Australia v Bangladesh, First Test, Day Three

Featuring terrible French, Darcasm, dealing with Jarvo Situations™ and flattening pitches

Terrible French
Grade: F

Many years ago I proposed that a good way to remember how to spell ‘Hazlewood’ was to think of him in French as a bowler who haz le wood on batters. A very logical and clever mnemonic based primarily on a scurrilous combination of stereotypical accents and weirdly half-translated idioms. It’s served me well for many years.

Early on the third morning of this Test, however, Josh Hazlewood suddenly became Josh Hazlepad, thanks to a couple of successful LBW appeals. Does this haz le pad variation of the original pseudo-French wordplay (aka playing wiz de mots) stand up to scrutiny? Of course not. Which is why one of those successful LBW shouts was swiftly overturned.

Rightly so. Great to see the ICC expanding their deployment of DRS into such fresh new areas. The omniscient wisdom of ball-tracking was fine in its day, but time marches on (le temps, eet eez, ’ow you say, onwards marching).

Darcasm
Grade: A-

However, apart from those two quick wickets (Hazlewood traded in the denied LBW for a catch at gully, another welcome ICC innovation), Australia continued to struggle with the ball.

At one point, Marnus Labuschagne at cover enthusiastically went up for a caught behind appeal that missed the outside edge by about a foot (why was the batter’s foot up near the outside edge? Look, we’re not here to argue with the technique. Focus on the results).