When I listen to Greg Matthews call cricket, I have a general rule not to think too much about anything he says. Doing so can involve deconstructing non-sequiturs and fallacies, and that stuff can fry your brain.
With all this in mind, however, and with great trepidation, I did as much early on the first day of this Sydney Test.
‘Mo’ had just joined Tim Lane and Waqar Younis in Fairfax’s box and in reference to Pakistan’s limp start, said something along the lines of, “You can lose a Test in a session, but you can’t win one.”
The comment was delivered with Mo’s usual pretence for funkiness and chutzpah, but also with the sageness of a tribal elder.
Indeed, Mo came across as cricket’s version of Yoda!
The comment went unchallenged by Tim and Waqar, but at the same time, I didn’t feel that that meant they acknowledged it. It seemed more Tim sharing my general rule and Waqar not backing his command of English to argue otherwise.
Either way, “You can lose a Test in a session, but you can’t win one” didn’t strike me as a time-honoured cricketing adage. It struck me as the kind of half-arsed thing Mo can say without thinking things through.
So let’s do that.
Presumably, Mo was saying that you can play so badly in a session that it can cost you a game, but you can never play so well that you can win one.
That doesn’t tie in with Newton’s third law: for every action, there is equal and opposite reaction.
If a team can play so badly that it can be decisive, then surely it can play well enough to gain the same effect?
Consider a Test where both teams have been well organised. Their batsmen have played responsibly and their bowlers have been disciplined. Neither team could be criticised for losing its focus for a second. Indeed, it’s been session after session of good, hard cricket.
Then one player does something exceptional to break the game open. It wasn’t that the other team played poorly; it was that this batmen or bowler was extraordinary. In one session, the player’s brilliance tilted the balance in his team’s favour. In one session, Brian Lara or Dennis Lillee dug deep to swing momentum their country’s way.
Is that not a characteristic we’ve seen in many, many Tests?
I guess Mo was really aiming to contextualise just how costly dropping a session can be. Pakistan seemed dispirited after their implosion on the last day in Melbourne and Mo’s analysis was that they’d better get their act together fast. And he was 100 per cent on the money about that. Pakistan were a rabble in that first session and you couldn’t help but feel that it has already cost them this Test.
But it’s a fallacy to suggest that brilliant cricket isn’t as decisive as poor cricket. If it were the case, the game would be defined more by ducks and ‘none fors’ than it would triple hundreds and Laker’s 19 in a match.
Build your own fantasy cricket team and put it to the test with Draftstars daily fantasy competitions. Pick your match, pick your team and watch the points roll in to take out cash prizes on each match. What are you really gambling with? Set a deposit limit.
It seems franchise cricket has forgotten about the great battle between bat and ball. In fact, this season in the IPL there is no battle at all.
The mammoth rise of Jake Fraser-McGurk - his enormous potential and the destructive shot-making that he possesses makes him a very tempting option.
Marcus Stoinis produced his first IPL century and it was a beauty. He went 6, 4, 4, 4 to finish off the Lucknow Super…
Xavier Bartlett has been permission to extend his cricketing education with a spell of T20s in England, playing in the Blast competition for Kent…
Three-Test spinner Matthew Kuhnemann has signed with Tasmania in a bid for red-ball game time ahead of Australia's tour of Sri Lanka next summer.…
Last week, you read about the Matt XI, a compilation of the best cricketers ever to represent the name Matt. And to be fair,…
