3 minute read
You’ll have no doubt seen that India rushed to a Test victory over Bangladesh in roughly two days’ worth of cricket after only 35 overs were possible over the first three days. It was an incredible performance from the batting line-up in particular, hustling their way to 285-9 in 34.4 overs in their first innings to somehow make victory plausible, against all the odds. Ben Duckett must be very proud of himself.
On one hand we feel bad for picking on Duckett, who clearly can’t hold his motivational rhetoric. Every time he’s exposed to the stuff, he gets a little tipsy, loses a few inhibitions and finds himself going around telling people “the more the better” about fourth innings targets, or that the opposition are clearly “slightly wary of us” because they sent a nightwatcher in even though they were already 330 ahead.
On the other hand, he did say all this stuff.
> Is it possible to bat with the conviction of Ben Duckett yet talk with the bleak defeatism of the average England fan?
The particular quote we’re thinking of is when Duckett said of a Yashasvi Jaiswal double hundred: “When you see players from the opposition playing like that, it almost feels like we should take some credit that they’re playing differently than how other people play Test cricket.”
The general response to this was, “Mmm, yeah, not so much. Maybe go and have a lie-down, Ben. Do a bit of colouring or something. Come and talk to us again when you’ve calmed down a bit.”
Because Brendon McCullum’s England of course didn’t invent attacking batting. We’ll also say at this point that attacking batting didn’t arrive with T20 cricket either – although it has had an influence and it is making Test cricket better, if we can keep the damn format going.
T20’s gift to Test cricket
As we wrote in our five reasons we miss Test cricket piece last year, Test cricket has greater scope – a wider range of possibilities – than the limited overs formats and that’s what makes it simply unmatchable as a form of entertainment.
Anything that extends that scope (in either direction) only makes it better, because that increases the range of possibilities. India reaching 50 in three overs? That makes Test cricket bigger and better. Geoff Allott making a 77-ball duck? That also made cricket bigger and better.
There are a lot of options between those extremes. Anyone who plays a Test match therefore has decisions to make. So many bloody decisions. That’s the beauty of it.
Open-endedness makes Test cricket alluring in a way other formats aren’t, but T20 has done as much as anything to increase that scope in recent years. This is not because batters couldn’t score quickly before, but because nowadays they are getting so much practice that it seems a more viable option. As people try it more and succeed more, ambitions are climbing accordingly.
Whisper it, but this may be a broader trend than a bunch of people who happen have seen Ben Duckett (although to be fair to him, he’s a very fine exponent).
Either way, this development is great because it makes new things possible. Attacking batting also feels more exciting in the longest format precisely because we know the player is actively choosing to go about things this way. They can go on almost indefinitely too, which adds a little something. And then the people who can’t bat have to come out and make their own batting decisions, within the same span of possibilities, and that provides a whole extra dimension.
On top of this, the more we see these fast-scoring styles of play, the more blocking the shit out of it becomes more powerful too, because the contrast between the two approaches is that much more marked.
Contrast is great, choice is great, scope is great.
Test cricket is incredible.
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