Australia v Pakistan Report Card

Featuring reversing the arrow of time and remembering Shaheen Afridi

Reversing The Arrow of Time
Grade: B+

On a Bengaluru belter, David Warner and Mitchell Marsh got Australia off to arguably a brilliant start. 

I mean, sure, it’s probably not too controversial to call 259 runs at 7.7 runs per over for the first wicket ‘brilliant’. But a ‘start’? Come on. Surely by the time the openers are into the 34th over, the startness of the innings is in heavy dispute.

Both batters pulverised the pace attack of Pakistan, with Haris ‘Are You Having A’ Rauf, in particular, being tonked all over the place. Similarly, Hasan Ali, despite racing through the overs faster than Jadeja, was also expensive.

But then Pakistan turned to spin, and the Australian openers - Marsh, in particular - struggled to score with the same fluency they’d shown against the faster bowlers. Soon, we’d well and truly entered the boring middle overs portion of the innings, as Australia’s run rate decelerated to the low sevens per over.

Just as Pakistan seemed to have found a way to constrain the pair, however, they pulled a rabbit out of their hats. To be precise, a rabbit shaped like a helmet out of the canary yellow caps in which they’d been facing the spinners.

For in a complete reversal of the normal chain of cause and effect, the donning of helmets by Warner and Marsh resulted in Pakistan abandoning their spinners and turning back to their pace attack and the innings accelerated once more.

Australia mucking about with the arrow of time? Surely against the Spirit of Cricket.