Hello and welcome to Stumped, your intercontinental hit of news features and debate from the quirky world of cricket.
I'm Alison Mitchell and I'm in the ABC commentary box at Adelaide Oval.
It is my favourite ground in the world. Adelaide, the city of churches and we can see well,
if it was daylight, we could see the cathedral across beyond the Moreton Bay fig trees
and the heritage scoreboard but this is a day-night Test match that I've been watching here.
So the night sky is now dark. The floodlights have been on. They've been switched off as the crowd has now dissipated
and I'm very pleased that I've got the lovely Jim Maxwell alongside me again.
Ali, where's the guitar? We need a bit of music at this time of the night.
And this has been an eventful day of Test cricket at the beautiful Adelaide Oval
and 25000 or so fans have turned up.
The biggest crowd to watch the first day of a West Indies-Australia Test in 40 years
And so that was something to behold. But Test cricket keeps moving
and Australia move just as fast as we'll find out when we discuss the opening day.
And I'm Sunil Gupta in New Delhi, a sunny New Delhi. But I'll tell you where the guitars are Jim.
They're gently weeping for the Indian team that is imploding slowly in Bangladesh,
having lost the first two games, so the Beatles are right there over there and strumming away.
I just hope that the administration here wakes up and understands that white ball cricket is very different
from red ball cricket and we just need to have something else. Because, remember, next year, a year down the line,
the World Cup is going to be held in India.
I'll tell you there will be a lot of questions asked if India don't do well in that particular edition.
And what a jamboree that promises to be with India hosting the World Cup again.
Of course they won it in 2011 with that final in Mumbai. I remember it so well.
Well as we're here at Adelaide Oval, looking out on to the outfield,
West Indies team are making their way out of the dressing room
and a long walk across the Oval to get out the gate. They'll be back tomorrow,
but it was a long day in the field for them yet again.
They came unstuck at Perth, hit by injuries to their bowling attack.
Now here for this day-night Test match. Well, after a first day, where Australia piled up 3 for 330
with yet another century for Marnus Labuschagne. He closed the day 120 not out.
So he has got three hundreds in a row because of course in Perth, he got the double hundred and
the hundred in the same match. Now he's followed that up with a third ton.
Jim, I'm not sure whether to start with you,
with Australia's batting or West Indies bowling. Because, almost the bowling was so dismal, so injury-hit.
That is almost as much of a story as Marnus Labuschagne's batting hunger.
Where do you wanna start?
The first place I'd start is team selection as an indictment of the West Indies' management
that they should ask a fella to come from Jamaica to Australia and expect
that he could walk out onto the field and play in a Test match without something going wrong.
I mean, we found out subsequent to his appearance this morning,
that he hadn't played for over a month.
He'd been playing for Jamaica in the 50 comp. Jamaica ultimately went on to win,
but he didn't play in any of the more recent games. Seven games.
So, what sort of match fitness did he have? We should explain, this is Marquine Mindley.
He bowled two overs then went off with a hamstring injury,
having just been flown in from Jamaica. Yes, it's quite extraordinary.
No, it was a very poor display and the longer the day went,
the worse it became with the run rate going up over four an over in the last hour and a bit.
And even the second new ball, which is so much of a problem as a rule here under lights.
It looked like it was going, more like a Turkish delight round the dressing room,
than a cricket ball on the field.
David Warner made 21. He was the first man out.
But he started the day and has probably still ended the day in the news for reasons other than his run making.
On the eve of this Test match, David Warner announced that he'd withdrawn his application to have his
lifetime captaincy ban removed. This relates to his role in Sandpapergate during the tour of
South Africa in 2018, when the lifetime leadership ban was placed on him. Recently, Cricket Australia
amended their own code of conduct to allow a player to apply to have any long term sanctions
modified. Warner, therefore, had put in an application with the blessing, he says of Cricket Australia.
But he is thoroughly unhappy about the way the panel dealt with his application.
He put out a lengthy post on Instagram, detailing how he says the review panel wanted to conduct
a hearing in public, raking back over events of Sandpapergate. Contrary to the way, Warner says,
the process should have been or at least, what he and Cricket Australia thought it would be.
First of all, Jim, Warner is upset and angry it seems over the process, is he right to be?
Yes, he's right to be upset with the lack of proper process and a fairer hearing than perhaps he got.
I think that the problem that started this was Cricket Australia's decision
to amend their code of conduct that has led from A to B to C.
And unfortunately, talking to someone this morning, it's pretty clear that the players in the team
are fairly upset with Warner,
in the way this has been dealt with, because it's becoming too much of a distraction.
And he's 36 years of age.
What possible future would he have as the leader, certainly at the international level, maybe at another level.
I worry that all this is going to end badly for Warner.
After this series, he plays against South Africa who have a much better attack.
If he continues to get low scores against them, he could be dropped.
But he won't get dropped because he'll retire and go off and play T20.
I think that's the more likely outcome of all of this,
unless he can start getting some runs and focus on just playing cricket.
Because, at the moment, this is turning into a very unhappy event for Cricket Australia
because of the poor way they have handled it. And now for Warner,
because it's consuming too much space in the media and against his team.
Let's talk a little bit more about this Australia-West Indies series cos I want to focus
on one player in particular from the West Indies side. And that's because on last week's show,
we did talk about West Indies debutant from Perth, Tagenarine Chanderpaul.
Now he played very well on his international Test debut in the first match of the series.
Made 45 and 51 as opener and we found him to be a pretty quietly spoken man.
And when he batted, he did display similar technical and mental characteristics to Shivnarine,
his father and legendary West Indies batter. And Sunil, you've been speaking to his father this week.
Yes, I had the privilege of speaking to Shiv Chanderpaul
and I asked him how it felt for him to see his son make his Test debut?
I wasn't too sure what was gonna happen, knowing that
Australia's bowling attack is the best in the world and the quality of bowlers they've got.
I mean, Starc, Hazelwood, Cummins and then Green and Lyon there.
And then, Travis Head is now bowling.
But, I mean, looking at their bowling attack and the teams that have been there for the past 10 years,
haven't done anything much in Australia. And making your debut in Perth is never an easy place,
especially against Australia in Australia. It's not going to be easy, so I wasn't sure what to expect.
But I think he held up pretty well. I know he would have been tested by these guys
and needed to be tested and he's got to show how much fight he's got in him
and how well he would hold up against these guys.
Yeah, well I think that showed he learned his sense of fight and standing there and going for it
from you because that's exactly what you did when you were playing Test cricket.
But scoring 51 on debut, take us through your emotions at that time.
I was like, very much normal, just looking at him and just hoping that he could keep his head on
and then making sure that he knows that these guys are top-class bowlers and you can't make too many
mistakes with these guys. Yeah, knowing that he was overnight forty something and then the next
morning, he came out to bat and Hazelwood bowled an over that was an amazing over. I mean,
he could have nicked off early in the over but he nicked off one time, one at short slip.
Then the next he nicked off, it bounced through and went through the gap for four.
And then the other time he nicked, he was gone. There were some good balls, some real top bowling
that over there and he was lucky that that edge to slip went for four to get his fifty.
But Hazelwood never let up. He kept plugging away and hit the right areas at all times
consistently and he had no choice, he had to play. The ball was on the stumps. He had to play so,
all he could hope for was that he missed it and didn't edge it but unfortunately he edged it and got out.
There one thing that we noticed about you both was the similarity in the stance.
Is this something he started with right from the beginning or did you coach him to take up that pretty open eyed stance?
No, it's not something he had in the beginning.
I told him to open a little bit because he was very, very slight arm.
He was locking himself in a lot. And then,
he opened up a little too much and I tried to get him back around, where he gets a little more side on.
And then, he still stands a little too open, but I mean whatever he's comfortable with.
So, how did this very open stance help you and help him because it was so unusual?
Very few batsmen had that type of stance.
What was it that actually gave you the advantage by using that stance?
Well, it helps you with your balance. Keep as still as possible, making sure your weight
is heading in the right direction and that is the main thing.
Batting is more about your balance than where your weight is headed.
I mean, for him, I think that is what is also part of his game.
He's got a few areas he needs to fine tune and then they'll help him with his cricket.
But hopefully, hopefully, he'll learn a lot from this tour.
Thank you so much. And we call you the fighter, the gritty fighter.
Shivnarine, gritty fighter, Chanderpaul, thank you so much for being on Stumped with us.
No worries, thank you.
England beat Pakistan by 74 runs in front of a sell-out crowd on the fifth day with the final wicket
coming with only minutes of lights remaining.
And yes, we have seen Test matches go down to the wire like that before, but that was what came before it,
which was so extraordinary. It was a Test match that ultimately broke all sorts of records for
England's aggressive scoring, in both the first and second innings, and we touched on that last
week, you'll remember. I think at the time, it was only the openers, who had scored rapid hundreds.
Little did we know what was to come with England scoring runs across the Test at a rate of 6.73 runs per over.
Unheard of for sustained batting across a Test match.
The one decision that caused the biggest debate but is now being rightly lauded,
was Ben Stokes' aggressive declaration.
He declared at tea on Day Four, setting Pakistan a very gettable 343 runs to win
on the flattest surface that you could find and it was gonna be hard work to take 20 wickets on that pitch.
Jim, we already knew that this was an incredible Test with four centuries scored by England on the opening day.
But what of that declaration from Stokes on Day Four? Brave? Bold? How ever many words you can find.
All of those things and I think we've noticed since Ben Stokes took over
the captaincy that he's prepared to risk losing a game to win a game. He probably doesn't see it that way,
he sees it as a great opportunity to win, when he makes those kind of declarations.
But to do it with the strange bowling attack that he had it in this match and pull it off was simply remarkable.
So hopefully, it has made all the other captains leading teams bolder, braver,
fearless in the way they go about managing their team in the hope that what they do, may get a win.
But if they lose, does it really matter?
It's a Test match and you've done your best to put your team in a winning position.
So we could, at last, get rid of this near negative attitude of just
leaving enough time to bowl a side out but not really giving them a sniff and all that sort of stuff.
So I think, it's a huge transformation, potentially, for all of Test cricket,
but certainly as I mentioned some time ago when Stokes and McCullum got the job in tandem,
this is one of the most exciting decisions that English cricket, have ever made.
But I didn't really think we would see this on a flat pitch in Rawalpindi.
But also think of it from the opponent's point of view.
And that is a very interesting point of view. It's like a tennis player playing somebody
who is lower ranked than him, right? Especially say, in a final,
and the pressure is on the higher ranked guy because he says,
I can't lose to that guy, what's going to happen to my image and what is going to happen to everything else.
And the same thing in Pakistan. Hey, these guys have given us just 340 odd runs
to score in four sessions. We should be winning. And that pressure comes right back on Pakistan.
I can't put a foot wrong. I can't do something wrong. So they can't just go there and play freely,
the way that England actually played, I think. So it's a very delicate psychological battle also.
It's not just a cricketing thing. It is how you put the pressure on. How you subtly apply that pressure.
Let me read you a couple of tweets though, Sunil, because as you say it's delicate
in a transference of pressure, delicious at the same time, but that fine line.
This was a reaction to the declaration, when it first came.
"Sorry, England are insulting Test cricket.
This ridiculous declaration has devalued everything that went before. If you can't win a Test match,
you don't hand it to the opposition, who have only had to bat normally to win on this pitch.
No carrot involved. The Aussies must be laughing their socks off. Only bad light can save our naivety."
That was from Brian, obviously, before England went on to win.
Then on the other hand, there was a tweet we picked up from Gary.
#BBCStumped so we see your tweets.
Gary said, "Think of this declaration differently. It alerts future opposition to an England team
that is prepared to lose to win. It will set a cultural change that strikes fear in our opponents and
means no team can cruise through sessions against a predictable and conservative opposition. Bravo to Ben."
Absolutely. I think that sort of sums up what you're saying Sunil.
Absolutely.
Now, that is all we've time for on this week's Stumped, though.
So my thanks to Jim Maxwell and Sunil Gupta and of course, to all of you for listening.
For now from us from the Adelaide Oval. We'll say bye bye.