Australia’s innings-and-51-run victory over Bangladesh at Mackay finished inside two days and lasted just 750 deliveries from first ball to last — the fourth-shortest completed men’s Test match on record, and the second-shortest ever played in Australia.
The second Test at the Great Barrier Reef Arena, which began on August 22, produced 369 runs in total. That is the sixth-lowest aggregate for a completed men’s Test and the second-lowest for a Test in Australia, behind the 234 runs scored in the 1932 Melbourne Test against South Africa.
Bangladesh were bowled out for 64 and 95. It was the first time they have been dismissed for under 100 in both innings of a Test, and the first time any team has done so in a men’s Test since Zimbabwe against New Zealand at Harare in 2005. Their previous lowest match aggregate was 187, against West Indies at North Sound in 2018.
Mitchell Starc took ten wickets in the match, needing only 109 balls to complete the haul. Only four bowlers have reached ten wickets in fewer deliveries in a men’s Test, and Starc’s is the fastest since Frank Woolley’s 104 balls against Australia at The Oval in 1912. It bettered his own Australian record of 123 balls, set in last year’s Ashes Test in Perth. Six Bangladesh batters fell to him for a duck — a tally bettered only by Jim Laker, who dismissed eight during his 19-wicket match in 1956.
Australia’s own first innings of 210 was modest: it is the fourth-lowest total to produce an innings victory in men’s Tests. Bangladesh quick Shoriful Islam claimed 7 for 48 in that innings, the third-best figures by a Bangladesh bowler in Tests and the first seven-wicket haul by one of their fast bowlers.
Two-day finishes are becoming less unusual in Australia: three of the last seven Tests played there have ended inside two days, against just two in the entire period before that sequence.
Daily Mirror reported that the result lifts Australia to 80% in the World Test Championship standings, ahead of South Africa on 75%. Bangladesh slipped to 55.56% after a third defeat in six matches, while India stand on 53.33%. India are currently playing Sri Lanka in the second Test of their series at the SSC in Colombo.
