West Indies Upset the Natural Order

Gideon Haigh

He wasn’t going to come to the ground.  Then he wasn’t going to bowl.  Then he wasn’t going to bowl much.  Then he could not be stopped.

West Indies’ Shamar Joseph did not take the ball yesterday until the twenty-ninth over of Australia’s second innings.  Three boundaries came from his first ten deliveries.  The hosts were then two for 113, more than halfway home.  When Australia last lost a home Test, Joseph was still playing tape ball cricket in Guyana; when Australia last lost a home Test to West Indies, Joseph was…well he wasn’t, not being born for another three years.  

When he bowled Josh Hazlewood in late afternoon and carried on running into the shadows, arms outstretched, like an athlete breasting a tape, Joseph completed a rise so precipitous that really only Test cricket could have delivered it.  He arrived unheralded; he still does not have a Cricinfo profile; he has been to summer what Peggy was in Forty-Second Street, going out a youngster and coming back a star.

And Test cricket makes that possible.  A youngster can succeed in an important T20 match and achieve little of permanent note, so perishable is achievement amid the profusion of fixtures.  Even in its twilight as a format, Test cricket forces us to stop, take time, pay heed, make memory.

The materialist says that Joseph’s withering spell, inflicting on Australia their first pink ball defeat by a mere eight runs, changes nothing about the malaise of Caribbean cricket: the way its finances have been denuded by the International Cricket Council’s wicked funding model, the way its traditional season has been crowded out by the Indian Premier League, the market that constrains its corporate prospects, the time zone that stifles its broadcast opportunities.  

The optimist - and my word, the game has never needed its optimists more - cannot help but see hope in the verve and elan of this surprising team. Jason Holder, Kyle Mayers and Nicholas Pooran cared not to come here for these two Tests for the sake of their white ball continuities.  How might they now be feeling?  Hopefully with a new five-day FOMO.  

Because for the world’s eighth-ranked Test team to defeat the world’s number one is a significant disturbance of what has come, disturbingly, to look like a natural order - something for every participant to be proud of.  And Joseph was, after all, only primus inter pares: there were Joshua de Silva and Kavem Hodge who revived West Indies from their nadir at five for 64 on the first day; there were Kemar Roach and Alzarri Joseph who secured West Indies an unlikely first innings lead; there was Kevin Sinclair who on his debut hit a six off Nathan Lyon, outthought Usman Khawaja and outsomersaulted Sam Kerr. 

On this last day, too, Kraigg Brathwaite found the perfect in-out fields to magnify his bowlers’ threat, and the ideal demeanour to concentrate his team’s energies.  The West Indian captain hardly looks or sounds in the lineage of Frank Worrell, Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards or Brian Lara.  His batting is austere, his bowling an apology, and his mumble is so quiet that his men must lean in to hear his team talks.  But lean in they seem to.

Did Australia take their eye off the ball in this Test, even if only a little?  It was their fifth Test in the last 45 days, their twentieth in the last 420 days, and they had already pocketed the Worrell Trophy; West Indies arrived after a six-month lay-off, including sitting the World Cup out as Australia won. 

Steve Smith, with a point to prove, succeeded, but his top order colleagues essayed some jaded strokes, and his captain hazarded a declaration in the whimsical vein of Ben Stokes at Edgbaston.

The Gabba, always airless, was also extremely hot and humid - so unpleasant as to raise questions about the efficacy of cricket in Brisbane at this time of year, and to render the overtime sessions of this Test cruel and unnatural punishment. It felt like Australia here would get around to it if they could, like West Indies knew they had to, which can in a close encounter make all the difference.  All the same, let’s take cheer from this result at the end of a home summer that, rather like Joseph today, outstripped all expectations.