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One relatively chaos-free weekend in Adelaide has proven old batsmen are now useless to Australian cricket, placing them alongside other exiles like sub-130km/h seamers, stroke-makers with custard arms and tail-enders who can’t bat.
With youth chiefly responsible for resurrecting a nation’s hopes by not humiliating us in the third Test, this means all batsmen over the age of 30 can now stop wasting everyone’s time and retire.
Unfortunately for the veterans, the ploy to gamble Australia’s entire future on youth has paid off handsomely for everyone except them.
Blokes like Matt Renshaw and Peter Handscomb have reminded us how we appreciate our Test batsmen – slow, technically handicapped, and out in the middle.
We were especially enamoured by the young Queenslander. With each delivery that whizzed past the bat without kissing the edge, we marvelled and thought ‘how good is this?’
By the 37th time it happened, we had fallen back in love.
This fresh youthful style pervading the ranks is not only effective and exuberant, it also offended the Wide World of Sports commentary team.
As a result, we’re definitely not turning back now, so I urge the oldies to pack up their experience and scram.
Thanks for your service, but your resistance is futile, your ambition is worthless and your efforts will be ignored.
From now on, the role of being used-and-abused and blacklisted without explanation will be fulfilled by the kids of this fine country.
Moving forward, the rookie policy will now dictate all decisions on batting selection. It cannot be denied after already proving successful twice inside a fortnight- once in Adelaide, and once in Hobart a week before it was introduced.
This fundamental shift spells the end of a famous era. It is the death of the matured-aged graduate in the baggy green.
The rise of the over-30, over-qualified rookie in the Test team emerged at it’s strongest in the 1990s. To the naked eye, it was an uber-ripe Aussie wearing an abnormally-fresh cap, but really it was a symbol of a cricketing powerhouse’s outrageous affluence.
Such was the immovability of the batting order in these rare times, securing a position was like waiting for a spot to open up in the SCG Members Stand. The only way to break in was to kill someone or wait for capacity to be expanded.
However, when a rare vacancy emerged, the candidates to fill the breach were often more qualified than those they were replacing.
Snarling with hunger after working hard and paying their taxes for a lifetime on the domestic scene, nothing would stand between them and their nest egg of smashing sub-optimal Asian attacks on our agreeable home decks.
But with a shift to youth, theirs will be consigned to Australian history as a quirky relic like Victorian shorts and Martin Love.
You can bid adieu to the next Michael Hussey, Chris Rogers or Martin Love story, and look elsewhere for the easy scapegoat qualities of Adam Voges, Marcus North and Brad Hodge.
In their place, it will be your Nic Maddinsons, Kurtis Pattersons and anyone currently playing Kanga in New South Wales.
Victims of their nation’s drive to return it’s carnivorous ways, the over-30s will be left to rot in the palliative care of first-class cricket, their dreams of what might’ve been left as just that.
Except Shaun Marsh.
Can’t really rule him out, his name is always on the door.