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The lingering haze that is the Australian summer of cricket continues, where the Australians methodically dominate the visiting side, the visitors finding themselves suddenly exposed in the blazing southern sun, and all just not going right for the foreign big stars.
Australians find this exciting. They like to see their Aussies win. I don’t. It bores me.
It bores me by its predictability, the constant repetition, season after season, the winning, the easy winning, and the huge gap in scores by the end of the first innings.
It’s all capped off by the ensuing constant gratification of the public, the love of watching Australia win so easily.
I liken it to the child, who gains only pleasure out of winning. How the child wins makes no difference to the pleasure of winning. Cheating, unfair conditions, made up rules to suit, doesn’t matter, a win means smiles.
In Australian cricket it’s the same; win means smiles.
I wonder if the opposition had to play with only three in the field, would the public notice anything wrong, would it irritate them or would they just still cheer madly, Australia wins, ‘woop woop’?
It’s like Orwell’s 1984, where the public love their government despite obvious reasons not to, buying the hype and just not thinking about it too much.
Yes the hype, it worsens the condition, especially with the English, ‘they’ll put up a good fight’. Of course they don’t. But it’s always promised.
Remember the last Ashes series here? Same story, and the Aussies went on to white wash the most boring series of cricket I have ever seen in my life. The public loved it.
And here we go again.
I sit here and watch this dominating batting period of Hussey and Haddin, middle order centuries for both of them, they’ve put on some 250 runs or something. Some good solid methodical constructive batting innings. The bowlers have lost the edge from a small period of something. The sun burns at their necks, all confidence is gone.
It spells the death of hope of a contest and I reach for my medication, the ones that sedate me, for my fear this might just happen has come true, again, and I get aggravated. I hope I’m wrong, hope its just false pessimism, but it hasn’t been for some 15 years now, one tends to lose hope.
I know, I know, you’ll bring up examples of fine cricket by visiting sides, South Africa won here didn’t they? Good, but so what, it hardly represented a decline in Australian dominance. There’s been a few blips on the heart monitor that competitive cricket may return, but nothing more than that.
In fact, most visiting big names fail in Australia. Sachin, never did too much here, I’d have to say I’m largely unfamiliar with his apparent batting prowess. Murali, the world leading wicket taker, never did anything here at all.
Lara was the last visitor to make a spectacular impact here, and I don’t get the feeling we are going to see the likes of those performances soon.
Most seem to loath this now apparent decline, that the Aussies are no good no more. The drop to fifth in ranking (not a statistic I believe neither), Pup not maturing accordingly, bowling crisis, all this bad stuff.
I was hoping it was real, because only then can cricket fully recover in interest stakes. That is, when we get a decent competition.
A battling Australian side is far more appealing than the methodically effective one it is now. These Aussies, they are somehow just so… boring.
And just a footnote, was that Ian Healy in character as that ancient cricketer? That’s not embarrassing at all if you were wondering, just funny.
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