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The Australian cricket team have shown how quickly a side’s fortunes can change. Not only was Australia’s 4-0 series lead unexpected, it was completely unforeseeable.
Upon Darren Lehmann’s appointment as head coach only 18 days out from the first Test at Trent Bridge, many cricket ‘experts’ (using the term very loosely), most of them English, assumed that Australia would go to England, get smashed, return home and get smashed again.
For the June-July series, those predictions were fairly warranted. While Australia were not humiliated by England as many predicted, they were convincingly beaten 3-0, which was enough for Ian Botham to predict a 5-0 whitewash down under in England’s favour.
In the lead-up to the Sydney Test, the difference between the prophecies and the product could hardly be scarcer.
While the team with the emu and kangaroo on their shirts are preparing their metaphorical mantelpiece to make way for the urn, the team with three lions* on their chests are picking through the scrapheap to find a morsel of positivity, despite having the urn all to themselves merely four months before the first Test in Nottinghamshire.
No one can honestly say they saw this result coming, not least Australian captain Michael Clarke, who today admitted that not in his wildest dreams could he have anticipated being up 4-0 after four Tests.
While the obvious contributors to the series result have been the outstanding – Mitchell Johnson, Brad Haddin and David Warner – among other players, one name that has been mentioned relatively little is Darren Lehmann’s.
He has shown that, with the right balance of fun and hard work, a dishevelled team doesn’t need an age to become a world-class side again.
Under Mickey Arthur, the Australian team seemed to be stuck in a never-ending transition period, with Arthur promising that his adopted nation would soon become world beaters again.
However, after thrashing India 4-0 in the 2011/12 summer, the team started to go downhill.
By the time that India had reversed that 4-0 result on home soil 16 months later, the team had become a complete and utter shambles.
‘Homework-gate’ showed how Arthur believed that his team were only worthy of being treated like 10-year-olds, saying that the self-improvement exercises would benefit the team.
However, he failed to recognise that self-improvement involves the act of improving, which Australia failed to do.
Under his tenure, Arthur promised much and delivered little.
The team and Cricket Australia had had enough of his never-ending transition period, which produced ever-worsening results over the two years he was in charge.
Then came the appointment of Darren Lehmann.
Here was a coach who treated his players like men, who knew that it was just as important to have fun as it was to have a great drive and work ethic.
Lehmann provided the breath of fresh air that Australian cricket needed.
Though the winter Ashes produced a disappointing 3-0 loss, all the Australian squad members spoke of the great amount of fun they’d had since Lehmann was in charge of the dressing room.
After the draw at the Oval, Lehmann had merely four months to prepare for the second of extremely rare back-to-back Ashes series.
With all of his squad playing one-dayers in either India in the seven-match ODI series, or in Sydney for the Ryobi Cup, along with a handful of Shield matches, it is arguable whether or not Australia could have had better preparation for this Ashes series.
But the new attitude and feel that ‘Boof’ has brought to the Australian team has played a huge part in various player performances.
The resurgence of Mitchell Johnson, the climaxing of Brad Haddin’s long career and David Warner’s run-scoring bonanza can all be put down, if not directly, to Lehmann.
He has shown that all that is needed to ‘rebuild’ is a fresh attitude and a few beers when warranted.
Mickey Arthur took two years to take Australia backwards, but Lehmann has taken six months to restore the pride of the nation.
While defeating a well below-par English side is not a great marker of a side’s true ability (ouch!) the three-Test tour of South Africa will go a long way towards proving Australia’s true potential.
While one can merely speculate as to the outcome of that series, for the first time in two years, it is safe to say that the Australian team will perform with a great deal of respectability.
That should prove that there should be no need for a “rebuilding” period. Only a re-‘Boofing’ period.
*Like Australia’s emu and kangaroo, lions are well-known to be extremely common all over England.
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