The Great Escape
12 Things I Learned After The Black Caps Clung On In Kanpur
Even on a bad day, test cricket compels me to burden you with “thoughts”. Yesterday wasn’t a bad day.
It was a very, very good day.
As the haze, smog and a setting sun got together in Kanpur to shave a few overs off the first test between New Zealand and India it quickly became apparent that we had just watched something special.
I mean… Glenn Maxwell… The Big Show!
So, without labouring the preamble, here are 12 rock-solid things I learned from the first test.*
* Which are absolutely subject to change in the second, which starts on Friday afternoon in Mumbai.
1. Draws are so cool
I was following a game of college football (American) the weekend just gone and a bunch of kids - of Auburn University and University of Alabama to be precise - were dragged through four overtimes to find a winner. I’ve never seen anything so stupid in my life. It should have been a draw, in the end it was a really cheap, manufactured victory.
When New Zealand started the final day at 4-1 on a pitch that frequently had balls skidding through at shin height, the win was only ever fantasy, but regardless it was must-watch cricket. Even when they abandoned all pretence of trying to keep the scoreboard moving, the struggle was fascinating.
To prove that test cricket does really weird things to grown children, I had even drawn up a kind of schedule in my head. All 11 batters had to face, on average, 53 balls. Obviously you don’t want all 11 batsmen to have to do that, but that was the equation. So when Will Young faced only six, someone had to face at least 100 to make up for him. So even batsmen that ostensibly failed, like Tom Blundell (2), had at least done a decent stint by soaking up 38 balls.
All evening I was working out whether they were plus and minus to the schedule, which helped absolutely nobody, including myself.
Test cricket, eh.