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In recent years, Test cricket has seen a number of successful run chases where the target was a big one – West Indies chased 418, South Africa 414, India 387 and Australia 369.
However, a game wherein many overs are played out in the fourth innings to save a Test match is something which does not happen with regularity.
There are many reasons, one of the most important of which is the advent of T20.
T20 has led to players inventing new shots, shots which could not have been imagined a few years back. However they have somewhere creeped into Test cricket as well.
Batting slowly to save a Test is an art in itself. There have been quite a few exciting draws in the recent years, however in most cases the batting team had an outside chance to win the game. That is because a chance to win provides some kind of motivation.
However when you know that you can at the most save the Test and have no chance to win it, that is when the art of defensive batting comes into play.
In one day cricket and T20s, the number of balls taken for scoring matters the most – the lesser the number of balls used up, the better the innings.
A century off 70 balls is always going to be better than a 100 off 120 balls on the same pitch.
However that is not the case in a Test match.
A fast ton and a slow ton both matter in a Test, depending upon the situation of the game.
The second Test between Australia and South Africa last year was by far one of the best in recent years, because it was had been a long time since a side batted a long fourth innings for a draw.
If that match is analysed from day one, we would find 482 runs were scored on the first day. That was quite blistering and equally blistering was the double ton from skipper Michael Clarke.
However at the end of the Test, Faf Du Plessis’s 110 runs at a strike rate of 29 turned out to be the crucial innings and was an innings equally enjoyable as Clarke’s, though for different reasons.
What that proves is a slow innings can also give joy. Clarke’s innings gave the bowlers the extra time to bowl out the opposition, while the South Africans wanted Du Plessis to play as many balls as possible.
If he had got out scoring 110 in 150 balls, South Africa could have lost the game.
That Test also saw AB De Villiers, an attacking batsman, scoring 33 off 220 deliveries at a strike rate of just 15.
And what an important innings that was!
In fact from among those innings where he scored less than 50, this was perhaps De Villiers’ best innings.
So even a draw can be a great result. And slow batting can be a joy.
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