Super Over 33

16 June 2025

Ball 1
Well that was disappointing.

I know, I know.

South Africa winning is great for Test cricket and all that. But I wanted Australia to win: to hell with what’s best for the sport!

Arrggghhhhh!

Nevertheless, congratulations to the Proteas.

South Africa is a great cricketing nation. It was cringeworthy hearing Matthew Hayden and others in commentary carrying on like it is a minnow. He evidently forgot that not that long ago South Africa beat Australia in three consecutive Test series in Australia.

Hopefully this win sparks a Test match renaissance in South Africa - and in other countries too.

It irks me that Test cricket is characterised as fragile and needing of protection. There is no need for this to be: it genuinely is the best format of the sport. Pay all players plenty, create windows for Tests, eliminate flat pitches, fix over rates and promote Test series properly and there is no reason it cannot thrive.

Ball 2
I should have known not to question Mitchell Starc’s place in the side!

I did it on Indian television before the 2024 IPL Playoffs, only to see Starc basically win the title for Kolkata Knight Riders.

And, of course, in this game he was superb: taking 5 wickets and top scoring with 58 not out in the second innings.

Each time I criticise him he comes out firing: clearly he is an avid reader of this newsletter!

I also got the toss decision badly wrong. On Twitter, I said that Bavuma made a mistake in bowling first. Obviously, this was not the case.

Indeed, had Australia bowled first, they might well have won. This is not to be churlish or begrudge South Africa their superb win - I think it is just an objective fact.

It was a wonderful game of cricket. Rabada was magnificent on day 1, as was Steve Smith: two of the game’s greats going head to head. And then Starc hit back late in the day to leave the Aussies on top.

On day 2, Cummins scythed through the South African middle order in what appeared to be the decisive spell of the match. But then, in an increasingly chaotic afternoon, Ngidi and Rabada routed the Aussies, before Carey and Starc stopped the rot.

In hindsight, it is ironic that their superb partnership condemned Australia to defeat. Had Australia been bowled out in time to have a crack at South Africa in the gloom of post-tea day 2, maybe they would have induced a collapse.

As it was, by day 3 conditions were suddenly benign - but this should not detract from the superb batting of Bavuma and Markram.

Ball 3
As expected, I can’t find any viewing figures from Amazon Prime, the streaming service on which the cricket was broadcast in Australia.

I suspect they were tiny.

My Twitter feed throughout the match was full of the cricket - except for the Aussies I follow: I kept seeing AFL/NRL tweets from Aussies.

Flash back to 2023 when the WTC final was on Channel Seven, and the numbers were superb.

I did a comparison with Day 3 of both games - I chose this day because it was a Friday, the flagship day for NRL and AFL.

In 2023, the average free-to-air audience across Australia* was:

The cricket numbers were so impressive - especially given session 2 was from 10:10pm-12:10am and session 3 was from 12:30am-3:00am!

For the Friday of the WTC final last week, the free-to-air numbers were

:These days, a ‘reach’ figure is also given - basically it’s the total of everyone who watched, even for only a short burst.

AFL’s reach for last Friday was 1,653,000 and NRL’s was 1,222,000.

Just imagine what cricket’s ‘reach’ would have been on Channel Seven and what a missed opportunity this was for the sport in this country.

As it was - well, I was watching on Prime and so was my father. I believe my friend Patrick was watching as well. Hopefully there might have been others - but we can safely say it was at least 3.

*Back in 2023 they did not give a national figure - they only gave a figure across Australia’s five biggest cities. These figures were Cricket: 490,000, AFL: 410,000, NRL: 236,000. In 2024 the five-city figure was replaced with a national figure. The industry norm is that to convert a five-city figure to an equivalent national figure you multiply by 1.3 - which I have done to arrive at these numbers.

Ball 4
So. where to now for the Aussie batting line up.

Sadly, Smith looks like he will miss at least the first Test on the upcoming tour of the West Indies. And it seems Labuschagne’s time has run out.

Potentially this might result in this sort of top 7:

1. Khawaja
2. Konstas
3. Green
4. Inglis
5. Head
6. Webster
7. Carey

I feel a bit sorry for Labuschagne, in some respects. Personally, I would have dropped him for the WTC final but, when most batters struggled, he played two quite lengthy innings and looked good throughout. As has often been the case of late though, he just didn’t score quickly enough: 17 off 56 and 22 off 64 don’t quite cut it.

Khawaja looked worse than Labuschagne and I have serious doubts about him in the Ashes.

I think it is premature to judge Green - he got a couple of good balls and nicked them. It happens.

Smith looked amazing - he seems back to his greatest ever form. Hopefully his finger injury is just a blip.

Head had a rare bad Test. Webster looked awful for a while in the first innings but rallied to play some bludgeoning shots and ride his luck to be top scorer in the first innings.

Carey, as is usual of late, looked superb but without quite dominating as much as he looked like he would. Australia could do worse than opening with Carey in the Ashes to solidify our fragile top order. Inglis could do a bit of keeping if needs be.

Ball 5
I do not respect those who boo Steve Smith, as happened in this Test when he came out to bat.

Yes, he allowed cheating to occur on his watch - he might have even directed it - seven years ago. I deplore what the Australians did - I loathed it then; I loathe it now.

However, they were not the only ones to tamper with the ball. Several other players have been caught over the years and it seems pretty clear that in that series in South Africa there was a ball tampering arms race occurring. The Australians took it to a new - and disgraceful - level by using sandpaper.

They certainly got punished for it. The International Cricket Council gave them only a minor punishment. Most other countries would have left it at that. But Cricket Australia imposed its own penalties; in Smith’s case, this meant a one-year playing ban and a two-year captaincy ban.

The ban cost him millions of dollars, he missed a lot of cricket when in his prime, he lost the Australian captaincy and, it seems, is destined to be hated forever by a percentage of cricket fans.

For what? One mistake - for which he has well and truly paid, in my opinion. Those who actively loathe him - even if it is just him as a proxy for their dislike of the Aussie cricket team - seem a bit dim to me.

And if you are in any doubt as to how visceral the hatred is, have a look at the reaction on Twitter, as Smith walked off the field in agony on Saturday, with a sickening compound dislocation of his finger.

I suspect most of these ‘fans’ (presumably English as they were reacting to a tweet from an English media agency) did not actually see the incident and how nasty the injury was. Had they done so, maybe they would not have responded with such glee . . . or maybe I am just naive.

One thing that cannot be faulted is their intelligence and wit. To draw a connection between a hand injury and the fact that sandpaper is best deployed with a hand . . . pure genius and hilarity.

Ball 6
I started by top five Ashes series countdown a couple of weeks ago but forgot to finish it, so here are my third and second best!

3rd: 1936/37
Down 2-0, and amidst rumours of senior players not supporting new captain Don Bradman, and with Australia at fever pitch for revenge for the Bodyline series four years earlier, some 350,000 people turned up for the third Test in Melbourne - when Melbourne had a population of only a million.

Australia made just 200 and looked finished but rain made the pitch treacherous and England collapsed to 9/76 - and declared to get Australia in before it dried. Bradman countered by reversing the batting order, opening with 9 and 11 and with 10 batting at number 3.

Bradman himself finally came in with the score 5/97. He was out for 270 when the score was 9/549. Australia won and won the next two Tests (Bradman making 212 and 169) to come back and win the series 3-2, the only time this has ever been done.

With four of the five Tests being affected by rain and sticky wickets and with total attendance nearly a million, there has never been a series like it.

Second: 1981
Sacked as captain after the second Test, Ian Botham came out to bat at number 7 as England followed on in the third Test, with the game lost. Odds of 500-1 for England appeared on the board - and Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh duly had £10 and £5 on them!

With support from the tail, Botham made an extraordinary 149 - an innings of skill, audacity, power and luck - allowing England to at least set some sort of target for Australia: 130. The Aussies looked home, until Bob Willis - who had been dropped for the Test but talked his way back in - took 8/43, bowling as if in a trance, and England won by 18. It might be the most extraordinary Test ever played.

The Aussies hit back at Edgbaston and had the game won . . . until Botham came on and took 5 for 1 and England won by 29. Botham then smacked a peerless 118 in the fifth Test - an innings which promoted the Times to ask, ‘Was this the greatest innings of all time?’ The extent of Botham’s dominance of the summer is that no-one remembers the drawn 6th Test or what he did, (he took 10 wickets in it!).

England’s astonishing 3-1 series victory captured the attention of England - for a glorious few weeks cricket was the nation’s number one topic (along with the wedding of Charles and Diana!) and made the now Lord (Sir) Ian Botham a hero forever.