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Will the real Australian cricket team please stand up

23rd August, 2015
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Michael Clarke's autobiography was full of juicy details. (AP Photo/Jon Super)
Roar Rookie
23rd August, 2015
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It’s a special sort of torture trying to enjoy humiliating someone you’ve already lost to.

Which one is the aberration? Was it the Cardiff, Edgbaston and Trent Bridge performances or the Lord’s and The Oval performances that show the real Australian cricket team?

With such atrocious performances in the last two Tests, what self-respecting clairvoyant would have predicted the role reversal we have witnessed over the first two days of the fifth Test. Maybe it’s just a dead rubber.

The question is, is this five minutes of sunshine in a cyclone or were the last two Tests a storm in a paradise?

If it’s only five minutes of sunshine then Aussie cricket fans have every right to feel let down, frustrated and even angry at what might have been. Fans invest a lot of emotional well being and many late nights and early mornings willing their team along.

The diehard fan stayed until stumps every morning hoping for the turn around they know their team is capable of only to be repeatedly disappointed. They know their team won’t win every encounter but at the very least they expect their team to be competitive.

One shakes one’s head in dismay when reflecting on what could have been. The performance over the last two days makes it even harder to bear. Why didn’t they perform close to that in the last two Tests? The Aussie fan grits his teeth and grunts out ‘they’re capable of so much more so how could they have surrendered the Ashes so meekly’.

One of the worse aspects is that we made the English team look so superior when they are not. They are essentially the team that was humiliated out of the World Cup just months ago. They are the team that lost to us in a 5-0 whitewash at home. This is not the team of reborn superheroes that they now seem to be.

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How good are the English bowlers? The truthful answer is we don’t know. The last two Tests are not a pointer to the answer. They didn’t earn their wickets, the Aussies surrendered them. And yet Stuart Broad will live in English history as having single-handedly brought the urn back to England in one session of cricket.

This is the same ‘sportsman’ that refused to walk when he was clearly out at a previous encounter at Trent Bridge, denying the Australians a much needed win at that time.

After all the analysis of whether there was enough time spent acclimatising prior to the first Test, or how the toss of a coin, doctored pitches and swing bowling influenced proceedings is done and dusted, nothing will erase the loss of the Ashes urn. It was such an uncompetitive, meek and un-Australian performance and they shamed the memories of cricketers gone past.

So when you look back at the team and say ‘not good enough’, how much blame is shared by the selectors?

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