Despite a strong public stance against further pervasion of sport by gambling money, Cricket Australia has refused to appear before a recent Senate hearing into gambling reform and resisted legislation to completely ban gambling advertising.

Back in April, CA chairman Mike Baird expressed strong opposition to any funding option that ‘puts gambling front and centre’ of cricket’s future. But in an August 5 letter to the committee examining the legislation, CA’s chief executive Todd Greenberg complained that ‘anticipated reduction in Cricket Australia’s revenue sources as a result of the (proposed) Bill will have a direct impact on Australian Cricket’s (sic) core community programs’.

Gambling revenues, Greenberg argued, indirectly helped fund, among other things, “integrity and anti-corruption programs” and initiatives supporting “women and girls’ cricket, Indigenous and multicultural participation”.

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It has rained in England - something that hasn’t happened in fifty days. The drought was bad news for many, but not bad for some, including The Hundred, whose sixth edition basked in warm sunshine as the men’s version was won by the Manchester Super Giants (coached by Justin Langer)….

…and the women’s by Trent Rockets (captained by Ash Gardner).

I had three days immersed in The Hundred’s final stages: I photographed two Eliminator matches at The Oval last Friday, shot the captains the following day before the Final, and then covered the two Finals on Sunday at Lord’s. The Aussie quotient involved might improve morale down under a little, after the battering it took in Darwin (many congratulations to Bangladesh, by the way, for whose first success at Australia’s expense I was present at Cardiff in 2005). There were players, coaches and broadcasters from down under galore. Each time I turned around there was a familiar face. Not just JL and Ash, but Phoebe Litchfield, Tom Moody, Sophie Molineux, Beth Mooney, Jess Jonassen, Tim David, Annabel Sutherland, Nathan Ellis, Mitchell Marsh and Aaron Finch …. you get the idea, and that was with only seeing six teams out of sixteen total teams.

By Sunday evening these players and coaches could be classified as either winners or losers - the biggest of the former being the aforementioned Ash and JL, plus Beth Mooney and Tom Moody. Most that I did get to speak to were pretty keen to get back to the southern hemisphere, heading for Heathrow pretty much straight away. Maybe they have missed the rain….

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The Australian team landed at Mackay Airport last night. Jake Weatherald was not among them, having been omitted - he and partner Rachel will wake this morning in their home port of Adelaide. This is cricket’s equivalent of drumming out - a rigmarole involving the gradual rescinsion of privileges, deletion from various WhatsApps etc. Pretty soon, he will be yesterday’s news.

Only eleven days ago, Weatherald arrived in Darwin almost as the face of the top end. Born and raised in the Territory, he spoke of his initiation as a cricketer here, and introduced Alex Carey to the delights of local angling. He also conceded being under pressure to hold his spot, while speaking positively about technical adjustments he had made correct fallibilities against the full ball revealing during the Ashes. At the crease, however, he looked vulnerable on both edges, skittish, like someone who hadn’t quite nailed a new dance step. He nicked off driving in the first innings, dragged on cutting in the second. When changes were bruited, his was the most obvious.

Still, one can’t help a certain wistfulness. Weatherald had fought all the way to get where he was, transplanting to Adelaide, then to Hobart, twice almost giving the game up, taking mental health breaks to refresh himself. He is a hard worker and a technical tinkerer, which is useful in proportion, baneful when not. It would have been great to see him succeed. A couple of weeks ago, having recently been awarded a national contract, he would have had visions of being part of Australia’s twenty-one-Test odyssey of the next year. With the best will in the world, working his way back now as a thirty-one-year-old will be a challenge.

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Both of these teams are bad. Pakistan, at least, know it. While England are yet to admit it. In Joe Root’s thirty minute sit-down with Michael Atherton last week, the reappointed captain described success with this team as stemming from an “evolution…of the good things we’ve got.”

Root is in a peculiar position. He’s taken over from his best mate, who captained under a coach whose style piqued Root’s interest in the top job again, and was appointed ahead of the next-in-line 27-year-old who has been the poster boy for the previous era. To rip it up and start again would be to point to sins committed by his nearest and dearest. But from a personal standpoint, Root would do well to recognise that beyond this series against Pakistan, a fiendishly difficult 18 months of Test cricket lies in wait, and he’s been dealt a duff hand.

Yes, England should beat Pakistan. But after that, with an inexperienced batting line-up, he will take his team to South Africa where the hosts will be heavy favourites. Then, England go to Bangladesh, who just did have a win… of some sorts… on which I couldn’t possibly comment. That’s before The Ashes arrives, which is followed by a five-match trip to India. Root finished his previous captaincy tenure with one win in 17. There’s a world where the results in his next 17 aren’t that much better.

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Both Jake Weatherald and Marnus Labuschagne are in the selectors’ sights after the loss to Bangladesh, but the opener is most likely to make way for the new squad member.

There had been speculation that Nathan McSweeney, Kurtis Patterson or Renshaw could be brought into the side.

Weatherald scored 23 and 0 in the first match and has struggled to establish himself in the side.

Labuschagne has been in an extended slump and has not scored a Test century for three years. David Warner has a more recent Test hundred.

It seems more likely that Weatherald will make way for the Queenslander who made his debut in 2016 but has only played 14 Tests, his last in 2023 in Delhi. He moved back to the top of the order this summer after a stint in the middle, scoring three centuries and averaging 49.9 for his state.

While coach and selector Andrew McDonald said the panel would not react emotionally or panic following the loss to Bangladesh, change seemed inevitable.

“There was some change to Jake in terms of his where he lined up and his movement patterns,” he said after the game.

“It’s always hard to critique small sample sizes to whether (it) holds up. He dragged one on and drove at one in the first innings and was dismissed, so it’s probably harder with that small a sample size to say, ‘Yep, that’s going to hold up under pressure’, but there was some change.”

Labuschagne made 259 runs at 28.77 last summer, and has not scored a Test century since the fourth Test of the 2023 Ashes series at Old Trafford.

As Et Al reported yesterday, the coach has called for him to deliver.

“We want runs. That is the bottom line,” McDonald said.

“And how he makes them - it was 31 in the second innings - and up until the point he got out, you would say, ‘Geez, he is looking good. He is clipping the ball off his pads. He’s getting through the ball down the ground’, so it is easy for me to sit here and try to defend that, but ultimately it is 31. It is not a big score.

“He’s lacked runs. He feels that. We feel that. We’re working incredibly hard as a coaching group … we’ve got to get the best out of Marn as well.

“He’s had a bit of a lull. He knows that, he’s gone to work and I think we saw some change in the way that he played, so that’s good. So some of that work that he had done feels as though it’s stuck up under pressure … but he needs some big runs. But it is 31. He is disappointed with that. It is a missed opportunity. He needs some big runs.”

Josh Inglis, who played in Brisbane and Adelaide during the summer, is also in the squad.

Et Al’s last night in Darwin was perfect. In a quiet restaurant on Mitchell St, a group of well-groomed young men in matching blue polos entered the restaurant and made their way in single file across the spacious main floor. Quiet applause began from one corner, and soon every single table in the establishment had joined in.

The Bangladeshi cricketers, unassuming to a fault, didn’t quite know how to respond; some raised a hesitant hand in acknowledgment, some ducked their heads, as if embarrassed to be the centre of attention.

A small confession. I may have been the one who triggered the applause, but only because I was sitting near the door when they came in. It came from the heart. I’ve only ever done that once before; it was for Shamar Joseph after he’d single-handedly cleaned up the Australians in Brisbane.

Would Usman Khawaja have approved? The former great has, understandably, quibbled about the reaction to Bangladesh’s historic victory in the first Test.

“What has annoyed me is people saying it is ‘embarrassing for Australia to lose, it’s disgraceful for Australia to lose’,” he said on social media. “It’s Test cricket; you do realise both teams are allowed to win. It’s the whole point of this game. I know we are the number one team in the world; we are expected to win, but saying words like ‘embarrassing’ and ‘disgraceful’ is just disrespectful to Bangladesh.

“They thoroughly outclassed Australia, right from the start to the end. You’ve just got to give them a tap on the back and say ‘well done, let’s move on to the next game’. I really don’t understand why people are disrespecting a team like that.

“I just want to say, ‘well done, better team on the day’. I still think overall Australia is the better team when they do play up to their standard, which hopefully we’ll see in the next Test match, but who knows.”

Usman went on to congratulate Cam Green, saying he is a big fan and expressing hope his consistency can improve. “I’m a big Green fan, I’m a big Green believer”.

Cheeky bugger finished by berating the fans for being fickle and calling for change, noting that a year ago they were celebrating the same outfit.

Hang on a minute, weren’t you playing in that XI, Usman?

Gideon and I are so happy and grateful that we were able to make the trip north. We wouldn’t be able to do it if it wasn’t for the support of Et Al’s subscribers, and it’s been great to see how much interest there’s been in the comments and via other channels.

It’s just been so good to have Test match cricket on again.

Speaking of subscribers. Bernard Fanning sent a note saying this morning saying, “So good to have you two back talking about cricket, not the fucking business of cricket, important as it is”

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Live from Shags in Darwin, Pete and Gid have the latest on Australian cricket’s roiling crisis of confidence after defeat by Bangladesh. Will Australia add to their squad for the Test in Mackay? How much more rope do Marnus and Jake have? What gives with Nathan Lyon? What’s the significance of Australia’s white ball cricket? Will Pete let Gid have one of his chips?

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The Cure -

David Warner and Simon Katich caught the red-eye back to Sydney. Ricky Ponting caught the overnight plane to Melbourne at an ugly hour. Matthew Hayden is on an international flight to Amsterdam where he’ll be coaching the Glasgow in the European T20 Premier League. As you do.

Justin Langer, swimming against the current, is on his way home after guiding the Manchester Super Giants to a win in Sunday’s final of The Hundred.

The former greats, and every other stunned Australian cricket fan wandering the streets of Darwin on Sunday night, had been debating solutions and wondering who would be on the plane to South Africa for the next Test series. Suggestins flew thick and fast, but few could agree on the way ahead.

There’d be a few among the current playing group wondering the same thing, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here as there’s a very real prospect that some may not be in the side that takes the field in Mackay later this week.

Coach Andrew McDonald said “they were feeling it” in the sheds after play.

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Over the last decade and a half, Australia have been cricket’s foremost meliorists, hastening slowly, tuning finely, heavily invested in incremental change. For sure, there have been tragedies and scandals. But the response at Jolimont has always been tamped down - a plan, a report, a new appointment, an adjustment to the organisation plan. The course is steady-as-she-goes, and the attitude check-the-trophy-cabinet: the Ashes, the Border-Gavaskar, the World Cup. The national team has, by consent, almost sat to one side: an important but self-contained and self-regulating unit, on whose hatch Todd Greenberg knocks every so often. ‘Everything OK in there?’ he asks. ‘All good,’ replies a muffled voice from within. ‘Just working out the carry percentages!’

In lots of ways, that is a state devoutly to be wished. It is vastly preferable to England’s lurching between fads and personalities, or a system bedevilled by politicians treating the national team as an extension of foreign policy like our guests. But it was telling that chairman Mike Baird was too busy getting his feet under the desk at NRMA to join us in the top end, while Greenberg FIFO’d in to dilate on….checks notes…..Big Bash League contracts and bilateral ODIs? And you do wonder how exactly this Darwin defeat might register at the next Cricket Australia board meeting. ‘Item 7.4.8 (b): On-Field Non-Success. Recommendations: rebrand defeat as “strategic repositioning relative to victory”; phase in supplementary run reserve. Actioned.’ Then, back to that juicy private investment….

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Few places in Australia impose themselves on the senses like Darwin. Though the dry season is the gentlest time of year up here, August is its back-end, and what’s next - the wet season “build-up” - forebodes. The air is a little heavy, the foliage breathes deep and green, black kites circle overhead looking for their prey.

In the upper terraces of the Maurice Rioli Stand, waiters carry trays of a beer called “Territory Dry” and plastic goblets of red wine. It’s 9.45am on Thursday, it’s day one of the Test and local thirst is significant. Everywhere, there are sensible hats and people with their own stubby holders.

On the other side of the ground, people spring deckchairs under the five flags of Australia, Bangladesh, as well as the Aboriginal, Torres Strait and the white Sturt Desert Rose of the Northern Territory. Later on day two, I catch up with a mate from Sydney, here on a Buck’s trip. His compadres are talking to the standing cop, asking genially what the fine is for streaking. The cop laughs. They then mention that this must be a nice assignment for him, watching the cricket on a Friday. He says it’s hard to watch everyone having a beer, because that’s what he’d like to be doing. Mid-strengths taste great here, by the way.

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Pete and Gideon watch Bangladesh flip the script on Australia by beating them at their own long-distance game in Darwin after a sensation four days of Test cricket. What exactly did Pat Cummins mean by ‘trend’ when he described Australia’s batting? What’s going on with Jake and Marnus? Has Cameron Green turned the corner, and what does this mean for Australia’s odyssey of the next year?

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The Breeders -

In cricket, T20 is proverbially the game of upsets, where a lucky toss or one-off feat can tilt the playing field unexpectedly. Test cricket is meant to be the genre where common sense prevails, resources matter, and providence is on the side of the big battalions. Perhaps as a result, Test upsets have a disproportionate impact - it’s like logic itself has been overthrown. The shock of Bangladesh’s victory in Darwin comes partly from acknowledging that it has not - Australia, despite being fresh, at home, at full strength and having choice of innings, were outplayed in every department of the game, in every session, by a cool, calm and collective effort.

There was a paltry crowd for it. The terraces were thinly populated, the corporate area mostly empty - the pace of modern Test cricket makes fourth days hard to sell.

That left ample room for soul-searching about Test cricket’s joint inventor losing to one of its newest entrants by time-honoured means: first Bangladesh’s seamers did the job, then their spinners, while their batters played as though they had all the time in the world, which in cricket terms they did. While this was only Bangladesh’s tenth win in seventy-six overseas Tests over twenty-five years, it rewarded their addressing that record - by investing in the coaching wisdom of Phil Simmons, the curating skills of Tony Hemmings, and the pace acumen of Andre Adams then Shaun Tait, the visitors have applied serious thought to what winning on the road entails. Some difficult discussions have been had, some hard choices made. Can the home side now do the same?

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When Beau Webster joined Cameron Green at the crease with Australia struggling to stave off an innings victory, the metaphorical scale of Bangladesh’s achievement was obvious. The twin towers, like a pair of Gullivers, were surrounded by the industrious and determined Lilliputians.

Monimul Haque is a full 40cm shorter than the two-metre giants. Few, if any, of the opposition come up to their shoulders. Webster was quickly felled; Green, of course, escaped the snare to make his first hundred at home, but was a lone pillar amid the wreckage.

Apologies if the allusions appear patronising; its intention is quite the opposite. If David had been the same size as Goliath, would anyone have cared?

Australia has lost a Test it shouldn’t, and Pat Cummins concedes trouble had been brewing for some time before this, and perhaps it’s time to swing the axe.

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Pete and Gideon wonder if Australia are done - do we put a fork in yet? No, there’s still hope, but it’s dwindling after another day of indifferent batting and slightly chaotic outcricket. What gives with Jake Weatherald? What was Trav doing with those stumps? Are Bangladesh good or are we bad? Is cricket the winner?

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Ed Kuepper -

Australia 4-161 trails Bangladesh by 67 runs

At lunch on the third day, as we chewed our food and tried to digest the meal Australia has made of this match to that point, the general consensus was that this selection panel isn’t one to panic. Its track record suggests it was likely to have guaranteed those close to sentencing that they’d have both Tests before handing down a decision.

‘But, if they lose this one, will it force their hand?’ Someone who's played a bit more Test cricket than the person typing asked. We decided, without conviction, that the selectors would hold their nerve. Better to give them one Test too many than one too few, as ‘experts’ are wont to say in such situations.

Then, with Bangladesh bundled out for a lazy 426 runs, Jake Weatherald (0) twitched the third delivery of his second innings onto the stumps. Fourth stump line, no need to play.

Pick the bones out of that one, eh?

"You are required to make runs all the time when you go out there,” Weatherald told Cricinfo on the way to the game. “And I've got a good opportunity to play two games, hopefully, and make runs in four innings to do that. If I don't do that, then yeah, I'll put fate in someone else's hands."

Hopefully.

Weatherald, unfortunately, inspires no confidence. He has re-engineered his technique to fix bad habits which had crept in, but the resultant, alarming bounce from front foot to back foot as the bowler approaches appears to be the dance of a man oscillating between fight and flight.

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At lunch today, 7 aired a lengthy interview with Travis Head. It was fun-loving, easy-going, on-brand Trav - the man who brings a picnic match sensibility to the seriousness of Test cricket, and an appealing 70s swagger to our prematurely jaded modernity.

An hour or so later, there was another Trav moment to dwell on. He bent over, collected from the ground a couple of bails, fastidiously replaced them on top of the stumps, stood back a little to study them, then began slowly to walk away with a glance over his shoulder, with the studied nonchalance of a batter dismissed in the nets - one to you, pal, but, y’know, I wasn’t quite ready….

Except that Head was out, bowled, dragging on for the second time in this Darwin Test gone awry for Australia. The instant a batter hears the detonation of stumps behind them is always a pregnant one - some drop their gaze, some throw their heads back, some pretend it has not happened. Could Head explain his faux courtesy? Maybe; maybe not. But was it of a piece with an Australia not quite ready?

Head has passed a quiet 2026 since signing off from the Sydney Test, reflecting his newly hallowed status as Aussie playmaker, allowed to put his feet up in the Big Bash League, and to take ‘personal leave’ during Australia’s white ball sojourn in Bangladesh. There was the Indian Premier League; there is always the Indian Premier League; players will shortly begin rising from the grave to accept contracts, such is its allure. Otherwise, with a score of Tests or more in the next year, Head has been working on his handicap, tending endorsements, handcrafting wines. A state of constant match readiness, of course, is needless, exhausting. But drag ons fall into that category of dismissal that often conveys imprecision - cricket a beat behind, off kilter, out of whack.

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Pete and Gid watch Bangladesh establish a dominant position in the Darwin Test, 153 ahead with four wickets to fall. How well did Tanzid Hasan play? Is there a way out for Pat Cummins? How bad a day did Cameron Green have? Could fourth really beat first on the World Test Championship table? And what time is the bus in the morning?

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The Fall -

The bus from the city of Darwin to Marrara Stadium is an experience. Each day it is packed. Each day it seems to leave at a different time, and to describe a different route - this morning via the golf club and Crocodylus Park, where nobody was going but where we dutifully stopped anyway. It takes a languid hour or so - communal and lackadaisical in the way that nobody has any real idea where we’re going, when we’ll arrive, or what next when we do.

It’s not a bad vantage from which to contemplate the lot of Australia’s cricketers in this Test - stuck unexpectedly on their own uncertain journey to an indeterminate location. When Pat Cummins won the toss on Thursday morning, they probably thought they were in the driver’s seat; instead they’ve had their faces against the glass staring at the unfamiliar scenery, wondering how this might end. Australia in recent times has perfected a standard commute - short, sharp Tests, propelled by explosive pace, counterpunching batting, suave keeping and slick outcricket. Two days against Bangladesh and they are struggling to regain control of tempo and sense of direction.

We have gone something like this route before - the last two home seasons began with Australia under pressure, and their countrymen harbouring existential thoughts about how much more could be expected of this fine but ageing team. Each time, they have swerved away from disaster. To partially regain the initiative today it took them eight bowlers and a second new ball - only the fifth time they have had recourse to it these last two years.

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(Australia 10-198, Bangladesh 6-351, lead by 153 runs)

“I was trying to play normal cricket shots and keep calm myself. I wasn't trying too much. I just played the ball."

Thus spoke Tanzid Hasan, the wet-behind-the-ears opener who, in just his second Test, became the only Bangladesh batter to score a Test match century in Australia.

From the mouth of (relative) babes …

The scale of his achievement is enormous. He’d made a duck in the first innings of the tour match at the same ground a week before. He’d been granted a life before getting off the mark by Nathan Lyon, gave another tough chance off the spinner that was not pouched, but rarely looked troubled. Or hurried.

He'd played just one Test match before this one.

Just one Bangladeshi (Shahriar Nafees 138, Fatullah 2006) had scored a Test century against Australia before this one.

He’d risked the wrath of his father as a child to pursue the game.

He attended to the basics of batting over five hours at the crease and was duly rewarded. It is fair to wonder if, at any time in a career that spans just 25 first-class games and a solitary Test before this one, he ever spent so long at the crease.

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Pete and Gid salute Hasan Mahmud, Australia’s destroyer, on a day Test cricket turned topsy-turvy in the top end. What went wrong for the team at the top of the World Test Championship table? Did Pat Cummins funk it at the toss? How much longer can Marnus and Cam hold on? How much longer can Mominul Haque and Tanzid Hasan bat? Will we be able to get a bus back to town? These questions and more….

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King Snake Roost -