"No doubt someone, somewhere, in some fevered corner of the internet will come up with a counter view. If the universe of cricketing hot takes really is infinite, then logically there must be a feed, a page, a platform where a voice is saying, Jamie Smith and The Shot: on second thoughts. You might think this was a bad shot, perhaps even the Worst Shot. You might think all surviving footage of the shot should be pixelated in the interests of public safety, classified as a hate crime, scrubbed from the internet under the right to forget."
"But actually you're just telling the world that you don't understand the energy, the mindset, the transcendent game-states, the blocking out of the noise, the saving not just of Test cricket but all life, love, joy Sorry. But no. Even trying to type these words is not just nauseating by now, but physically painful, like stabbing yourself in the eyeball with a heated knitting needle made entirely from stupidity, motivational slogans and the toenails of weak men."
"The shot heard around the world. The plink to mid-on off Marnus Labuschagne's pantomime medium-short. The punchline to an era just before lunch at the Sydney Cricket Ground, a shot that speaks not just to poor execution or the fatigue of touring, but to a failure that spreads back up the arm, into the central cortex and out like a Stranger Things magic energy-wave into the entire superstructure of the Baz-verse and all its methods."
Jamie Smith's shot is presented as a reckless, defining error that transformed a strong England position into a moment of collapse. England were 320-5 before lunch with Smith on 41 and Joe Root on 128, applying pressure on the bowlers. The ball to mid-on off Marnus Labuschagne's medium-short is framed as poor execution amplified by fatigue and a cognitive failure. The reaction uses vivid, hyperbolic metaphors to convey disgust and incredulity. The shot is characterized both as an isolated mistake and as a symbol of broader systemic and psychological failure.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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