It’s the games within the game that make Test cricket such an intriguing spectacle. On the way through Centennial Park to watch the first day of the third Test between Australia and South Africa, I heard a mother speaking English with a Russian accent explain to her young daughter: “They’ve won the first two Tests, and even if they lose this one …”
It was near 10 am on a warmish but overcast day and streams of fans were striding through the park on the way to the SCG.
Many of them were wearing the distinctive green and gold shirts, the sporting colours of South Africa.
The men were brawny and their wives or partners were blondes, some of whom were wearing the rodeo hats I last saw in Montmartre in the week leading up to the 2007 Rugby World Cup final in Paris.
A couple of men in their 30s bustled past me. They were locked in what seemed to be a serious conversation. The names ‘Hilditch’ and ‘Symonds’ were spat out, a bit like a kid spitting out a lolly that had gone off after its used-by date had been well passed.
Australia won the toss and were batting by the time I found my seat in the magnificent Victor Trumper Stand.
It was clear that the crowd was riding every ball faced by Matthew Hayden, as if they were willing him not to be thrown off. Hayden’s first confident defensive stroke was greeted with a roar of applause that it other years greeted his smashing sixes off the new ball bowlers.
An even greater roar greeted Hayden getting off the mark.
He tried to steal a single, then dashed back to the crease before the throw hit his wicket, and then he scampered away like a kid getting out of school after a long day at his desk.
Meanwhile Simon Katich was playing a blinder of an innings, stroking the ball around the lush outfield and scoring 47 in 53 balls before unexpectedly getting out.
One flick to the square leg boundary had the look of Chares MaCartney about it, “dismissing the ball from his presence,” in Neville Cardus’ immortal phrase.
I have a theory, which was developed when I was an opening batsman in times very distant, that openers who are struggling tend to relax and play better when their in-form partner is dismissed before they are.
Was it my imagination or was it reality, but Hayden started to look almost frisky in his stroke play and his running between the wickets after Katich was dismissed.
Just when everyone had started to relax – including Hayden – and the thought germinated that perhaps, maybe, possibly Hayden was on his way to a redemptive century, the beleagured opener slashed at a ball, feet planted in his original stance, and the ball squirted from the inside of the bat onto his stumps.
Hayden threw back his head in anguish.
A gasping, almost sobbing sound resounded around the ground and Hayden started his long walk back to the pavilion, and presumably out of Test cricket.
In 2007 Hayden averaged 54 in Tests. But there were only 4 Tests.
In 11 Tests in 2008 he averaged 32. And in the SMH on the morning of the Test, Peter Roebuck published the damning statistics that Hayden’s Test average in England was only 34, compared with his overall average of 51.
You would expect someone like Philip Hughes, who should be his successor if the selectors adopt the Australian way of promoting brilliant and gifted youngsters, to average more than 34 in England.
Then Ricky Ponting came in, immaculate as usual with his collar up to protect his neck from the ultra violet rays.
This was an unnecessary precaution, in this case, as he was bowled first ball. After his dismissal Ponting walked down the pitch and solemnly prodded down the guilty spot that made the ball deviate on to the inside edge of his bat.
Ian Chappell often enunciates the theory that if a bowling side gets three wickets on the first session of play in a Test, they will generally win it.
The South Africans had got two of their third wickets. Could they get the third?
Hayden and Michael Hussey played out time to lunch, with Hussey making several journeys along the pitch to pat down parts of it, but mainly to ensure that no more overs were going to be bowled.
Hussey once had a Test average of 76. It’s come down this year to 59. His first class average is 53 (Hayden’s first class average is 51).
It’s no surprise to me that Hussey is failing to match his Test average in innings after innings this season. He is not a 59 average player.
An average around the high 40s and low 50s is more likely where he’ll finish off.
When the new Test player, Alexander McDonald, came into bat at 4 – 130 there was generous applause, even though he is a Victorian. He looked the part: tall, lean and springy of step.
But were the looks deceiving?
Here is a chronicle of his first series of balls until he scored his first runs in Test cricket.
1. He is hit on the thigh pad, a bit late with his shot. Sympathetic groans from the crowd.
2. He is hit again on the body.
3. The crowd ‘ooohaahs’ as the ball is snicked into the slips along the ground.
4. The ball is blocked to silly mid-off.
5. The ball is stroked quite elegantly into the covers.
6. The ball is pushed back to the bowler.
7. Another nice stroke to mid-on.
A woman sitting behind me, who is going through agonies every ball McDonald faces without scoring a run, says to her friend: “How many points has he got yet?”
8. Just as she is asking this question, the ground erupts in an avalanche of sound as McDonald pushes a 4 through the slips. The woman behind me screams like a banshee.
McDonald then ducks into a bouncer, is struck on the helmet and the helmet squirts off his head revealing red-top carrot hair.
The male friend of the banshee-ing woman declares authoritatively as McDonald snicks a ball and is dismissed: “This chap is not good enough for Test cricket … Oh dear, this will be all over in four days.”
In fact, Australia lost two wickets each session to be 267 for 6 at the close of play, after Michael Clarke and Mitchell Johnson had launched a mini-counter attack in the fading light.
It had been a fascinating day’s play.
I walked back through Centennial Park listening to Jim Maxwell, one of the excellent ABC cricket commentators, interviewing Neil Harvey. Harvey, as he did when he batted so assertively, was adamant that Matthew Hayden was doing an Allan Border and staying on far too long.
In rugby we call this kind of talk the third half of the game. There was so much to savour from the first day of play: the spectator in Bay 13 soundly aroused like a sleeping giant who every hour or so would stand up and bellow, ‘Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!’; the beautiful controlled and menacing fast bowling of Dale Steyn; the unexpected dismissal of Ponting; Hayden giving away his flat-wicket bully game for a survival first style; the casual elegance of Michael Clarke’s stroke play.
The recently-deceased playwright Harold Pinter once wrote: “I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth – certainly greater than sex, although sex isn’t bad either.”
That Pinter could make that assessment, despite being married to the brilliant authoress and bee-lipped beauty, Lady Antonia Fraser, says a lot about the enchantment Test cricket, especially at the sacred site of the SCG.
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