Australia’s apparent and sudden drop in performance standards has shocked even the most hardened follower of this cricket team – and of cricket in general.
Most people are blaming the Australian captain Michael Clarke. Others are blaming the Australian coach Darren Lehmann. Many are questioning the positions of certain players within the team, as well as the techniques which have supposedly let them down.
Even the wives and girlfriends (WAGs) and the children of the players are not immune to the boat of criticism, with Nine commentator and former Australian wicketkeeper Ian Healy debating whether they should actually be on tour with their partners.
“Are they together as a team?”
“All their partners are here and some of the most respected cricketers I played with hated that distraction. They weren’t allowed on tour until after the series had been won.
“Your mind needs to be completely focused on it. Cricket is a sport that requires complete concentration. You need everything going for you and I’m not sure they’re pushing for that hard enough.”
Obviously, as you can see, his criticism of the WAGs and their children was rather pathetic, considering all expert and non-expert opinion on the topic. The criticism was just as pathetic as Australia’s batting display.
His commentary of the innings with Michael Slater, and to a lesser extent Mark Taylor, constantly thinking that technique, not the performance of Stuart Broad – which was one of the best performances I have seen from a fast bowler in a long time – was the only thing that contributed to Australia’s poor batting display. Australia in the most part were seriously unlucky, not ill-disciplined.
However, no one, and I mean no one, at least in public, is questioning the performance of the national selector Rod Marsh for his absolutely shocking selection display in recent times.
Marsh, in my opinion, has had a habit for making the right call at the wrong time. This is a hard concept to grasp, and I expect no one to believe me in stating what I have just said, but I can give you a couple of recent examples of this being the case.
The first example was earlier this year at the ICC World Cup when Shane Watson was dropped for the match against Afghanistan in Perth. It was the right call, but it was done at the wrong time.
Mitchell Marsh wasn’t ready to take up the role that Watson had done well for such a long time. This was corrected by Mark Waugh, the main selector on-duty for the match against Sri Lanka in Sydney, and Australia went on to win the Cup.
The second example was in the third Test match of this Ashes series, when Brad Haddin was not selected to return after missing the second Test match due to family reasons.
This was criticised by many people, including the Australian coach, who shared a link of an article criticising the decision to not select Haddin. However, while I think Marsh made the right call, it was done at the wrong time, destabilising the team on an emotional and mental level when it didn’t need to be moved about.
However, Marsh is not the only person at fault for this calamity.
Pat Howard has been a huge factor in preventing the Australian cricket team rising to the top of the world in all forms of the game. His sports science approach – while having a beneficial effect in short-form cricket – has had a noticeably negative effect in the long-form of the game.
He has seemingly prevented the captain Michael Clarke from bowling his bowlers for as long as he wants them to, preventing him from leading the Australian cricket team to the best of his ability, and this must change.
Marsh and Howard must learn, understand and have a feel for the game, and what the team requires at that particular time.
Sure, we cannot have players out on the field that have concussions and injuries, but changing and influencing the tactics of the captain and the coach on what they can do with the team is just unacceptable.
They both must learn, lest they must go.
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