The Fast Show

GH on another rapid Test

Two-hundred and ninety-five runs one way, ten wickets the other: the 2024-25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy is not fluctuating so much as oscillating. With players flaming one another on and off the field, it’s starting to reverberate too.

This is an era of high-impact cricket, result pitches and World Test Championship points with big margins to go with it. An hour before Australia’s openers had disposed of formalities, England had beaten New Zealand by 323 runs, having duffed them up by eight wickets a week ago. Ben Stokes’s men had themselves come off losing by 152 runs and nine wickets to a Pakistan team they had previously defeated by an innings and 147 runs. Phew.

Number one and two on a championship table should by rights be evenly matched, but India and Australia have this summer each taken 292 and 168 overs of available 450s to blow the other away: they have, in other words, effectively crammed two alternating Tests into the span of one. Anyone for momentum? We are in a post-Newtonian cricket age.