The muppets take Melbourne
It was the best of chases, it was the worst of chases.
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The crowd are laughing. Not because it’s funny, but because no other sound fits. What they’re watching resembles cricket: men on green grass, a brown strip, the right colours - but the cricket itself feels like it’s being played by muppets.
Brydon Carse walks in at three and swings at his first ball like he’s trying to beat an invisible ogre. It was dirty, nasty, like when a video comes into your feed and you think, I shouldn’t be watching this, but also have to follow it to the end anyway.
Years ago, I walked into a bar in Leeds very late at night. It was hauntingly dark, and everyone was in one section. There was some event happening, and when we asked the barman, he said he didn’t know what it was. But there was a trestle table, three people eating random things, while an MC talked into a microphone about topics that seemed to have nothing to do with what we were witnessing. The crowd watched on in silence for ages. Nothing made sense; it was just a thing that was happening and people were staring at it. That was this chase.
Brydon Carse was going after a total, but he was also riding a stoned dragon into an apocalyptic electrical storm, waving his steel sword above his head.
***
Ben Duckett went full Noosa tourist mode. There was nothing left to do. Mitchell Starc was bowling fast and getting the ball to jut off at weird angles, so Duckett went reaching for deliveries he couldn’t have hit with Zak Crawley’s wingspan. It was slog and miss, followed by Starc delivering juicy legside half-volleys to smash. The worst ball he faced is sprayed miles down leg by a weirdly inaccurate Starc, and Duckett still manages to almost get caught and bowled from it. He is scooping, slogging, missing and slashing, then he got a full one and he is playing a different ball in his mind as he was bowled.
Crawley is trying to get out, and failing. Crawley is trying to hit to point and finds mid-on. Crawley is smashing the ball through mid-off like a George Foreman punch. This happens in three consecutive deliveries. He is, on occasion, batting properly - and on occasion slogging badly, like he can’t remember his role, or is just free-styling it.
Jacob Bethell swings his first shot to the legside, the ball flies over the slips for a boundary. For a moment he is looking 180 degrees from the ball, and yet it all feels right for this chase.
