Australia / Pakistan

Did Australia win or did Pakistan lose? YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE

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England v Australia: 3rd Investec Ashes Test - Day One
Photo by Sarah Ansell

One of the rules of cricket coverage is that Australia, England and India have results and the other teams are merely inactive participants.

In 2016, India beat New Zealand, Australia lost to Sri Lanka, and England drew with Bangladesh. Technically, this also means that New Zealand lost to India, Sri Lanka beat Australia, and Bangladesh drew with England – but you’ll be hard-pressed to find things presented that way.

Like many rules, this one has an exception – and like so many cricketing exceptions, it involves Pakistan.

Pakistan lost to Australia today. The home team didn’t snatch victory. The tourists – who were already one down in the series – threw the match away.

That is the unwritten result on the scorecard because a Pakistan implosion is even more headline-worthy than Australia snatching an unlikely victory.

Could it be that despite how we may be inclined to perceive things, it is impossible for one team to be wholly responsible for the outcome of a match?

Similar deliveries:

Default ThumbnailHow often do Australia lose at home? Default ThumbnailAustralia’s World Cup winning streak bookended by losses to Pakistan Default ThumbnailAustralia vastly inferior to India who are better than everyone

22 comments

  1. On the subject of rules, and exceptions, can we all agree that “the exception that proves the rule” doesn’t mean ‘there’s an exception to the rule, which confirms that the rule exists?

    Rather, the exception ‘proves’ the rule in the sense of ‘testing’ the rule – to use the example from the relevant Wikipedia article (which brilliantly includes the heading ‘serious nonsense’), “mutillidae are wasps without wings which cannot fly, and therefore are an exception that proves (tests) the rule that wasps fly”.

    I understand that this post doesn’t actually contain an instance, misused or otherwise, of the phrase “the exception that proves the rule”, but if this year has taught me anything it’s that facts are no impediment to getting one’s point across as aggressively as possible.

    1. I’ve learned something there, AP.

      Eight years of frequenting this ridiculous website and it finally happened.

    2. Also, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and of course (and relevant to this site) proof-reading.

      The English language is literally bursting at the seams with phrases in which the word proof survives with its archaic meaning intact. It turns out that all English idioms contain the word “proof”, a fact which I can easily prove by simply saying “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

  2. From the Beeb:

    The third Test starts in Sydney on 3 January but Misbah has not committed to playing in the match after a poor series so far. The 42-year-old, who was dismissed for a two-ball duck after managing just 11 in the first innings, only scored nine runs in total in the first test in Brisbane.
    “I haven’t decided about that [Sydney] but let’s see,” he said. “[If I’m not contributing] there’s no point in hanging around.”

    Misbah to continue playing for another five glorious years, then.

    1. PS. Pakistan totally chucked that game away, like they did the last one. Classic Pakistan.

      PPS. I was eating some hummus yesterday, labelled on the packet as ‘Classic Houmous’ [sic]. Reminded me of that time when my hummus said something hilarious and I was like ‘oh that’s classic hummus’.

  3. Kudos in getting a badger out over the festive period, oh King. Something to cheer us up in these dour times of horrendous politics and English failure.

    1. Wouldn’t say we’d poured heart and soul into it, but maybe we did. Maybe that was all that was left.

  4. In other news, while I wend my way through the summer of 2008 on Ogblog, some of you might enjoy reading about a sunny but frustrating day in Richmond.

    The grub situation did not work out as planned, nor did the cricket match. And despite my issuing strict instructions to the MTWD match reporter, LizzieJ, we learnt nothing new about the colours of Nic Pothas’s underpants:

    http://ianlouisharris.com/2008/06/22/sunday-afternoon-in-richmond-with-miss-daisy-middlesex-v-hampshire-t20-22-june-2008/

  5. The weather lost.

    On a proper fifth-day finisher like this, the weather could easily have dictated the result – how many sessions would have been needed to have been wiped out with rain for a weather-enforced draw to have become inevitable?

    Australian weather is just not as good as the proper English stuff.

  6. Pakistan definitely lost. In the post match interviews all the Aussies were banging on about “never giving up” and “we always believed we could win” , but the reality was that Pakistan just played like absolute crap on the last day, primarily in the field allowing enough runs to be scored to give Aus a chance to declare.

  7. Well I don’t know about you lot, but I’m sitting around waiting for the new year honours to be announced.

    Not the “Her Maj” ones – I’ve seen those – Aggers MBE – OMG – ROFL…

    …no, I’m talking about the Lord Megachief of Gold.

    The suspenders are doing my head in.

  8. I’d award the Lord Megachief of Gold Commentator to Rob Key. He’s always a joy. As he ever was. Happy New Year to all xx

    1. Happy New Year, Ceci, and everyone. And Happy Leap Second as well. Of all the seconds of last year, that was undoubtedly the best one.

      By the way, can I just point out that in your gravatar you’ve accidentally photoshopped dear old Rob’s chest and tummy the wrong way round.

  9. I know KC doesn’t do requests, but in true contrarian style, I do…sort of.

    So when I got a desperate text from an old friend this morning, complaining of ear worm, I felt obliged to dig out the old lyric he requested and bung it up on Ogblog.

    In so doing, I realised that it is one of the very few comedy lyrics I wrote with a cricket reference therein.

    So if it takes your fancy, click below:

    http://ianlouisharris.com/1992/02/07/eugene-terre-blanche-newsrevue-song-7-february-1992/

    1. Blimey, Ged. My wife got on a flight out of Jo’burg once and realised to her horror that Eugene Terre’Blanche and his entourage were on the plane. Unsettling to say the least as you can imagine.

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