As Et Al arrived at Great Barrier Reef Arena today, Josh Inglis and Matthew Renshaw were in the nets. Inglis was facing Scott Boland, in a duel of the non-combatants. Renshaw, meanwhile, was ‘on the wanger’ - batting coach Mike Di Venuto was providing a succession of throwdowns with the dog stick.
The reasons weren’t far to seek. Having the day before been dismissed trying to work a delivery from middle and off to leg, Renshaw was straining to groove a straight bat forward stroke, chin in and elbow up. Every now and again, he would emerge for consultation and encouragement, continuing to mime the shot. Until, at last, it was time to go - and return to another Test match, the thirteenth of our century, the fourth in Australia’s last twenty home outings, to end in two days. Worse, in fact: for what five days had been allocated, five sessions sufficed. At 750 balls, it was the shortest in nearly a century.
Life expectancy is declining. So is the life expectancy of Test matches. In both cases, a variety of pathologies have been posited. The difference is, as this interlude in the nets hinted, that we seem to understand the problem - flakey, brittle, overambitious batting. It’s just that, in the instant, we seem incapable of doing anything about it. We’ll get it right next time - yet somehow never do. Four-day Test cricket has had its advocates a long time. Sometimes it’s as though they have achieved their ends by stealth.
The irony is, as Et Al noted yesterday, that red ball batting’s white alter ego is surfing the crest of a wave. After four decades in which the landmark seemed like the four-minute mile, a dozen double hundreds have been peeled off in a decade and a half of ODIs. A fifteen-year-old has hit 148 sixes in forty T20s. At times in the Indian Premier League, bowlers seem powerless to stem the tsunami of boundaries; when bowlers return to Test cricket, however, they start a tsunami of their own.
Maybe, before getting too apocalyptic, we should do more to celebrate the latter. Mitchell Starc makes an interesting case study. For a long time, Starc was actually typecast as a specialist in white ball cricket. Those pin point yorkers in the death overs eclipsed anything he achieved with the red ball. Then it’s as though he intuited the game’s cleaving. He passed up the IPL serially, gave up T20Is permanently. Test bowling required more of him physically, but offered more satisfaction spiritually.