Raw Australian Test team exceeding expectations

Australia’s almighty pounding of New Zealand in the first Test at Wellington is their best win since their stirring series victory in South Africa two years ago.

New Zealand clearly are not in the same league as that South African side, which was still amid its golden era as the undisputed number one team in Tests.

But this is also a vastly different, and far less experienced Australian side than the one which conquered the Proteas early in 2014.

More cricket:
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» Adam Voges, batting ugly but sitting pretty over Bradman
» Watch: Aussies down Kiwis by an innings and 52 runs
» Scorecard: New Zealand vs Australia first Test

To highlight how comparatively green Australia’s current line-up is, consider that then-skipper Michael Clarke alone had 105 Tests to his name at the time of that South African series.

Seven of Australia’s current line-up have collective Test experience of just 82 Tests – Jackson Bird (four Tests), Joe Burns (nine), Peter Nevill (11), Adam Voges (14), Mitch Marsh (14), Usman Khawaja (14) and Josh Hazlewood (16).

Australia’s XI has been cobbled together in haste after it was decimated when six long-term members of the team retired in a matter of months.

They lost both of their opening bowlers (Mitchell Johnson and Ryan Harris), their in-form opening batsman (Chris Rogers), their skipper (Clarke), their wicketkeeper (Brad Haddin) and a veteran all-rounder (Shane Watson).

Most teams would be left a flaming wreck were they to suffer such heavy losses in a short space of time. Yet Australia’s win-loss record is 5-0 in Tests this summer, and they’ve just registered a monstrous innings victory away from home against a Kiwi team which had not lost a Test series in almost three years prior to this season.

A lot of re-writing of history is being done in regards to the New Zealand team. Now that Australia have so ruthlessly exposed them this summer, many cricket followers are trying to downplay the achievement, painting the Kiwis as a poor side who can’t compete with the stronger teams.

How quickly we’ve forgotten that, leading into this Australia summer, many pundits and fans believed New Zealand had a strong chance to beat Australia at home and were heavy favourites to win the return series.

I expressed such an opinion just weeks before the first Test in Brisbane, writing that “New Zealand will arrive in Australia as clearly the better Test team. Where Australia will be hastily trying to rebuild their XI, the Kiwis have a settled and confident line-up”.

There was good reason for the optimism about New Zealand’s chances expressed at the time by myself and many other cricket followers. The Kiwis had gone seven consecutive series without being beaten.

Most significantly among those results, they had drawn 1-1 with Pakistan in the UAE, performing much better over there than did Australia, who were humiliated by the Pakistanis just months earlier.

New Zealand also had drawn 1-1 in England, merely weeks before the Australians arrived and were humbled by the home team. So it was then that the Kiwis arrived in Australia with a talented, experienced and assured team.

They had a new-ball pair, in Trent Boult and Tim Southee, which some cricket followers considered the best in the world. They had a gifted and settled top six, and a high-quality wicketkeeper batsman who was a fine gloveman and averaged more than 40 with the bat in Tests.

What did Australia have entering that series? They had only two batsmen with anything more than a skerrick of success in Test cricket, in Steve Smith and David Warner.

They had a rookie all-rounder floundering with the bat. They had an unproven wicketkeeper with just four Tests to his name. They had a pace attack which had misfired in the Ashes and received an enormous amount of criticism from all quarters.

Leading this ragtag group was a brand new captain, himself under fire for failing when it mattered in the Ashes.

The reality is that New Zealand had the better, more settled, more experienced line-up on paper at the start of this summer. Yet Australia are 3-0 up.

If Australian fans had been offered such a scenario at the start of the summer they would have accepted it with glee and swiftly logged on to the internet to let the world know all about it.

Yet it seems many people are downplaying the achievements of a very raw Australian team which entered the summer under immense pressure. They have far exceeded my expectations and, remarkably, are now just one win away from reclaiming the number one Test ranking Australia owned for eons.

That would be a hell of a successful summer, wouldn’t you agree?