How does someone such as Hughes come to be occupying the spot once filled by Mark Waugh and Greg Chappell? Is this a cyclical low, or is it a terminal decline?
Is it wrong to mock the afflicted? If there simply are not half a dozen players in that entire country who can play like Test batsmen, what does that mean for Australian cricket? For Test cricket?
Will there still be an Ashes in a generation’s time? Will it have to be replaced by a Twenty20 extravaganza? Or just settled the old-fashioned way, out on the cobbles of Twitter? Hughes will walk off now, Michael Clarke next; why is he hiding himself at five? Shouldn’t he be coming out to avert a crisis rather than into the teeth of it?
After enjoying a quietly encouraging day one, can his young side ever recover now they are routed? For England, is this unfolding mismatch delicious payback for years of humiliation? Or do we want to see a close contest?
The crowd’s cheering subsides abruptly. Hughes has a question of his own: was that really out? He wants a review. The moment is punctured.
Time is suspended while third umpire Tony Hill checks umpire Kumar Dharmasena’s homework. Thermal imaging readers, supersensitive microphones, high resolution close-up cameras, voodoo are all employed. Hughes, and all of us, stand in limbo.
Eventually the verdict is reached, although for those in the ground it is not clear exactly how and why. Even for those watching on TV, the evidence is far from immediately conclusive.
Now the moment of sporting drama, the question of a man’s career, a team’s position, a cricketing culture’s future are all subsumed by a new set of procedural, prosaic questions.
Was it a no ball? How grumpily will Sir Ian say “move on”? Is that a mark on Hot Spot? Or is that from the bat clipping the pad? Does the close-up show a deviation?
What does the stump mic say? What can the Sky boffins see or hear that we cannot? Why does the Snicko thing take so long to set up? Is the decision correct? Is there enough evidence to overturn it?
Do you ever hear the word “howler” in any other context these days?
Was the batsman justified in asking for the review? And it is the same questions every time, every few minutes, several times a day.
Slaves now to the technology that was supposed to improve the game, we debate the use and misuse of the DRS where once we talked of cricket.
It is not worth a five per cent increase in decision-making accuracy.
Sport is not about justice, it is about skill, heart, fallibility and drama. Constant reviewing of so many wickets is robbing Test cricket of its most painful, poignant act: the guillotining of a player’s participation in the piece.
They say, “We have the technology so we should use it”. No. It is like a mobile phone going off during Hamlet’s dying speech. Again and again and again.
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