With a new year’s sun shining on the Sydney Cricket Ground the day before the third Test against Pakistan, a new one-off festival was simultaneously underway.
“Warner Week has started,” said Australian captain Patrick Cummins.
“I think everyone will think of him in their own way.”
Which, as far as descriptions of opening batter David Warner go, gives the right amount of scope for interpretation of a player who has polarised like no other.
Had Pakistan squared the series 1-1 by converting their chances to win in Melbourne, then the retirement of a cricketing fixture after 112 Tests would have had to share billing with this match being a decider.
Instead, Pakistan slipped, the series is gone, and this third encounter will all be about the valedictory lap. That much was evident from Cummins’ press conference, where he fielded 13 questions about Warner compared to 11 questions about anything else.
And that was before Warner went public with the tale that his baggy green cap had been either lost or stolen in transit from Melbourne, prompting an invitation from Schapelle Corby to swap notes about experiences with Qantas baggage handlers. Somehow he has always found a way to become the story.
New cap or not, Australia will need a performance from Warner for reasons beyond symbolism, hoping he can turn on the runs one more time at the venue where he once raided Pakistan for a century by lunch on day one.
World Test Championship points are still on the line for this match, and as Cummins pointed out, Australia has already had some deducted for slow over rates in England. Not that this has made them speed up their work on the field since, mind you. But everyone is hunting wins.
Hence Australia will go in with an unchanged XI, backing their senior players to get the job done, and lucky to have their three first-choice fast bowlers fit and firing.
“All three of us are really fresh,” said Cummins.
“Even the way this summer is spread out a bit more, there’s two Tests on, then a bit of a gap, then two Tests, then a bit of a gap, then New Zealand. We’ll give it a chance. It’s all gone pretty smoothly so far.”
And hence Pakistan spent the day arguing over changes. Their captain Shan Masood arrived at his press conference half an hour late, delayed by debates over team selection that still weren’t resolved by that point, with a team being announced several hours later.
Largely this involved keenness to include the chaos factor of leg-spinner Abrar Ahmed, who has taken bags of wickets in his half dozen matches since debuting a year ago, though often at a heavy cost of runs.
Desperate for a cutting edge, and tempted by the memory of Sydney as a spin venue, Pakistan wanted to give him every chance to recover from injury, but eventually had to give that up. Instead they will turn to off-spinner Sajid Khan.
The history of Sydney as a spinning pitch, though, is history. This century most of its surfaces have produced little but runs, with 26 team innings of at least 400. India back in 2004 led the way with 705 for 7 declared.
Local curators have been working this season to add some pep to their Sheffield Shield pitches, and the Test strip the day before the game did have appealing patches of green grass, but that has happened before and proved to be an illusion.
A bigger loss is pace leader Shaheen Shah Afridi, overworked in the first two Tests despite warming into the series. His omission means that the attack will consist of third-gamer Aamer Jamal, impressive after debuting in Perth; fifth-gamer Mir Hamza, who reduced Australia to 16-4 in Melbourne; and Hasan Ali as the senior option in his 24th match, who toiled without luck in his last start.
Agha Salman’s part-time bowling was the only spin used in the first two Tests, but he will be retained given how well he batted in the Melbourne run chase. The final change is the uncapped 21-year-old Saim Ayub, highly rated as a dynamic ball-striker, in place of the defensive Imam-ul-Haq. Saim was listed to open by the Pakistan board’s press release, but it’s just as likely that he will bat in the middle order with Masood to open.
That would fit with Masood’s intention to lead from the front in playing enterprising cricket, as the captain used his press conference to emphasise the need to keep the scoring rate high against Australia: “the best side in the world at the moment, in my opinion.”
So it’s over to Warner to contribute to that perception one more time. Warner’s best farewell, said Cummins, “would be a hundred and maybe a leg spinner to take the last wicket of the game out of the rough.” He did mean a delivery bowled by Warner, an unlikely prospect given Warner hasn’t sent down an over in a Test match since 2016, but the phrase could equally be read to mean any leg-spin bowler. Unfortunately for Pakistan, that leg spinner won’t be Abrar.
