India wins admirers after gritty draw as Australia’s unedifying histrionics let them down at SCG

When television broadcasters first started using the statistics generated by cricket analysts CricViz, there was a widely-held suspicion that some of their offerings were what Mitchell and Webb would term numberwang. That scepticism soon passed.

On day one of the Sydney Test, the data seemed plainly unbelievable: statistically speaking, India’s Rishabh Pant was only the second-worst wicketkeeper in Test cricket, and the man in pole position was twice as bad.

You imagined Bangladesh’s Mushfiqur Rahim making Ravichandran Ashwin’s facial expressions distort even further.

Of course, like Mushfiqur, Pant is picked for what he can do with the bat.

To focus solely on his keeping is like critiquing Tony Soprano’s bookkeeping work at the Bada…