When historians sit down at their special historical desks in decades to come and compose their unarguable histories of the year 2011, they will scratch their history-loving chins, twiddle their retrospectivising pencils, and wonder to themselves: “What was the most important thing that happened in that famous year? Was it the wave of popular revolutions around the Arab world? The forces of technology-enhanced democracy unleashed around the planet? The European economy Titanic-ing itself into an iceberg of idiocy? The violent deaths of some of the universe’s least desirable dinner companions? Or was it the rebirth of Test cricket, as a new generation of star fast bowlers emerged, and groundsmen around the world remembered that their principal purpose in life is not to bore spectators to tears and make fast bowlers wish their parents had never met?”

Time will tell which box they tick on their multiple-choice answer sheet. But they will surely give considerable thought to the last of those options. Some may even choose it. They would, of course, be wrong. And, hopefully, fired from whatever professorship they happen to occupy.

However, the last couple of months have been the most exciting for the Test game for a considerable time, a catalogue of engrossing contests in which momentum has shifted with each couple of wickets and each partnership of 30 or more, decorated by individual performances of enticing promise for the future. Test match cricket has been buffeted about like an unwanted penguin in an uncaring tumble dryer in recent years, but that penguin has emerged, flapped its wings, barked, and resolved to give flight another wholehearted attempt.

The year ended with the two teams that had begun the year tussling for the No. 1 Test spot sink to disappointingly supine defeats. India caved too easily in the face of excellent Australian fast bowling, whilst South Africa, for the third series in a row and fourth in six, contrived to lose a 1-0 lead, this time to an inspired Sri Lanka, who claimed their first win of the post-Murali era, at the 16th attempt. In a country where they had never previously won. And where they had averaged 209 all out per innings in their previous eight Tests. Seven of which they had lost (four by an innings), with one rain-aided draw. And with a bowling attack that had not taken 20 wickets in its previous 12 away Tests over three years. It was one of Sri Lanka’s greatest wins.

It was also one of South Africa’s worst modern defeats, rounding off a deeply disappointing year in both Tests and ODIs, in which a team that has almost all the component parts of a great side consistently proved itself not to be one. Yet. The Proteas can look like a top-end Rolls Royce in one match, but when the clock strikes 1-0, they seem to turn into a pumpkin, with Graeme Smith sitting confusedly at the wheel of the pumpkin like a disappointed Cinderella, banging the pumpkin dashboard and muttering, “Where’s the accelerator on this thing? Vroom vroom. Come on. Vrooom. Ah, shucks. I could have really done with more from that Prince.”

Dhoni’s India picked up where they left off in England, batting with insufficient technique and application against the moving ball. A questionable tactic, at best. From a position of first-innings control, if not dominance, they lost 17 wickets for 237, thus counteracting both their own strong team bowling performance and Australia’s own insufficient technique and application against the moving ball.

India should be in a better state to recover from their first-Test blooper than they were in England, whilst Australia have shown that they have the capacity to lose a match from almost anywhere. An intriguing series looms as these two fragile giants trade cricketing slaps with each other.

One of the prominent trends this Test year, and particularly of the 2011-12 season so far, has been the performance of bowlers new to Test cricket. In Melbourne, Pattinson again looked a potential world-beater ‒ how was he allowed to slip through England’s global recruitment net ‒ and Yadav confirmed his promise with another muscular and skilful display.

(Strap in, stats fans. I’ve spent far too long working all this out, to give statistical backing to an already widely observed phenomenon, so you can all damn well read it to justify me staying up well past my bedtime for a prolonged and intimate session with Statsguru.)

Bowlers who have made their Test debut in 2011 have, between them, taken 319 wickets at an average of 28.8. (I have included bowlers and allrounders, but not batsmen who dobble a few down every now and again. Even if they have taken wickets. They have no place in the numbers. I don’t care if it is allegedly the season of goodwill.) In 2010, debutant bowlers took 165 wickets at 41.4. From 2000 to 2010, the average yearly haul by bowlers in their debut Test year was 152 wickets at 38.7.

Furthermore, over the last 12 months, debut-year bowlers have outperformed those who had played Test cricket before 2011, who collectively averaged 33.5. Thus, bowlers new to tests in 2011 have been 16% more effective than their more experienced colleagues – from 2000 to 2010, bowlers in their first year of Tests had, on average, been 15% less effective than those who had already played.

Nor is it that these statistics have been skewed by one or two particularly outstanding newcomers. Bowlers who have debuted this year have taken 18 five-wicket hauls, shared between 12 different players from eight different countries, all of them under the age of 27, six of them aged 22 or less. Only England, who did not give a debut to a new bowler this year, and Sri Lanka, cannot boast a newcomer with a five-for this year.

By comparison, in 2010, seven five-wicket hauls were taken by players new to Tests; there were five newcomer five-fors each in 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2001 and 2000; only one apiece in 2005, 2004 and 2002; and a slightly rogue 10 in 2003.

Of course, these numbers are, by their nature, a little random – a bowler who makes his debut in a Boxing Day Test has less opportunity to shine in his debut year than one who prances onto the Test scene in January; and due to not wanting to wake up in the morning with pages of meaningless numbers drifting before my eyes, or to alienate my children at breakfast with exciting discoveries about the performance of bowlers in their debut years during the 1890s, my research only goes back to 2000. Even Statsguru was begging me to leave it alone by the end.

However, the sheer number of newly blooded bowlers who have made an immediate and striking impact on the Test scene this year bodes well for the next few years. Not for batsmen who do not particularly like playing pitched-up swing bowling (i.e. all batsmen), but for Test cricket and its supporters, for whom memorable bat versus ball contests have not been as plentiful as they would have liked. Provided, of course, that all these new bowling stars do not simply disappear into the Twenty20 ether, fall to pieces under the merciless hammer of the international schedule, or decide that banging it in short of a length outside off stump to keep the runs down is the way to bowling nirvana.

Next time: The Confectionery Stall 2011 Awards Ceremony.

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In the 2015 previous Test matches that have adorned the history of the universe, few, if any, passages of play can have matched the barking-mad cricketing melodrama that unfolded in the 2016th in Cape Town on Wednesday. On a lively but scarcely fire-breathing wicket, mayhem reigned as the moving ball and the DRS ran amok like a porcelain-loving bull in a well-stocked china shop.

Australia, from a position of total dominance, lost, in quick succession: a few early wickets; their marbles; and control of the game. Haddin, in particular, seemed to be spooked by the scoreboard (which read an admittedly alarming 18 for 5), and forget the match situation, which was, effectively, 206 for 5. Philander and Morkel took full advantage, and the game was not so much turned on its head as flipped into an impromptu quadruple somersault, before staggering groggily to its feet, muttering: “Who am I and what am I doing here?”

Australia had history and an immortal entry in the annals of sporting ineptitude within their grasp – at 21 for 9 after 11.4 overs, they were within one more inept waft of registering the lowest-ever completed Test innings (New Zealand’s 26 against England in 1954-55), and the shortest-ever completed Test innings (South Africa’s 12.3 overs at Edgbaston in 1924). Siddle and Lyon stapled a small fig leaf of dignity to Australia’s obvious embarrassment with a last-wicket stand of 26, and History mopped its brow and toddled off. But it did not leave empty-handed. Here then, is a multiple-choice quiz about the unforgettable day two of the Newlands Test. Each question has multiple answers. Do not attempt if you are (a) an Australian batsman, or (b) an Australian of nervous disposition.

1. What did Nathan Lyon do on Thursday that no other human being has ever done?

(a) He walked out to bat in a Test match with his team at 21 for 9. The previous worst score facing a No. 11 was 25 for 9, when Lyon’s baggy green predecessor Tom McKibbin marched to the wicket at The Oval in 1896 thinking, “Oh dear. This is a disappointing score. I bet no other Australian will ever come to the wicket with a worse score than this on the board.” He smote a defiant 16 before being caught, taking Australia’s score up to 44 all out, leaving Hugh Trumble chuntering into his moustache at the non-striker’s end that he had taken 12 for 89 in the match and still been on the wrong end of a shoeing.

(b) He broke the 300-mph barrier on a unicycle. Unicycling has been introduced to the Australian training regime by their new coaches, as a means of improving balance and self-confidence. Lyon took a morning pedal up to the top of Table Mountain, lost his balance whilst looking for a yeti, and careered down to Newlands at breakneck speed.

(c) He became the eighth No. 11 to top-score in a Test innings.

(d) He walked on the moon.

ANSWERS: (a) and (c). (b) has not been ratified by the World Unicycling Federation, as it took place outside of official competition.

2. What do WG Grace and Philip Hughes have in common?

(a) Both men are no longer as effective as Test Match batsmen as they once were.

(b) Both have been played by Hollywood actor Val Kilmer in films.

(c) They have each taken part in one of the only two Tests ever played in which 23 batsmen have been dismissed in single figures in the first three innings of the match – Hughes at Newlands this week, Grace in the Lord’s Test of 1888.

(d) Both have featured prominently in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s dreams in the past week.

ANSWERS: (a), (c) and (d).

3. What has Australia as a nation experienced three times in the last 16 months?

(a) An infestation of pterodactyls.

(b) It has watched in gaping-mouthed astonishment as its once-mighty cricket team has been bowled out for under 100, on three separate occasions – 88 all out against Pakistan in Leeds in July 2010, the Boxing Day MCG abomination against England (98 all out), and now 47 at Newlands. Three times in 12 Tests. They had posted a two-figure score just once in their previous 277 Tests over 25 years. They had not been skittled for under 100 three times in two years since 1887 and 1888 – when they had to regroup and take the positives after eight different sub-100 totals. In six matches. It is fair to say that Australian batsmanship improved thereafter.

(c) A creeping sensation that Silvio Berlusconi’s behaviour might not be entirely prime ministerial.

(d) It has seen its cricket team win a Test match – in their previous four series, they won three, drew three and lost six. The previous time they won three or fewer games in a run of 12 Tests was between December 1987 and June 1989. At which point, they ground England into a fine pulp, kick-starting a decade and a half of unremitting Ashes dominance. Is this all part of Cricket Australia’s masterplan?

ANSWERS: (b) and (d).

4. Why might Vernon Philander and Shane Watson have spent Thursday night discussing plans for a massive 30-foot-high commemorative bronze statue of themselves to be erected on the concourse at Newlands?

(a) Because they had just overheard Peter Siddle and Morne Morkel discussing erecting a 29-foot-high commemorative bronze statue of themselves on the concourse in Centurion.

(b) Because they had just become the first pair of bowlers from opposite sides to take five-wicket hauls for fewer than 20 runs in the same Test.

(c) Because 18 wickets had fallen in 23 overs of Test cricket, and they had been the principal agents of batting doom – both took five wickets in 20 balls. Eighteen wickets tumbled for 68 in 138 balls. Think about that. Have you thought about that? What do you think about that? This included 16 for 44 in 115, as South Africa lost their last seven wickets for 23 (their lowest such total since their first Test after readmission in 1991-92), and Australia lost their first nine for 21 (unprecedented at least since before the dinosaurs were still at the crease). Holy smokes. The apocalypse is coming. No doubt. Look at the Eurozone. Then look at the scorecard from Newlands. Then look at Alastair Cook’s Test average over the last 12 months. There is no other conclusion to draw.

(d) Because, during the tea interval, they discovered a method of converting the noise of lbw appeals into electricity, thus solving all the world’s energy problems, and rightly believe that their breakthrough should be recognised in artistic form.

ANSWERS: (b) and (c)

5. Before the Newlands Test, what had happened only twice since the First World War?

(a) Another World War.

(b) Both teams had been dismissed for under 100 in the same Test. It happened when India and New Zealand went head-to-head in a loser-loses-all collapse-off in Hamilton in 2002-03, and when South Africa and Australia span each other silly in Durban in 1949-50, and it has happened in Cape Town this week.

(c) A member of the Bush family had won a US Presidential election.

(d) Australia had lost a Test Match after taking a first-innings lead of 188 – their Newlands lead after skittling South Africa for 96. Those two occasions are quite highly regarded matches – Headingley 1981 and Kolkata 2000-01. If Australia lose this match, it will be the eighth highest first-innings lead to have resulted in defeat (excluding the Hansie Cronje’s Magic Jacket match in 1999-2000, when the middle two innings were forfeited and England technically won after conceding a 248-run lead).

(e) A Test team had lost eight wickets for 10 runs or fewer. Australia collapsed like a narcoleptic house of cards on a bobsled going down the Spanish Steps in Rome as they subsided from 11 for 1 to 21 for 9. Only twice before had eight wickets fallen for as few runs in a Test, and both times New Zealand were the untriumphant team involved – when Saqlain and Sami carved them up in Auckland in 2000-01 (121 for 2 became 131 all out); and when, on the first day of post-war Test cricket, in Wellington in 1945-46, the Kiwis celebrated the return of peace by slumping from 37 for 2 to 42 all out. They followed this up by losing 6 for 6 during their second innings, and Australia, so appalled that such ineptitude should be allowed on a cricket pitch, did not play another Test against New Zealand for almost three decades. Will they be hoist by their own petard?

ANSWERS: (b), (d) and (e). And (c). And (a). If you count the international dispute over the UDRS as a World War. Which you should not.

Here endeth the quiz.

What a day. I think cricket needs a cup of tea and a sit-down. For mercifully different reasons than it needed a cup of tea and a sit-down last week after the spot-fixing trial. The third day may provide yet more twists, and after the excellent Test matches in Zimbabwe and India, these crazy Cape Town capers have been a further reminder that cricket is generally far more enjoyable when it is being played and watched on the pitch rather than in a courtroom.

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England’s flawless tour of Australia has continued impressively with two superbly constructed defeats in the opening two one-day internationals, confirming that the England management will leave nothing to chance in their pursuit of ultimate success.

The immaculate, all-encompassing preparation that helped secure the Ashes (where every detail, from sweatiness of fielders’ hands, via Alastair Cook’s four-year undercover operation as a middling Test opener, to injecting psychotropic substances into the Australian selectors’ breakfast sausages) is now being applied to the World Cup campaign. Strauss and his team, well aware that they could not sustain their Ashes form until April 2, have tactically dipped at just the right time. They will be looking to endure at least a 6-1 drubbing in the Commonwealth Bank series, before slowly finding their game again during the month-long group stage of the World Cup, then exploding into form for the crucial quarter-semi-final week at the end of March.

England proved their mastery of the well-timed Test match defeat in Leeds in 2009 and in Perth in December, brilliantly allowing Australia to believe that everything was just fine, that England’s brief and uncharacteristic dalliance with excellence was over, and that normal service had been thoroughly resumed. Then, with the Baggy Greens still high-fiving themselves in delight, they burst out of their tactical Trojan horse like the modern-day Odysseuses they are, and skewered Australia like a cheap kebab.

For their part, Australia will be delighted that, having underperformed with such determined persistence in the Ashes - or, as Cricket Australia has now officially rebranded them, “The Commonwealth Bank Series Official Six-Week Curtain-Raiser” - they are now proving that, at the business end of their international summer, they can still perform like the Australians of old. They too still have plenty of players nicely out of form two months away from the key games, as well as players in form who have not been selected for the World Cup, so whose inevitable drop-off will not affect the team as they push for a fourth consecutive trophy.

India and South Africa are also not quite bubbling under nicely. Both will be happy with not taking a decisive lead in the ODI series, and be hoping that rain in Centurion tomorrow removes the possibility of either of them winning. A notable victory against a strong opponent at this stage is likely to prove fatal for their World Cup hopes.

Both teams also took every available precaution to make sure they did not win the final Test of the three-match series recently concluded, avoiding the EPM (excessive premature momentum) that all coaches fear. (It was a disappointing end to a compelling series akin to Shakespeare writing Act V of Hamlet as a single scene in which Hamlet does a crossword, eats a packet of nachos, and twangs a ruler on his desk, or Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier concluding the Thriller In Manila by spending rounds 14 and 15 filling in their tax returns and phoning their accountants to check what they were allowed to claim as expenses.)

India’s glut of injuries also bodes very well for the tournament favourites. Those players should be in peak condition come March 23.

New Zealand’s win over Pakistan in Wellington (described as “worryingly comprehensive at this stage of our preparations” by Daniel Vettori) should not detract from their expertly crafted 11-match losing streak that preceded it, whilst their opponents know that, such is the fluctuating nature of their cricket, how they are playing now bears no relation to how they will play in late March (indeed, how they play in late March will have no impact on how they play five minutes later in March).

Sri Lanka and West Indies are no doubt practising half-heartedly to make sure they do not hit the ground running in their three-match ODI series beginning on January 31, whilst Bangladesh are keeping a low profile after whitewashing of New Zealand, desperately hoping they will not take that form into the early stages of the World Cup. All in all, the tournament is still anyone’s.

Meanwhile, the Chairman of Baggy Green Selectors, Andrew Hilditch has, after an investigation lasting two weeks, issued the Official Cricket Australia List Of Positives To Be Taken From The 2010-11 Ashes. It reads as follows:

1. Selectors seek consistency from their players. Many of the team provided us with admirably, almost unprecedentedly, consistent performance levels. The captain, as so often, led the way, churning out a series of scores that were so consistent as to be barely discernible from each other. He was ably supported in this by his vice-captain, whilst Ben Hilfenhaus set new standards for reliable, guaranteed consistency with the ball.

2. Sportsmen are never more determined than when they set out to “prove the critics wrong”. By garnering for themselves a record number of critics, Australia’s cricketers will be more motivated than ever, and will play for the next 25 years in an almost hypnotic trance of critic-disproving frenzy.

3. The pain of defeat in 2005 and 2009 was exacerbated by the the fact that had one ball happened differently in each series, the result would have been reversed. If Lee had slapped Harmison’s full toss either side of the fielder at Edgbaston in 2005, or if the umpire had given Kasprowicz not out to a marginal caught-behind appeal moments later, and if one of the 35 balls bowled to Panesar in Cardiff in 2009 had, as might reasonably have been expected, cleaned him up, then Australia would have triumphed gloriously. Life is too short for “what ifs”, so, by being obliterated by an innings in three Tests and conceding a record statistical superiority to England, the Australians will now be able to proceed happily with the rest of their lives, unencumbered by nightmares of the ones that got away.

4. Since the retirement of the irreplaceable Shane Warne in 2007, Australia have been trying to replace him, and find a spinner who is indispensably crucial to the side’s success. Over the course of the Ashes, Nathan Hauritz grew into that role.

5. The international game is short of star names. In this series, Australia created a new generation of potential world superstars – Cook, Trott, Bell, Anderson, Tremlett, Bresnan, to name but six.

6. Taking positives from abject defeat is long-established as a method of helping captains avoid breaking down in tears of humiliation at post-match interviews, no matter how spurious and desperate those supposed silver linings dully glistening around the mushroom cloud of defeat may be. Australia helped prove that taking negatives from victory is an equally valid procedure. As Ricky Ponting said in Perth, after leading his team to a thumping victory: “Well, obviously we’re delighted with the win, but let’s not forget we can still take a lot of negatives away from this victory. Our top-order batting was useless, we were bailed out by Hussey yet again, and there is absolutely no way he can do that for five Tests in a row, and only two of our bowlers took any wickets, one of whom blows notoriously hot and cold, the other of whom picks up injuries like Warren Beatty used to pick up women in his prime. So, all in all, whilst we cannot deny that we did win this game, there is still much to be downbeat and pessimistic about, and we’ll focus on that carrying that forward to Melbourne.”

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