Unless you are someone not at all into cricket, you will be well aware of the fact that just a few weeks ago the Australian cricket team completed a 5-0 whitewash Ashes victory over England.
You’ll also be aware of the common belief that this had absolutely nothing to do with how good the Australian team were, but simply that their opposition were just the worst team in the history of Test cricket.
Well, at least that’s how it comes across.
If anyone should suggest that Australia are showing good form and could well carry that to South Africa and win that series, you just watch all the replies about how there is no comparison – that England were such a bad team while South Africa are a really good one.
You could be forgiven for thinking that Australia had just beaten Bangladesh and were somehow using that triumph to suggest they should be able to beat South Africa.
At a newsagent recently I picked up a cricket magazine that was looking ahead to the 2013/2014 Australian summer, with all sorts of details about the two Test teams, forecasts and the like.
It was interesting to look back and see what people really were thinking prior to the Ashes just gone.
England had the premier bowling attack in Test cricket which, according to what I read as I flicked through this magazine, was so much better than anything Australia were going to be able to put on the field.
(I still struggle to see how they would think England’s attack better than South Africa’s, but when you include the spinners, not just the pace bowlers, then the argument may have been reasonable.)
Add to that the fact that they had such a solid, experienced batting line-up, while Australia’s was the most fragile batting line-up since Allan Border took over as captain in the 1980s.
The conclusion was that despite some points in the previous Ashes series where Australia were able to compete, the 3-0 scoreline was pretty accurate and it was hard to see Australia being able to win this series.
What a difference a few months make.
The series we just witnessed is described as one of meek surrender by the English, and it’s easy to see how people could arrive at that conclusion. It could, however, just as easily be described as a series where Australia got England on the mat and just kept laying the boot in and wouldn’t let them up.
There were actually a few points through the series where England did threaten to try to get up off the mat, and quickly the Aussies turned that around, flipped them straight back down and shoved the knee into the small of the back.
Australia had well-formed plans for every English batsmen and they executed them incredibly well, rarely giving any of the batsmen balls in the area they like them and continually bowling the ball where they don’t like them.
They piled the pressure on from both ends to the point where the batsmen struggled to see any way out.
There were a few times that some batsmen looked to be settling in and scoring some runs, but the Australians just kept pressing them. Michael Clarke would change things up and never let the batsmen settle, and eventually they would get their man and then go right back to applying the vice-like pressure to the next batsman.
And on the batting front, while there is all sorts of talk about Brad Haddin and the tail bailing the Aussies out, the truth is that the Australian top seven between them scored 10 centuries in the series, and only one by Haddin.
Sure, they probably all had more low scores than they’d have liked, but by and large, when they got a start they did a good job of making it count.
They all had plans to tackle all the England bowlers, and for the most part they did a very good job.
Graeme Swann, seen as one of the key points in which England were significantly better than Australia, was hit into a premature retirement and Stuart Broad the only bowler on the England team to finish the series with even remotely respectable figures.
So will Australia beat South Africa over these coming Tests? Nobody knows the answer to that question, but it will be a great spectacle to watch unfold.
The monumental triumph Australia just had was not over a team barely any better than Bangladesh or Zimbabwe, but one that came into this series with all the quality and experience on their side.
South Africa will also have the advantage of having just seen what Australia did to England, so they will know exactly what is coming at them. Knowing what’s coming is one thing – countering it is another.
They may be a good enough team to do that where England weren’t, but unlike in England and India before it, the conditions won’t do them any great favours.
South African conditions are ones that the Australians are very comfortable with as they are quite similar to those in Australia.
Their is a saying often in sport, that a team “only played as well as the opposition allowed them to”.
And in this Test series just gone, that saying could well apply to the English cricket team. Match after match, no matter what they tried, Australia always had the answer to keep them down.
And I think the Australian team needs to be given a bit more credit for the Test result they have just achieved.
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