- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
The fourth Test between Australia and India ended in a draw. More importantly, after the Clarke-Kohli series ended 1-0, the Smith-Dhoni series ended 1-0, we had the Smith-Kohli series end here 0-0, with the Indians fighting back strongly.
Here are the ratings for the final Test of the summer.
Ashton Agar
Grade: B-
One of the most exciting moments of the fourth Test took place several days before it began when Ashton Agar was added to the Australian squad. This was the final straw for MS Dhoni, who felt that if the Australians weren’t going to take the series seriously, he was going to retire.
Personally, I think Dhoni over-reacted. It seems much more likely to me that Darren Lehmann was just having a bit of fun. I fully expect Boof to continue to surprise Ashton Agar with unexpected Test selection at random points throughout the next 15 years. Like, when Agar’s 33 and working in marketing for BUPA: “Hey, Ashton, put down that 3D-printed lung and get to the KFCG immediately.”
Still, if the selectors were going to add Agar to the squad to bolster the bowling, they should have doubled down on the idea and selected the following XI:
Glenn Maxwell (c, w)
Mitchell Johnson
Mitchell Starc
James Pattinson
Ryan Harris
Pat Cummins
Peter Siddle
Jackson Bird
Nathan Lyon
Josh Hazlewood
Ashton Agar
Now, that’s a team.
Richard Kettleborough
Grade: F
One of the highlights of any series featuring India is the potential for their batsman to be wrongly dismissed and for everybody else to yell ‘review it’ at them. Never gets old.
While there were a few opportunities to pounce on such errors this series, there were nowhere near as many as one would hope, thanks primarily to the number one ranked umpire Richard Kettleborough.
Over and over again, slow motion replays and Eagle Eye and hotspot and real time snicko showed that virtually every tight decision Kettleborough made was the right one. It was very reassuring to see DRS technology prove the extremely high accuracy rate of Kettleborough’s decisions.
It makes one wonder if we could somehow use him to also prove the reverse is true to the BCCI.
Sir Donald Bradman
Grade: C
Such was the consistency of Steve Smith’s batting this series that he eventually overtook Sir Donald Bradman’s record for most runs in an Australian-Indian series.
Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. It’s about time that desperate showoff was wiped from the record books. The SCG scoreboard celebrated Smith’s achievement by duly showing him above Bradman on the overall run tally made while playing for the Border-Gavaskar trophy.
Which does, of course, imply that Bradman once played for a trophy named after apparent time travellers. Something that Smith, as far as I’m aware, is yet to do. So looks like the Don gets to hang around the record books a little longer yet.
Batting pitches
Grade: D
This Sydney pitch was made for batting, with more than 1500 runs scored for the loss of only 30 wickets.
In addition to Smith’s Bradmanesque antics, Chris Rogers continued a streak of scores above 50, securing his spot for the foreseeable future. After all, where are the young colour-blind batsmen threatening to replace him? I’d like to think that he’ll continue on to the age of 60, when he’ll celebrate by going on a similar spree of scores above 60.
David Warner leapt high with a century, prompting speculation about whether his celebratory leap might achieve escape velocity if he ever scored a Test double century. Shane Watson made 81 in his first innings and immediately got people talking about ‘dead rubber runs’, just as his job description demands. Ryan Harris was briefly on target for the fastest double century in Test match history. But only briefly. And so on and so on and so on.
For India, Kohli made his own inevitable sublime century. KL Rahul also chipped in with a hundred of his own. Heck, the wicket was so easy to bat on at this stage that players were able to comically fall over in the middle of the pitch and not be run out. A true batsman’s paradise.
Spidercam
Grade: C-
But, of course, the main talking point of this Test will forever be Spidercam, which successfully distracted Steve Smith from taking a skied top edge during one of the interminable batting marathons of the first three days. This prompted immediate media outrage, particularly from such infamously anti-Spidercam journals as J. Jonah Jameson’s Daily Bugle.
Older fans took a more measured view, recalling the previous time that Spidercam was blamed for messing up a vital catch. This was Spidercam in his secret identity, of course, but the Pakistan team still haven’t forgiven umpire Peter Parker for not giving Justin Langer out at Bellerive in 1999.
So, Spidercam. Hero or menace? You decide.