We can argue until the cows come home about Steven Smith’s cautious declaration in the MCG Boxing Day Test.

Is it more important to win the Test or regain the trophy? There is, of course, no correct answer.

One thing it did demonstrate was how lucky we have been to have Michael Clarke at the helm.

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It is extraordinary to witness the hairy-chested Clarke doubters suddenly getting all nostalgic and complaining about Smith’s timing.

Joni Mitchell’s “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone” springs to mind. Clarke’s history suggests he would have played a more attacking hand.

While the timing of the declaration is at least defensible, Smith’s decision to abandon the match with four overs remaining was incomprehensible.

Australia needed four wickets in the four scheduled overs remaining.

Stranger things have happened.

Clarke himself took three wickets in an over to bowl Australia to victory over India at the SCG just six years ago.

Ancients remember the day at the MCG in 1979 when Pakistan’s Sarfraz Narwaz took 7-1 from 33 deliveries to skittle Graham Yallop’s Australians.

Smith’s decision smacked of small-mindedness and a lack of imagination, extraordinary for an enterprising batsman who thinks nothing of depositing Morne Morkel over long-off and bowls leg breaks.

Worse, it was an insult to the thousands who had turned up to the MCG – most of whom stayed to the end – and the hundreds of thousands watching on television.

Yes, the game seemed to have slipped from Australia’s grasp.

But those of us at the ground, and the commentators on electronic media, were still in a state of anticipation, if not expectation.

What was Australia’s best chance? A swinger from Harris? Another unplayable cutter from Johnson? Hazlewood bowling wicket-to-wicket? On the radio, Greg Matthews was imploring Lyon to slow it down and give it a rip.

Grizzled old cricket watchers, some who had been there for all five days, were still intent on every delivery, cheering crowd catches and generally forgetting their dignity. Parents had brought young ones in the hope of witnessing a slice of history.

What we didn’t expect was Smith to pull the plug and head off for a beer.

His explanation – “all our bowlers were pretty cooked and it was time to finish” – was unconvincing in the extreme.

What was the harm in bowling out the final fours overs? Even one or two wickets would have set the crowd alight and had people huddling around television screens from Darwin to Deepdene.

We should hardly be surprised. Test cricket continues to treat its paying public abominably, with glacial over-rates and regular unscheduled interruptions by fluoro-clad invaders.

It’s not so much that Smith denied us a miracle. It’s that he denied us the possibility of a miracle. In sport, that is no small matter.