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National Selection Panel chairman John Inverarity has pointed to T20 cricket to blame for influencing Australia’s recent batting woes.
Inverarity isn’t alone in his views of T20’s impact on young batsmen in Australia, with many former players also putting blame on the shortest format of the game.
But to blame T20 is a simplistic view, with many other factors in first class cricket in recent years has affected batting techniques or lack thereof.
It wasn’t long ago when each Australian pitch had its own characteristics.
The WACA was hard, fast and bouncy, the SCG was known as a spinner’s paradise and we even saw Test at Adelaide Oval where Australia played two spinners.
These different wickets gave first class exposure against different conditions, testing and teaching them skills against the bouncy and turning ball.
But in recent years wickets not just across the country but across the world have become flatter and easier to bat on.
It simply means batsmen’s skills haven’t been tested nearly as much. The uniqueness of Australia’s pitches had disappeared.
The WACA is nowhere near the fast wicket it once was, the SCG is no longer the turner we used to see and it has been to the detriment of our developing batsman.
Nothing was more evident of how soft batsmen have had it then in this seasons’ matches at Bellerive Oval.
The ground for much of the season was green and the ball swung, resulting in many low scores in Shield games there.
The ground was also savaged by the media before the Test match against Sri Lanka there and the year before in the corresponding match against New Zealand.
Instead of celebrated for giving the bowlers the assistance that had been lacking on so many pitches in recent years it was labelled as bad to bat on.
It is this kind of attitude that has had a greater impact on Australia’s batsman. For too long they simply haven’t been exposed to the moving ball often enough and long enough for them to learn to handle it.
To blame T20 is wrong, the best players will always adjust to different formats, like Mike Hussey and Jacques Kallis who have been able to play all three forms and not have it affect their form at Test level.
Australia has struggled against quality spin bowling recently, maybe part off that is due to lack of quality spin bowling at Shield level but we also see very few pitches that offer spinners much assistance making it easy for batsman.
If Cricket Australia want to unearth batsman who can bat for long periods of times under different conditions then they must do what they can to get each ground back to their old characters and allow the batsman to grow under them.
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