Sam Konstas and Rishabh Pant both batted with the control of untethered kites in the first innings at the MCG, yet shockingly only one was crowned the next Prime Minister of Australia.
Why?
Not because the other is ineligible under Section 44 of the Constitution, but because cricket is a stupid, stupid, stupid game.
A pastime renowned for illogical traits, cricket is renowned for tons of vague absurdities like over rates, bad light and Bazball.
But while most of these can be rationalised or silenced by digital detox, one of the game’s oddest foibles is its failure to agree on an appraisal model for batters who love goin’ the tonk.
As a collective, cricket is a hypocrite happy to self-moisturise over aggressive batting until the nanosecond it goes wrong, then we all transform in to nuns.
It was no different in the early stages of the Boxing Day Test, with the similar approaches of Konstas and Pant resulting in one being proverbially chaired off the arena and the other publicly denunciated like the second coming of Hansie Cronje.
Considering India had clawed its way back into the game after a spate of early wickets in the first innings, Pant’s impetuous flick off Scott Boland directly towards two catchers on the fence was like unplugging a life support machine to hook up your boom box.
But judging by the outrage that followed, you’d be forgiven for believing he was a recidivist with an 0.25 average who’d just set fire to his own pegs for the umpteenth time, not a high-rolling match-winner who’d been caught a few inches inside the rope.
Amid a cacophony of rage, Pant’s dismissal was deemed “unacceptable” by Mark Waugh on Fox Cricket and “Stupid, stupid, stupid” by a combusting Sunil Gavaskar on ABC Grandstand.
Of course, Waugh is from an era when Australia didn’t lose wickets and Gavaskar a man who could’ve batted out for a draw in a timeless Test – but you can’t have it both ways.
Rishabh Pant. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
Nobody whipped out the rosary beads when Pant was flaying Australia around the Gabba in his match-winning knock in January 2021, nor urging him to take a Prozac when he pumped his first three boundaries on Saturday at the MCG.
That’s because you’ve got to take the good with the bad when it comes to these types, even when the bad is putrid enough to make milk curdle.
Besides, how did everyone feel on the last day when Pant took our advice by batting time before ultimately holing out in frustration to spark the collapse that ended India’s chances?
And had we learned nothing from the first day of play when we gleefully accepted plenty of ‘good’ with Konstas? Or were we too full of prawns and cheer on Boxing Day to remember the details?
Take nothing away from the rookie and his high wattage knock, one that will be forever remembered as a white knuckle ride so intense we needed a BBL double header afterwards just to slow the nation’s pulse.
But his boldness was praised for taking the game to weirder places than India’s spread field, it could’ve been vastly different.
Had any of the 19-year-old’s insane ramp shots or nervous lashings resulted in his downfall, that massive adoring audience immediately becomes an angry mob of discerning traditionalists.
Let’s be honest; instead of spending the next 48 hours being folklorised while playing Pied Piper for Bay 13, Konstas would’ve been copping the unreasonable ire of cricketing logic.
There would’ve been questions over the suitability of his technique and discussions of temperament and one-way flights back to BBL camp, and that’s why we breathed a sigh of relief when he was tastefully castled through the gate by Jasprit Bumrah in the second innings so we didn’t wreck a good thing with our own hypocrisy.
In this era of unethical consumption, T20 has spawned a generation of batsmen like Konstas and Pant which has seen fearless batting become as frequent in the game as unnecessary changes of gloves.
Sam Konstas celebrates his 50 on debut (Photo by Daniel Pockett – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)
Yet despite this, we still preach acceptance of ‘living and dying by the sword’ in all scenarios except when dying by the sword.
We Aussies are the worst for it too, with our self-congratulatory devotion to ‘playing your natural game’ spouted as a DNA virtue until Glenn Maxwell does something brainless.
We implore our batsmen to chase the game and put pressure back on the bowler, but only provided they place a high price on their wicket and appear technically flawless in shape and attire at all times.
It’s a trait buried too deeply in our cricketing consciousness to extract, and for that reason we can only hope that much like Pant, Konstas can construct the requisite catalogue of highlights behind him so he’s undroppable whenever he’s next bowled lying flat on his stomach trying to hit a straight drive like a billiards shot.
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