India and Australia traded only bouncers until Adelaide. None of the barbs that would customarily succeed the overt aggression would appear to suggest that the current, high-stakes Test series was living up to its dramatic billing as the confrontation of the best teams in the business, never mind who topped the rankings. The strong man, after all, is stereotypically projected as silent too: if he is obliged occasionally to take it, he is also secure in the knowledge that he can give it back in proportionate measure.
Loquaciousness is not required to be among his special attributes. And if Mohammad Shami’s exit from the serialised contest after the first Test is a big blow that India have taken, well might they be taking heart from the fact that it was two of their neophytes, Mohammad Siraj and Kartik Tyagi, who knocked the hosts’ boots and brains by rapping Will Pucovski and Harry Conway on the helmet in the pre-Adelaide exchanges. Eyebrows rose sharply, as usual, when the latter, a tail-ender, was targeted but the consequent disapproval was voiced very, very mildly. Cricket could be seen to have reconciled itself to the purported correctitude of the widespread, long-held belief that it was only those who lacked pace in their bowling who screamed their heads off when they found themselves at the receiving end.
The days when Test matches were preceded by unofficial, mutual agreements on the rabbits not to be bounced were too far back to hold any prohibitory significance today. And why, it has been said unabashedly, should the paceman hold himself back when tail-enders could prove stubborn enough to carry on seemingly ad infinitum? Or, ad nauseam. So the former cricketer lucky to have escaped the sort of scary scrutiny of his skills and mental resources in his time that is par for the course now is free to advocate the rough treatment, adding that the tailender must add new skills to his repertoire to be able to survive.
But it is also an age when limited-overs cricket has left even many front-rank batsmen inadequate in terms of technique ~ and there are reasons why rabbits are rabbits ~ to an extent that illustrates administrators’ inability to strike a balance between the game’s financial well-being and its fundamentals.
Watching a Twenty20 blockbuster, it might seem absurd that Don Bradman once recalled one of his century knocks quite happily in an interview as he had played no lofted shots while going great guns. The contrast, truth to tell, could appear even silly in the contemporary context. The extravagantly lifted shot is not something to be chary of: it is a Twenty20 staple.
But then, Ian Chappell could be right in apprehending tragedy lurking somewhere. If Steve Smith scoffs at his criticism, the gladiatorial competition he seemingly wants may not be universally deemed cricket.