It is exciting, finally, to see cricket embrace a bold new vision of the future.
I’m not talking about the pyjama cricket of the 70s, nor the T20s of the mid-2000s when we opted to collectively laugh while players’ nicknames adorned the back of their jerseys. I’m not even talking about The Hundred, a format so universally derided I’d be surprised to learn it even exists anymore.
I’m talking about the format we witnessed under leaden skies in Brisbane at the punchy end of the working year.
A 1v1 – an old-fashioned duel. Blokes ripping gloves off and slapping each other across the face for the honour of a lady’s hand kind of stuff. What we witnessed in Queensland, apart from a dynamic showing of Mother Nature’s three horsemen of the ‘no-cricket-apocalypse’ (lightning, rain and dim lighting) was just that.
A battle between two men, one of whom has scored 32.87% of Australia’s runs, the other of whom has taken 44.68% of all Indian wickets. This is not across a small sample size either, this is across three Test matches, six innings each, two of which featured no wickets and a combined total of 27 runs.
Despite our most fervent accusations of boy’s clubs, state-based conspiracies, and outright lies in the shadowy recesses of selection meetings – which I am led to believe take place in very loud back rooms of country pubs, leading to all kinds of mistakes like very unfit fellas like Josh Hazlewood and Mitch Marsh being selected – there is a simpler explanation.
What we are watching in this series, is two very fragile teams, with ageing stars, stubborn captains and two eyes firmly on the past, being propped up by a pair of future legends entering their destructive prime at the very same moment.
Travis Head (Photo by Matt Roberts – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)
Watching Travis Head rock onto his back foot and cut a leg-side ball through point for four, or watching Jasprit Bumrah swing a shiny red rock both ways through the putrid soup of Brisbane humidity is akin to watching Gordon Ramsey prepare a royal banquet amongst hordes of children ineffectively pouring milk over cereal, and assuming they are operating at the same level.
What these two players are doing is not simply asking the question of whether they are both at the very top of their respective fields right now, but they are throwing into question the future careers of 20 other men who look like they are trying their best, but seem to be playing another game entirely in comparison.
When Head bats at the moment, it seems as if the danger of losing his wicket has been removed from the equation entirely.
Every other member of the Australian batting order bar Alex Carey, has essentially walked into the middle with an innate and fiendish desire to return to the pavilion as quickly and as humiliatingly as possible.
Not so Trav. He has displayed nothing but utter calmness under increasingly dire match situations and now has 405 runs to his name for the series. That’s more than the entire Australian team scored in the Perth test match.
Bumrah, on the other hand, is in a league entirely unto his own.
Never has a bowler of any nationality looked such a threat on these shores since Mitch Johnson in the 2013/14 Ashes, and the paceman has every chance of overtaking his legendary haul of 37 wickets in that series.
He has made Steve Smith, the man who once held the highest Test average after the God of Cricket, look like he’s never held a bat in his life – notwithstanding the first innings in Brisbane.
He’s made Marnus Labuschagne, a bloke with an average of 57.55 in Australia, completely forget how to orient himself in time and space.
He’s made Usman Khawaja, one of our most successful test openers, a newfound master at walking between the pavilion and the pitch.
He’s also absolutely terrified poor Nathan McSweeney, who must be weighing up his retirement options after such a frightful introduction to Test cricket.
Jasprit Bumrah. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
All of this is to say, in a rather roundabout way, that this series will probably be viewed in the context of what these two incredible players are doing right this minute.
Both teams will undergo heavy changes at the conclusion of the series, but for reasons both historical and hysterical, neither will make the selection calls that are needed before either Melbourne or Sydney.
This offers up a tantalising proposition if one wants to view it as such. The series is tied 1-1. Good weather is predicted for Melbourne, and I will personally see to it that it does not rain in Sydney.
In all likelihood, we’ll have a result in this series, and the direction of that result rests in the hands of two players.
One is a stocky, moustachioed batsman from Adelaide who is affectionately called ‘The Bin Lid’.
The other is a lanky, good-looking bowler from Ahmedabad who does things with his arms to have physics in shambles.
The duel continues. Let’s enjoy it while we can.
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