Australia is playing performance-enhancing cricket, and rotating the heck out of all the quality kids available.
Performance-enhancing cricket comes when players, coaches, selectors and the administration are on the same page, and that is what this Australian team, post Ponting and Hussey, have managed in a very short space of time.
Sure the selectors’ hands have been forced. Sure we’re only playing the Windies and the Lankans.
But the manner in which we are winning commands respect.
Australian cricketers play on a natural high. They don’t need any intravenous stimulation to win and play magnificent cricket.
But the time will come for the key players when injury, form and strain will lay them low. It is then that Australia needs 30 blooded, in-form, finely tuned individuals who can rotate through the three teams. Until now, the Australian cricket team has never had a system to cater to the three teams.
Australian cricket is blessed. It has 200 finely tuned athletes engaged in fiercely even competition every day of summer, from which the selectors can pick the cream of the crop to play on any given day.
What is pleasing about Australia’s three teams is that athletically, there is not one passenger.
They can send any 11 on the park and they will run, throw, catch, bat and bowl like stallions. The testosterone in this Australian camp is oozing out of the dressing rooms – they sure as heck don’t need testosterone supplements.
Cocky, forward, a little arrogant perhaps, but winning form is a drug of great power, and Messrs Inverarity, Marsh and Bichel have not put a foot wrong in selecting anyone who has played for Australia this season.
It reminds me of the great West Indian teams who had six batsmen (including the keeper) and six bowlers who were the best in the world and then another two or three of each in the sheds.
Their demeanour was all intimidation, all arrogance, all about winning. They were unstoppable, unbeatable, barring complete misfortune.
Australia hasn’t frightened the hell out of everyone yet, but then they’ve never had their best possible line-up on the park.
If Australia ran four of their best quicks at the Poms, the South Africans or the Indians in Australia, and the wickets were like Perth, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, it would be a blood bath – and I don’t mean Aussie blood.
On the other team’s home grounds it might be the same, but Australia is buying itself some insurance.
The Aussie selectors are smarter than Shane Warne thinks.
They are picking all-rounders who bat, bowl spin, bowl quick and field like Colin Bland, and fitting them in to the three teams.
Glenn Maxwell, Moises Henriques, James Faulkner, Ashton Agar, Cameron Boyce, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Ben Cutting, Mitch Johnson, James Pattinson, Mitch Starc, Peter Siddle, Adam Voges, Aaron Finch, Steve Smith and others are all being exposed to big time cricket. And they can all hold a bat nicely, and bowl beautifully.
Spin bowling and wicketkeeping need to be developed, and all Australian wicketkeepers should wear face protection when keeping in all forms of cricket to spin and quicks alike, especially now that all Australian quicks are bowling some form of change of pace delivery – the ball is doing strange things off pads, footmarks and the grass between the wickets and the keeper.
How Matt Wade hasn’t taken a hit to the face is a miracle, and it will happen one day if he doesn’t wear a helmet with face protection. This would leave him vulnerable to challenges for his spot by Brad Haddin and Tim Paine.
Australia is developing Maxwell and Nathan Lyon as offies, and Smith, Boyce and perhaps Dave Warner as leggies, and Xavier Doherty and Agar as left arm orthodox, all while keeping people like Mike Beer on notice.
This Australian squad under Mick Clarke has the ability to be number one in all three forms. And I don’t know what they’re on, but I want some of it.
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