Bowlers have travelled back in time

In the 1800s, batters struggled because groundsmen put chunks of shit on the wicket. The only dung on the pitch now is from the batters consistently crapping themselves.

Steve Smith is absolutely positive that there is no way at all he is even close to being out. Umpire Chris Gaffaney agrees with him. Lungi Ngidi is angling the ball in, he strikes Smith around the knee roll, very close to off stump. Perhaps it is LBW, but Smith says no. He is not shy about it - his right hand is showing the South African fielders that he was definitely struck outside the line of off stump, and he’s flicking his glove around at the fielders that there is no reason for them to even worry about having a review. This just has not hit him in line.

The South Africans aren’t anywhere near as sure as him. They go through the list. Was there any bat? How was the height? And then finally, look at the line. Bavuma decides to review this time. Despite the SPDS (Steven Peter Devereux Smith) system deciding that it is not out, the Hawkeye disagrees and Smith is gone.

Of course he is. Smith is a great batter, but he also exists in 2025. That means his normal state is dismissed.

In the 1800s, batters struggled because groundsmen put chunks of shit on the wicket. The only dung on the pitch now is from the batters consistently crapping themselves. Wickets haven’t come this quick since WG Grace was on the field.

This is our lowest-scoring WTC cycle so far. Every now and again, someone will ask me if the pace playing pandemic is over. Basically, if batters can take off their masks. Well, this is suggesting we are not there yet. For context, anything under 30 is certainly a bowling period. The last two WTCs were that, and this is still low in comparison. A wicket has fallen every 27.4 runs in this cycle.

Batters have given up batting normally. They tried that, and the bowlers still dominated, so they decided to attack in this period. Obviously, Bazball played a part in this, but many teams have gone all out when it comes to attack. If not always as a team, then certainly for some periods as a counterpunch, or just giving players a licence. And it has not worked, but neither did batting defensively before. They’re running out of ideas.

And they are doing that very, very quickly. In this WTC, we have bowlers taking a wicket every 48 balls. That is one of the most extraordinary numbers ever in the history of cricket. Every eight overs, we see a wicket.

There has never been a period in our game that has been like this. You like wickets, we got all the damn wickets you could ever ask for.

We’re getting so many wickets that we are actually going back in time. This is the sixth lowest strike rate in the history of our game. All the others less than 2025 in Tests are from the 1800s. Bowlers have created a bloody time machine and they are taking wickets like we have never seen since we started filming matches. Pathé doesn’t actually have footage of the last time wickets fell this quickly.

I can make it no clearer than this: the strike rate in Test cricket this year is a wicket every 46 balls. In the entire history of our sport, there are four bowlers with 300 wickets at a strike rate this good. We have turned all of cricket into Dale Steyn and Waqar Younis.

Many people say that Malcolm Marshall is the greatest bowler of all time. Well, his career strike rate is higher than the collective Test bowlers of 2025. Cricket is outbowling Marshall.

And of course, three of the greatest strike bowlers of all time are playing in this final. Kagiso Rabada’s strike rate has dropped under 40 again. This cycle he popped over to Bangladesh and was still unplayable. He used to struggle against left-handers, and he’s worked that out too.

Mitchell Starc has come out of a career funk and is now bowling over 90 mph on the regular and is swinging the ball a mile. He looks more accurate than before as well. And that is nothing compared to his skipper. In the entire history of cricket, there might never have been a bowler who is this accurate and this fast at the same time.

The other two are strike bowlers, but Cummins is really more like a high-end stock bowler who just doesn’t make any mistakes, and then can occasionally bounce batters out when he has to. If he is this high on the list, it tells you what kind of a world we are in now.

Today, there were times when it looked like people could still bat a little bit. Those were almost entirely when the sun was out. Many will say the clouds came in and the ball swung. That didn't really happen today. In fact, what seemed to happen is that when the clouds came in, the ball was slightly harder to pick up.

And in normal cricket - like what we used to play for the hundred years before this - that would be a bit difficult. Facing Cummins, Hazlewood or Jansen without clear sunlight looks almost impossible right now.

Think of Lungi Ngidi, barely a Test bowler. I mean, he doesn’t even play first-class cricket anymore. His three wickets today were his first with the red ball this year. In the previous 12 months, he only had four, and in 2023 he didn’t take a wicket. Ngidi has taken seven wickets in the last two years, and three of them were today when the gloom came in.

No one is doubting Ngidi’s talent. When fit, his ability to bowl at pace, with movement and bounce is brutal, but he’s almost never fit. He’s always pre or post-injury. And in the first innings, he looked like someone who just hadn’t bowled at all for a long period of time. He was rough, he was slow, he was everywhere. And then in this one, he’s suddenly Sydney Barnes, Dennis Lillee and Jasprit Bumrah rolled into one.

I mean, he was so sure he got Beau Webster out that it wasn’t even a celebrappeal. He was cheering like he had actually bowled him.

And so he should be, because he was in the middle of his second-longest spell in Test cricket ever. He bowled 10 on the trot back in 2020, but now he was going so well there wasn’t even a reason to bring on Rabada, who is the best strike bowler in history. When he splattered Pat Cummins’ stumps in a rare moment of counterattack, it meant Ngidi had three wickets in one spell - one less than all his red ball victims from the previous two years.

And it doesn’t really seem to matter who has the ball. Wiaan Mulder only took one wicket, but he could have taken heaps as well. When Australia don’t have their best three man attack of all time, Scott Boland comes in and takes wickets at 1800s prices. It wasn’t long ago that New Zealand had a four man pace attack and Matt Henry was their fifth option.

These are the summers of our wickets. They are everywhere. No one even thought on day one that this was South Africa's best bowling attack. In fact, for the entire first innings, people were moaning and saying that they could have chosen someone different.

In this cycle, they have taken their wickets at under 24. 23.78. I say it like that, and then I shake in the corner. India and Australia are at 24 and 25 as well, so it means we have three teams combined averaging fewer than 25 runs per wicket when they bowl.

The worst team is Sri Lanka, and they’re up at nearly 34. We’ve had years in Test cricket this millennium with higher aggregates than that. Now the worst bowling attack is still doing fine.

Everyone is taking wickets. This game has seen 28 in two days, and it’s not even close to the most dramatic of this cycle.

This is not even a wicket which should be that deadly. It is swinging less than normal, and seaming only slightly more. 0.7 degrees seam is not something that you should sniff at. But it also shouldn’t make it look like it’s is the first time you've ever picked up a bat. At the moment, everyone looks like it.

n the 1800s, manual labour and amateurism meant that batting in cricket was impossible. More than a century on, technology and professionalism is doing the same thing. This is the ground that has the WG Grace gates. He was the man who changed batting forever, and right now, it’s changing back.

What is Test cricket if every bowler is Malcolm Marshall?