DC Edit | Modern Cricket Is Brutally Charming

It was an extraordinary week in which the slow burn of Test cricket had time to display the nuances of the game even as the brutal hitting power of batsmen in modern cricket was amplified in run chases in which the targets that seemed to test the limits of the impossible, were made to look probable and then made possible by the never-say-die spirit of today’s cavalier willow entertainers.

The South Africans, down and out in the first Test, were the first to display all the doughtiness and the staying prowess needed for five-day cricket in which they excelled despite that old enemy of the long game — rain — having robbed much of the playing time.

Temba Bavuma may be short in stature, but he makes light of the responsibilities weighing on the skipper of the cricket team of the rainbow nation. In tandem with the comparatively gigantic Marco Jansen, the Proteas skipper first batted Australia out of the Test before unleashing his pace battery. Jansen, who has the hallmarks to claim the title of the world’s best Test all-rounder in contemporary cricket, was the destroyer-in-chief.

As the likes of Scott Boland defied age to shine with ball and bat, hanging on dearly to play for the draw, which is also a result in Test match cricket, the tension could be cut with a knife. On the other hand, the limited-overs game lends less time for the emotions as the white ball keeps sailing for and over the boundary as if it were a programmed drone of modern warfare.

The shortest format match of the day saw Team India chase down 225 in professional manner with the silken touch of Samson making way for the fierce hitting of Naman Dhir. As if those thrills were not enough for a day, aficionados were hearing of the chase of a whopping 430 by the Sri Lankans after captain Harry Brook had become the first from England to make an ODI double hundred, ironically to become the first such score to belong to the losing side.

Such was the ferocious response of the Lankans that they seemed to think the England total was a little under par and they proved it with one of the most exhilarating run chases despite losing two early wickets. Putting the icing on the cake baked by early strikers was Janith Liyanage with a 61 from 27 balls, the last of which sailed over the ropes for the winning hit. What a week that was for the three formats of the game.