3 minute read

Matt Renshaw has been very difficult to ignore this week, whereas Jack Leach apparently remains incredibly easy to overlook.

We went to a Test match in Kandy once (Sri Lanka v West Indies if you’re wondering) and a Sky cameraman came into the stand and filmed us from about a metre away for what felt like 50,000 years.

At no point did he utter a single word to us. He didn’t, for example, ask, “Would it be weird if I filmed you watching cricket for what will feel like 50,000 years?”

To this we would have answered, “Well, it would be considerably less weird than filming us anyway from a distance of one metre WITHOUT EVER ONCE SPEAKING TO US.”

As for why he filmed us, it’s fair to say we did stick out a bit at Asgiriya that day. Casting an eye around the stands, it was clear our visual appearance was very, very different. This was because we do not look like an empty plastic seat.

Say what you like about attendances, but the empty plastic seats still turn out for most matches and they were treated to far more entertainment than they would have expected in Durban this week. This was because the first Test between South Africa and Australia made the unusual, old-fashioned move of carrying on until day five.

Bad light was perhaps a bigger contributor to that outcome than the two teams’ batters though, because only two players managed to pass 50 in the entire match.

The second half-centurion was Aiden Markram, who batted six pointless hours for 75, trying and failing to save a Test that was lost when Temba Bavuma had neglected to make any effort to prevent Matt Renshaw taking singles for the best part of a day, earlier in the match.

Renshaw finished that first innings with 190. He then made 82 in the second innings.

We have long felt that Renshaw was easily worth a place in Australia’s misfiring batting order, but we haven’t liked to mention it in case someone noticed and actually picked him. We are not here to encourage Australia to pick the correct players.

That particular machiavellian ploy has been rather ruined by this performance. The genie can’t be put back in the bottle. (This is a terrible idiom, by the way. One of the Arabian Nights stories is literally about a fisherman tricking a genie into going back into a bottle. It’s not even that hard. He basically just goads him into it.)

On the plus side, this does mean we can again write freely about Matt Renshaw without having to subcontract all referencing to people who are attempting to pass him off as little-known. If you’re wondering why this is such a positive development, it is because we get to point you all to a series of articles we have written about the time Renshaw had to retire hurt because of the wild shits. (Steve Smith does not emerge well from those tales.)

Speaking of involuntary expulsions, it sounds like Jack Leach is very much out. Asked about the spinner’s prospects on Wisden Cricket Weekly, national selector Marcus North said England were, “focusing on a slightly different direction,” for the foreseeable future.

Bit sad. We’ve always had a lot of time for Leach – although being as he’s not Australian, at least we’ve been able to say as much.

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