The Upsetters

GH wonders where it all went...right

The Tigers beat KFC

In cricket, T20 is proverbially the game of upsets, where a lucky toss or one-off feat can tilt the playing field unexpectedly. Test cricket is meant to be the genre where common sense prevails, resources matter, and providence is on the side of the big battalions. Perhaps as a result, Test upsets have a disproportionate impact - it’s like logic itself has been overthrown. The shock of Bangladesh’s victory in Darwin comes partly from acknowledging that it has not - Australia, despite being fresh, at home, at full strength and having choice of innings, were outplayed in every department of the game, in every session, by a cool, calm and collective effort.

There was a paltry crowd for it. The terraces were thinly populated, the corporate area mostly empty - the pace of modern Test cricket makes fourth days hard to sell.

Hello?

That left ample room for soul-searching about Test cricket’s joint inventor losing to one of its newest entrants by time-honoured means: first Bangladesh’s seamers did the job, then their spinners, while their batters played as though they had all the time in the world, which in cricket terms they did. While this was only Bangladesh’s tenth win in seventy-six overseas Tests over twenty-five years, it rewarded their addressing that record - by investing in the coaching wisdom of Phil Simmons, the curating skills of Tony Hemmings, and the pace acumen of Andre Adams then Shaun Tait, the visitors have applied serious thought to what winning on the road entails. Some difficult discussions have been had, some hard choices made. Can the home side now do the same?