Notes from the Basin III

A short message of 'hope', and an old friend sits down with The BYC

A pinprick of light. Getty Images

AUSTRALIA 383 & 164

NZ 179 & 111 for 3

There has been a lot of cricket crammed into three days.

Not all of it has been of a gold standard but hey, we’re going into day four with, technically, three of the four possible results still available after a fightback of sorts from the hosts.

While Rachin Ravindra (56) and Daryl Mitchell (12) remain, so does the merest flicker of hope.

Nathan Lyon was generous in his praise for the local leftie, saying that Ravindra was “going to be a superstar”, but tempered that by adding that “we’ll crack it” when referencing the batting pair’s resolute defence.

 You wouldn’t bet against Lyon. This pitch has turned sharply and from number eight in the order down New Zealand’s only counter to turn will be hit and hope. The suspicion is we remain much closer to the end of the match than three down suggests.

Still, that we are even discussing flickers of hope and pinpricks of light means that New Zealand have enjoyed their best day. Admittedly that was an extremely low bar, but when Lyon (41) started flicking around the attack this morning, taking three fours in three balls off Tim Southee, things looked bleaker than a Dickens novel.

What price would you have got that Lyon would be Australia’s top scorer and that the chief destroyer in the seam-heavy attack would be Glenn Phillips? The offie gave it a rip and took five. It should have been six (more on that later).

All the platitudes about Phillips’ energy, x-factor and sparkplug qualities have already been exhausted, but what hasn’t really been considered is that underneath the aw-shucks facade, a quality spinner might be lurking. The conditions were helpful, yes, but he turned it a lot and cut back on the junk.

He’s now taken 16 wickets in six tests and in half of New Zealand’s innings in the field, he has not been asked to bowl. That was clearly a mistake here - not the Black Caps’ brains trust’s first or last of this match.

In some respects it has been a disorienting test.

Go back to that first morning when the coin went up and Patrick Cummins called wrong. The crowd cheered because they knew how badly Southee wanted to bowl. Cummins said he wanted to bowl.

The scorecard now says they were the best batting conditions of the match.

The typical Basin ‘greentop’ looks instead like it has been prepared as part of a colab project with Wankhede Stadium¹.