Test cricket is supposed to be cruel. This is a key aspect of its beauty. This thing hurts. It will seek out your weakest points and then very carefully and skilfully gouge its nails into the wound. But is it meant to be this cruel?
There was something tender, painful and even a little disturbing about what Jasprit Bumrah did to Marnus Labuschagne during the first Border-Gavaskar Test in Perth. In the space of 23 Bumrah deliveries Labuschagne was dropped, hit in the ribs, beaten five times, left completely scoreless, and basically de-cricketed, reduced to a series of strange, formless movements, stabbing at the ball like an under-gardener swatting midges in the dark.
