Australian cricket is doing well, despite the doomsayers
Roar Guru By art pagonis, 10 Jul 2012 The Crowd is a Roar Guru
We bat first, get the raw end of the seamers’ pineapple and lose with 15 to spare…and everyone thinks the Aussie cricket team is in crisis. Oh for goodness sake, cricket fans, grow up.
So Brett Lee, Shane Watson and Pat Cummins go down. That’s bad luck, nothing more.
It also opens up opportunities for quicks like Mitch Johnson, Mitch Starc, Pete Siddle, Alister McDermott, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Ryan Harris and Gary Putland to name a few.
Injury is a never ending reminder that cricket is a squad game and that the cream rises to the top. Bats like Ed Cowan, Shaun Marsh, Usman Khawaja, Rob Quiney, Liam Davis and even Phil Hughes, Aaron Finch, Travers Birt, Callam Ferguson, Mike Klinger will be rubbing their hands with the prospect of vying for a spot in any Australian team.
Tim Paine will see an opening as the next keeper as he watches Wade struggle. So will Triffet from Tasmania and Brad Haddin.
Allrounders like Mitch Marsh and Dan Christian will be licking their chops.
Spinners like Jon Holland, Nathan Hauritz, Mike Beer and Nathan Lyon will be overjoyed at Xavier Doherty’s ordinary form. Secretly, of course.
If you want a nice, warm fuzzy feeling you can wander around thinking that we MUST have Watson, Cummins, Lee, Ponting, Hussey M and a whole host of people to have a chance to win, but the truth is we need 30 players vying to play for Australia, not just the old brigade. We need them to COMPETE for spots. To score runs, to take catches, to bowl people out.
And we need them fit and in form every time they play….which is what England has been doing for four years now.
Where did England “find” these great players? Are Bell, Cook, Kieswetter, Anderson, Bresnan, Morgan all overnight sensations?
They found ‘em the same place we found them, playing cricket in the counties and the grades and the schools and the colleges, and they put them in development squads and made it a competitive environment.
We’ve been living off the “freaks” tag for far too long now. Where is Warnie, where is Gilly, where is Hades, where is Pidgeon, where is Dizzy?
We keep living in the past and thinking, “the good old days of flogging the Poms can’t be over, can they?”
It might seem like a sausage factory to you but the next Brett Lee and Shane Watson are already playing for their states in the Sheffield Shield.
And the next winning Australian team is only nano seconds away. Go and have a Bex and a good lie down and when you wake up Cricket Australia will have winning teams in 20-20, 50-50 and Tests for you.
There, you feel better already right?
The Crowd Says (13) | Page 1 of Comments
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July 10th 2012 @ 5:19am
mark said | July 10th 2012 @ 5:19am | Report comment
we lost by 8 wickets!
July 10th 2012 @ 8:15am
Matt said | July 10th 2012 @ 8:15am | Report comment
The longer the series has gone on, the more they’ve been spanked.
Frustrating when they struggle to make runs, they make it look as if the wicket is a tough one. Then the opposition walk out and the boundaries flow from the start. If both teams going well and one team just does that bit better, that’s a good game. Hasn’t been the case though, they’ve never looked like winning.
Hopefully they win the last game and save it
July 10th 2012 @ 8:28am
Brett McKay said | July 10th 2012 @ 8:28am | Report comment
Art, I know what you’re trying to say here, and I agree with you for the most part, even. Timing is big issue of this discussion, though, in the middle of a ODI series of underwhelming performance, you possibly couldn’t have timed this much worse!
But you are right, the generation that followed the Warne-McGrath-Gilchrist-Hayden-Ponting-M.Hussey years was always going to struggle. The fact Australia has held onto no.1 rankings for as long as we did tends to paper over some rather big gaps.
Not unlike our batsmen currently, Australian cricket fans will need to show a lot of patience in the short-medium term..
July 11th 2012 @ 3:32pm
Bayman said | July 11th 2012 @ 3:32pm | Report comment
Brett,
What is Art trying to say? I think, as Ita Buttrose would say, “He’s just taking the pith”.
This ODI series is a fair pointer to what we can expect next year. Batsmen who have trouble batting and bowlers who have trouble getting to the next game.
Cummins has played one Test and… goorne! One ODI and, wait for it, goorne! Lee and Watson have spent a considerable part of the last two or three years…….goorne!!
We Aussie fans are forever asking for consistency and now we’re complaining for getting it. Mind you, I do think we hoped for the team to be consistently good instead of consistently ordinary.
Now Lee won’t be in the Test side next year, and maybe not Bailey, but everyone else is a candidate. It worries me somewhat that after two years of wishing Ponting and Hussey would retire we are now pinning our hopes on them for the improvement.
I, for one, am certainly hoping Lehmann can do something with Khawaja and that Adelaide restores Phil Hughes confidence in himself. The one small irony of this ODI series is that the one player who has consistently (there’s that word again) been Australia’s most reliable batsman, David Hussey, has never even been close to getting selected for the Test team. Now might be the time.
July 10th 2012 @ 8:48am
Disco said | July 10th 2012 @ 8:48am | Report comment
If only Sheffield Shield performances were rated as highly by the powers that be.
July 10th 2012 @ 6:16pm
lolly said | July 10th 2012 @ 6:16pm | Report comment
Why do you think Forrest is n the ODI side? It sure as shooting isn’t for his List A record.
July 11th 2012 @ 1:33pm
Disco said | July 11th 2012 @ 1:33pm | Report comment
That’s true. Nor his Shield record, despite his good start to last season.
July 10th 2012 @ 9:45am
Bayman said | July 10th 2012 @ 9:45am | Report comment
Art,
You’ve certainly put things in perspective for me. Having read your article I now fully understand we’re in even deeper sh*t than I imagined!
July 10th 2012 @ 9:55am
Sports Writer said | July 10th 2012 @ 9:55am | Report comment
Johnson has had plenty of opportunity…I think it’s time to forget about him representing Aus.
And Mitch Marsh has recently been kicked out of his training camp for disciplinary reasons.
July 10th 2012 @ 10:19am
Ian Whitchurch said | July 10th 2012 @ 10:19am | Report comment
“They found ‘em the same place we found them, playing cricket in the counties and the grades and the schools and the colleges, and they put them in development squads and made it a competitive environment.”
Interesting. Your automatic thought is that State level cricket is only for identifying talent, not for developing it.
July 10th 2012 @ 1:07pm
Duncan Gering said | July 10th 2012 @ 1:07pm | Report comment
In some ways I agree with this article. We need lots of players vying for spots in the Aussie team. We need a strong first class competition.
The problem is that we don’t really have this right now. The Shield comp has been butchered by the Big Bash and the State seconds comp has been butchered by the U23′s. The current system doesn’t teach boys how to play against men (a little bit like the Aussie team in England right now – I can see the chickens coming home to roost), so how do CA propose to develop those skills in our young players. It’s easy to think you’re going ok when the opposition isn’t that good either.
And the selectors seem doomed to repeat the mistakes of Hilditch and Co by relying on ageing “champions” – even though I don’t put Lee or Johnson in this category – and journeymen – D Hussey, Bailey, Forrest, Smith (Smith lucky to even be named a journeyman). For goodness sake bite the bullet and take a chance with someone younger who is the future. How much worse could it be? You can’t lose a 5 match series 0-6. And yes, I get that they tried that with Smith and the selectors got hammered for it. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad strategy.
And another thing, Justin Langer, I never really understood what he brought as a player even though I appreciated his runs, but I can’t see how any single batsman has improved since he’s been coaching. He must have the same contract negotiator as Michell J.
July 11th 2012 @ 10:41am
Talisman said | July 11th 2012 @ 10:41am | Report comment
Absolutely right about ‘teflon’ Langer, DG. Among all the hand-wringing & head-shaking regards the abysmal batting (and techniques on display) in recent times, he totally escapes criticism & accountability.
July 11th 2012 @ 1:35pm
Disco said | July 11th 2012 @ 1:35pm | Report comment
Notice how no-one from CA ever mentions him?