With injuries to Cameron Green, Mitchell Starc and Scott Boland’s statue, Australia brought in three replacements for the third Test: Ashton Agar, Josh Hazlewood and the man putting ‘positive test’ back into ‘positive Test cricket’, Matt Renshaw.
Here’s the report card for the third Test of the Australia v South Africa series.
Grade: C
Despite the changes to Australia’s team, most of the first couple of days followed a familiar pattern.
Captain Pat Cummins finagled his way to another toss win, David Warner was out cheaply and Marnus Labuschagne and Usman Khawaja batted out the rest of the first day.
Sure, at one point, South Africa had Labuschagne caught at slip, only for the third umpire to overrule it on replay for some reason. But otherwise, pretty standard fare.
Later in the Test, Steve Smith also had a pair of slip catches denied by third umpire Richard Kettleborough, who after reprieving Labuschagne felt morally obliged to reciprocate the favour. And then do so again.
This is why neutral umpires simply don’t work. A partisan home umpire would have just given the thumbs up to the Smith catches, sent the South African batters on their way, had a bit of a laugh about the injustice of it all and got on with the match.
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Still, Ashton Agar playing Test cricket and seemingly fair slips catches not being given out? Were we back in the 2013 Ashes?
Grade: A-
Labuschagne celebrated his reprieve in the first innings by asking for a lighter from the dressing room.
Was he going to fire up a stogy and blow smoke in the South Africa slip cordon’s eyes in obnoxious celebration? Was he going to toast a sandwich he had hidden in his pocket and then munch on it between deliveries?
No, it turned out he was going to melt down part of his helmet. Nobody was game to ask why, but I think it’s safe to assume he’d noticed that Australia and South Africa don’t have a properly branded series award (a la the Border-Gavaskar Trophy or the Warne-Muralitharan Trophy), and he, as the modern-day Venn diagram intersection of the two nations, had decided the ashes of his helmet was the most fitting way to fill the role.
A nice idea. But not as nice an idea as honouring one of the historical greats from each team: former 1980s Australian batter Kepler Wessels and former 1990s South Africa captain Kepler Wessels.
The Wessels-Wessels Vessel. Now, that’s a cup worth playing for.
Grade: D-
Even after Labuschagne was out the ball before bad light wiped out the end of the first day, Steve Smith came in to combine for a double-century partnership on the second day alongside Khawaja.
The light, by the way, was so bad that it stopped play for a few hours. A remarkably long time considering the speed of light is 300,000 kilometres per second. How ill-behaved is this light that it can’t even obey one of the fundamental constants of the universe?
This miscreant light should have passed over the ground in about five ten-millionths of a second by my reckoning. Or is Einstein just an idiot? The Sydney Test yet again raising a lot of questions.
After the bad light, we had rain throughout the third day, and then the fourth began with the sun shining and yet no cricket taking place. What was going on?
There were rumours of a wet outfield. Some also spoke of dangerous, muddy patches. Still others suggested the ground curator had stepped out to get a breakfast burrito.
Regardless of the true reason, the fact remained that there was no cricket taking place when it was scheduled to do so. At least when Brisbane gave us a two-day Test match we got a result out of it.
Rain delays play during the 2023 SCG Test. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Grade: B-
Whenever there was no cricket, we had the usual brand of rain filler – Allan Border reminiscing about the time he swore at Craig McDermott, high frame rate slow motion recaps of the first two days’ play set to salacious classical music and, of course, ads for betting companies.
I remain concerned about betting ads on TV, particularly when a declaration is afoot. Do we really want cricket captains to be ‘gambling responsibly’ in closing an innings? Of course not. Take a chance. Open the game up. Gamble irresponsibly.
Fortunately, Cummins was not swayed by the insidious message of the betting companies to take the safe and responsible path. Instead, as soon as the head groundsman returned, wiping the barbecue sauce and egg off the side of his mouth, and decreed that play could start after lunch, the Australian captain immediately declared.
South Africa, therefore, had five sessions to avoid being bowled out twice, while Australia had 475 runs to defend. Bad news for Khawaja, who was left stranded on 195 not out.
Although in stranding terms, this was hardly Matt Damon in The Martian, was it? Pretty sure Khawaja was fine and at no point had to grow potatoes out of his own faeces (pootatoes?).
Heck, if he was really worried about missing out on the double century, maybe he could just borrow the 5 not out from the Test’s resident slapstick clown Renshaw.
Grade: A-
Despite a fearsome spell of Pat Cummins erotica to close out the fourth day, Australia still needed fourteen wickets on the final day to win the Test.
Cummins tried everything to get those wickets. He turned to Travis Head, for he now has a better Test bowling average than Nathan Lyon and is therefore Australia’s best spinner.
He also turned to Agar to open the bowling when South Africa followed on, perhaps under the impression that Dean Elgar had moved fourteen letters further down the alphabet and we therefore might have had bowling from Agar to Zedgar.
Smith and Labuschagne were asked to send down their respective leg spin filth. Cummins also even bowled himself and Hazlewood on occasions.
Ultimately, however, South Africa held on for the draw. It must be said, though, that even when Australia needed eight wickets in the last fifteen overs of the Test, it still didn’t feel like a completely impossible task.
Full credit to the South African batters in this series for instilling such confidence and keeping the series alive to the final hour. As a reward, they can take home Marnus’s melted helmet.
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