Homework

I wasn't sure what to think or believe about this week's crisis in Australian cricket. (This isn't to say that there's a crisis every week, although, at the moment, it might seem like it.)

My initial reaction was that Arthur and Clarke had been heavy-handed, although Brydon Coverdale's nail on head piece on Cricinfo, led me to re-consider my initial view. It seems, from comments made later by Clarke, that the failure of the four players to 'hand in their homework' on time was the straw that broke the camel's back. And James Pattinson, in an admirable display of contrition which I'm naive enough to believe was genuine, appeared to have learned a lesson of sorts, although, as the team's best bowler, he was always destined to return to the side at the earliest opportunity. For Watson, who high-tailed it back to Australia to be with his pregnant wife while muttering about the injustice of it all, and Khawaja, and Johnson, the future is a deal more uncertain. All are cricketers of talent, that much is beyond dispute, but all have histories of under-performance, and, in at least Khawaja's case, this apparently wasn't the first time they'd failed to meet their disciplinary obligations.

For all of them, time will tell. This is about something bigger.

It is trite and obvious to say that this wouldn't have happened a few years ago, when Australian were one of the greatest teams in the game's history. For one thing, individual and collective navel-gazing is less likely to be demanded when sides are winning, and, if it is, players are more likely to respond positively. They will be happier and more relaxed because they are winning and they are likely to be more conscious of the need to preserve their place among a privileged elite. It would be a surprise if the Australian cricket team, beaten from pillar to post by Dhoni, Pujara and the rest over the past few weeks, currently feels much like an elite.

In an extension of this, one of the earliest and least surprising reflex reactions to the news came from people asking whether the likes of Viv Richards or Shane Warne would have come up with their three suggestions for improvement in the prescribed manner. Well, no, they probably wouldn't. In fact, in Warne's case, he definitely wouldn't, even if he's recently developed the waning, raging, retiree's addiction to putting the world (or at least his country's cricket system) to rights. Things were different then, and, if John Buchanan had asked Warne to do such a thing, the reaction would doubtless have been short and not particularly sweet. And he would still have been picked for the next Test.

Last week's affair had as much to do with a national cricket culture's confusion and uncertainty about what to do in the face of decline as the errant actions of a few individuals. When your cricket team has been as fecund and impregnable a source of national pride and cultural identity as Australia's was a few short years ago, people start scrambling for excuses and solutions once the inevitable regression and decline sets in. And a relatively new, foreign, coach, will feel the dead weight of past glories all the more and consequently try harder to free himself and his charges from the pressure imposed by the hand of history. And things can seem even worse when your hopes have been raised by illusory and often facile successes which led you to think you were making progress. Cleaning up Sri Lanka in home conditions is one thing, meeting India under roasting skies with a hand of inadequate spinners and floundering batsmen, and with twin Ashes series against better equipped opponents on the horizon, is very much another.

This is an uncertain time for Australian cricket, and Australian sport. The customary narrative, which a generation or more of Australians has grown up with, is that Australia is good at sport. When it comes to cricket, they are among the best. In fact, they have often been the best. Now they are not, and with every fresh stroke of Shikar Dhawan's bat, or each time Phil Hughes is dismissed in clumsy circumstances, renewed doubts and uncertainties raise their heads.

It will take more than three bullet pointed ideas to put them to rest.

A Sense of Unreality

I didn't see the fall of the World Trade Center on 11th September 2001 as it happened, but people who did reported that doing so induced a sense of unreality. Many of them genuinely couldn't believe what they were seeing.

Today was a bit lke that. As I watched the Australian second innings wickets tumble in the kind of surreal freefall rarely seen away from the game's lower echelons, I briefly felt as though what I was seeing couldn't reallly be happening.

This was Australia.

Australia. The side, if not the players, who used to bestride the world, trampling all challengers underfoot.

And they were 21 for 9.

Precise reasons were hard to come by. There was some fine bowling, of course, and the pitch did its bit, but, as the cliche goes, 'it wasn't a 47 all out wicket'.

There were poor shots, from Hussey and Haddin in particular, but, more importantly, Australia, despite their fine showing in Sri Lanka, remain in an uneasy place. Watson now looks several places too high, Hughes, jumpy and staccato, still fails to convince, and Ponting may be facing the final curtain. Johnson just struggles on.

For all Clarke's class, the many qualities of Steyn, Morkel and the excellent newcomer Vernon Philander were always going to test their mettle to its limits.

They did, and they were found wanting. The game could go either way tomorrow but South Africa are favourites.

Faint Praise Be Damned

When I wrote about the sense of underachievement that attached itself to Shane Watson during the Test series, I didn't necessarily mean to damn him with faint praise. As part of the uncertain batting efforts of a poor side, his muscular if unconsummated fifties were valuable as far as they went.

More was needed though, and today he provided it, with a one-day innings for the ages.

Of course, facing a denuded England attack in the artificial environment of a one-day international on a benign MCG pitch isn't the same as doing the hard yards against Jimmy Anderson armed with a red ball, but you still have to make the runs.

In a changed Australian landscape this is a player of quality and high importance, somewhere near peak form, fitness and performance. The more complex and troubling demands of Test cricket can wait awhile.

A Long Road Ahead

In many ways Shane Watson is representative of the difficulties faced by his side, the only diference being that he was (at least while he lasted) in something resembling decent form.

Talented, sincere and competitive, but also lacking in concentration, fitness, and, when it comes to running between the wickets, basic technique, he's made a decent fist of filling one of the openers' berths in the Australian side over the last eighteen months. One's suspicion is, though, that his natural home lies further down the order and that he ought to be bowling more, and with more intent, than he currently does. Given his history of injuries, this is partially understandable, but, watching him over the last couple of Tests, it was hard not to think of him as a player who simply isn't achieving anything like his potential and wouldn't be worth a place in the England side.

He's not alone.

Everyone knew before the series started that Australia were in decline. This impression was confirmed and hastened by some strange decisions by their selectors and the confidence, virility and power of England. For now Watson himself, Khawaja, Hussey, Clarke (who, let no-one forget, is a superb batsman) and possibly Ponting offer the nucleus of a batting order, but Hussey and Ponting will soon be gone for good and the bowling cupboard looks bare. Some extra work on fielding, fitness and running is essential.

All the things that are being said about Australia now used to be said about England. For them it's been a long road back, starting with the appointment of Duncan Fletcher as coach in 1999 and the subsequent adoption of central contracts.

For Australia it will be no different.

A Full House of Negatives

Whatever happens as this game plays out, things look truly grim for Australia. Grim in a way they haven't against England for a quarter of a century.

One of my favourite memories from the summer before I went to university is the day Gooch and Gower flogged a pallid Australian attack all over Kennington. Today, with the hapless Xavier Doherty playing the part of Murray Bennett, and Shane Watson as Simon O'Donnell, Cook, Trott and Pietersen did much the same.

For the majority of the twenty-five years which have elapsed since that day, the Australian cricket team has had it all. It still has, only now it is a full house of negatives: a threadbare, poorly selected attack; batsmen who are ageing, or lack form, or both; fielders who cannot take catches which should be routine at Test level.

It's still possible, given the benign pitch and the possibility of rain later in the game, for Australia to escape defeat in Adelaide, but the psychological damage being done here is huge.

Australia's glory years were really over as soon as all the greats had retired, but full confirmation of what this has meant on the pitch has taken a while longer to come.

Now, though, it is over. And there is nothing that anyone - least of all Ponting - can do about it.

When the Music Stops

Ricky Thomas Ponting is, in more ways than you can count, a typical Australian Test cricketer. Indeed, he embodies the emotional makeup of virtually any successful professional sportsman. He doesn't do sentiment, or regret, or wistfulness. Such feelings are the privilege of the retired player, who can afford to look back at his career in anger, sorrow or pride with the certain knowledge that it can't blunt the sharpness of the competitive response that's vital for survival at the highest level of the game.

But Ponting wouldn't be human if he didn't reflect a little on the way things have changed for Australia in recent times. This is a man who's played nearly all his career in a team without peer; for much of that time he has been its leader and its best batsman. Now, as the autumn of his own great career draws in, he finds himself in charge of a team which just can't do what it used to. He knows it, his team-mates know it, and now other teams know it too.

Ponting said back in the English summer that he was relishing the different challenges that captaining a lesser side presented. I've no doubt he meant what he said at the time, but that was before they were beaten by Pakistan at Headingley; their two recent defeats, the second ultimately comfortable, to India have nailed the coffin lid shut on the invincible years. The music has stopped, and Ponting is still holding the parcel. The only trouble is that he doesn't know what to do with it.

While the batting is still respectable, it is far, far more vulnerable than it ever used to be, and his attack is too dependent on a spinner he doesn't trust and a quickie so erratic that it would be a shock if he really trusted himself. For all the optimism, promise and doggedness of Watson, George and Hilfenhaus, they're just not good enough to carry an attack, especially in unfamiliar conditions. There are alternatives - Bollinger, Siddle, Lee, Smith - but nobody capable of intimidating opponents with their sheer excellence in the way that was second nature to Warne and McGrath.

For me the outcome of the Ashes series still appears magnificently uncertain. Home advantage will tell, and, as everyone knows, Australians are never beaten. England's batting is a concern, but they will have seen nothing whatever to worry them over the past two weeks.

For every uncertainty, though, there is a certainty. While today's outstanding innings was Cheteshwar Pujara's first fifty for India, it sure as hell won't be his last.

Opening Gambits

When it emerged yesterday morning that Australia had dropped Philip Hughes, there was a strong temptation to write a piece castigating their selectors for replacing him with Shane Watson when there appeared to be better and more obvious alternatives, such as Mike Hussey, who learned his trade as an opening batsman.

Now, in the light of what happened between 5 and 7 yesterday afternoon, I'm glad I didn't, although the arguments against Watson still stand, and it's difficult to envisage him staying at the top of the Australian order for very long.

Yesterday afternoon, though, England did their level best to make him look good, bowling with poor consistency and concentration in front of what sounded like a boisterous and over-hyped crowd. The two may not be unconnected; England have a tendency to believe their own publicity too readily, and, with the cheers of the Lord's crowd still ringing in their ears and supplemented by those of Edgbaston, they looked like a side lacking focus.

James Anderson, of whom a lot was expected in this series, and Stuart Broad, of whm a lot was hoped, are particular concerns, and they and their team-mates need to show a lot more when play resumes in three hours' time.

All You Can Ask

After Friday's Tendulkar-fest, yesterday was the day when Australia came face-to-face with what life's increasingly going to be like in the post-McGrath/Warne era.

Just after tea, with Ganguly and Dhoni going well, and Shane Watson and Cameron White bowling, you had the feeling that, for the first time in a long time, an Australian side in the field were toothless. Watson and White are players with many strengths, mostly with the bat (and they're probably nice guys too) but integral parts of a good quality Test attack they're not and never will be.

Okay, Australia subsequently wrapped the Indian first innings up relatively quickly, but today the game went away from them again, to the point where India must be strong favourites to go one-up in the series.

The Indian bowling attack has impressed on a bland Mohali pitch; Zaheer got his rabbit Hayden again with a neat piece of variety, Ishant Sharma oozes promise every time you see him and the new leggie, Amit Mishra, has been cool and threatening, finishing this morning with a debut five-for.

As I said, the Australian attack has looked more limited, but a word for the game's other debutant, Peter Siddle, whose powerful, consistent action, sharp pace and muscular aggression has stamped him as a bowler who'll hurry a few people up on faster tracks.

And there have been people there to watch it. Not huge numbers but enough to give the impression that it matters.

And that, these days, is all you can ask.

Strange Days Indeed

It was hard to decide which was the stranger and more welcome sight at Hamilton the other night - New Zealand, with Craig McMillan back to his bristlingly confident best in their middle-order, cleaning up Australia for the third time in a row, or Merv Hughes and John Buchanan watching them do it. Both looked studiedly unemotional about it but you wouldn't mind betting that their thoughts weren't a million miles from 'just how many runs do we have to make to win a game against this side?'. 148 at Wellington? Well, you couldn't expect to win with that. But their 336 at Eden Park and 346 at Seddon Park ought really to have been winning totals and would surely have been so in about 98% of the ODIs Australia have played in living memory. Which, as many people have already said, must mean that there's something been going pretty seriously wrong with their bowling.

Okay, for the West Indies they have McGrath and hopefully Lee to return, with Ponting, Gilchrist and Clarke to further bolster the batting. But McGrath's gone round the park on more than one occasion recently and Lee's fitness may well be suspect even if he makes the plane to the Caribbean. Which leaves the likes of the idiosyncratic Brad Hogg, the hot-and-cold Nathan Bracken, the raw and over-estimated Mitchell Johnson, and Shane Watson (really a batsman who can turn his arm over and none too well at that) to carry the attack. Of course, with the peerless Punter and Gilly back you have to feel that runs won't be a problem and the confidence lost in New Zealand will start to return just with their presence. But totals, however big, have to be defended, and, when bowling first, sides have to be restricted. All the signs are that this could continue to be a big issue for Australia, and it's made even more so by the fact that teams all around the world will have witnessed what New Zealand, and, before them, England, have done to Australia over the past few weeks and they'll all fancy a piece of the action themselves.

It's a trite observation to make, but defeats and confidence have a symbiotic relationship; the confidence of sides that suffer defeats goes down, while that of the sides which inflict them goes up.

The World Cup has started to look a whole lot more interesting over the last few weeks - partly because it now appears to be a more open competition and partly because it'll be instructive to see how Australia respond to circumstances which are as alien to them as winning one-day competitions is to England.

My own feeling is that Australia will - as Australian teams always do - take some beating once the business end of the World Cup comes around, but every other major ODI playing country will have their own reasons for optimism.

New Maturity

It was good to see that Hoggard got his five wickets. In fact he made it seven, extracting more life from a moribund surface than any of his colleagues.

Nice also to see Michael Clarke make a century. At times on the 2005 tour it was easy to see why he was so highly regarded in his homeland, but the period since then has been difficult for him, with his repeated failures to convert good starts and flashy half-centuries into match influencing hundreds leading to his eventual omission from the side. The word is that he displayed a new maturity in this knock and it seems certain that he will stay in the side for Perth, probably at the expense of Damien Martyn, if Shane Watson is fit to provide the extra bowling option which Australia feel they need. Not that England will lose any sleep.

At some stage in the early hours Christopher Martin-Jenkins said on TMS that Michael Clarke reminded him of Kim Hughes. This struck a chord, partly because there are certain clear similarities, but also because Hughes is a bit of a forgotten man, regarded as a representative of Australian cricket's darkest years and chiefly remembered for resigning the national captaincy in tears. I saw plenty of Hughes in England in 1980 and 1981 and he was a stylish, aggressive and individualistic batsman. Perhaps a bit more spontaneity and flair than Clarke, but I have a feeling that Clarke will end up doing better in Test cricket.

With England finishing the day on 59-1 the draw still looks the best bet and would probably be a fitting end to a match played on a pitch too bland for the bowling attack of either side. The game has reminded me a bit of the Lord's Test between England and Pakistan last July - plenty of decent batting to enjoy but not enough of a genuine contest between bat and ball.

More pace at Perth, please (time was, you wouldn't even have to ask).