Australia v South Africa First ODI Report Card
Featuring wordplay and colour reminders
Wordplay
Grade: B
An actual ODI! As I live and breathe.
Yes, we’re still in the far north of Australia, playing white ball winter cricket. But now we’ve pivoted from T20s to the longer fifty-over form. Actual one day fricken internationals between Australia and South Africa. Amazing.
Mitch Marsh won the toss, calling ‘we’ll field’ in the air, and the South Africa openers, Aiden Markram and Ryan Rickelton, arrived in the middle.
Now, everybody knows that Markram is a palindrome, but did you know that Rickelton is an anagram? (Specifically, of ‘interlock’.) South Africa, still comfortably the number one international cricket side when it comes to name-based wordplay.
It doesn’t end with Markram and Rickelton either. Bavuma? That’s rhyming slang. Breetzke? A mondegreen. Stubbs? An acronym. Brevis? A backronym. And Wiann Mulder? Why, in Afrikaans, that’s the filthiest spoonerism you’ve ever heard.
These entertaining names combined to get South Africa to a first innings total of 8/296, despite the very best efforts of enthusiastic non-wicketkeeping outfielder Alex Carey (a portmanteau of celebrity couple Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Drew Carey).
Colour Reminders
Grade: D
Australia, through openers Mitch Marsh and Travis Head, set off in rushed pursuit of the South Africa total, bashing the quicks all over the place.
But the introduction of spin into the attack, most notably in the form of Keshav Maharaj, soon put an end to any hopes of Australia running down the total.
Maharaj started with the wicket of Marnus Labuschagne, popping back into Australian colours just long enough to remind everybody why he’d been given a rest from those same colours.
But Marnus was swiftly followed by Cameron Green, Josh Inglis, Carey and Aaron Hardie, as Australia lost 6/29, five of them to Maharaj.
At 6/89, this was a perfect time, you’d think, for Glenn Maxwell to stride to the crease and guide Australia to an imposs— hmmm? Oh.
Well, in that case, I ducked over to instead watch Australian Survivor.
Ordinarily, I’d put in a limerick here, covering what I missed. But it turned out I didn’t miss much at all, with Marsh holding down the fort in my Survivor-based absence.
Of course, two balls after I returned, the Australian captain was out. And that was more or less that, South Africa wrapping up the tail to secure a 98-run win.
It was their fourth ODI win against Australia in a row, according to overstimulated commentator Brendon Julian. Which sounds ominous for Australia, until you remember that it’s not in any way an accurate stat.
I mean, sure. Beating South Africa in World Cup semi-finals is something we take for granted. But the wins still technically count, BJ!
Stubbs = Service Training Under Blubbering Bilious Sergeants