If you could sell confidence, if you could bottle it and market it, you would be richer than you could ever imagine. Confidence is what every cricketer, every sportsman, craves. If you have it, the world is your oyster. If you don’t then a shell to hide in is what you yearn for. How quickly it can come and go in this game is impossible to comprehend.
But the example of Mitchell Johnson is mystifying. No more than a fortnight ago Johnson’s confidence was down around his ankles. He couldn’t bat, he couldn’t bowl, and he couldn’t field. Like a cancer, his bowling woes had spread to every facet of his game. It hit an almost incurable point. If he had a shovel at the Gabba he would have dug a hole and climbed in. Everyone had an opinion, everyone had an answer, and everyone called for his head.
The Australian selectors took the only action they could, and left him out in Adelaide. But rather than play for WA or his grade side Wanneroo, as so many suggested he should, he spent his time away working in the nets.
Suddenly, in Perth he is super-Mitch again. He played with freedom with the bat, wielding his blade in spectacular and eye-catching fashion. He played with a natural freedom and flourish that has been absent since he tore the Proteas to shreds in March of 2009. Not surprisingly, his 62 was only his second half century since that tour, and his first in 15 Test matches.
Then, with the ball, something truly remarkable happened. He swung the ball away from the left-handers and into the right.
Johnson was feeling his way with his first two overs on the opening evening. He might have lifted a cog if Hussey had caught a catch he never saw when Andrew Strauss flashed through gully.
But on the second morning his shot of confidence came from an Alistair Cook error. Cook, choc-full of self-belief, over-extended, driving at a ball that left him with minimal footwork. Hussey pouched the chance and Mitch’s reaction was relief. The gorilla on his back reached for a nearby branch.
The Silverback had both hands on the branch in Johnson’s next over when he swerved one back to the right-handed Jonathan Trott, who was so plumb he almost walked.
The gorilla leapt off and disappeared into the jungle three balls later, as Johnson claimed Confidence’s poster boy Kevin Pietersen. Again it was a rapid inswinger that trapped England’s number four in front. Pietersen went from 227 to 0 in a fortnight, Johnson from no-hoper to hero in two days.
Johnson’s reaction to Pietersen’s removal told the story. For weeks he had not smiled. For months he’d fretted and slunk his shoulders. A lamb in lion’s clothing, they had written.
The lion had suddenly roared and Johnson raised a fist to the Press Box.
It was a gesture that some will brand ugly, some will brand immature, but at the end of the day it was something to show that he’s back. It was for the so-called “journalist” that sought quotes from his estranged mother during the 2009 Ashes. It was for those scribes that had panned his poor performances. It was for all those ex-players, who could not comprehend his plight, claiming he couldn’t “bowl a Hula hoop down a hill”.
Johnson’s demeanour changed in an instant. Prior to the over he’d been on edge, serious, and focussed. After the over he was smiling, relaxed, joking with fielding coach Mike Young on the rope at fine leg, and signing tons of autographs for the punters who, an over earlier, had treated him like a leper.
It was an extraordinary transformation. Johnson then produced his coup de grace, removing Paul Collingwood with one that pitched outside the Geordie’s off stump and seared back into his pads like an Exocet missile.
Collingwood’s footwork was a study in confidence itself, particularly when contrasted with Ian Bell. Collingwood was anchored deep in the crease. His right foot back near the stumps, like a first-time bungie jumper holding on to the rail, fearful of taking a step over the ledge. Meantime Bell moved forward and back as decisively as a champion fencer, and with the confidence, balance, and bravado of a tight-rope walker. Collingwood departed for a nervous 5. Bell compiled a classy 53. The latter really has graduated from Sherminator to Terminator and a promotion can’t be far away.
But in fairness to the combative Collingwood, he got an absolute corker from the left-armer. Johnson wasn’t standing the seam up in conventional fashion. It was the type of delivery that would have made Sir Isaac Newton sit bolt upright in his 283-year-old grave.
They are curveballs in baseball parlance. They defy any conventional coaching manual of swing bowling. And they are made even more difficult to handle given they don’t appear consistently.
Johnson had every instruction at his finger tips in the form of the bowling guru Troy Cooley and the master Dennis Lillee. But rumours suggest they haven’t re-invented the wheel. Johnson’s core strength was well down according to internal testing. His drive through the crease and general ability to keep his action, when tired, had diminished significantly.
However, for all the technical jargon, nothing can replace the confidence he received from his batting, Hussey’s first catch, and the Trott LBW.
If he could bottle that confidence up and take it wherever he goes, he and Australia will be unbeatable.
If only cricket were that simple.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
Come in Spinner, but don’t close the door
There was a sign erected at the WACA ground during a one-day match between Australia and the West Indies in January 1997. It was the summer Australia missed the Carlton and United One-day series finals, which eventually led to the sacking of Mark Taylor as limited-overs captain, and the initial foray into having separate squads for the two different forms of the game.
The sign read:
“Lost: The Plot. If found please return to the Australian dressing rooms. Ask for Tubby.”
One wonders whether or not the gentlemen who erected that sign still has it, and whether he might bring it out again next week during the third Ashes test. Only one change needs to be made. Replace “Tubby” with “Digger”, and they may have it spot on.
Chairman of selectors Andrew “Digger” Hilditch announced Australia’s Test squad for Perth last week. In it appeared the name Michael Beer, the tenth Australian spinner to be selected for Australia since Shane Warne’s retirement. Ten since January 2007.
Can you name them all?
Take a deep breath because it will take awhile. Stuart MacGill, Brad Hogg, Beau Casson, Cameron White, Jason Krejza, Nathan Hauritz, Marcus North, Steve Smith, and Xavier Doherty all have been used as Australia’s number one spinner in Test matches since Warne’s departure.
To put that into perspective, English Premier League club Newcastle United just named Alan Pardew as its manager last week after sacking Chris Hughton. Pardew is the eighth manager to take charge of the giant Tyne-side franchise since January 2007. In that time they have bounced from the Premiership, to the Championship, and back to the Premiership. They are currently the laughing stock of English football.
If Beer plays in Perth on Thursday he will be the least credentialed of all nine spinners named, which by the way is no mean feat, having played just five first-class fixtures for a return of 16 wickets at a cost of 39.93 apiece.
Cue Hilditch.
"Michael is a left-arm orthodox spinner who has been very impressive at domestic level this year. He took wickets against England in the tour match earlier this summer and we expect he will bowl very well against the English on his home ground," Hilditch said.
We’ll ignore the fact that the Chairman had to describe Beer as “a left-arm orthodox spinner” just in case anyone listening did not know.
Very impressive at domestic level this season? Just 16 wickets at an average of 39.93 with a best of two three wicket hauls is Beer’s return. Does that mean that Wade Townsend’s 202 runs at 28.85 for Queensland with two half centuries have also been very impressive?
He took wickets against England in a tour match earlier this summer? He did, with figures of 3 for 108 from 24 overs and 2 for 99 from 16.4 overs. The wickets included Jonathan Trott, Ian Bell, Matt Prior, Kevin Pietersen, and Paul Collingwood. They are reasonable figures. However fellow left-arm orthodox Aaron O’Brien claimed match figures of 3 for 112 against England for South Australia, and New South Wales left-arm tweaker Steve O’Keefe took 4 for 88 in England’s first innings against Australia ‘A’.
We expect he will bowl very well against the English on his home ground? So Beer has been picked because he knows the conditions well? He’s played three first-class games at WACA. They are two of just six first-class or grade matches he’s played in Perth having moved from Melbourne during the winter to begin a first-class career at age 26.
O’Brien, O’Keefe, and Xavier Doherty have all played more cricket at the WACA than Beer.
So why is he in the XII? Because Shane Warne mentioned his name in a newspaper column?
It is not Beer’s fault that he has been selected. Every Australian fan will hope he performs well should he play. But on recent record, getting selected to play for Australia as a specialist spinner is like getting a knock on your door from the Grim Reaper.
Beau Casson took three wickets on test debut in Bridgetown, June 2008, in the third test against the West Indies. He then wasn’t selected for the following tour of India, as White, McGain, and Krejza went instead. Since then he has played nine Shield matches for NSW, taking just nine wickets at 78.44 per scalp, as well as being pulled from the attack in a match at the Gabba for two high full tosses in an innings. He was last sighted collapsing in Sydney Grade cricket trying to make a return from the debilitating illness Chronic Fatigue syndrome.
Cameron White played in Casson’s place throughout the 2008 tour of India. He claimed just five wickets at 68.40. Since then he has scarcely bowled in first-class cricket having claimed just six wickets in two and a half domestic seasons. He is now trying to push his case as a batsman.
Jason Krejza took a stunning 12 wickets on test debut. He then missed the next test match Australia played because the Gabba strip called for four seamers and no spinner. Krejza then injured an ankle in the lead-up to the second Trans-Tasman test against a weak New Zealand batting line-up. Hauritz filled in before Krejza returned to take on a mighty South African batting line-up on freeway at the WACA. The Proteas chased a monstrous 414 to win in the fourth innings. Krejza finished with match figures of 1 for 204. Brett Lee and Peter Siddle also only claimed one wicket for the entire test. The two quicks retained their place for Melbourne, and Krejza was banished back to Shield cricket where he has since struggled to retain a regular place for Tasmania.
Marcus North played as the sole spinner in his first two tests in South Africa, scoring a century as well as taking a wicket in each victorious test. He missed the third due to illness and opened the door for Bryce McGain’s inclusion.
Debuting ten days before his 37th birthday, McGain went wicket-less in 18 overs that cost 149. His career was over before the test match concluded. McGain has since claimed six wickets in last year’s Sheffield Shield final but at 38 is seen to be clogging up the system.
Nathan Hauritz was given the most extended run of any spinner tried, and was the most successful as a result. Yet ironically, his first-class record was worse than the part-timer North when he was selected. Hauritz was ineffective in India recently, taking just six wickets at 65. But he’s not the first and won’t be the last to suffer on the sub-continent. Warne averaged 50 with the ball in the famous 2001 series in India.
Two bad tests theoretically should not end a career. Xavier Doherty has averaged 103 with ball in hand as the replacement for Hauritz, yet the Queensland –born New South Wales off-spinner feels so disenchanted that he gave away his test clothing at garage sale. Although he wouldn’t require it if recalled due to a change of CA sponsorship, the symbolism of the gesture, and his quote: “I don’t play for them (Australia) anymore”, suggests he’s been told in no uncertain terms that he is no longer an international cricketer.
Doherty has gone the way of McGain and Krejza before him. Tried, failed, and discarded.
One fears for Beer as well. But his first-class career has barely got off the ground. So what happens if his test career ends in one or two innings like those before him?
Steve Smith on the other hand would have to do a lot wrong to be treated like the nine aforementioned spinners. He has been anointed as a long term project. But his selection as a batsman is baffling. A first-class average of 43.77, with four centuries, in just 20 matches puts him ahead of the likes of Shaun Marsh and Callum Ferguson on record alone, but unlike those he’s hardly batted above six for New South Wales. Very rarely has a Test batsman been picked having not been a top-four regular for their state. He has just recently moved to four for New South Wales. His Shield average this season stands at 32 without a century.
If Smith averages 35 with the bat and 42 with the ball after 21 Test matches, will he be dropped like North? You would hope not, but few would disagree with North’s axing.
What happens next is anyone’s guess.
But hear this in mind. Shane Warne’s first four bowling efforts in Tests amounted to a 1 for 337, and six opposition players scored centuries with Ravi Shastri scoring a double.
Last question Mr Hilditch. If Shane Warne had debuted under your Chairmanship, what would have happened?
The sign read:
“Lost: The Plot. If found please return to the Australian dressing rooms. Ask for Tubby.”
One wonders whether or not the gentlemen who erected that sign still has it, and whether he might bring it out again next week during the third Ashes test. Only one change needs to be made. Replace “Tubby” with “Digger”, and they may have it spot on.
Chairman of selectors Andrew “Digger” Hilditch announced Australia’s Test squad for Perth last week. In it appeared the name Michael Beer, the tenth Australian spinner to be selected for Australia since Shane Warne’s retirement. Ten since January 2007.
Can you name them all?
Take a deep breath because it will take awhile. Stuart MacGill, Brad Hogg, Beau Casson, Cameron White, Jason Krejza, Nathan Hauritz, Marcus North, Steve Smith, and Xavier Doherty all have been used as Australia’s number one spinner in Test matches since Warne’s departure.
To put that into perspective, English Premier League club Newcastle United just named Alan Pardew as its manager last week after sacking Chris Hughton. Pardew is the eighth manager to take charge of the giant Tyne-side franchise since January 2007. In that time they have bounced from the Premiership, to the Championship, and back to the Premiership. They are currently the laughing stock of English football.
If Beer plays in Perth on Thursday he will be the least credentialed of all nine spinners named, which by the way is no mean feat, having played just five first-class fixtures for a return of 16 wickets at a cost of 39.93 apiece.
Cue Hilditch.
"Michael is a left-arm orthodox spinner who has been very impressive at domestic level this year. He took wickets against England in the tour match earlier this summer and we expect he will bowl very well against the English on his home ground," Hilditch said.
We’ll ignore the fact that the Chairman had to describe Beer as “a left-arm orthodox spinner” just in case anyone listening did not know.
Very impressive at domestic level this season? Just 16 wickets at an average of 39.93 with a best of two three wicket hauls is Beer’s return. Does that mean that Wade Townsend’s 202 runs at 28.85 for Queensland with two half centuries have also been very impressive?
He took wickets against England in a tour match earlier this summer? He did, with figures of 3 for 108 from 24 overs and 2 for 99 from 16.4 overs. The wickets included Jonathan Trott, Ian Bell, Matt Prior, Kevin Pietersen, and Paul Collingwood. They are reasonable figures. However fellow left-arm orthodox Aaron O’Brien claimed match figures of 3 for 112 against England for South Australia, and New South Wales left-arm tweaker Steve O’Keefe took 4 for 88 in England’s first innings against Australia ‘A’.
We expect he will bowl very well against the English on his home ground? So Beer has been picked because he knows the conditions well? He’s played three first-class games at WACA. They are two of just six first-class or grade matches he’s played in Perth having moved from Melbourne during the winter to begin a first-class career at age 26.
O’Brien, O’Keefe, and Xavier Doherty have all played more cricket at the WACA than Beer.
So why is he in the XII? Because Shane Warne mentioned his name in a newspaper column?
It is not Beer’s fault that he has been selected. Every Australian fan will hope he performs well should he play. But on recent record, getting selected to play for Australia as a specialist spinner is like getting a knock on your door from the Grim Reaper.
Beau Casson took three wickets on test debut in Bridgetown, June 2008, in the third test against the West Indies. He then wasn’t selected for the following tour of India, as White, McGain, and Krejza went instead. Since then he has played nine Shield matches for NSW, taking just nine wickets at 78.44 per scalp, as well as being pulled from the attack in a match at the Gabba for two high full tosses in an innings. He was last sighted collapsing in Sydney Grade cricket trying to make a return from the debilitating illness Chronic Fatigue syndrome.
Cameron White played in Casson’s place throughout the 2008 tour of India. He claimed just five wickets at 68.40. Since then he has scarcely bowled in first-class cricket having claimed just six wickets in two and a half domestic seasons. He is now trying to push his case as a batsman.
Jason Krejza took a stunning 12 wickets on test debut. He then missed the next test match Australia played because the Gabba strip called for four seamers and no spinner. Krejza then injured an ankle in the lead-up to the second Trans-Tasman test against a weak New Zealand batting line-up. Hauritz filled in before Krejza returned to take on a mighty South African batting line-up on freeway at the WACA. The Proteas chased a monstrous 414 to win in the fourth innings. Krejza finished with match figures of 1 for 204. Brett Lee and Peter Siddle also only claimed one wicket for the entire test. The two quicks retained their place for Melbourne, and Krejza was banished back to Shield cricket where he has since struggled to retain a regular place for Tasmania.
Marcus North played as the sole spinner in his first two tests in South Africa, scoring a century as well as taking a wicket in each victorious test. He missed the third due to illness and opened the door for Bryce McGain’s inclusion.
Debuting ten days before his 37th birthday, McGain went wicket-less in 18 overs that cost 149. His career was over before the test match concluded. McGain has since claimed six wickets in last year’s Sheffield Shield final but at 38 is seen to be clogging up the system.
Nathan Hauritz was given the most extended run of any spinner tried, and was the most successful as a result. Yet ironically, his first-class record was worse than the part-timer North when he was selected. Hauritz was ineffective in India recently, taking just six wickets at 65. But he’s not the first and won’t be the last to suffer on the sub-continent. Warne averaged 50 with the ball in the famous 2001 series in India.
Two bad tests theoretically should not end a career. Xavier Doherty has averaged 103 with ball in hand as the replacement for Hauritz, yet the Queensland –born New South Wales off-spinner feels so disenchanted that he gave away his test clothing at garage sale. Although he wouldn’t require it if recalled due to a change of CA sponsorship, the symbolism of the gesture, and his quote: “I don’t play for them (Australia) anymore”, suggests he’s been told in no uncertain terms that he is no longer an international cricketer.
Doherty has gone the way of McGain and Krejza before him. Tried, failed, and discarded.
One fears for Beer as well. But his first-class career has barely got off the ground. So what happens if his test career ends in one or two innings like those before him?
Steve Smith on the other hand would have to do a lot wrong to be treated like the nine aforementioned spinners. He has been anointed as a long term project. But his selection as a batsman is baffling. A first-class average of 43.77, with four centuries, in just 20 matches puts him ahead of the likes of Shaun Marsh and Callum Ferguson on record alone, but unlike those he’s hardly batted above six for New South Wales. Very rarely has a Test batsman been picked having not been a top-four regular for their state. He has just recently moved to four for New South Wales. His Shield average this season stands at 32 without a century.
If Smith averages 35 with the bat and 42 with the ball after 21 Test matches, will he be dropped like North? You would hope not, but few would disagree with North’s axing.
What happens next is anyone’s guess.
But hear this in mind. Shane Warne’s first four bowling efforts in Tests amounted to a 1 for 337, and six opposition players scored centuries with Ravi Shastri scoring a double.
Last question Mr Hilditch. If Shane Warne had debuted under your Chairmanship, what would have happened?
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
If, If only
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;” Rudyard Kipling, If, 1865
The British Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling would not have had cricket in mind when he penned his ode to Victorian stoicism, but the Australian Selectors could do worse than read his verse before they meet to discuss Australia’s disastrous defeat at the Adelaide Oval.
They should take note of another line from Kipling’s poem. “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same;” Kipling wrote “then yours is the Earth, and everything that is in it.”
The Earth is not Australia’s right now, nor are the Ashes, and one could argue that part of the reason is that the Australian selectors have not treated the imposters of triumph and disaster just the same.
They did in 2009.
The triumph was an innings victory in Headingley to level the Ashes series 1-1. They “risked it all on a game of pitch and toss” by gambling with a fourth quick, Stuart Clark, and banking on a green seamer in Leeds. It worked. England won the toss and lost 20 wickets for 365 to book-end Australia’s only innings of 445.
Australia went unchanged to the grass-less, baron-dry, dusty Oval. The disaster came. With no specialist spinner, Australia removed 19 English wickets for scores of 332 and 373 declared. Hardly the run-gluts you may have expected given what was written in the post-script. But Australia managed a meagre 160 in their first innings, with pace-man Stuart Broad claiming five of Australia’s top seven, and off-spinner Graeme Swann bagging four of the rest.
The selectors met with disaster just the same. Ten of the eleven Australians present in both Leeds and London started in Brisbane a fortnight ago. The only change made was the introduction of Tasmanian left-arm orthodox spinner Xavier Doherty, with all of 35 First-Class fixtures of experience that had yielded just 84 wickets at 49.45. Meantime Clark was discarded to the scrapheap after the Oval debacle. His 94 test scalps at 23.86, including 30 English bats for a cost of 20.63 apiece, are currently leading New South Wales who sit atop the Sheffield Shield table.
But yet after a draw in Brisbane, where both teams claimed just 11 wickets each on one of the flattest wickets curator Kevin Mitchell Jr has ever concocted, the Australian Selectors dropped Mitchell Johnson and Ben Hilfenhaus for fear of a flatter surface in Adelaide, meaning that since Australia’s defeat to Pakistan at Headingley in July, nine different bowlers have been used in five different combinations, across five different tests against three opponents on three different continents.
Is it any surprise Australia has lost four of five tests, its worst losing slump since 1988.
The ex-members of Australia’s fast bowling cartel, as well as the tight knit spinning fraternity, are screaming blue-murder. Their kind are being made scapegoats for a batting unit that is consistently not carrying its weight.
This, to a certain extent is true. The Oval disaster was a batting failure not a bowling one. Likewise in Adelaide, despite a poor display by the bowlers, when you are defending a first innings total of just 245 you are asking to get beaten.
The problem is that the bowlers are dispensable. Aside from Mitchell Johnson, whose problems run deeper than a simple form slump, the next best test record of the nine bowlers used is Peter Siddle with 66 wickets and three five-wicket hauls. It is the equivalent of having a batting group whose most experienced player has only 1000 test runs and three centuries. For all those who felt Nathan Hauritz was hard done by, he took his first Sheffield Shield five-wicket haul only last week. Name the last Australian batsman to play 17 Tests having not made a Shield century?
Meantime, the batting woes are led by the captain and vice-captain who simply can’t be dropped. In the five winless test matches, Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke have combined for just six half centuries and no hundreds in 19 innings between them. Even the man in the gun, Marcus North, has posted a hundred in that time, if nothing else.
Even the opening combination, for all the praise they’ve received for being the bedrock of the side and the comparisons that have been drawn to the great combinations of yesteryear, are not as fruitful as they appear to be.
Andrew Strauss and Alistair Cook in just four innings of this Ashes campaign have scored three individual hundreds between them, including a double-century from Cook.
Simon Katich and Shane Watson have achieved just four centuries between them in 15 Tests as a combination.
Katich and Phillip Hughes managed three in one Durban Test match 21 months ago, ironically to seal the last significant Australian Test series victory.
As Cook and Strauss showed at the Gabba, and as the likes of Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer, Michael Slater and Mark Taylor, and Geoff Marsh and Taylor again have shown over a span of 21 years, double-century partnerships at the top of the order demoralise opponents to breaking point. There is a feeling of frustration, then panic, then helplessness, then defeat that seeps through the mind and soul of those trying to remove them. It’s been 21 months since Australia have achieved such dominance.
And it has exposed a soft underbelly. So what is the answer? Replacements? The bowlers would say it’s only fair. But who do you replace them with?
Herein lies the inherent, systemic problem that plagues Australian cricket right now. It is a problem that no number of selectors, commentators, writers, or pundits can solve. The cupboard is bare because the system is broken.
Once upon a time, when Australia was in its prime, selectors had the likes of Jamie Siddons, Stuart Law, Michael Bevan, Darren Lehmann, Jamie Cox, Michael Di Venuto, Martin Love, Brad Hodge, and Chris Rogers plundering tens of thousands of Sheffield Shield runs year in, year out, as merely back up to the incumbents in the Test squad.
Now the candidates range from two immeasurable, but hardly worldly, talents in Phillip Hughes and Usman Khawaja, and four others in Callum Ferguson, Shaun Marsh, Adam Voges, and Cameron White, all of who have played in excess of 50 Sheffield Shield matches, none of who average in excess of 40.
Perhaps some would argue that this is merely a less talented generation of Australian cricketers?
Then how must the rest of the world be going, if Australia are the current holders of the U19’s World Cup, and the last Australian side to achieve the feat featured White and Marsh?
If it isn’t the talent, it must be the system. Cricket Australia’s National Academy is no longer the breeding ground it was with staff, coaches, intakes, programs, and focus changing almost annually to the point that it’s unrecognisable from Rod Marsh’s Adelaide Institution that fostered arguably Australia’s greatest era of players.
The nation’s State Second XI competition, once the envy of the world for its strength and depth, has been reduced to an Under 23’s league, played under different rules to the Sheffield Shield, and thus has pillaged the foundations of Australian cricket as scores of players over the age of 23 leave grade cricket for work, travel, or family reasons because the chance of progression to State ranks has become virtually impossible. Runs and wickets against fellow 23 year olds do not a first-class cricketer make. There isn’t a cricketer alive who will tell you he was a better player before his 23rd birthday than he was after.
All the while, contracted cricketers over the age of 23, not in the Shield side can’t play in the Second XI competition.
The rise of T20 cricket has also led to a generation of Australian boys becoming more intent on the riches of the IPL, or the bright lights of the expanding Big Bash as opposed to winning a Shield cap.
Indeed CA ordered Doug Bollinger and Michael Hussey to stay with the Chennai Super Kings at the T20 Champions League rather than join the Test squad to prepare for a tour of India. The expectation that Hussey would go from thrashing as hard as he can as quickly as he can on one-day wickets in South Africa, to batting time and absorbing pressure from Harbhajan Singh and Pragyan Ojha on raging turners in India is akin to expecting Roger Federer to win the French Open after playing table tennis for a month. Likewise, to expect Bollinger to be fit for Tests in India after bowling four overs a day is laughable. That he broke down is anything but. Even worse, the rumour that he was fit to bowl through pain on the last day in Mohali only to be told to rest for the first Gabba test that he eventually wasn’t picked for, is something not even the England and Wales Cricket Board could have conjured its darkest days.
The ECB and their selectors “kept their heads when all about them were losing theirs” at the Oval in 2009. An innings defeat at Headingley heard calls for 40-year-old Mark Ramprakash to be recalled to sure up a fragile batting line-up such were the lack of options available. Instead they called upon the 28-year-old Jonathan Trott, with 8419 First-Class runs 131 matches, who delivered with a match-winning hundred. Now, 15-months and as many tests later, he is in the top ten players in the world and averaging 60 as England’s immovable number three.
England has learned from its mistakes. To paraphrase Kipling again, "they’ve watched the things they gave their life to broken and stooped and build 'em up with worn out tools."
They have done an Australia to Australia. They prepared thoroughly. Like Border’s heroes of 1989 they banned wives and partners until after the third test. They’ve played three first-class fixtures before the first test, two on test match venues. And they’ve picked an Australian-style team. Gone are the desperate days of trying to fit five bowlers in a Test XI. They’ve picked six specialist batsmen, a wicket-keeper, three quicks and a world-class spinner.
The Australian selectors don’t have the luxury of turning to a Trott as they did to Hussey or Hodge after 2005 to begin a 16-Test winning streak.
This clearly isn’t 2005. This is more 1988 as results and team experience suggest. The selectors and administrators are "watching the things they gave their life to broken, and now they must stoop and build 'em up with worn out tools."
The worn out tools are the Australian way. In 1988-9 during a one-sided summer against the West Indies, they picked Mark Taylor to make his debut in the fourth test after three successive defeats, and they stuck by the talented but inexperienced, and inconsistent, Steve Waugh at the expense of second test centurion Graeme Wood. They won in Adelaide, and six months later the pair made twin hundreds in the first Ashes test at Headingley. A dynasty of Australian cricket was born.
Otherwise, Australia can do an England and threaten to match the 31 players used in that 1989 series.
Australian selectors and Administrators take note of Kipling;
“ If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;”
...
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And – which is more – you'll be a Man my son!"
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;” Rudyard Kipling, If, 1865
The British Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling would not have had cricket in mind when he penned his ode to Victorian stoicism, but the Australian Selectors could do worse than read his verse before they meet to discuss Australia’s disastrous defeat at the Adelaide Oval.
They should take note of another line from Kipling’s poem. “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same;” Kipling wrote “then yours is the Earth, and everything that is in it.”
The Earth is not Australia’s right now, nor are the Ashes, and one could argue that part of the reason is that the Australian selectors have not treated the imposters of triumph and disaster just the same.
They did in 2009.
The triumph was an innings victory in Headingley to level the Ashes series 1-1. They “risked it all on a game of pitch and toss” by gambling with a fourth quick, Stuart Clark, and banking on a green seamer in Leeds. It worked. England won the toss and lost 20 wickets for 365 to book-end Australia’s only innings of 445.
Australia went unchanged to the grass-less, baron-dry, dusty Oval. The disaster came. With no specialist spinner, Australia removed 19 English wickets for scores of 332 and 373 declared. Hardly the run-gluts you may have expected given what was written in the post-script. But Australia managed a meagre 160 in their first innings, with pace-man Stuart Broad claiming five of Australia’s top seven, and off-spinner Graeme Swann bagging four of the rest.
The selectors met with disaster just the same. Ten of the eleven Australians present in both Leeds and London started in Brisbane a fortnight ago. The only change made was the introduction of Tasmanian left-arm orthodox spinner Xavier Doherty, with all of 35 First-Class fixtures of experience that had yielded just 84 wickets at 49.45. Meantime Clark was discarded to the scrapheap after the Oval debacle. His 94 test scalps at 23.86, including 30 English bats for a cost of 20.63 apiece, are currently leading New South Wales who sit atop the Sheffield Shield table.
But yet after a draw in Brisbane, where both teams claimed just 11 wickets each on one of the flattest wickets curator Kevin Mitchell Jr has ever concocted, the Australian Selectors dropped Mitchell Johnson and Ben Hilfenhaus for fear of a flatter surface in Adelaide, meaning that since Australia’s defeat to Pakistan at Headingley in July, nine different bowlers have been used in five different combinations, across five different tests against three opponents on three different continents.
Is it any surprise Australia has lost four of five tests, its worst losing slump since 1988.
The ex-members of Australia’s fast bowling cartel, as well as the tight knit spinning fraternity, are screaming blue-murder. Their kind are being made scapegoats for a batting unit that is consistently not carrying its weight.
This, to a certain extent is true. The Oval disaster was a batting failure not a bowling one. Likewise in Adelaide, despite a poor display by the bowlers, when you are defending a first innings total of just 245 you are asking to get beaten.
The problem is that the bowlers are dispensable. Aside from Mitchell Johnson, whose problems run deeper than a simple form slump, the next best test record of the nine bowlers used is Peter Siddle with 66 wickets and three five-wicket hauls. It is the equivalent of having a batting group whose most experienced player has only 1000 test runs and three centuries. For all those who felt Nathan Hauritz was hard done by, he took his first Sheffield Shield five-wicket haul only last week. Name the last Australian batsman to play 17 Tests having not made a Shield century?
Meantime, the batting woes are led by the captain and vice-captain who simply can’t be dropped. In the five winless test matches, Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke have combined for just six half centuries and no hundreds in 19 innings between them. Even the man in the gun, Marcus North, has posted a hundred in that time, if nothing else.
Even the opening combination, for all the praise they’ve received for being the bedrock of the side and the comparisons that have been drawn to the great combinations of yesteryear, are not as fruitful as they appear to be.
Andrew Strauss and Alistair Cook in just four innings of this Ashes campaign have scored three individual hundreds between them, including a double-century from Cook.
Simon Katich and Shane Watson have achieved just four centuries between them in 15 Tests as a combination.
Katich and Phillip Hughes managed three in one Durban Test match 21 months ago, ironically to seal the last significant Australian Test series victory.
As Cook and Strauss showed at the Gabba, and as the likes of Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer, Michael Slater and Mark Taylor, and Geoff Marsh and Taylor again have shown over a span of 21 years, double-century partnerships at the top of the order demoralise opponents to breaking point. There is a feeling of frustration, then panic, then helplessness, then defeat that seeps through the mind and soul of those trying to remove them. It’s been 21 months since Australia have achieved such dominance.
And it has exposed a soft underbelly. So what is the answer? Replacements? The bowlers would say it’s only fair. But who do you replace them with?
Herein lies the inherent, systemic problem that plagues Australian cricket right now. It is a problem that no number of selectors, commentators, writers, or pundits can solve. The cupboard is bare because the system is broken.
Once upon a time, when Australia was in its prime, selectors had the likes of Jamie Siddons, Stuart Law, Michael Bevan, Darren Lehmann, Jamie Cox, Michael Di Venuto, Martin Love, Brad Hodge, and Chris Rogers plundering tens of thousands of Sheffield Shield runs year in, year out, as merely back up to the incumbents in the Test squad.
Now the candidates range from two immeasurable, but hardly worldly, talents in Phillip Hughes and Usman Khawaja, and four others in Callum Ferguson, Shaun Marsh, Adam Voges, and Cameron White, all of who have played in excess of 50 Sheffield Shield matches, none of who average in excess of 40.
Perhaps some would argue that this is merely a less talented generation of Australian cricketers?
Then how must the rest of the world be going, if Australia are the current holders of the U19’s World Cup, and the last Australian side to achieve the feat featured White and Marsh?
If it isn’t the talent, it must be the system. Cricket Australia’s National Academy is no longer the breeding ground it was with staff, coaches, intakes, programs, and focus changing almost annually to the point that it’s unrecognisable from Rod Marsh’s Adelaide Institution that fostered arguably Australia’s greatest era of players.
The nation’s State Second XI competition, once the envy of the world for its strength and depth, has been reduced to an Under 23’s league, played under different rules to the Sheffield Shield, and thus has pillaged the foundations of Australian cricket as scores of players over the age of 23 leave grade cricket for work, travel, or family reasons because the chance of progression to State ranks has become virtually impossible. Runs and wickets against fellow 23 year olds do not a first-class cricketer make. There isn’t a cricketer alive who will tell you he was a better player before his 23rd birthday than he was after.
All the while, contracted cricketers over the age of 23, not in the Shield side can’t play in the Second XI competition.
The rise of T20 cricket has also led to a generation of Australian boys becoming more intent on the riches of the IPL, or the bright lights of the expanding Big Bash as opposed to winning a Shield cap.
Indeed CA ordered Doug Bollinger and Michael Hussey to stay with the Chennai Super Kings at the T20 Champions League rather than join the Test squad to prepare for a tour of India. The expectation that Hussey would go from thrashing as hard as he can as quickly as he can on one-day wickets in South Africa, to batting time and absorbing pressure from Harbhajan Singh and Pragyan Ojha on raging turners in India is akin to expecting Roger Federer to win the French Open after playing table tennis for a month. Likewise, to expect Bollinger to be fit for Tests in India after bowling four overs a day is laughable. That he broke down is anything but. Even worse, the rumour that he was fit to bowl through pain on the last day in Mohali only to be told to rest for the first Gabba test that he eventually wasn’t picked for, is something not even the England and Wales Cricket Board could have conjured its darkest days.
The ECB and their selectors “kept their heads when all about them were losing theirs” at the Oval in 2009. An innings defeat at Headingley heard calls for 40-year-old Mark Ramprakash to be recalled to sure up a fragile batting line-up such were the lack of options available. Instead they called upon the 28-year-old Jonathan Trott, with 8419 First-Class runs 131 matches, who delivered with a match-winning hundred. Now, 15-months and as many tests later, he is in the top ten players in the world and averaging 60 as England’s immovable number three.
England has learned from its mistakes. To paraphrase Kipling again, "they’ve watched the things they gave their life to broken and stooped and build 'em up with worn out tools."
They have done an Australia to Australia. They prepared thoroughly. Like Border’s heroes of 1989 they banned wives and partners until after the third test. They’ve played three first-class fixtures before the first test, two on test match venues. And they’ve picked an Australian-style team. Gone are the desperate days of trying to fit five bowlers in a Test XI. They’ve picked six specialist batsmen, a wicket-keeper, three quicks and a world-class spinner.
The Australian selectors don’t have the luxury of turning to a Trott as they did to Hussey or Hodge after 2005 to begin a 16-Test winning streak.
This clearly isn’t 2005. This is more 1988 as results and team experience suggest. The selectors and administrators are "watching the things they gave their life to broken, and now they must stoop and build 'em up with worn out tools."
The worn out tools are the Australian way. In 1988-9 during a one-sided summer against the West Indies, they picked Mark Taylor to make his debut in the fourth test after three successive defeats, and they stuck by the talented but inexperienced, and inconsistent, Steve Waugh at the expense of second test centurion Graeme Wood. They won in Adelaide, and six months later the pair made twin hundreds in the first Ashes test at Headingley. A dynasty of Australian cricket was born.
Otherwise, Australia can do an England and threaten to match the 31 players used in that 1989 series.
Australian selectors and Administrators take note of Kipling;
“ If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;”
...
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And – which is more – you'll be a Man my son!"
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