by If you’re Sam Konstas, you’re used to moving quickly. It took 718 first-class points to get into the Australian team. It took 113 tries to potentially change how it’s configured. For almost two years since Travis Head won a shootout in India, the plan has been clear: On the next Asian pitch, the usual No. 5 would jump up the order, opening the batting to target the rare seam overs or to slam spinners using a harder ball. Usman Khawaja would partner him with Graft, the veteran regular opener filling the gap after the retirement of David Warner.
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Just weeks before Australia’s impending series in Sri Lanka, however, that plan was upended. Konstas is also an opener. Konstas is also in the team. On the spur of the moment, Konstas will play. So either Khawaja moves on for the first time in years, Konstas plays out of position in his third Test, or in Australia, abandon the head plan that has sat there for so long waiting to be implemented. However, it will mean a major last-minute change based on a Test career that reads 60, 8, 23, 22.
The numbers tell you how much this moment in Australian cricket is about vibes. There is such excitement about Konstas, Buzz created by the appearance of a 19 year old for whom reality has yet to cloud any potential. People light up to see him make 9 from 14 balls in the Big Bash. People get shirts with his face on them. A guy chasing him for a photo jumped out of a car without applying the handbrake so he rolled downhill into a collision.
The excitement is based on the 60, not the 8, the 23 or the 22. It is based on how and when Konstas debuted, working his way into the national consciousness. There are a few games at play here. Firstly, some England fans have a point in asking why the Australian media and spectators responded as if this was unprecedented. Make 60 from 65? Not even that fast. T20 hits on the slide? England have batted like this for years.
England has, and has been, looked down upon by the Australians for being selfish people. Before England, Rishabh Pant did it. Before Pant, Brendon McCullum did it, without a scoop but striking with the same aggression he carries now. Back goes the line, through Virender Sehwag, Adam Gilchrist, Sanath Jayasuriya, to Charlie Macartney and Gilbert Jessop. Yet the local media wrote of Boxing Day as a red-ball revolution, a rewrite of how cricket is played, a hundred other pieces of hyperbole.
The second part of the equation, however, is the context of the law. It wasn’t just the shots that Konstas played, it was such an innings at such an age. Do it at the beginning. Doing it the day after the next morning, in the seventh, in prime time, with a country watching from the couch. Doing it to the world’s best bowler, and in the series, while by then Jasprit Bumrah had repeatedly torn apart Australia’s top order.
There was the fact that it was a tactical choice, taking on the hardest task with the coolest method, like stopping a runaway train after a rollback with an earthworks. Two overs of play and missing before the first reverse ramp. Failed twice, got third, moved on. He faced 33 from Bumrah’s 36-ball spell, it cost 38 runs, and a 180-degree turn began Australia’s march to victory.
Tactical surprise only works once. Second innings? Bumrah unleashed a mile, restoring natural order with a clatter of stumps. So, to the question that always hangs over the head: what should Konstas do next? He hatched his plan as a bowler, but continued it in Sydney after Bumrah was injured. In the second inning, he played as a pinch hitter. The ball from his dismissal could have been hit wide off the side, but he tried a flat shot down the middle. Attack should not mean the lowest percentage option. This is the trap Konstas set for himself: the adrenaline and validation made him want to pursue what sustainability argued against.
This may all seem dour, but that’s not to deny the fun of Boxing Day, spectacle and substance. The fact is that people liked the innocence of his approach, the joy of life. Risk and reward. Lack of thinking or having to think. And it only charms as long as it works. This can’t work for long. The impulse to protect this innocence arises from the inevitability that you cannot. Enter Test cricket comes under the spotlight. Face your first pitch and be rated by millions, eyes watching from the stands and across the broadcast waves. According to physics, systems are influenced by observation. It has already started.
In some ways, Konstas now has bigger challenges than starting out with nothing to lose. Two Tests in Galle have never faced a ball in Asia. A World Test Championship tilt in England against South Africa’s new ball could. A chance at a title, in which an opener who hit 20 won’t be good enough. Another move to the slow tracks of the Caribbean. And if he goes through these tasks with confidence strengthened rather than exhaustion, the fever season of a home ash.
At this point, no one knows if he’s up to the task. For all the talk of twin tons for New South Wales, these are the only hundreds of his first-class career. He could be the prodigy who does it, he could be a kid who floundered and got away with it. The Australian selectors tried a hunch that worked so well they are married to it, all the way to the next southern summer. It could turn out to be a stroke of fortune, it could turn out to be a backfire. The only certainty is that when Konstas hits the middle in Sri Lanka next week, people will turn to the screen.
