By Paul
June 7th 2008 @ 4:33am
Loading ...Where are all the exciting young cricketers?
Is cricket in Australia in trouble, or are the selectors letting us down?
Up until the last Australian summer, the recent spate of retirements had been downplayed.
Stuart MacGill’s retirement in many ways is not a big headache for Australian cricket, but it exposes a big weakness. There are no obvious exciting young players coming through the ranks.
Beau Casson is touted as MacGill’s replacement, and I wish him every luck in his upcoming role. It will be an easy baptism into Test cricket. It’s not as if the West Indies will seriously stress him, and MacGill’s lack of form is no big loss.
But at 25, Casson is no spring chicken either. Meanwhile, Cullen and Bailey have both lost their Australian contracts because they have not been performing well.
The lack of spin in the current Test line-up may seem like the biggest problem in the current side but it’s not. It is the lack of youth.
Michael Clarke is only 27 and by normal selection patterns based on age he would only now be considered for selection for the Test side. If Clarke had not been selected at the age of 24 for the Test side, Australia would not even have a serious captain in waiting now.
In the second test in Antigua, the average age of the team was 31.
Mitchell Johnson was the youngest at 26 and Michael Clarke the second youngest at 27.
The average age of the 25 contracted players is 29.
There are seemingly no exciting young players in the wings pressing for a Test spot.
Shaun Marsh, 24 ,had an exciting IPL season, but in first class cricket, his batting average of 34.97 is not impressive.
High hopes have been placed on Ben Hilfenhaus, but his form has dropped off of late, and his call up seems further away, especially when Tait is ready to play again.
Cameron White is perhaps the only player under 25 with any exciting prospects.
In the next couple of years, Matthew Hayden will retire. Katich, Ponting, Hussey, Symonds, Lee and Stuart Clark will all be reaching their expiry dates also.
This would leave Michael Clark, Phil Jaques and Mitchell Johnson as the only players with any real experience in the side.
The Australian selectors need to be bringing through more young players quickly, or within two or three years Australia will be relinquishing their place at the top of world cricket.
Former Test cricketers, Geoff Lawson and Stuart MacGill, write exclusively for The Roar Mondays and Wednesdays respectively.
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Phil said | June 7th 2008 @ 2:15pm | Report comment
Paul - I just skimmed through the article but Phil Hughes didn’t get a mention….
Joe O'Sullivan said | June 7th 2008 @ 5:44pm | Report comment
Paul
I fear the average age of Aust’s national side is not the only problem facing cricket here & overseas. The biggest one ( but by no means the only one) I see is the seemingly never ending encroachment upon the cricket season by winter sports, particularly the football codes. In Aust its not just that soccer is played during summer but the other 3 codes appear to run 11 mths of the year or at least occupy valuable media space fot that period. And this clearly has consequences for things like sponsors & money. Very similar situations occur in NZ, England & Sth Africa. I remember listening to a test match broadcast on ABC about 15 yrs ago & the commentators were discussing this issue then - & it has not improved from cricket’s perspective.
Perhaps 20/20 & IPL will bring some balance back. If the attendances at the current Aust v WI test matches are anything to go by cricket administrators have a mountain to climb.
Paul said | June 7th 2008 @ 7:33pm | Report comment
Joe O’Sullivan,
Absolutely I agree with you. Personally, I enjoy cricket far more than other sports. The problem is that as cricket is an ancient game the administration has always been very traditional. There is no reason that Australia could not have a cricket competition as popular ration wise in Australia as baseball is in America. The biggest reason why this has never happened is because cricket at a representative level instead of a league level. Baseball is played on a league structure. There are only up to 77 elite cricketers in Australia (6 states, 1 national team) even less, if you realise that only 25 players are guaranteed a decent income. The football codes have much more (I know AFL better and know that there are currently 640 senior players 16 x 40). Imagine if cricket had even half that. Imagine if there were 16 cricket super league teams in Australia, which would need about 240 players to sustain.
People may argue that these would not all be good players. But if a player can play full time professionally they will improve their game. The entire standard of cricket would improve. It is just going to take someone with the nous to get the league off the ground. There would be a whole world of players to recruit from, and I don’t see a real problem. The biggest problem is the the traditional approach. These are all the same problems that Rugby Union has faced.
Phil Coorey,
Hmmm. Phi Hughes? He’s a baseball player? Are you trying to tempt me to defect? I would have to live in the USA to do so, as the ABL has folded.
Joe O'Sullivan said | June 7th 2008 @ 8:01pm | Report comment
Yes Paul your comments vis a vis baseball most apt. I’m aware Cricket Aust are planning a bigger 20/20 domestic league for next season - perhaps a cricket equivalent to Rugby’s Super 14 comp should be considered i.e. NZ, India, Pakistan & Sri Lanka. I know financing such a venture would be an issue but I think for cricket such “left field” concepts need to be seriously considered.
DT said | June 8th 2008 @ 5:35am | Report comment
Peter Siddle, Luke Pomersbach, Phil Hughes, Peter Forrest, Usman Khawaja and Moises Henriques, are all under 25. Those last 4 will be the core of the NSW batting next season. Queensland and SA will also field younger teams next year.
We have a bunch of good guys in their mid to late 20s like Shane Watson, Andrew McDonald, Adam Voges, George Bailey, Luke Ronchi, Doug Bollinger and Mark Cameron, to name a handful. Some of them are ready now, some need another season or 2, some may not go any further, but there’s talent there.
A good number of these blokes who come late to test cricket (or get dropped and come back in their 30s) have gone on to give us years of top quality service. I think David Hussey will be the same. Chris Rogers might be another.
Regarding baseball, if the Aussie sporting public aren’t interested in watching high quality first class cricket now, what makes you think they’d watch it if you spread the good players over 20 teams?
Test quality spinners don’t just fall out of trees, not even in Australia. One will show up eventually, and in the meantime, our club/grade and Shield system will keep us strong enough that we’ll still have one of the top test teams, if not the best.
Joe O'Sullivan said | June 8th 2008 @ 8:50am | Report comment
DT
I’m not disputing your views on the players you mention, quality test spinners or Aust’s position at top of test nations. Its more a case of the overall health of cricket, especially in the countries I listed earlier. The baseball analogy specifically refers to a 20/20 league & attendances at a domestic level. The history of cricket is that test matches have always been the primary focus dragging 1st class & club levels along behind it. Will this still work in the future? Will domestic leagues ( 20/20 or otherwise ) now push test cricket?
Paul said | June 8th 2008 @ 12:41pm | Report comment
Joe O’Sullivan, DT,
Exactly well put Joe, Twenty 20 can be capable of pushing test cricket in the future, instead of test cricket dragging first class cricket.
The problem DT is that traditionally first class cricket has been a breeding ground for the national team. The national team for a long time has in our psyche been the elite level of cricket. People have not gone out to see the other games so much, because the Australian team has been marketed as the thing to see. The IPL changes all of this. Australia is capable of running something similar to the IPL but on a lesser scale financially.
If more players are paid professionally to play cricket they will spend more time on their game and the standard will improve. So it will not be a matter of spreading the same players further. The pool will become bigger and stronger.
As far as the young players in the state sides are concerned, that’s good to hear. But really, the selectors should have a little more faith in a few of them who show real talent and promote them earlier. Players like Ponting and Clarke become greats, because they were selected for the test team in their early 20s. To wait until someone is in their late 20s or even 30s, means that they will never reach their full potential.
Phil Coorey said | June 8th 2008 @ 4:19pm | Report comment
Phil Hughes for the Yankees is a pretender - Phil Hughes the opening batsmen for NSW is another story…
Paul said | June 8th 2008 @ 6:33pm | Report comment
Phil,
Thanks for clearing that up (I was stirring).
Obviously I have to do some more research, being away from Australia, I don’t keep up on all the chatter. Still, I would rather see exciting young players like Phil Hughes get selected at 24, than instead of 28 or even 31. If there are going to be champions, they need time to grow.
ren said | June 8th 2008 @ 11:13pm | Report comment
Over here in WA Tom MOody has implemented what could be described as a youth policy. Though our bowling stocks are low at the moment we have a lot of promising batsmen. Marsh and Pomersbach have already been mentioned. LUke Ronchi is an exciting keeper-batsman along the lines of Adam Gilchrist (And has just been flown over to the windies as back up for haddin), As a parochial West Australian I felt he may have had a chance ahead of Haddin because he is a few years younger.
AS others have said, the obvious problem is that cricket is a representative game, you start by representing your school, then your distrcit in club cricket, then its first class cricket for your state and ultimately national.
I dont think franchise type leagues would work with the exception of twenty20. Four day matches, and even 50 over matches are just too long. Any more teams would dilute the talent that there is (just look at the country cricket system in England). My prefernce would be to form a chapions league style tournament for the longer forms of the game, where say the top domestic teams from the test nations play a year long round robin tournament. Logistically would be difficult but would be far more attractive to see, say the Warriors playing against Surrey or North-west province