Sam Konstas will wear shoes in a no shoes house and make you apologise
Credit - Getty Images: Morgan Hancock
I am in love with how Sam Konstas has gone about his fledgling Test career so far. The bravado of his attitude, the audacity to reverse-ramp Jasprit Bumrah for six in his first few balls of Test cricket, the vivacity of his crowd work, he’s been a real injection of enthusiasm in a series that quite frankly didn’t need any more, like someone throwing a lit match at a petrol tanker.
There’s been a lot of online back and forth about Konstas over the last week or so, largely centering around the, let’s call it braggadocio, with which he plays his cricket.
Test cricket has undergone somewhat of a metamorphosis over the last few years in terms of how we analyse the game. What would once be considered a careful, measured innings is now branded as slow, laborious and scratchy. Gone are the days of batsmen with strike rates in the 20s, batting out entire sessions. At the risk of sounding like a talkback radio caller, there’s just no value placed on wickets anymore.
The advent of “Bazball” has brought this into the forefront but in reality the English side are just the loudest and most forthright example of the cultural shift in how the longest and most revered format of the game is played, because this movement has been simmering under the surface for the better part of 15 years now.
Even in Australia, the concept of a Jekyll and Hyde opening partnership is nothing foreign. Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer, one of the country’s most successful opening tandems, built a reputation on their thunder and lightning approach, Hayden often scooting to a quickfire 30 or 40 before Langer had even strapped on his thigh guard.
In more contemporary times, before the rise of Usman Khawaja as an opener, the national side struggled for years to find a complementary partner to the scorched earth approach of David Warner, he himself a Test opener moulded from the T20 circuit. Warner’s best foil? The organised and compact Chris Rogers, who averaged over 44 as Warner’s opening partner.
It’s here that I struggle to understand why Konstas is viewed in a different lens considering Australia’s history with aggressive openers. I’m not entirely sure what the real endgame of the criticism I’ve seen of some of Konstas’ batting technique is? To be honest, the only legitimate flaw I’ve seen analysed in his game is his tendency to bat with a large “front gate”, as we saw exploited by Bumrah in the second innings in Melbourne.
But the hand wringing about the immediacy with which he looks to score strikes me as analysis that’s overcorrected. Too often nowadays we bemoan a slow scoring pace, when not two decades ago such patience would be applauded. India made 185 in just over two sessions on the first day of the Sydney Test and I heard people sitting behind me at the SCG audibly complaining about how boring it was, such is the shift in normality of Test cricket scoring.
When we consider the four innings Konstas has played, I don’t really think there’s anything overly out of the ordinary in how he batted.
His first innings was one of pure freedom and youthful exuberance, an innings built on counter-attack and bravado to the point it threw the entire Indian bowling attack off its lengths. When you plonk Bumrah over the keeper’s head into row 3, it sort of rattles the other lesser bowlers.
Mission accomplished.
Konstas playing an audacious reverse ramp against Jasprit Bumrah on Boxing Day
Credit - AP
His second dig in Melbourne began with fielders immediately played at fine third man and fine leg. Imagine telling someone in 2010 that there’d be fields set in the first over of a Test innings for ramps and laps. They might die of tradition.
Konstas got out in the second innings defending, a harsh lesson for a kid picked to punch and not hold his gloves up in front of his face. Defending gets you nowhere kids, the IPL money isn’t interested in blocking.
Both innings in Sydney were against low Indian totals. I get the intent. Go out there in a blaze of glory. Make a quickfire 30 if you can, get the chase some positive impetus and let Khawaja settle in to play the bedrock of the innings.
In that sense, mission accomplished again.
And thus we arrive at the true insanity of what transpired late on Day 1 of the Sydney Test.
Usman Khawaja, at 5:57pm, began scratching around the pitch, flattening imaginary bumps and flicking away any grain of sawdust he could find. The day was coming to an end, he wanted this to be the last over of the day, and get into the sheds unbroken.
Jasprit Bumrah, snarling at the top of his mark, the lone threat in the Indian attack, a comically Herculean effort throughout the series to basically carry the team almost single-handedly into a fighting position.
Bumrah stuttered to run in a couple of times before losing patience at Khawaja’s gardening tactics, so Konstas stepped in to say he wasn’t ready, and to go back to his mark (this may be paraphrased for brevity and, um, safe for work reasons).
Bumrah and Konstas then had a bit of verbals, the umpire stepped in, enough time had suitably been wasted so that this would now be the last ball of the day, so Khawaja faced up, got a mildly teasing ball outside off stump, jumped for some reason, played a nothing shot, and got out.
Now of course, all this commotion and angst from India is conveniently forgetting Shubman Gill did the exact same thing in the first session to waste time until lunch, only to stupidly charge Nathan Lyon on the last ball and edge off. Great batting Shubman, outstanding mindset there.
Konstas wore the blame, for reasons I don’t fully understand, so let’s go through them shall we?
Some people have dared suggest that Sam Konstas stepping in to the melee somehow fired up Jasprit Bumrah, giving him extra motivation.
This line of thought makes me laugh. Oh sure, a 19 year old child riled up the best bowler in the world to the point that he decided to bowl a good ball did he? I’m sure Bumrah was totally content to waft up some utter shit wide of off that Khawaja could easily leave until the naughty, snot-nosed brat from private school had to make it his business. Yes this all makes perfect sense.
Then there’s people suggesting that Konstas getting involved was unnecessary because it was the last over of the day regardless. No it wasn’t. There was still 2-3 minutes in the day’s play with a couple of balls left in the over at this point, they were absolutely going to get one more in before World War Three erupted.
Finally, and perhaps most hilariously, there’s suggestions the little dust up meant that Khawaja got distracted.
Maybe the dumbest line of reasoning of all three. Usman Khawaja has scored nearly 6,000 Test runs at an average over 40. I’d like to think a player of that calibre can handle one final ball for the day, and handle criticism when he doesn’t. It was a complete failure in Khawaja’s technique to fall to a ball that might have done a bit off the pitch, but also really wasn’t anything overly special, and definitely not one of Bumrah’s best. The Konstas angle of the whole fracas appears to have blinded people to the raw fact that Khawaja got out fishing outside off stump for the umpteenth time this summer.
Konstas’ introduction to the Test side this summer has provided somewhat of a lightning rod of differing opinions from the staunch traditionalists to the adrenaline seekers to the fusty old bores who complain regardless (Captain Carbon etc).
I’m sure there have been words to Konstas privately about controlling his aggression and learning to harness his fire for positive use. After all, his enterprise is what got him into the team in the first place. It’s no use picking someone who has exhibited upstanding form and then asking them to reinvent their wheel. You live by the sword and die by the sword, and other various cliches.
Perhaps Konstas’ greatest influence was just how much he appeared to rile the tourists. Consider Khawaja’s dismissal late on the first day of the final Test. Giving send offs is nothing new in cricket (although Siraj giving Travis Head a few choice words after the South Australian had smacked 140 odd was certainly a choice), but the Indians all made a beeline for Konstas to give him a serve, which considering he was…not out, was a little odd.
Credit - Getty
It’s those reactions that Konstas elicited from Bumrah, Kohli and co that showed just how in the minds of the Indians he was. Getting set T20 fields and copping a hip and shoulder by one of the greatest batsmen of his generation, all opening chapters in the book of Sam’s hopefully long and illustrious Test career.
Sure, you could draw a conclusion that Konstas’ antics helped unite what appeared to be a fractured or enervated Indian dressing room, but the other side of that coin was how much he got the rest of Australia (except the haters obviously) to rally behind him. Australia doesn’t need much motivation to want to beat India in Test cricket, after all, the Border-Gavaskar Trophy had been in Indian hands for a decade,
But Australia has a proud tradition of loud and annoying young stars breaking into the house and putting their dirty shoes on the couch, and this lairy teenager from Sydney’s south-east is no different.
Catch the Beyond the Fence podcast on all podcast platforms as we round up each Test from the summer (with exception to Boxing Day because we were all busy and probably drunk).
