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True fast bowling, more than any other subject, is what most markedly makes cricket people lose our collective minds.
Fast bowling is intoxicating. It embodies power and danger and thrill, black thunderheads advancing from the horizon, a metallic aftertaste that could as readily be blood or lightning or adrenaline.
When fast bowling comes along, we lose the ability for rational thought. As soon as someone clicks towards that mark of 150 kilometres per hour, we want them in. Pick them. Play them. Bowl their full 10 overs on the trot.
Handed a hurricane in a matchbox, how can we think of anything but when to let it out?
Never mind that there are batsmen who can play the stuff. Never mind that without precision, velocity is the friend of the player looking to score rather than the one preventing it. We remember the times that pace worked and erase those it did not.
Because when it worked, it was complete elemental seduction.
There are parallels in any sport: perceptions based on feeling rather than fact. We let ideas dictate a personal reality, rather than having reality dictate ideas. A physical attribute, a personality quirk, a couple of memorable moments, and certain players or types of player are doomed to be viewed a certain way forever.
I was caught up like so many others in the suggestion Australia might field a true pace quartet at the Champions Trophy in England. Firstly, after years of frustration, two bowlers who had apparently become unicorns now solidified back into thoroughbreds.
Patrick Cummins: youthful, fierce, straight pace with a bouncer that bounds from the pitch, and a bag of change-ups matching any short-form pro.
James Pattinson: savage right-arm outswing, hot temper, teeth bared and face red.
They had negotiated a maze of muscle tears, stress fractures, busted feet and ribs and backs, and were finally both in an Australian squad.
Alongside Mitchell Starc - left-arm deadly, the smoothest swing with the game's best yorker - and Josh Hazlewood - relentless, bashing the pitch from a high release to pin batsmen in place.
Except when the time came to take on New Zealand in the first match for both teams, the pace dream dissolved as quickly as any morning phantasm. Pattinson missed out for John Hastings, a workmanlike seamer who had not featured in anyone's giddy anticipation.
Black Caps tame Starc with relative ease
Starc's first ball was full and on the money, but Martin Guptill repelled it. So often does Australia's attack leader take a wicket in his first over that it now seems like his birthright, but here he was negated and negotiated. By his third over, Guptill began swinging and ended Starc's spell.
After five overs, New Zealand's openers had put on 38. It took old-fashioned bowling to get Guptill. Hazlewood, with a touch of seam and that length, barely able to be called short, yet bouncing more than it should.
The combination saw the ball sneak fractionally wide of Guptill's line as he tried to play to the on-side, taking the leading edge to point.
If Hastings is the Pete Best of this Fab Four, Hazlewood is its Ringo. Loved and least celebrated, providing the essential rhythm without which the rest would falter. At least until Paul replaces him with a bowling machine, at which point he storms out to live on Peter Sellers' yacht.
Look, metaphors can only stretch so far.
Hazlewood can crack the 140km range, but is not up there with his bandmates in terms of speed. Guitarists to the front. He is about consistency and restraint. He got the first reward. But it was not just a rain delay that made Australia wait for more.
Either side of it, Cummins was tangling with Luke Ronchi. A stand-in opener in the spot where New Zealand has so missed the attacking flair of retired captain Brendon McCullum, Ronchi took 41 from Cummins in the 17 balls he faced.
Making liberal use of the available pace and his own top edge, the Black Caps wicketkeeper sent three over the rope and five into it by the ground route.
New Zealand was on 117 and flying after 93 balls. It suddenly looked a great idea to have left out Pattinson, who had been tapped for 80 runs in Australia's warm-up match.
Unfashionable Hastings finds breakthrough
Which was when Hastings chimed in. Movement from a good-length ball hitting the pitch hard. A drive, an edge, a catch. Ronchi done for 64.
Hastings is someone we have written about here before. Unpretentious, medium-fast, he thuds to the crease as though trying to make skeletons stir deep in the earth beds of their eternal sleep.
He is broad of shoulder, seemingly older than his 31 years, sporting that clipper-based hairstyle that follows Jimeoin's follicular dictum: "You can go, but you'll go now on my terms."
In short, Hastings is an unsexy option, unless you want a bearlike man to hold you through a long cold night. He is also a clever and experienced operator whose spot in this one-day international team began in England in 2015, where he happened to be playing country cricket when the touring Australians needed reserves.
Skip forward to the 34th over, where Kane Williamson was eyeing a century and batting like a dream, and Ross Taylor had built a platform of 46 and was getting ready to launch. Hasting's delivery looked like a slot ball, but he flicked his fingers viciously down the seam to slow it up.
Taylor saw the length, tried a heave, and was beaten by the scramble. A partnership of 99 ended, and 2-216 subsided into 291 all out within the shortened allotment of 46 overs.
Sure, Hazlewood's bag of six might somewhat flatter him, taking the last three in four balls at the end of a derailed innings, with fresh tailenders trying to plonk every opportunity over a fence as distant as their hopes.
But what stood out in the end was that the two least glamorous bowlers had made the difference.
"It almost seemed like the slower you bowled, the harder it was to score," said Australia captain Steve Smith in his post-match assessment, before strongly implying that this would be a factor in upcoming selections.
In the end the bowlers' fortunes were immaterial, the game rained off and the points shared. But this also means that Australia's next two matches are must-win, and the lessons from this one must be heeded for that to happen.
It is down to those making the decisions to resist the shimmer of impossible visions. The rest of us can dream what we like.
Topics: cricket, sport, england, united-kingdom
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