Denizens of the Bleachers,
What if anything to take away from the recent 4-0 drubbing of the Poms, and the right to chisel off that miserable little pissant Ashes Trophy from it's prized pedestal at Lord's? Not a lot, if you were looking for competitiveness, but plenty if you subscribe to the laudable sentiment that there's no finer sight in world sport than seeing Poms ground into the dust. The nail biting draw in Sydney aside, and apart from some brilliant, nay breathtaking, individual performances from some of the Strayans - chief among them Uzzie's twin tons - the thrust and parry of the theatre became predictable - not a great deal of fun - with not one, but two, Pink Stink day-nighters adding precisely nothing, or less, to the equation. As My Spy at The Ground in Adelaide remarked as the England batting collapsed yet again in the twilight..."this is like shooting fish in a barrel". All reports suggest the two words that stuck out from the English press coverage of their debacle were "ghastly" and "pathetic", which are fair enough descriptors for a rabble of upper class twits and wally's, given a recent study that's found England's selection policies are even more aristocratic than the House of Lords. Worse! The only worry now is that the Strayan team is not all that strong either anymore, with their best - but now veteran - batsmen and bowlers not that far away from retirement and they certainly won't play Ashes at home again. But there's not exactly a whole bunch of whipper-snappers nipping at their heels, self-fulfilling the time-honoured adage that it's harder to get dropped from the Australian team than it is to be picked. A simple example: if 29 y-o MS Harris is the best they can do to partner an aged Burbs Warner at the top of the order, then the selectors are looking at long term trouble. Let's face it; Australia carried passengers in every game and still won handsomely, only going to show how weak England really are. But it's an impressive list of remarkable ancients who have played test cricket this summer: Warner (35), Khawajah (35), GOAT (34), Smiffy (32), Boland (32), Hazo (31), Starc (31), Neser (31).
Never mind entrenched
racism in Australian cricket, only the second blackfella to ever
play for Straya, SM Boland (after a decade in 1st class
cricket for Chrissake without ever once coming to the selectors'
notice), had - according to Alison Mitchell on the telly - a
"Dreamtime Debut" at the MCG, and then continued to ram the
gigantic tusk up the Pommy runter right through to the finish
line. Damn, it was good to watch, but deary me, the bloke'd be
as buggered as, after that, at his age. There's no problem
bowling well into your thirties apart from bad backs, knees,
ankles and blistered feet, if you are fit enough - just ask
Jimmy Anderson - but it's alot harder to bat as you get older -
just ask Jacky Leak - who wields the willow in spectacles. SPD
Smith has over the course of his brilliant career been as bad a
fidget as MJ Clarke, who used to touch himself all over his body
and poke every bit of equipment he had and all but announce 'am
I looking a million dollars here, or what?" before every
ball; Smiffy is now even worse. The Good Lady Wife
reckons he looks more like a ballerina than a batsman when he
pirouettes about at the crease - maybe he has to be that
drenched in superstition and routine to keep up the rigourous
attention span required for Test cricket? Dunno. Whatever it is,
it looks increasingly odd. But there will come a time when even
he will have to rest on his not inconsiderable laurels and be
admitted to cricket's Pantheon as one of the greats. The
youngster in the team, that "enormous human being" Cam Green at
22 has a helluva lot to learn and really only gets a spot due to
age old wrong-headed thinking that every Australian team must
have an all-rounder, despite the fact that the last two genuine
all-rounders were Alan Davidson (last test 1963) and Keith
Miller (last test 1956), so there's now precious little, if any,
living memory of them ever playing. God forbid poor Green ever
becoming another Shane Watson. And what can you say about
27-year-old Marnus "Tanglefoot" Labuschagne? (Max Walker
will forever be "Tangles"). He can bat, no doubt, and makes
runs like a machine at three - but the dismally comical
falling over and leaving all three stumps exposed moment of
ignominy in Hobart was a timely reminder to put all those
silly antics away and just watch the ball, son. Don't
get caught up in the "I'm Number One, so why try harder?" trap.
There's only one way from there, and it's down.
After the departure of
TD Paine from the Captaincy, and shortly thereafter the team,
for the fatal mistake of letting his dick do the talking and
thoroughly self-destructing his reputation, PJ Cummins appeared
to slide in effortlessly as skipper. He's the first to admit he
has plenty to learn, but he's a clever man. After making an
unwise choice of dinner venue and missing Adelaide, there was no
option but to give the Captaincy back to Smiffy for another lash
at it for almost certainly his last hurrah. However, without
anyone really noticing,Travis Head was quietly handed the
poisoned chalice and named as Vice Captain for the one match.
So, what does that tell you? Are the Board (who, as far as
anyone knows, still control the appointment of the Captain)
saying that 'we're making plans for Travis'? or were they just
playing the home town hero card?. Who knows, and there's not
much point gazing into the crystal ball of The Chairman and the
Three Wise Men, when everything is a day-to-day proposition
anyway (in the real world).
Despite the largely
dull lop-sided affair and the complete & utter uselessness
of the pink ball, Test cricket is far from dead, as the other
formats continue to struggle big time. 50/50 is a moribund
pyjama game from another era that has just about lost all
relevance, while 20/20 now has no pretence about being anything
more than a three-ringed circus, where winning or losing is
meaningless, as long as the largely unknown players put on a
show. The BBL's solid decline in TV viewership continues, and
the crowds, Corona or no Corona, are voting with their feet. The
official attendance for the Heat v Scorchers match at Docklands
Stadium on 17 January numbered an astonishing 480. Crikey, even
a bad day at a First Class match would struggle to get that few
in through the turnstiles. And in Melbourne, where crowds gather
to watch two flies crawling up a wall.
So, with the Stoopid Little Urn back where it belongs, the next Test assignment on the sub-continent will be an entirely different bottle of mussels altogether. It's a place where you can really get found out on doctored pitches, just for a start off. It's also a joint that can mess with yr head and it seems like forever (try 24 years) since they last played in Pakistan, so no-one touring there will have a single clue about local conditions. And if, in these difficult & uncertain times, they are forced to employ local umpires to officiate in the Test matches, then it's goodnight, nurse. The Strayans will need a power of luck against all the underhand tricks on their next jolly jaunt. See you in Karachi in six weeks time.
