Australia v England Fifth Test, Day Three Report Card
Featuring blinkered dogmatism, Zatanna, dropped Heads, Steve Smith nonsense and reminiscing
Note: There is a very real chance this upcoming fourth day will be the final day of the Test. If so, that means you have virtually no time left to sign up to my Shadow Writing experience. If you’re on the fence, now’s the time to jump off.
Blinkered Dogmatism
Grade: D
POV: Yo— (sorry, can you sit down please?)
England began the day 218 runs ahead. Not that you’d have known it looking at the two teams in the field. The late Shane Warne - bless his pizza-loving soul - used to have a lot of random commentary bugbears that have now been mostly forgotten and/or forgiven. And perhaps rightly so.
One of them was ‘body language’, a cudgel with which he’d ritualistically beat poor old Mitch Starc at the beginning of pretty much every summer. It was as if Warne - like so many larger-than-life characters - simply could not conceive of a world in which there is a personality type who might not want to always be striving to physically, verbally, emotionally, spiritually and/or financially dominate the space they were occupying.
POV: You’re Stev— (where’s that glare coming from? Can we do something about that?)
Now, I’m sure Warne sort of had a point. Sport is inherently confrontational. Physically asserting one’s dominance via body language (which so often tends to simplify to swearing at people a lot, but that’s by the by) is no doubt a successful approach. It’s not - as Starc has proven this very summer - the only approach, but it’s one that would very often work. And if it was Warne’s preferred approach while playing, it was perhaps understandable for him to similarly champion it in the commentary box. Even if he did it with a kind of blinkered dogmatism that sometimes grated.
Today, however, Warne would have been in his dogmatic body language championing element, because England came across as doomed from the second they stepped out into the middle.
For one thing, Matthew Potts was still bowling. And, somehow, getting worse.
Zatanna
B: edarG
POV: You’re Steve Smi— (Sorry, can that gentleman in the crowd take his cap off? No, the other one. Yes, you. Cap. Off.)
Michael Neser - the nightwatchie - resumed with Travis Head, despite being given the perfect opportunity from the night before to retire hurt. Why was Neser still out there? Nobody knew. Shame on him for resuming the innings. Get back down to nine where you belong, Michael.
To be fair to Neser, though, I’d also quite like to be in the middle when Head brings up a century.
And, of course, Head didn’t take long to do that. Did he do it off Potts? Look, let’s say he did. By this stage, Potts had become a cartoon character. And I’m thinking in particular of the Simpsons cartoon character from the meme in which a small child begs for a brutal beating to cease, with the phrase ‘Stop! Stop! He’s already dead!’
Because this was like the Bizarro version of that: ‘Potts! Potts! He’s already dead!’
POV: You’re Steve Smith, one of the gr— (can we put a towel over that camera?)
Now, look, as a gag, this observation doesn’t really work. For one thing, Bizarros think in opposites - they don’t talk in reverse spelling (you’re thinking of Zatanna!). Potts also has an extra t in there that means it’s not quite ‘stop’ backwards, is it? Furthermore, why, in this imaginary character’s voice, is the first half of the phrase backwards and the second the right way around? No, this is a fundamentally broken joke that barely holds together.
Still better than Potts’ bowling though.
