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Australia have all but lost the first Test against South Africa. The risk now is they could lose control of the whole Test summer if they capitulate today.
There is so much talk in cricket circles about “mental scars” and “momentum” that these concepts can seem like clichés. But we’ve also seen time and again what appears to be evidence of these phenomena.
Once a negative mindset is established it can be difficult to eradicate. The same goes for a positive one. I would consider this a major component of what we call “form”. When a player is struggling to perform that often isn’t solely the result of a technical deficiency.
A few low scores or wicketless innings can see doubt take root and from there it’s easy to start floundering out in the middle, even if you’re on fire in the nets. Teams as a whole can suffer from this same malaise.
Consider the back-to-back Ashes of 2013. In a matter of months, Australia somehow turned a 0-3 flogging in England into a 5-0 romp at home. In England, the home side looked clearly the better team on paper, man-for-man, so the lopsided scoreline was not unexpected.
The return series however, was a perfect example of what seemed to be “mental scars” and “momentum” at play. All it took was one Test at Brisbane for the tide to turn, prompted by some brutal bowling by Mitchell Johnson which blindsided the Poms.
In the second Test at Adelaide, the vastly-experienced and accomplished England side suddenly looked rattled. The Australians, most of all Johnson, had got inside their heads. By the end of that Test the “mental scars” were deep and Australia’s “momentum” was unstoppable.
One crushing loss can be enough to turn an assured, rampant team into a doubt-riddled rabble. In Australia’s case, there is the risk that their shock smashing at the hands of Sri Lanka in August may have kickstarted such a rot. They entered that series brimming with belief, coming off a wonderful summer in which they went 6-0, including a 4-0 home-and-away hammering of a well-regarded New Zealand team.
All of this self-assurance melted away in the space of the first Test in Sri Lanka, where Australia let slip a dominant position and cascaded to a heavy defeat, just like they’re at risk of doing today. Australia looked broken, mentally, from the second Test onwards.
The debacle in Sri Lanka, combined with being cleanswept 5-0 for the first time last month in South Africa, must have dealt a solid blow to Australia’s collective confidence.
But then they returned home, to the country they’ve made a fortress in the Test format.
Australia have gone an incredible 18 Tests now without a loss at home, owning a phenomenal 14-0 win-loss record since South Africa last toured here four years ago.
Whatever the depths they’ve sunk to overseas in that period they’ve immediately transformed into a commanding unit upon setting foot back in Australia. This summer, however, represents their toughest home Test season for many years.
South Africa have won their past two Test series in Australia. Pakistan, meanwhile, are arguably the world’s top Test team, fresh from drawing 2-2 with England on the road, a result which underscored their ability to prosper outside Asia.
A supreme start to this summer would have helped cauterise the “mental scars” inflicted by the recent cleansweeps. That, in turn, would have made them fiercely intimidating foes for even quality sides like South Africa and Pakistan.
Australia with their tails up on home soil are a marauding mob. The flipside is that a demoralising defeat in the first Test of the summer could infect those “mental scars” earned in SA and Sri Lanka. The public pressure on the team as a whole would then be enormous. The interior pressure on each Australian player would be just as immense, with a host of them suddenly playing for their spots.
This is not a healthy condition for any team to be in, let alone one at the start of an extremely challenging summer. If Australia are reduced to such a vulnerable, paranoid state it is hard to see how they will produce anything close to their best cricket over the next six weeks.
And middling efforts will not be enough for Australia, not this summer. It may sound melodramatic, but the course of the Australian season may well be set today.
I cannot see how they can avoid defeat. But should they finish off the South African innings this morning and then bat with purpose they still can take something out of this Test and avoid handing the visitors a daunting degree of momentum.
They simply must make the South Africans labour for their victory. Capitulate and that failure may reverberate across the whole summer.