Australia may well have traded short-term gain for long-term pain with Sam Konstas – to win a Test that doesn’t need to be won.
With the World Test Championship five months away and the Ashes defence back home next summer,the Australian Test team needs Konstas to get as much game time as possible. Connolly just needs to prove himself.
Test cricket is great when ball dominates bat. But one group is getting left behind.
Fans young and old have been drawn unconditionally into the Konstas tornado.
There are plenty of Beau Websters growing in the Sheffield Shield despite widespread accusations of the competition’s mediocrity.
Reports of Test cricket’s death have been greatly exaggerated for nearly 50 years. As long as young swashbucklers like Konstas,Jaiswal and Bethell keep coming along,it will be just fine.
On a gloomy afternoon at the SCG the cricketing prodigy proved that he has what it takes.
Wildly unpredictable results. Teams regularly winning away from home. Runs being scored at a remarkable rate. Test cricket is in rare form. Now we just need the spinners to get a bowl.
In the early 1980s as coloured uniforms,white balls,prime-time TV slots and results achieved in one day were swamping the cricket topography,the death knell of Test cricket was sounded loudly. They were wrong then,and they’ll be wrong again.
Pat Cummins’ Test team has been far from perfect,but they won so many of the watershed moments that victories followed. Big questions remain,however.