The sliding doors of Test cricket

We’re well into the final day of the final Test of a gripping series.

Australia won the first Test and India won the second. The third Test ended in an exhilarating stalemate. Now both teams are pressing for victory.

India are 3-194. Their improbable target of 328 is still distant but within sight. The outcome of both the Test match and the series is so finely balanced that the result may turn on whether a single hurled ball hits the seam and deviates or whether it follows the trajectory the batsman expected. Sitting at home, in another state, but wary of the butterfly effect, I hold my breath as each testing delivery is released.

Now Nathan Lyon flights a well directed off spinner towards Rishabh Pant’s off stump. The pugnacious, pugilistic Pant skips towards the twirling ball and unwinds into a whirling lofted drive. But the leather ball grips the leathery pitch and, evading Pant’s whooshing willow, leaps towards keeper Tim Paine’s impatient gloves.

Mimicking the ball’s jesting path, my heart grips and leaps too, until I see that the ball has evaded Paine’s gloves as well and is disappearing towards the boundary rope.

It’s a sliding doors moment.

(Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

Had Paine clutched the ball and whipped off the bails before Pant’s gyrating bat had completed its rapid 360-degree circuit back to the protection of the ground beyond the crease, India would have been vulnerable at 4-194, with 134 runs still to chase down and only 30-odd overs remaining.

Did Paine’s missed stumping change the outcome? Without a DeLorean and flux capacitor, we’ll never know.

But that is the beauty of Test cricket. So often, the intrigue in the contest is what might have happened but didn’t.

Every tremulous innings is a house of teetering cards. Every quavering innings hangs from a quivering thread.

Should every swinging, seaming or spinning ball catch the edge of the blade and fly to a safe pair of hands, even a seemingly strong batting line-up can end in decimation and disaster. Australia discovered that at Trent Bridge in 2015, when they were humiliated for just 60.

India learned the same lesson in Adelaide in this series when they were skittled for a mere 36. Yet in both instances, had just one searching ball missed the edge or had the chance flown past an outstretched hand to safety, the batsmen may have settled, the bowlers may have tired and the batting may have become easier. That’s all it takes. One batsman to settle in. And then the calamity is avoided.

During the recent Indian series, the Australians started Day 5 in both Sydney and Brisbane with genuine hope in their hearts of securing a decisive victory. But for long, dispiriting hours on both days, Cheteshwar Pujara stood defiantly at the crease and defended both his wicket and the different teammates to come in behind him should his deeply-prized wicket fall.

He knew that Test cricket, more than any other sport, is a game about what might happen. So he accepted the less-than-glamorous, but hugely critical, role of ensuring that his wicket – the wicket that might presage a collapse – was not taken early. Had he failed in his endeavour, the outcome of both Tests may have been different.

(Photo by Saeed KHAN / AFP via Getty Images)

Like Pujara, Ben Stokes knew when he entered the arena on Day 3 of the Headingley Test in 2019 that his job that evening was to prevent what threatened to happen. His sole task was to survive until stumps. Runs didn’t matter. Provided he was alive in the morning, tomorrow would take care of itself.

And so, he only scored three runs from his first 73 balls. That epic final day of Test cricket in Leeds was replete with late sliding doors moments: the ball evading an outfielder’s hopeful hands to fly for six, an unwise DRS review, a muffed run-out chance, and an LBW shout erroneously denied.

Though less alluring, however, the critical sliding doors moment occurred the previous evening when Stokes resolved to simply survive until the next morning. Had he failed, the gladiatorial tussle that played out the next day – culminating in an epic English victory, which still stings – would never have occurred.

Test cricket is a game that can convulse, at any moment, in an unexpected direction like a vicious wrist-spinning googly. Or it might not, in which case it proceeds with the pleasantness of a summer breeze. But there are always storm clouds lurking beyond the horizon.

And that is why we cricket tragics sit though slow periods of play. Some of the action does not manifest itself in action. As the shadows grow long and the dusk gathers, two quick wickets can always re-cast the shape and length of the game’s majestic, soaring arc. And equally the batsmen holding on until stumps can always re-direct that sublime arc in another direction.

I love this game with such a deep, abiding, indomitable passion. Even when mourning the loss of a series, which besides a sliding door or two, we should have won.