A tale of two declarations

A declaration, and the approach to a declaration in a cricket test match tells you a lot about the captain, and the overall approach of a team.

On day two of the ongoing Hobart test match between Australia and Sri Lanka, Australia were cruising at 450/5 in their first innings. The scoring rate was high and conventional wisdom would have suggested that Australia would score 600+ before declaring, and have Sri Lanka bat for about 20 overs on day two. However that didn't happen. There were some signs of rain, which meant that the test match could be truncated. Michael Clarke declared at 450/5 to give himself some additional time to bowl Sri Lanka out twice just in case some time was lost to rain. As it happened, the rain never came, but Clarke's proactive declaration set the tone for the match, and Australia will likely win the test match anyway.

10,000 kilometers away India and England were battling each other in the Nagpur Test match. India could salvage some of their damaged reputation and level the series with a win, while England only needed a draw for a historic come-from-behind series win. After day three, India were about 40 runs behind England in the first innings. Their only hope was to bowl England out the next day, and chase down the runs on the fifth day.  Conventional wisdom would have dictated one of two courses of action - declare overnight and give your bowlers some more time to bowl the opposition out. Or have your batsmen go hammer and tongs for 30 minutes and get out or declare. Right? But that's not what happened. India inexplicably crawled along for 62 minutes and 29 runs before declaring. If that is not an example of lack of leadership, or just plain old brain dead cricket, I don't know what is.

That is the tale of two declarations. A captain looking to find a way to win, and another one looking for ways to not lose. Both India and Australia are teams in transition at the moment, but it is not hard to predict which one of these teams will win more test matches over the next 5 years.