One day I’ll get to an Adelaide Test.
This year’s viewing started in the admissions waiting room at a hospital, on Kayo, on the phone. Saw the first ball, the first wicket and settled in.
Soon I was in a bed in a holding room for tagging and shaving and other preparation. There was a TV up high at the end of the bed showing an ABC TV News story about someone who’d died in hospital. Later I noticed an orderly checking out something on a TV at another bed. “Can you put mine onto the cricket please?” I asked. Gill was batting confidently, Rahul looked secure. Then things happened. “Four down,” I said when the orderly reappeared.
Wheeled off to another room. No TV. Then to the operating theatre where I noticed the cricket on a laptop. The anaesthetist started doing his thing. “Can you feed through some cricket scores during the operation?” Don’t know if he answered.
Finally to a shared room, plugged into various machines, I got hold of my phone and checked the score. The Australians had avoided pink ball nighttime carnage. I glanced at my roommate’s TV – an ABC News banner told us “Second Test: Australia trail”… I’d been under a general but could’ve done better than that… “Australia on top” perhaps.
Back home for day two. A lot seemed to have happened. To me and in the cricket. I felt like I’d been whacked in the guts by a Mitchell Starc in-swinger. Rest ahead and a few days cricket would help.
Bumrah got McSweeny early. Ominous but the newcomer had done alright. Marnus did his job. Ashwin got Marsh so confused that he went home. And somehow through it all Travis Head scored 140.
There’s so much firepower in the Indian batting line-up there was still a chance the game could progress and get close. But Cummins, Starc and Boland performed with too much consistency and hostility. It was a reminder that hostile, nasty, uncomfortable bowling doesn’t have to come with abuse and send-offs. Outrageous batting by Pant brought the day to a satisfying end.
By the time I got to the TV on day three Pant’s resistance was down. I didn’t feel the need to go to social media after this game, just to bed. But, I wonder, was the consensus that the Indians were too woke? Too nice?
australianrules.com.au 