One down. Devilish bet on Aussie plonk (5, 7)
Could Douglas Jardine have cheated on the crossword? No, he wouldn’t do that. Or rather, he would, but only in a way that still technically complied with current crossword rules, while also causing a violent crossword-based diplomatic incident. Would Mike Brearley cheat at crossword puzzles? No. Instead, he would ask the crossword why he thinks it should be so difficult.
A defining Brendon McCullum image has been sought during this haphazard Ashes tour: a look-at-the-data moment, a McClaren brolly. His “in any case, we prepared ourselves too well [after the defeat in Brisbane]’ was good, and also dangerous because it made him look foolish, and the moment McCullum’s carelessness seems foolish, the whole thing threatens to collapse.
On a rain-shortened first day of the fifth Ashes Test, we were given the crossword. The England head coach is often seen doing crosswords during the game. Here he was seen flipping to the answers at the back of his book and then appearing to fill in some unsolved clues. The clip was happily recycled on social media. It just seemed fitting for a man who is often accused of looking for shortcuts, neglecting his homework, and so on.
There was even a degree of frustration here in an unbroken partnership of 154 between Joe Root and Harry Brook, enough to leave England in a late position of strength in the final dead rubber of a losing series.
Root looked beautiful in control on a good, even delivery. Brook played half the time as a man who urgently needed to go to the toilet, the rest as some kind of hyper-competent alien prince. But perhaps the most tantalizing unsolved riddle on the first day was the sight of Jacob Bethell standing at number 3 on the perfect podium, a beautiful sun-drenched lime green oval, an elite Test attack, the event glamor of the New Year’s Test.
In the end, Bethell produced a perfect miniature of his time with the Test team to date, all simple lines, symmetry, balance, sparkle of shadows, always leaving you wanting more. He is clearly a top talent. But does anyone actually know what to do with this? Do we trust that these people won’t break him?
Bethell came to bat at 35 for one after Ben Duckett had batted his way to a fun and volatile 27, opening the innings with the tough, seasoned durability of Paddington Bear who had an accident with a bar of soap and a skateboard. Bethell looked at the final ball of Mitchell Starc’s fourth over. He hung his bat on the curtain inside the line, sleeves rolled up, all springy, rolled up.
As always he looked great. He took off, he punched, he defended in tight shapes. He chipped in to zero with nine balls. Bethell has no trigger moves. He simply stands still and plays from the crease, a tribute to the speed of his hands and the quick energy in his feet. Scott Boland ripped one past his perimeter, a good, cinematic play and miss. Nothing like 11. Then it was nothing like 13 when Starc whizzed a truly awful bouncer over his nose.
Ball 15 was shorter and had a beautiful point to break the spell. At that stage you couldn’t help thinking, “Hmm, maybe they’ve sorted this out. Maybe they can play Test batting. Maybe the clue was at the back of the book all along.”
The answer to this will take a bit of decoding and from here it will require some care. Bethell did a very interesting interview with Nasser Hussain on a Sky podcast released just before this test. He sounded smart, confident and determined in the way all top athletes do. But he also said strange things.
Had he read Greg Chappell’s recent article, Nasser asked, which suggested Test batters needed to defend better? No, he didn’t. But yes, Bethell thought, you could defend more. But you won’t score many points that way.
Chappell scored more than 7,000. Bethell is yet to reach 20 in the first innings of a Test. Hmm. Does he think young players should start at number 3 or work their way up? No, no work-up, his game is perfectly adapted to strike three. Which may be true. But how does he know this? How can he be so sure? Bethell has never scored a first-class hundred.
He later said that he never listened to outside advice or suggestions (“noise”). Real? Why not? Is it helpful that the only voices Bethell hears are those of his captain and coach, both of whom advocate positive reinforcement, the you-go-girl style of preparation? Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will. This is the tagline of McCullum’s X account. Maybe that’s true too. But doubt can also be a useful tool.
Bethell was caught after a nice ball from Boland, although even this was a good lead, a lead that flew, that looked good. Could a No. 3 who had played No. 3 for a year, who was completely plugged into that role, leave that role?
We’ll never know, or at least not for a while, because Bethell is one of the areas where Bazball (such as it was) has blinked in the last twelve months. They really should have trusted the first impression in New Zealand and had him in that slot all year.
What would Bethell be like now if he had played all summer and then started in Perth, instead of being starved of cricket after being benched in the Indian Premier League (and please spare us the standard learning stuff)? Like everything else in this tight and complex sport, this is a question wrapped in guesswork and cryptic clues. Although as always, and just as it is for someone up there – Jacob’s Creek; bet hell – the answer for England will probably still be Jacob Bethell.
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