Aussie teen Sam Konstas sets the cricket world alight in debut Test against India
Welcome to Konball. Australian cricket has found the superstar it has been looking for as Sam Konstas played an innings on the opening morning of the Boxing Day Test that will never be forgotten.
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Australian cricket has a new game – “Konball”.
It was launched at 10.30am at the MCG and by the time you had your lunch it would have been copied by scores of youngsters in backyards around the country exploring, like Sam Konstas, the most outrageous limits of their own creativity.
Even before he reached 30, Konstas’ Test debut was an instant entry in the MCG cricket Hall of Fame along with David Hookes’ five fours in a row off Tony Greig, Shane Warne’s hat-trick, Brett Lee’s debut and Scott Boland’s 6-7.
In fact, in a way, it was more memorable than all of them because the shock factor was off the charts.
Konball is cavalier Test cricket as you have never known in this country, a brand that confounds every coaching book ever printed, every conventional theory you have ever heard.
And, it came from an unusual place because Konstas does not bat this way in Sheffield Shield cricket for his home state of NSW.
Australia, with every player bar Konstas over 30, is a team searching for a new hero in the men’s game to make pulses race, hearts flutter and be every kid’s poster hero. They might have just found him.
Konstas’ MCG stunner, when he tossed a heap of exotic flavours at the canvas and somehow they came together for this daredevil masterpiece, ransacked not just India’s fast bowling god Jasprit Bumrah but the entire team.
Konstas’ creativity in his 65-ball 60, with whacky ramp shots, down-the-pitch drives and bravely showing the bowlers his stumps then smacking them straight, was so breath-taking it rattled India to the core.
And the merit of it was enhanced by the fact that he was beaten four times in the first over by Bumrah, then started swinging punches at a time when he could have put his gloves over his face.
Virat Kohli will face disciplinary action from no-nonsense match referee Andy Pycroft for shouldering Konstas in an act which said everything about how rattled India was. It was a dreadful play by Kohli who has been tightly wired all tour.
It’s been four years since a batsman has hit Bumrah for six in a Test match. Konstas did it twice. The strange thing about Konstas’ decision to ramp Bumrah was that most times he did it were to balls he could have comfortably driven – a much safer stroke.
But this was a day for panache not percentages, for conjure not correctness.
Surviving against Bumrah is the greatest challenge in cricket. Targeting him? Who does that?
For once, all those theories about the fearlessness of youth made sense. This was a player without fear. When the camera came on him in the national anthems he smiled. When he was interviewed during the first drinks break about Bumrah he said he hoped he returned for another spell.
Only a 19-year-old could say that.
The benefits of this innings will be widespread. The first beneficiary was Usman Khawaja who suddenly looked like a man who could breathe again after being constrained by huge pressure all summer.
Then there will be the flow on effect to backyards.
The tip is that Konstas won’t always bat this way. He was very much sent out as a circuit breaker to try to scramble India’s radar. That he did, in an innings which will never be forgotten.
KONSTAS’ ARRIVAL NEVER TO BE FORGOTTEN
- Daniel Cherny
Last Friday, Australian selection chair George Bailey said that Sam Konstas had been drafted into the squad to “throw something different” at India.
But surely even Bailey wouldn’t have anticipated just how far from the norm the nation’s new Test opener would veer across the first 90 minutes of his international career.
Forget bringing a gun to a knife fight, Australia’s boy wonder came equipped with the type of futuristic weapon that will be used in combat decades down the track.
The scorebook will record Konstas as making an important 60, the first half-century posted by an Aussie opener across this Test series, but it was the method rather than the outcome that left those in the stands at a packed MCG breathless.
On match eve Aussie captain Pat Cummins had quipped that Konstas could effectively play with impunity. Cummins - one of just a handful of Australians to make a Test debut even younger than the 19 years and 85 days of Konstas’ time on earth - said that he had played without pressure in South Africa 13 years ago because it was the selectors who would cop the public’s wrath should things go amiss.
“They’re the idiots who picked an 18-year-old,” Cummins said.
Well at least for a few minutes, the Australian public might have been starting to etch dunce’s hats of Bailey and his fellow panellists.
Up against the might of Jasprit Bumrah - the finest bowler of the generation - Konstas couldn’t lay bat on ball after he bravely fronted up for the first over of a potentially generation-defining match.
He got off the mark with two down the leg side from the eighth ball he faced, but it was the 11th microcontest between champion and novice that drew audible gasps around the ground.
There was teenager Konstas, in the third over of his debut Test match, on Boxing Day, attempting a reverse scoop off the world’s premier bowler.
Undeterred by a failure to make contact, Konstas tried the manoeuvre again in Bumrah’s next over. Again he missed. But it was clear this was not just a rush of blood from an impetuous youth. This was considered.
“It wasn’t a plan yesterday. I was going to play good cricket shots but Bumrah’s obviously a world-class bowler and I was trying to put pressure on him,” Konstas told Channel 7.
Still on two, Konstas came galloping down the pitch, wildly looking to slog Mohammed Siraj but again unable to connect.
In the seventh over it finally clicked. Konstas was scooping enough to make an ice cream vendor proud. One conventional - if such a word can ever be used to describe the shot - and two reverse. Four, six, four, in the space of one Bumrah over.
The series, and perhaps Test cricket as a whole, had been turned on its head.
From there Konstas showed he had more than that one trick. Runs started coming in other areas of the ground, but underscored by the same spirit of brazenness.
He stared down Siraj, drawing a warning from umpire Michael Gough for walking too far on the pitch. By this point Konstas had clearly got under the skin of India’s icon Virat Kohli, who veered off course to brush the teen’s shoulder in an incident that would draw scrutiny from match referee Andy Pycroft.
Konstas stood his ground and gave some lip back to Kohli. This kid wasn’t going tp be pushed around.
“I think the emotions got to both of us. I didn’t quite realise, I was doing my gloves and a little shoulder charge, but it happens, it’s cricket,” Konstas added.
Eventually he fell lbw to Ravindra Jadeja for 60, but not before he had taunted Bumrah in a mid-pitch spidercam interview, suggesting that he couldn’t wait for India’s pace ace to return to the attack.
Even once he was out Konstas showed disregard for the way things have long been done, posing for selfies with fans on the boundary while play continued.
Is it sustainable?
“It’s so hard to tell,” said Fox Cricket expert Aussie great Adam Gilchrist.
“Because you’ve got to try to break away from conventional thinking. He himself isn’t restrained or constrained by that level of thinking, he’s just got his own game plan, and it’s the new modern player. The tests will come down the track.”
Whatever comes next, this was the stuff of instant legend.
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