Sam Konstas: A Test cricket meme

Sam Konstas ran out to bat. It was so noticeable, because that is not how people usually go about it. He was like a frisky two-year-old colt that had not yet been gelded, a puppy with too much energy. He had a mullet and a moustache, and a new bat he seemed to have received from Santa. 

He looked more like a meme than a cricketer. 

It was already different before we even saw that weird Elvis Presley lip curl he does before each ball, or the mumbling he does under it. 

But the actual innings started normally for modern cricket. India moved the ball around, and Konstas missed it. He was beaten four times in the opening over. He was taller than McSweeney, but using a Kookaburra, so it might as well have been the same guy. 

Then the second over came around. After four normal, human deliveries—including the one to get off the mark in Tests—the fifth ball happened. It was his 11th in Tests, and he tried to ramp Jasprit Bumrah. Or, as Kerry O’Keefe pointed out, not the traditional scoop, but the reverse. Mark Waugh thought it was a bit too early for a shot like that.

This was the same Mark Waugh who used to upper-cut West Indian quicks over the slips because he didn’t like to play the hook shot. That game has changed, but it has also stayed the same. 

But it does look very different. A player getting down early and reversing their stance is hard to ignore. 

The following over, he tried the same thing again. My first thought was this is not even how he plays first-class cricket. His strike rate was 52 coming into the Test. You can see an uptick, but when he first arrived, he was a very slow scorer. Teams told me that if you didn’t bowl short to him, you could keep a lid on the runs quite easily. This was India bowling on a good length, and Konstas just having some fun. A child of TikTok, pressing remix. More than anything, he memed Test cricket today. 

There used to be a thought that to dominate a fast bowler, you needed to hit them back over their head. Now, the batter ramps the ball over their own. The genius of this is that it’s way harder to set a field. Then, you add in the reverse angle. It means that there are now two parts of the field to cover, and it upsets everything.

I have been working on a piece for a while about what is or isn’t a good shot in Tests, because I think people get confused at times. In order to change the field or how a bowler is delivering, you often take risks. Sometimes, that will be driving on the up to a ball outside off stump. Other times, it will be reverse sweeping. There is a reason for all these shots. 

Konstas did not want the ball to be delivered to the top of off by the world’s best bowler. So he took a risk, with the field in his favour, and changed it. 

That is a shot that fails a lot, and if it did, he would have been crucified. Not because the shot was bad, but because it didn’t work. Before he scored from it, he missed it twice. Either of those were risks that could have ended his innings. Would people have been talking up his courage if that happened? No, please see Root, Joe. 

Taking risks to disrupt bowlers is what batters have always done, the difference now is the pre-mediated aspect of it. Once you get into the position to play that shot, there isn’t really a way back. To play the ramp takes physical courage, and mental. But it’s a risk—one that players are now willing to take. The difference with what Konstas did is that it was on debut, and against the world’s best bowler. Sure, courage played a part. But what about the creativity and tactical nous? The issue for Australia was that Jasprit Bumrah could not be upset. Konstas changed that.