The tri-series in the West Indies rolls on, as all tri-series seem to do, despite their clumsy, triangular nature that would seem to impede comfortable rolling. This time around, it was the two visiting teams, Australia and South Africa, facing off.
Here are the ratings for Game 3.
Resting Mitchell Starc
Grade: D
The Australians opted to rest Mitchell Starc for this game, after just one match back from injury.
Or perhaps, having played without him for the last six months, they simply forgot he was available to select.
Or maybe they dropped him from the side.
Who knows? All three options seem equally implausible.
Still, they did select Mitchell Marsh who, startlingly, went into this game with the best batting average in the Australian team, with 39.95, just ahead of Steve Smith (39.40), David Warner (38.70) and Aaron Finch (38.13).
This assumes, of course, that you exclude Josh Hazlewood, who has yet to be dismissed in this form of the game and therefore has an infinite batting average.
Cartwheeling stumps
Grade: B+
After South Africa steadily made their way to 3-97 in the 22nd over, Nathan Coulter-Nile’s reintroduction into the attack saw AB de Villiers and JP Duminy both bowled, with the stumps cartwheeling out of the ground.
It’s always a fun sight and makes one wonder why the mad geniuses at the Zing Bail Institute haven’t also invented Pogo Stumps that shoot from the pitch and into the air at the slightest touch of a cricket ball.
Hazlewood was sufficiently inspired by the sight of Coulter-Nile’s stump-dislodging deliveries that he also repeated the trick when he returned to take Wayne Parnell’s wicket.
But poor old Glenn Maxwell, lacking both pace and those Pogo Stumps that all the fans are talking about, had to settle for merely bowling man of the match Farhaan Behardien between his legs for 62, as South Africa staggered to 9-189 from their 50 overs.
The South African attack
Grade: B+
Defending such a meagre total, the South African attack stepped up. And then stepped forward for several paces. And then stepped through the crease, bowling deliveries for which the Australians had no answer.
First, Parnell trapped Warner LBW for just one off five deliveries. Usman Khawaja soon followed, bowled by Kagiso Rabada (working palindrome: ‘a dab arm, I’m Rabada!’) for two off seven.
A curious decision by Khawaja to abandon the undismissable and dreamy, godlike batting that had worked for him so well during the last Australian summer. But I’m sure he knows best.
Parnell struck again to remove Smith, who used his legally given captain’s right of primae reviewus to waste the only review Australia had. Disappointing for Maxwell, who could have really used that review when he was struck by a ball missing leg stump by a long way, but which was given out when debutant Tabraiz Shamsi shouted with quite astonishing volume.
You can’t spell Shamsi without ‘sh’, but after listening to his incessant, deafening appeals throughout the Australian innings, it appears nobody has ever thought to tell him that.
Aaron Finch
Grade: B
With the rest of the batsmen falling all around him, Aaron Finch had suddenly been given a chance to make a 150-score in a 190 run-chase. Not something you see every day. Or, indeed, ever.
After some initial trepidation, where he was almost run out twice – caught once and should have been given out LBW on at least a couple of occasions – Finch decided to get into the spirit of things and give it a crack.
But when Nathan Lyon joined him at the crease and ruined it by being the only other batsman until that point comfortable enough to reach double figures, Finch lost interest in the near-impossible feat, and was soon caught by De Villiers off the bowling of Aaron Phangiso for 72 (103).
Comedy
Grade: F
Ultimately, though, this was a disappointing comedy run chase from Australia. It’s not enough in the modern comedy cricket game to merely fail when chasing 190 off 50 overs. That might have been sufficiently amusing a decade ago, but not these days.
For a while, there was a chance that Australia might have managed a total with no batsmen in double figures, as Finch approached a century while everybody else fell around him in single digits. That would have worked.
Alternatively, Finch could have carried his bat in a losing run chase. An oldie but a goodie.
The combination of rain and South Africa is always good for a laugh, and a brief rain delay here gave last-innings pair Lyon and Hazlewood an opportunity for some late hitting that might have denied South Africa a bonus point. Or, even more hilariously, the victory.
But, again, nothing. Just the final wicket falling with the score on 142. So many missed comic opportunities.
Thank goodness we had umpires out there, guessing wildly on every LBW appeal. But let’s hope the players lift next game so we don’t have to be so reliant on the match officials to provide all the chuckles.
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