T20 feels too recent to have a history, but at the Melbourne Cricket Ground tonight two earlier T20s at the venue did come to mind.
Out swaggered Abishek Sharma, the fresh-faced twenty-five-year-old who has stormed the world’s white ball batting charts, on another search and destroy mission - and for a time, the atmosphere recalled that opening night of revelation in 2009 when David Warner was loosed on the unsuspecting Proteas and I knew that the world had changed because I’d seen James Sutherland in an open-necked shirt.
As his first six carried over cover off Bartlett, Abishek’s bat seemed to describe 450 degrees let alone 360. Seeing Abishek advance, Ellis tried a short ball, only to be sliced to the third man boundary; hoping Abishek would come again, Ellis full, but the batter had stayed home to get under a cover drive over the ring. In a seven-ball trice, Abishek was 23.
At the other end, however, India were recalling their first T20 outing at the G, when they were beaten in less than thirty overs - so early that I remember the Nine commentators promenading the outfield straining to explain how exciting it had all been.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Cricket Et Al to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.