The Australians may have walked off the SCG with a warm fuzzy feeling, but that would have been somewhat diminished by the fact they lost the series. Things have really gone 180 degrees from the time when Australia’s biggest problem was losing the dead rubbers.
With Greg Norman heading into the final round of a major on top of the leaderboard and both Hawthorn and Manly winning their Grand Finals, it felt more like 1988 than 2008. And Australia winning a dead rubber at the SCG only reinforced it.
That’s what they did three times in the space of six years during the 1980s – win the only match of an already lost series at the SCG.
If Channel 9 would have any sense of historical justice, they would have had Bill Lawry commentating the final moments like he did in 1987 against England.
Things may not change so quickly in the commentary box, but they do on the field.
South Africa only fielded four players from the side which played at the SCG four years ago (de Villiers, Smith, Kallis and Boucher), while Australia only fielded three (Hayden, Ponting and Hussey).
From the SCG Test played just 12 months ago against India, over half the side weren’t there now (Jaques, Gilchrist, Symonds, Hogg, Lee and Clark all absent).
This definitely is changing of the guard time for Australian cricket, and the holes that retirements have caused have been exacerbated by injury.
Maybe it’s the absence of Errol Alcott, but one of the things you took for granted about the Australian cricket side was that hardly anyone missed a game due to injury.
English touring sides of the 1990s came to Australia and they would suffer so many injuries that the replacements to the replacements ultimately needed replacing.
But not even Mr and Mrs McDonald would have thought their son was a Test cricketer. Otherwise they would now be multimillionaires from the $5 bet they would have placed on him one day wearing the Baggy Green.
From the odds they would have received, you would have forgiven them if they were in Monte Carlo and not the SCG.
Timing is everything and Michael Hussey, Phil Jaques, Brad Hodge and Darren Lehmann would be ruefully nodding along. Collectively they had at least 30,000 first class runs between them when they made their Test debuts.
Compare this to David Warner who has been selected for Australia’s Twenty20 side without having played a single first class game!
Australia has a busy 2009 ahead of them.
They host South Africa and New Zealand now in the shorter form of the game until mid February.
Straight after, they jet off to South Africa for two months for three Tests, two Twenty20 games and five 50-over contests.
They have nothing in May, but they have the Twenty20 World Cup in England in June followed by an Ashes tour which lasts until late September.
Australia may be reveling in England’s problem with their captain and coach, but they have demons of their own to deal with.
Is Nathan Hauritz the long-term solution to the vexing spinning question? Is Andrew Symonds going to be back? What about Brett Lee? What about Richie Benaud?
Forget about Shane Warne, if next year’s Test Match at the SCG is going to be the last time he wears the blazer, Australian cricket will have truly lost an irreplaceable figure.
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