The Liebke Report Card: 'All Test cricket to take place in New Zealand from now on'

Before the fourth Test started at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, a couple of Prime Ministers (including one that coincidentally had the same name as the stadium!) were given a free ride around the playing arena in the back of a car that had giant cardboard cricket bats protruding from the back of it for some reason. 

It was easily the most interesting thing to happen in this Test.

Here are the ratings for the fourth Test between India and Australia.

Non-Baggy Green

Grade: D-

Australia won the toss and, on a flat pitch, Usman Khawaja batted serenely under no threat from any of the Indian bowlers, eventually reaching a century. 

Later, Cameron Green – the biggest puppy in world cricket – also scored his first century for Australia, cutting Ravindra Jadeja for four to bring up the ton.

Good puppy. Good giant puppy. 

Probably the only disappointment was that the tall-rounder didn’t bring up the milestone while wearing a baggy green. Or, for that matter, wearing clothes a couple of sizes too big for him, so that he was a baggy Green. Or, ideally, both.

Ah well, maybe next Test century.

(And, yes, we know it’s hard to find clothes a couple of sizes too big for Cameron Green, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try!)

Cameron Green of Australia celebrates after scoring his century. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)

Secret Stump Sessions

Grade: B+

With all the effortless run-scoring, it was the kind of Test where you could easily doze off for a session or two and feel as if you didn’t miss anything.

Why, at one point on, I want to say, day twelve or thirteen, I watched an entire episode of Australian Survivor and returned to find the same partnership still going. 

Proper Test cricket. It stands in stark contrast to those dreadful Bazball Tests, where even a twenty-minute doze sees you running the risk of waking up in a transformed hellscape where everything you’ve previously known is gone forever. 

Still, if you did want to make an innings more frantic, why not have a secret stump session, in which the fielding team is allowed to give the off stump to a secret fielder to hide in the back of their shirt. During that time, the batter is only permitted to leave the ball if they can tell the umpire or opposition captain who has the missing stump.

Batters are always banging on about knowing where their off stump is. Let them prove it.

Commentary Nonsense

Grade: A

With the cricket wonderfully sedate, the commentators tried hard to capture our attention.

Matthew Hayden attempted a Ferrari analogy that was highly detailed but went nowhere (maybe because of a busted carburettor? I don’t know much about cars). 

I’m quite certain Hayden knows infinitely more than I do about batting in a Test match and yet every word he utters somehow makes me doubt that self-evident truth. A gift.

As mental as Hayden was, however, Sunil Gavaskar trumped him effortlessly, at one point delving deep into Mark Waugh’s playbook and pulling an ‘I haven’t seen much of him’ on Steve Smith.

Wonderful stuff from Gavaskar. Wish he’d expanded it further.

“This Kohli chap. What’s his go?”

“That Stokes fellow? Is he a bowler or a batter? A bit of both? Huh. Good for him.”

And so on and so forth.

With bat dominating ball for the first time this series, however, it also finally gave the India commentators an opportunity to indulge in their favourite pastime of gushing with lyrical enthusiasm over the strokeplay of the batters. 

Example piece of commentary:

*Batter hits a boundary*

Indian commentator: “This sublime genius, his unparalleled skill giving us a glimpse into the heavenly realms, the crack of the bat a transcendent song welcoming us into a higher state of bliss, the timing of his shot a hint of the clockwork nature of the cosmos, ticking along with the orderly beauty of a wisdom greater than we dare contemplate.”

Australian commentator: “Yes, but also crap bowling.”

Virat Kohli bats. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)

Muscle Hiccups

Grade: D

With no other way to dismiss the Indian batters, Australia reached into their Cricket Australia-endorsed bag of tricks, and pulled out the rarely used tactic of letting their opponents bat for so long they got cramp.

Ruthless stuff from the Australians, but also effective stuff as Shubman Gill eventually succumbed for 128 after suffering from the ol’ muscle hiccups.

Later, Virat Kohli was also tricked into some cramp after scoring a mere 186 runs that denied Australia any chance of victory. 

India finished their first innings 91 runs ahead of Australia with just fifteen minutes or so remaining on the fourth day. Should the six days lost earlier in the series have been added to the end of this Test?

It would still have been a draw, of course, but at least we’d have seen, I dunno, Mitchell Starc and Todd Murphy put on 200 together.

Nightwatch(Kuhne)man(n)

Grade: B+

Heading into the final day, then, India had one eye on the New Zealand-Sri Lanka Test taking place simultaneously.

For India to definitively join Australia in the World Test Championship Final, they needed to either win this Test or have Sri Lanka not win their Test. 

This was multi-dimensional cricket, across different hemispheres and only partially shared time zones. A fascinating contest that required serious concentration and thought.

Or, if you were Australia and already qualified for the final, you just had some fun and opened your batting with Matt Kuhnemann as nightwatchman. A nightwatchkuhnemann!

Can a man named Kuhnemann score a Test century? Perhaps, but not this Test, robbed of an opportunity by an LBW that Travis Head refused to let him review.

Nevertheless, with New Zealand sneaking home against Sri Lanka in a final ball, two-wicket thriller (just a week or so after a gripping one-run win after following on against England), neither India nor Australia could be bothered manufacturing anything in this Test, and it petered out to a tedious draw.

All Test cricket to take place in New Zealand from now on, I say.