Did you miss this? https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/what-ben-stokes-jack-leach-and-headingley-2019-tell-us-about-test-cricket/2019/08/28/

Test cricket can be great and moving and ridiculous and more. It is vast and sprawling and deep and wonderful.

I think there is veracity in the idea. But you need to think about it in terms of the quality of the bowling, not the batting.

Gavaskar is talking about deliveries that are so good that they would beat anyone. Deliveries that a batsman simply has to play but that deviate late. In many cases, such “beating” would beat the poor batsman’s bat completely, whereas a better batsman would edge it.

It is counter-intuitive but it does have merit as an argument.

A more common-sense-sounding equivalent is an adage Gus Fraser often applies to bowling conditions, where he talks about ideal pace bowling conditions being those where the ball is doing “just enough” for a good bowler to take an edge. Sometimes, when the ball is jagging around a lot, it might look threatening from afar but a good batsman will be able to tell in good time what he can leave and the poor batsman would just swish and get nowhere near the ball.

Another related adage is the notion that a good bowler works out an individual batsman and goes for the edge of a better batsman, while for the lesser batsman it is more effective to bowl straighter for the bowled or LBW. That is why analysts worry about a batsman’s technique or form if he starts getting out repeatedly bowled and/or LBW – that shows greater deficiency of technique than nicking a really good delivery early in the innings.

That’ll be Dan’s people, no doubt.

I gave it an ‘indifferent’ too to continue the wonderful tradition. I can’t believe that at the time of this writing, ‘indifferent’ stands at 17% while ‘happy’ sits at a comfortable 40%. Is this the sort of world in which we want our children to grow up? Come on, fellow commenters, make it happen. We can’t let the happy crowd go past us.

Enjoyed reading that, Sam — very nice indeed.

Nonetheless I voted for ‘angry’ because you didn’t mention Lyon’s missed runout.

I enjoyed.

I especially like the mention of the Casablanca misquote and the distance between that mention and the misquote itself.

This poem demonstrates how well you ply your trade as a wordsmith…

…so…

…ply it again, Sam.