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Opinion
Spin it whichever way you like, perhaps select a team for the third Test that will match it with India, or identify a potential match-winning strategy that could turn the tables in the favour of the Australians. You are simply wasting your time.
The Australian cricket team is out of its depth, up against one of the best teams in the world playing in home conditions and thoroughly enjoying embarrassing a team that did the same to them for an extended period of time.
Effort, tactics and mental fortitude have all be raised as potential reasons as to why the Aussies have been so far off the pace across the opening two Tests of the Border-Gavaskar series. Frankly, those reasonings are worth little and steeped in ignorance.
Some have come from broadcasters in denial and keen to keep people tuned in, fraudulently claiming the approaching iceberg is nothing more than a mirage.
Others emanate from people completely inept when it comes to watching and analysing the game in a measured and unbiased manner, whilst the passion in another group of Australian cricket fans appears to make it impossible for them to acknowledge the bare facts before their eyes and concede that this touring party is not even at the races!
How they all missed or simply chose to ignore the signs is quite astonishing.
The bare boned statistics behind the group of men charged with doing the impossible and triumphing on Indian soil for the first time since 2004, suggested nothing but a likely doom.
Not matter how comprehensively the Australians might bully their way to success on home soil and dispatch developmental teams like West Indies and South Africa, anyone watching cricket beyond a few Big Bash matches or taking a squiz at a home Test every now and then, realised that Pat Cummins’ team were not only injured, ill-prepared and out-gunned man-for-man by the team waiting for them, but also lacking in quality.
The majority of the touring party has cementing a place in the team front of thoughts, so unsure they are of their permanent position. This was personified by the dropping of Travis Head for the first Test and the obvious nervousness of Matt Renshaw, Peter Handscomb (despite a splendid innings in Delhi), Scott Boland and Matthew Kuhnemann; players all hoping that there name will be included on the next official team sheet.
It is a cricketing life Usman Khawaja has lived for a number of years, always playing well and hopeful of opportunity, yet never, ever convinced of his spot in the team until the recent past. David Warner appears to be playing in such a restricted manner thanks to a fear that each and every innings could be his last. Wicket-keeper Alex Carey has contributed much, yet still far from assured of his role beyond the shortest of short terms.
Right now, just Steve Smith, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon and Cummins feel confident of automatic selection for an Australian Test match. Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood would be close to those thoughts in normal conditions, yet the subcontinent throws a selection spanner in the works that reflects the selectors’ lack of confidence in the eleven chosen for any given match.
Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins of Australia chat. (Photo by Quinn Rooney – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)
No doubt, as soon as Khawaja suffers a slight loss of form, or Lyon struggles as he did in Nagpur, they too will be under the pump, with Cameron Green likely to experience the same emotions once he is actually fit and able to fulfil some of this prodigious talent that everyone keeps telling me about.
Simply, the Australians lack the cattle to compete against the best in the most challenging of conditions and sections of the media’s efforts to divert attention away from professional accountability, by alluding to some dodgy pitch business is actually harming the chances of Australian success, rather than aiding them.
As Bruce Springsteen penned in a line from his title song for the 2008 film The Wrestler, Have you ever seen a one-armed man punching at nothing but the breeze?
So too are the Aussies punching away with an arsenal not equipped to even make a dent on what is the most impressive of Indian teams.
Pat Cummins with coach Andrew McDonald during the India tour. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
And you know what. That is fine.
The pitches are juiced up superbly for their bowlers, the Australian batting has lacked poise and patience and Cummins looks distraught, without any answers to the examinations that his team keeps failing.
Things will no doubt be different the next time India venture down under and whilst they may win again, at least it will be something of a contest.
At the moment it isn’t and I’m not sure how the Australians even make one of the upcoming Test in Indore.