Accident as much as planning shaping Test summer
For Australian cricket, the new normal is proving devilishly hard to pin down.
When last we convened for a Test match, in Sydney in the first week of the year, it was all straightforward. The Test team was settled, and had momentum, and quickly completed a rout of New Zealand. The travail of 2018 was far in the past; all roads led smoothly to Lord's 2021 and the inaugural Test championship final. As for Cameron Green, he had made one first-class century then and was the name on precisely nobody's lips.
Then 2020 did what 2020 does, threw everything into confusion. Look around now. In the swirl of this long pre-season, seven different names have been speculated upon to open the batting for Australia, in at least half-a-dozen different combinations. The seventh name is captain Tim Paine, who it was said on Wednesday had volunteered himself for the role. You could even conjure up a scenario in which Australia's batting is opened by two wicketkeepers. The gloves would be off.
Tim Paine, left, and Joe Burns at a nets session in Adelaide on Wednesday. Credit:Ryan Pierse
It's not logical to blame the pandemic for the disorder, but in a year in which the only certainty has been uncertainty, it feels cosmically linked. The fact that the bowling is more settled and injury-free than the batting is itself a perversion of the natural order. Who would have imagined four years ago that the most dependable player in the team would be Pat Cummins (touch wood)?
Accident as much as planning is shaping the Test summer. Injury sidelined David Warner and ruled out Will Pucovski just as it seemed his claims were irresistible. A slight injury cloud sits above Steve Smith, another above the exciting newcomer Green.
Pucovski was hit in the head when batting, Green when bowling. This, weirdly, is the new normal. If it seems sometimes that Australia has mistakenly opened the door to getting hit-on-the-head lessons, the whole year has felt like a Monty Python sketch. And you have to admit that Smith at the crease does a passable Ministry of Silly Walks.
In the old normal, Australia would be solid favourites here. Even the best Indian teams find Australia hard going. But this is the new normal, an unmapped place.
Accident is the least acknowledged driver in sport. The instances are legion. The latest is Marnus Labuschagne; it was his making in Test cricket. Accident has left the door ajar for Green, the happy surprise of 2020 (the caveat is that whoever inherits the title of the next all-rounder is doubly burdened; ask Mitch Marsh and Shane Watson).
Joe Burns looks like an accident that has already happened. But so did Mark Taylor going into the 1997 Ashes series and he made a first-up century. Watching from the back stalls of the dressing room was an intent Justin Langer.
A series of accidents - a pile-up if you like - will thrust a temp into the opening role on Thursday, perhaps Matthew Wade, perhaps Paine. For either of these redoubtable Tasmanians, it would be another improbable twist in a cockroach career.
But it doesn't end there. This is a day-night Test, which means the prospect of Jasprit Bumrah and a new pink ball in the gloaming, the ball coming at the batsman like a comet, a fraught landscape.
Wade in particular would find himself between the new rock and a hard place. Warner will be back by Melbourne, and so perhaps will Pucovski, putting aside a separate discourse about whether he already had had one too many concussions than is sensible for any man. When the squeeze for places comes, what weight will Wade's sense of sentry-like duty carry?
Cameron Green bowls in the nets in Adelaide.Credit:Ryan Pierse
In the old normal, Australia would be solid favourites here. Even the best Indian teams find Australia hard going. But this is the new normal, an unmapped place. Australia won't feel quite so sure, India less unsure. Really, these layers of intrigue are the very stuff of Test cricket, and why Thursday afternoon cannot come too soon. Fragile as it sometimes seems, Test cricket is still the game's big stage. Its scale magnifies every piece of speculation, enlarges all possibilities, concentrates the mind and sensitises the viscera like no other form.
You don't think so? While fielding for the Hurricanes the other night, jobbing South African Colin Ingram was asked about this season's Big Bash rule changes. Fine by him, he replied unexpectedly, as long as they left Test cricket well alone. It was too good a game to mess with. It was a surreal moment in an unreal year. The new normal is anything but.
Greg Baum is chief sports columnist and associate editor with The Age.