom of a strict teacher when someone has let off a stink bomb trying hard to maintain composure but finally collapsing in giggles. Oh, and there was us, watching all predictions go crazily astray.