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After Australia were thumped by five wickets in the first ODI of the summer, with 304 not nearly enough at the MCG against a superb England batting outfit, Steve Smith flagged post-match that Australia needed to have a serious re-think about its approach to one-day cricket.
Anyone that’s watched even just a reasonable amount of one-day cricket since Australia’s emphatic 2015 World Cup win at home will know that pretty much all the major cricketing nations have adapted their game since then, and moved on from what was thought to be leading-edge at the time. All except Australia, that is.
Indeed, England brought Trevor Bayliss in as one-day coach with the express task of revamping their limited overs game. History and stats sites tell us that the revamp has gone rather well, with England playing some incredible one-day cricket and winning pretty much everything since.
So after Australia looked on track to make 350 or more in the first game, but didn’t, and England chased down 304 with no real pressure and in complete control, it was genuinely encouraging to hear Smith recognise that the writing was on the wall for Australia’s ageing approach to batting for 50 overs.
“England’s got to be up there as one of the best teams in the world in one-day cricket at the moment,” Smith said after the Melbourne loss. “It just looks like the way they play is for everyone to go really hard and Joe Root is sort of the rock in the middle. He just plays good cricket and guys bat around him.”
“That works for them and it’s something that we might have to think about as well. Having guys that are going really hard and having someone, it might be me, who just bats normally and then you see how you go.”
The method isn’t without risk, as Smith acknowledged, but he could also see at close quarters why it was working so well for Eoin Morgan’s side.
“I guess when you do that, perhaps you’re going to have days where you get bowled out for not many. But you back your players to come off maybe more often than not and get those big totals. That’s what the English players are doing at the moment. They’re playing with such freedom and have pretty good game plans.”
(AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)
When Australia lost the second game as well, after they looked on track to make 330 or more at the ‘Gabba, but didn’t, and England chased down 270 with no real pressure and in complete control, I conceded that this kind of change couldn’t happen overnight.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, etc, etc. The revolution will not be televised (because it will happen in the nets, presumably); that kind of thing.
But when Australia lost the third game as well, after they looked on track to chase down England’s 302 at the SCG, but didn’t, I did start wondering just when we might see evidence of learning these lessons.
Curiously, national selection panel chairman Trevor Hohns hopped aboard Smith’s way-late change-of-approach train, declaring after the Sydney loss, “We are reviewing how we’re actually playing the game and type of player that’s required in the one-day format.
“We haven’t played well in this series, we don’t seem to have been able to put it all together on the one day, there has been something lacking. We’ve got a bit of work to do there,” he told CricInfo.
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“With the World Cup in 2019, there is a lot of one-day cricket to be played between now and then. So, we will be trying very soon to get together the main nucleus of our squad, so they can play together for some time. We are reviewing the personnel and also the way we’re playing the game.”
Hohns specifically flagged the need for more power-hitting, the very high likelihood of Smith staying at no.4 – which Smith himself said in Sydney will happen for the rest of this current series – and for “specific and specialist one-day bowlers”. This included re-opening the door for the coloured-gear recall of Nathan Lyon, who as an aside, finished his BBL campaign on Tuesday night with seven wickets at 13.4 and economy rate under six runs an over.
It’s good the door will be reopened, but it should never have been closed in the first place.
It will be interesting to see when these now-flagged changes, as obviously late as they’ve come, will finally arrive. My suspicion is not until the short ODI tour of England in June.
Certainly, they right top order mix needs to be found, and evidently, built around Smith at no.4. I’m not sure Cameron White is the power-hitting answer through to the next World Cup at first drop, however, and I’m quite sure it’s not Travis Head either. Is it David Warner or Aaron Finch? Is it seriously Chris Lynn? I wonder.
If power-hitting allrounders is going to be the approach in the middle order, I’m not sure it can be both Mitch Marsh and Marcus Stoinis, more because of their bowling similarities. And yes, Stoinis has far more variety to his bowling than Marsh does, but when they come on after Starc-Hazlewood-Cummins, they are just another two right-arm seamers. It feels like there’s too much ‘sameness’ about this Australian attack. And we all know there’s another power-hitting allrounder out there that doesn’t bowl right-arm seam-up.
Tim Paine’s doing a great job currently, but I’m not sure how long a future he has in the coloured gear, not since Alex Carey did the job for a day and looked immediately comfortable.
Lyon seams an obvious inclusion, but Australia will need a line of quality one-day spinners. This 40-year-old thinking that four seamers and a spinner is all you need in a one-day game is crazy. Australia has to get used to the idea that some days you might need more than one spinning option.
Some days you might only want one quick. The need for power-hitting in ODIs literally means you don’t need power quicks to put it in their hitting zone at just the perfect speed.
(AFP / Jekesai Nijikizana)
If there’s an upside to this current one-day showing, it’s that least the penny has dropped now and not this time next summer, or worse, the one after that.
“Just playing smarter cricket and executing our skills a lot better is a good place to start,” Smith said in Sydney.
The same applies to selections, too, and maybe – just maybe – we will soon see some evidence of that.