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‘What we have learnt’ lists seem to be all the rage at the minute, so in the wake of the day-night Test in Adelaide, and not wanting to miss out on the action, here’s my quintet of points of interest.
2. Peter Nevill and Mitchell Marsh are not Test number six batsmen, but if it has to be one then it should be the former. He played nicely.
3. The ‘Missing in Action’ posters regarding Josh Hazlewood’s recent tour of England can be taken down. He’s back and in some style.
4. See what a bit of grass on the pitch can produce? Three days or not, that was a good, gripping contest and far better to watch than the WACA run-fest.
5. Mitchell Johnson could grow a proper, robust ‘tache. His replacement, Peter Siddle, cannot. Shave it off Peter before someone sees you.
You may have noticed that my number one thing we learnt has been left to the end, and there is a very good reason for that.
1. Nathan Lyon is my new favourite cricketer
Not for his solid and effective contributions as an off-spinner, not for his rags-to-riches groundsman to Test player back story and not for the fact he comes across as a good fella.
He’s top of my list because he managed to get away with the most blatant of edges and as someone who never walked – “You only walk when you miss the f****** bus” as my Wallsend colleague Dave Edwards delighted in telling me back in my Newcastle grade cricket days – I take a certain perverse kind of pleasure in such an occurrence.
Anyone who has stood their ground, been let off, and not experienced a brief sense of unbridled elation hasn’t lived (in cricketing terms at least). But enough about that and back to Lyon.
I was a bit late to the incident itself and was only alerted to its presence by the inevitable outpouring of outrage on social media. In many an instance, the argument for or against centres around which team the respective individual supports. Have a look at Twitter following a disputed goal in the English Premier League and you’ll see exactly where I’m coming from.
But in the case of Australia’s number 10, every comment, with barely an exception, condemned the decision made by Nigel Llong in the third umpire’s cubicle.
In black and white terms – rather ironic given the fact exhibit A in the prosecution’s case was a stark, front-on black and white hotspot image – Lyon was out. The evidence was clear cut and there was no room for interpretation. The ball hit the bat, the ball was caught by the fielder.
Yes? No!
Llong’s assertion that the hot spot, on a bat extended out in front of the batsman, raised above the ground and with no shrapnel in the immediate vicinity, “could have been anything” was so laughable as to be unfunny.
Yes, Nigel, it could’ve been anything just as that light in the sky ‘could’ be a UFO and not a passing aeroplane. However, on closer inspection and with, and I’m going out on a limb here, the benefit of countless television replays and dedicated technology, it shouldn’t have taken the finest of minds to conclude that the mark was caused by the ball.
And if any other factors were to be considered, the sight of the batsman walking off the field once the review process was instigated may have been something of a giveaway.
DRS has had its moments, and it wouldn’t take a great deal of research to formulate a hall of shame, but this was the best, hands down.
Let’s not go down the ‘it cost New Zealand the game’ route because one variable in a cast of thousands does not form a definitive argument and let’s celebrate it for what it was – a batsman getting away with blue murder.
And one can only hope, as this is being written, an entrepreneur somewhere across the Tasman Sea is in the process of printing up some ‘Nathan Lyon is a s**t bloke’ t-shirts.