In any Test series (limited-overs series are too hectic) there is no better gauge of the relationship between two teams than when a ball drops into the batsman’s crease,perhaps after striking a pad. A generation ago in the Ashes any England batsman who shaped to pick up that ball and chuck it to a fielder was told to not – expletives deleted – touch it.
What happens now?As the opening day drifted to its close,James Anderson was bowling the second new ball rather stiffly from his end,and on the way back to him,it dribbled towards Mitchell Starc the non-striker.
It was for Anderson himself to pick it up,or else Stuart Broad at mid-off or Ben Stokes at extra-cover. Sympathetic to the plight of fellow pace bowlers,however,Starc bent down and tossed the ball back to Anderson,a fleeting moment,but one as mellow as the evening sun.
Even David Warner has been afflicted with this bonhomie:at the start of day one he too picked up a dead ball in his crease and tossed it to an England fielder,an action which dates back to the golden days of chivalry.
Warner,once Australia’s pitbull,has opened the batting innumerable times with England’s nearest to an equivalent,Bairstow,for Hyderabad Sunrisers. Axes have long been buried,far from each other’s necks.
Teams take after their captains,and Cummins is an urbane citizen of the world.The Australian head coach Andrew McDonald is a student of the game,not a layer down of the law like his predecessors:you could not deduce from his outward demeanour whether he was coaching Leicestershire,as he once did,or Australia.