AUS vs NZ | Perth Day 3 Talking Points - The Day/Night declaration conundrum and Mitchell 'misfiring' Santner

ByAnirudh Suresh, SportsCafe Editor

12/14/2019

After making easy work of knocking down the Kiwi lower-order early on Day 3, Joe Burns and Marnus Labuschagne drove Australia's lead well over 400 to put them in the driver's seat. With the pitch crumbling like greased lightning, the Kiwi batsmen now face an impossible task ahead of them on Day 4.

No Hazlewood? No problem

Australia, one bowler short, were expected to toil hard on a scorching Saturday morning; cue the morning session being the best one to bat in a Day/Night Test et cetera. But what transpired on the morning of Day 3 veered from the script and how. If anything, it looked like Tim Paine and Australia had a bowler extra today: they kept the strangle-hold on the Kiwi batsmen from the very first ball of the day. It was an out-and-out team effort and it looked like they’d executed a well thought out plan to perfection.

Every bowler’s role in the team, or at least for the session, was well-defined and unsurprisingly, it translated into results. It was Mitchell Starc who was the chief architect, of course, as he unsettled the batsmen early on by cramping them for room with him armpit-directed bouncers - a ploy that he used to good effect on Day 2. He was supported well by Cummins, who stuck to his good ol’ ‘line and length’ mantra and reaped rewards for the same by cleaning up BJ Watling.

But what stood out in the first session was how the spin twins - Lyon and Labuschagne - complimented each other on a surface that offered enough turn: the former was looping deliveries outside off getting the ball to dip while the latter was ripping em quick, getting the ball to grip off the surface. Eventually, they got their individual rewards but more importantly, by doing what they did, ensured that the team, at no point, missed Josh Hazlewood on a Day 3 Perth wicket.

The Day/Night Test declaration conundrum

It’s the morning of Day 3, you’ve bowled your opponents out within the first session and you now have a 250-run lead. What would you do as a captain? If it were a normal Test, the decision is pretty straightforward: you bat till stumps, stretch your lead to say 450 or 500 and then declare overnight. But can you afford to do the same in a Day/Night Test? Perhaps not. And Tim Paine, as we speak, is facing the ultimate dilemma. Ideally, as a bowling team, you would be wanting to bowl under the lights, but Australia declaring before the third session would have meant that New Zealand’s target would have 350-400 instead of 450-500, a risk considering the fact they are one bowler short.

But then again, given the fact that in a Day/Night Test the early morning session is the best one for batting, wouldn’t Australia, who are again a bowler short, much rather bat out the first session, rest their bowlers, pile the runs and then declare? In this case, declaring overnight would mean that the bowlers would have to toil really hard on Day 4, and delaying the declaration would mean that they’ll have fewer overs to try and bowl New Zealand out.

Looking at this pitch, I’m pretty sure Paine will declare overnight: It’s crumbling and deteriorating at the rate of knots. However, a situation like this makes you think how captains would approach Day/Night matches in the future. One wrong step, one bad captaincy decision and you’re staring at defeat.

Mitchell Santner fails his ultimate audition

It’s easy to be carried by the pace and bounce that the Optus Stadium offers, but it is to be remembered that at the only Test played at this venue, a spinner walked away with the Man of the Match award. On the morning of Day 3, the second ball bowled by a spinner - that of Nathan Lyon to Ross Taylor - turned viciously and beat the inside edge of the batsman. Even Labuschagne, who is a part-timer, was spinning a web around the Kiwi batsmen and with three of Australia’s top four batsmen being right-handers, Mitchell Santner was expected to come into play on a crumbling Perth wicket.

But what we instead learnt today was why Santner’s numbers in Test cricket - 38 wickets in 20 matches at an average close to 40 - are appalling and perhaps why he is not good enough to be a specialist spinner at this level. At no point in the innings were either of Burns or Labuschagne beaten by the left-armer and the closest he came to troubling them was by surprising them with his quicker ones, which the batsmen dealt with rather comfortably. His speed, lines and lengths were all over the place and to make things worse, he undid all the good work done by the seamers, leaking runs at over 4 RPO. To be brutally honest, in this match, he was just about on par with Jeet Raval and well below Labuschagne’s level - with the ball. Or should I say - the only meaningful blow he landed all game was that on Aleem Dar, where he tackled the umpire.

His numbers in the England series weren’t particularly impressive either, so heading into the Boxing Day Test, New Zealand might just be better off giving Todd Astle a go.