Nice win NZ, but don’t forget to genuflect to Australia
There have already been many excellent takes on the World Test Championship, won this week by “everyone’s second favourite team” New Zealand. Earl Eddings’ wasn’t one of them.
There have already been many excellent takes on the World Test Championship, won this week by “everyone’s second favourite team” as my Times colleague Mike Atherton called New Zealand. So let me draw attention to a candidate for the lamest response.
It was a tone-deaf tweet, as the game entered its absorbing final stages, from Cricket Australia’s chairman Earl Eddings, complete with Trumpesque exclamation marks: “While we watch the WTC final tonight, reflect on the architect, James Sutherland who pushed, planned and got it up!! It is not perfect yet …. But it will get better! The aim is to ensure the primacy and context of Test Cricket! Thanks James.”
Sure, Earl. Let’s do that. While we’re reflecting on a fascinating encounter between two terrific teams in cricket’s premium format, let’s think about an already thoroughly well-rewarded former cricket official.
Just like an administrator, to remind you that it’s their game really. And just like an Aussie, maybe, to want to distract you from a New Zealand success. Hey Kane Williamson, nice job. But don’t forget to genuflect to Jolimont.
Actually, it adds considerably to the pleasure of the Black Caps victory to know that it comes at the expense of a country that has historically so patronised them.
One of the choicest exchanges in the Longstaff review of the culture of Australian cricket — remember that? Eddings would prefer you didn’t — comes on page 90 where an “Australian Test player” is asked to reflect on New Zealand’s decision simply to play cricket, sans sledging, sans boorishness.
At the mention of New Zealand, the player scoffs: “And how are they going?”
The answer, three years down the track, is pretty damn well. They rank ahead of Australia in every format, having also hit No.1 on the one-day international ladder.
Hell, the Black Caps actually play Test cricket, while we, Achilles-like, sulk in our biosecure tent, waiting for the world to come pay homage.
In some ways, in fact, it’s New Zealand that’s making international cricket work as well as it does, which is not very, but enough to provide some relief from the surrounding hellscape.
Were it not for New Zealand’s skill, spirit and ingenuity, the game would feel even more than it does like a slightly seedy racket for the benefit of India, Australia and England, so busy hogging the big bilateral fixtures and ICC events.
New Zealand, it’s true, had the better lead in to the final in Southampton, able to regain their Test match tempo by bossing England at Lord’s and Edgbaston; India’s intra-squad matches could not compare as preparation.
But Williamson’s men are the epitome of the no-frills team greater than the sum of their parts. They field superbly, with the world’s most reliable slips cordon. They bat all the way down, whereas India regularly field three bowlers who should bat at No.11. They have quality reserves, invisible coaches, efficient administrators, fun fans, and even good commentators.
Watch the Black Caps go cheerfully and also mercilessly about their work, and you’re consoled that, once cricketers take the field, cricket is 11 versus 11, rather than GDP versus GDP, as significant as the latter is in a resource-dependent world.
Watch super-rich, super-talented India accept the defeat — and Virat Kohli was a model of grace as a losing captain — and you understand the transcendent appeal of a good team going about the cricket the right way.
New Zealand’s win also builds a nice narrative for two years hence, when the next World Test Championship culminates, for there’s nothing like a defeat to pique a champion’s hunger — as for Williamson, twice previously on the losing side in an ICC final.
Expect Kohli to turn this trophy into a quest. Hopefully by next time, as he said afterwards, it will be decided over the distance of a series not a one-off match. The only obstacles to this are greed and stupidity.
On the aforementioned night, indeed, Eddings carried on tweeting, after a reply from the ABC’s Jim Maxwell that a best-of-three final would “sustain, improve the concept”.
“Ideally Jim that would be great unfortunately finding time in the already over crowded calendar,” responded Eddings in a sentence that he was somehow unable to complete, and containing a sentiment that instantly belied the “primacy” he’d just claimed for Test cricket.
It never ceases to amaze me that administrators complain about “the crowded calendar” as though it has been handed down from Olympus and that they’re somehow powerless to alter it.
It’s their handiwork. They could change it tomorrow if they cared to. Eddings, though, is no change merchant. Least of all about the chairmanship of Cricket Australia.
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