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Sydney has a reputation for being spin friendly, but it’s a reputation like your fat, wheezing mate who used to be good at gymnastics. Some of the raw ingredients are presumably still in there somewhere, but no-one’s seriously expecting anything.
Shane Warne is the top Test wicket-taker at this ground – no surprises there – but Stuart MacGill actually edges the equally predictable Glenn McGrath into third place with 53 wickets in just eight games. After McGrath, it’s Nathan Lyon ahead of the rather misleadingly named Charlie Turner.
So a spin-heavy top four, but shorten the timeframe to the last five years and Pat Cummins, Scott Boland and Josh Hazlewood rank ahead of Lyon, even though Boland only played two of the matches and Hazlewood three.
Lyon played all five games and averaged 43.53 in that timespan. Boland averaged 8.35; Hazlewood 15.71; and Cummins 20.45.
Modern Sydney has been The Home of Accurate Right-Arm Fast-Medium.
Given that only nine wickets have fallen to spin in the first four Tests of this series, you imagine both Australia and England might continue to play this rather depressing diminuendo where all else is being stripped away.
Those incredible recent bowling records for Boland, Hazlewood and Cummins haven’t however come about in isolation. They may not have taken so many wickets, but Lyon and Mitchell Starc delivered almost as many overs as the other three across those five most recent matches. The contrast that provided will have made a difference and there will also have been a couple of times where batters who had got the measure of all the meat and potatoes stuff met a premature end against one of these two tangier side dishes.
It doesn’t often pay to take these blunt statistics and run with them to their logical conclusions.
This is the beating ischemic heart of Test cricket, right? The more you hone in on one thing, the more vulnerable you become to something else. You can get away with a narrow approach (whether batting or bowling) for a session, or an innings, or a Test, or even for a whole series, but the more you specialise, the more your Achilles heels will proliferate, until eventually you’re a great knackered-up limping millipede, still desperately trying to pull off your one lame trick.
It’s probably no coincidence that recent Australian Test conditions have suited a fantastic yet ageing first-choice pace attack that would lose its edge and the majority of its components in a war of attrition. A series in which Lyon was reduced to a Rex Kwon Do-sized cameo must surely be as far as this trend goes though – not just because of how Australia surrendered the Boxing Day Test, but because it’s also allowed a touring team that is obviously hugely distrustful of its spin bowlers to pass an entire summer without at any point picking anyone who truly warrants that label.
So you imagine things bottomed-out in Melbourne, but there’s still a long way to bounce back. Last year, neither Australia nor India made it to 200 in either innings. We could be in for more of the same.
The overbearing seam-centric context to this fifth Test might continue to perpetuate this dull, annoying notion that This Is The Way simply by shaping team selection. Even if the pitch turns out a complete flatty, it’s not easy to envisage Will Jacks reshaping the statistical backdrop for future matches. As for the home team, will Todd Murphy even play?
Bleak stuff – but this too shall pass. Test cricket will turn on this thinking eventually. Maybe there’ll be some early sighter of that this week. Maybe we’ll see One Of Those Days for one team or both. Frankly, after this series, they both deserve a long, arduous reminder that variety is the spice of life.