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When you’re unemployed, you have plenty of time to watch cricket. Wake up at nine, make a tea, beans on toast, and it’s just about time to teleport via GEM to the picturesque cricket grounds of Sydney.
Glittering harbour, sprawling figs, heritage stands, grassy spectator hills big enough to host a cricket match of their own, David Warner tripping over his words, and world-class playing all combine for the spectacle.
Let’s look at the movers and shakers of the Domestic One Day Cup so far.
Mitchell Starc: 10
How great it is to see our Test stars on a level playing field with the greater pool of the cricketing talent of Australia.
‘What is it that makes these guys so special anyway?’ the cynics ask, as our soldiers toil away on a dead track in the UAE, their efforts guided to the boundary by Misbah-ul-Haq for two days in a row to the detriment of their average.
Look here, statisticians! Starc is averaging in the single digits, and state batsmen have fear in their eyes, not for their life, but for their castle. They are scratching to get up the other end, scratching for Test selection – the ball is full – it cannons into the pads and it’s too late; another year to wait.
Starc thrives with protection on the leg-side boundary so he can aim at the stumps. Michael Clarke’s insistence on five slips, fifth stump line and outswing for the first day of a Test match will hopefully be abandoned by Steve Smith. The equation is simple: Johnson bowls short at the body, Starc bowls full at the toes.
Steve Smith: 9
Clinical. Yes, a couple of ducks, but Smith is in a transitional period in his technique, toning down that flustered step across off stump that saw him nicking off early in the Ashes. He had it sorted by the time he accumulated 136 not out against Queensland and wasn’t dismissed during his supreme knock in the final either.
Jon Holland: 8
This bloke is turning ’em further than anyone in the cup. A simple action, no fanfare, but a lot of bounce and turn. Pitching outside off and going over the wicketkeeper’s leg-side shoulder to the boundary for four. And then Cameron Bancroft bowled Holland! Mitch Marsh caught Matthew Wade bowled Holland!
Matthew Wade: 8
‘I like that shot for him’ he yells to Holland as the batsman is drawn into an uppish mistimed drive. This kind of breaking-the-fourth-wall banter is both assertive and entertaining from the Victorian keeper-captain.
His determined thrashing with the bat late in the innings helped them all the way to the semi-finals, where only similarly ugly 97 by Alex Ross could stop them. Rod Marsh evidently sees a bit of himself in Wade, the selectors’ darling despite other rivals with higher batting averages and lesser egos.
James Pattinson 7.5
Has he survived the endless bowling-action remodelling, video analysis and workload management that led him away from the natural action developed as a child that gave him the gift of express pace in the first place? Mickey Arthur and Pat Howard’s insidious legacy still ripples through the Cricket Australia setup.
Pattinson has lost the vibrancy of adolescence, no longer quite the ‘young quick’ we talk of excitedly. Less prodigal, more working class and front-on at the crease, sometimes not finding the penetration you’d expect in his first spell, but still somehow ending up second-runner to Starc in the wicket tally. He will remain in Starc’s shadow when it comes to Test selection.
Peter Siddle: ?
The Siddle conspiracy. The lone hand at saving face in England not picked? How, exactly, is bashing the deck on a difficult length less relevant in ODIs than in Tests?
He may have 198 Test wickets and an ODI hat-trick, but Siddle’s calves are wasting, resting on the railing of pavilions around the world, lower back hunched in a chair. He has been given the indignity of carrying the drinks to uncapped players at 30 years of age, in the peak of his potential but seemingly the twilight of his career.
Dominic Michael: 7
When Tasmania were batting, Michael always seemed to be there, moving well, straight bat, working singles with a sound technique, scoring 50s, and a match-winning 100. His List A average checks out at 54.
With a Samoan father and Greek mother, and past stints playing for Surrey and the Netherlands, subconscious nationalism almost precludes thinking of him as a possibility for our international middle-order squad.
Shaun Marsh: 6
The top run-scorer for the tournament, thanks mainly to a ‘186’ centre-wicket-training-session against the out-of-their-depth Cricket Australia XI.
Always brilliant on the highlight reel, we don’t see the near-chop-ons or the edges that went through the vacant slip cordon. In real time he treads the balance of fragility and elegance. Somehow in the mix as an opening option for the summer; the position perhaps the least suited to his talents.
He ran himself out on 99 in Adelaide and purposely ran his brother out in this tournament, ruining any fantasy of telepathic Waugh brother middle order voodoo again for Australia. There’s a big difference between two and three Test centuries.
Marcus Stoinis: 6
Now the selectors must have seen something in this lad, or at least romanced by his handsome looks during the Australia A net sessions – calling him over to England for a pointless Twenty20 appearance.
Stoinis was called in again to replace rebellious truant Glenn Maxwell mid-tournament and scored a patient century to amass a total too weighty for George Bailey’s shoulders.
In the semi-final, he took the same approach, 30 balls to get off the mark; 20 off 50. He made up for it later with slog sweeps over midwicket, you say. It is a delicious tension; a slow run rate in a limited overs match that we know MS Dhoni and the George Bailey of old can deliver on.
In the end Stoinis had soaked up a third of the total deliveries in the innings for a mere 50 in a big chase. Geoffrey Boycott would have praised him for playing the perfect anchor – particularly with Maxwell down the order – but the result would read differently.
A case for Test selection? The new Rogers? Maybe. What do we value the greater; tight defence or match awareness? What would Matthew Hayden have done?
Joe Burns (4.5/10)
Opening the batting is a tough job. You have to block out the pacemen and get it past a packed infield.
When you get in, you start to think about bringing out shots. Alistair Cook makes double centuries off two, cut a wide one to backward point or flick a full straight one to the leg side.
It’s at this point where Joe Burns falls short. When scoreboard pressure is building around the ninth over, he defaults to his one scoring option – a lofted chip to long-off or long-on.
He seems one of the more limited stoke-makers in the top five of any of the teams – and that is maybe why he failed to make a significant impact last summer against India on the flattest pitches Australia has ever produced.
Ashton Agar 4.5/10
When Ashton Agar made 99 a couple of Ashes series ago we all swooned. A swagger in his stride, in his flick of his hair, his movements are lopey and self-assured.
He was opening for the Scorchers the next season with the backing of Justin Langer, but didn’t stay there for long.
We saw how effective Moeen Ali was batting at 8 and bowling offies; Agar can play the same role for whatever team he is in. Now and then we get a glimpse of a stroppy toddler when his lbw appeal is turned down.
He is like a prettier Glenn Maxwell who gives the ball a bit more flight. What he hasn’t done is score three consecutive 90s for King XI Punjab.
Nick Maddison: 4
Cracking sixes. The Sydney Sixers would be loathe to run range-hitting sessions for fear of going over the consumables budget. A lock for the Big Bash League, but under scrutiny of tight line and length the slogosophy fails. Maddison lacks the maturity to dig in and gets caught on the ring. County cricket is the prescription.
Cameron Boyce and Adam Zampa: 2
If these are the two best leg-spinners in the country, we need to call up the 10-year-old who took five-for in a club game for state selection. Or perhaps consult the ranks of club players. Some fat bloke? Your dad who gives ’em a rip every Christmas?
Sure, they are consistent I suppose, at landing them on the pitch. But I watched the ball. I even went and sat closer to the TV. It does not turn. Is the art of spin really this subtle, the amount of deviation only a pixel or two either way? Is the Gatting ball a warp in the archival VHS tape?
Shane Watson: 1
Watson is inn the kind of form that would see him making a mess of putting toothpaste on his toothbrush, or having to call Telstra because he dropped his phone and the screen cracked.
More irrelevant than ever, and now domestic ODI attacks have embarrassed him. What format can he claim to be a specialist in anymore?
You feel for the man, he knows nothing else, coddled from birth into cricket. A nervous breakdown could shift him out of the public eye and into a comfortable semi-retirement living off the return from his Cricket Australia funded investments for good.
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