Sunday Night Stat Fest Bodes Well for Green

PL: Australia has a record breaking win over South Africa

Andrew Ramsey’s The Wrong Line, published by ABC Books in 2012

Sunday’s ODI saw Australia score its second-highest score, Cam Green score the second-fastest century by an Australian, and three batters score hundreds at the top of the order for the second time in a 50-over game.

Then, when it was time to field, Cooper Connolly becomes the youngest Australian to take five wickets in the format and also finished with the best figures by an Australian spinner in the format.

The 22-year-old’s efforts and South Africa’s lack of effort saw the visitors suffer the biggest loss in that country’s history and Australia’s second biggest margin of victory. For more stats click this link.

We’ll get back to Green’s 47-ball century later. Something is going on there that needs examining, but lets pause for a moment and reflect on a game where Australia scored 431 runs for the loss of just two wickets. Travis Head (142 from 103 deliveries) was spectacular, Mitch Marsh (100 from 106) a little more restrained. The opening pair cracked 10 sixes, then Green added another eight, some of which appeared to be hit over the roof of the Mackay stadium.

It was all good fun, and while the bowling could have been better, there was little the visitors could do to stop the top order hitting through the line on a wicket that held no demons while the sun was up (it appeared more difficult under lights).

Australia set its highest ODI score, 434, batting first against South Africa in Cape Town in March 2006. Nobody had ever seen anything like it, and few expected to ever see it matched again, but as we all know, the home side scored 438 to win that game.

I wasn’t there, but Andrew Ramsey covered for The Australian and later wrote about it in his book The Wrong Line. If you haven’t read it go out and find a copy. It’s one of the best books written about cricket from a journalist’s point of view, and Ramsey’s darkly humorous writing is elite. Rambo, as we call him, wasn’t that fussed with the slog fest that produced over 900 runs.

“The game was quickly dubbed ‘the greatest one-dayer ever played’, an acolade the scoresheet suggests is entirely fitting. The reality, from my press box seat on the fourth tier of the towering southern grandstand, was that it all became a bit of a yawn. A rock-hard pitch, flint-dry conditions, a reduced playing arena and even thinner atmosphere at alitutude conspired to ensure that the ball flew laughable distances every time a batsman fearlessly thrust his front leg down the track and swung with impunity through, or across, the line. With the ball as likely to deviate off the straight as it was to be impeded before South Africa snuck home with a delivery to spare. From the outset, the bowlers were never part of the game. It was on this same inequitable premise that the Twenty20 concept was to conquer the cricket world.”