Tuesday, March 19, 2002 A Test, by tradition, is a test of many things. A test of mettle, of wits, of patience. The past three-and-a-bit days in Durban were more a test of credulity. Ricky Ponting batted as if running late for a train, and Justin Langer as if he were a train. In two days, 28 wickets haemorrhaged and 689 runs were hammered. Mark Boucher became the fastest keeper to reach 200 Test dismissals, Shane Warne the first spinner to take 450 wickets, Australia lost a Test in the southern hemisphere for the first time in 39 months, and ...

And after a while it all got a bit boring, actually. A worryingly simple equation has crept into vogue lately: rapid scoring = high excitement = bums on seats = good for the game. During the first two days at Durban the number of runs plundered were outnumbered only by the number of commentators gushing about how fabulous it all was. Bubbling over with glee, they likened the match to two one-day games compressed into 12 hours - as if that were the highest accolade possible. In truth, few notions so horrifying are imaginable to devotees of cricket's subtler delights.

Steve Waugh's Australians have made a habit of playing with a pizzazz rarely conceived of, let alone executed, in days gone by. This was not one of those occasions. This was a Test without rhythm, without momentum. There was no cut and thrust, no attack and counterattack. Good batsmen swung wildly at balls good and bad, subscribing to the theory that if a block of wood strikes a sphere of leather hard enough the wood will win eight times out of ten. The flip side is that two times out of ten the leather will have its way, which reduces cricket to a lottery and renders it about as tantalising a spectator sport as a game of Yahtzee.

Mark Waugh batted with the careless extravagance of a man on death row, and Damien Martyn like a missile whose radar had gone AWOL. This was understandable in the case of Waugh, who this time really was on death row, but less so for Martyn, who after waiting seven years for his chance suddenly seems intent on blowing it. Ricky Ponting continues to sell himself short by showing the bowler too much space too early between his bat and his body. Justin Langer, after his impeccable home summer, is again confusing batting positively with batting recklessly.

Maybe it was simply a rare sighting of Australian dead-rubber syndrome, an affliction formerly commonplace but now thought to be extinct. Perhaps Australia's top order succumbed to that more recent condition: the Everyone Wants To Be Adam Gilchrist phenomenon. If so, it is worth remembering that the success of Gilchrist – who has revolutionised the game so thoroughly that it is no longer considered unusual when streetwise Surrey pros bat like Shahid Afridi on speed – has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with clean, sensible hitting. Generations of dads have told their sons that there can only be one Bradman, and the same principle applies here: Gilchrists don't grow on trees.

Langer's pre-meditated impetuosity was particularly frustrating, though hardly surprising; the clues were there a fortnight ago when, after missing out on Australia's one-day squad, he grumbled about being unfairly stereotyped as a grafter. "When I started playing for Western Australia I was a bit nervous and I was definitely limited – I used to score most of my runs behind the wicket," he confessed. "From working on my technique and growing as a person my game has developed ... but it's very hard, when you have been pigeonholed early, to break those perceptions."

Hard? Yes. The end of the world? No. Rather than curse his misfortune and try to slog his way into a pair of pyjamas – which is exactly how he manoeuvred himself out of the team nine months ago – Langer would be better off counting his blessings and stretching his Test career as far as his talent and tenacity will allow. He should be made aware that, as an opening batsman, a strike rate of 94 and an average of 30 – his stats for the recently completed series – are far more praiseworthy when those numbers are reversed.

The man best equipped to remind him of that is, of course, his mentor: the gum-chewing, wisecracking bloke in the battered green cap. The conspiracy theorists who maintain that Steve Waugh's greatest passion is his batting average were given fresh ammunition in Australia's second innings when, upon reaching 42 and a career average of precisely 50.00, Waugh dropped his guard, indulged in a loose cut and was caught in the slips.

By then, however, he had batted with neither pretension nor showiness for more than two and a half hours, emphasising to us all what really makes a Test so gripping, so fascinating, so exciting. Anyone who thinks Australian cricket doesn't need Steve Waugh any more is kidding themselves.

Chris Ryan is former managing editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly and a former Darwin correspondent of the Melbourne Age.

More Chris Ryan
Warne: from giant and round to giant allrounder
Richie for Governor-General

© Wisden CricInfo Ltd