Dissecting a Day at the Cricket

A day at the cricket can be entertaining, it can be educational, it can be both and it can be neither.

To watch the Australian batting order dismantle themselves on Day 3 of the Fourth Ashes Test Match was depressing. My 12 year old brother in law put it best: first two sessions good, last session miserable.

Firstly, there was the galactically poor judgement of Shane Watson. Anyone who could advocate his elevation to the Test Captaincy after this demonstration of what not to do must have rocks in their head.

In order to provide some context, the Australian openers in Watson and Hughes were scoring freely, but also pushing the fielding team with enterprising running between the wickets. However, this was when the ball was pushed into the spacious MCG outfield, as Watson and Hughes regularly turned twos into threes.

Turning zeroes into ones is a harder task, and one Watson failed at miserably as he ran out his partner who was looking good and in need of a confidence building extended stay in the middle. So much for that plan as Hughes was left short, and the rot began on a pitch that gave little aid to the bowling attack.

Clearly a poor or ordinary throw at the stumps can turn a dicey run into a safe run. On the other hand, not using the bat to defend an inswinger on the diminishing bounce of the MCG drop in wicket was a clear example of Watson's complete lack of judgement. If he had played a shot, he would not have been out. It is clear now that there is good judgement, there is bad judgement, and there is Watson judgement.

The next two men in the batting order provided much the same option on the menu, but while I feel no sympathy for Michael Clarke, I feel plenty for Ricky Ponting. Determined to make his stay at the crease time consuming, he resolved to play at the ball only when required. With his broken finger filled with anaesthetic, he struggled his way to 20 runs before the curtain came down, another inswinger finding the inside of the bat and the fullness of the stumps.

Ponting trudged off a defeated man. It is clear he is finished as a test cricketer, not only defeated on skill and ability, but also in heart. The only thing he can do now is hurt his legacy, as players like Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid get to enjoy a swansong, away from the harsh interrogation of character being captain or batting number three provide. Ponting has become a victim of Australian toughness in a way Steve Waugh never did.

Watching Michael Clarke, I made the comment he wouldn't get a game for St Kilda CC 2nds. After unbelievably charging Graeme Swann on the first ball he faced from him, only to miss the ball (fortunately Matt Prior did as well), he then decided to be completely subservient to Swann's whims, letting the cocky English spinner dictate terms until Swann finally decided to stop playing with him and put Clarke, and more importantly us watching, out of our collective misery.

Swann is the barometer of the English team. He is energetic, feeding off his own success and the reaction it gets from the Barmy Army and other English supporters, who were clearly much too numerous at the MCG for economic benefit to allow. Maybe the Aussie Dollar needs to hit parity with the Pound before all those loud Poms stay at home to be snowed under and finally silenced.

Back to Swann: you need to hit him out of the attack. By the time Peter Siddle and Brad Haddin were doing the right thing on the fourth morning, it was too late. Siddle made 40 by whacking Swann down the ground, and Siddle is a solid number 9/10 batsman.

Clarke just sat there pushing the ball back to Swann time and time again, like a kid being pushed in the chest by a bigger kid until he starts crying. Clarke needed to literally knock the smile from Swann's face, and instead he just embarrassed himself.

Clarke's career showed all the promise of maybe a all time great of Australian cricket, but at the moment I think I'd rather Damien Martyn's career than Clarke's.

Michael Hussey played his most uncharacteristic shot of the series, but while Hussey has plenty of credits in the bank, he won't be around for the next Ashes and should announce Sydney will be his last Test Match. Better to go while they miss you and all that guff.

The best innings of the day to watch was Steven Smith's. He had a crack, and while his technique doesn't look great, his ability to just play his game regardless of circumstances is more than encouraging. Smith is clearly one to stick with, and stick with at number six. The fact he is a wrist spinner will help him succeed, especially against the likes of England, the West Indies, South Africa and New Zealand, who don't face wrist spinners much and therefore don't like facing wrist spin.

The lack of fight by the Australians, personified in the once talented but now unable batting of Michael Clarke, was the most disappointing thing about a day at the cricket. Let's hope the inclusion of some new blood in the top six, and the collection of a solid bowling attack, will enable the road to our next Ashes triumph to be a short one. But if a twelve year old is pencilling in 2017 as our next series win against the old enemy, who am I to argue?

Sledging: It's for the best

It took almost three years, but the Australian Cricket Team is starting to put the after effects of the Harbhajan Singh - Andrew Symonds incident behind it.

I opined in this space during the disastrous South African series in 2008/09 that the Australians were too quiet on the field, and this reflected a state of mind created by the media furore after the New Years' Test of 2008 versus India. At that time, Graeme Smith even commented publicly about the lack of any chatter on the field from the Australians.

The furore was to blame for this retraction of the Australian Cricket Team into their collective shells. Despite the clear, indisputable fact that it was the Indian and not the Australian who used the racial slur, the Indian media went into a frenzy. Well, that is not entirely accurate - they're always in a frenzy. For the ideal paradigm, as Obama is for Fox News, Australia is for the Indian media.

Generally, Australians play hard. They use any legitimate means to unsettle opponents, and they do this to opponents of all colours and creeds.

The Australians rediscovered the art of sledging at the WACA Ground, but only after Kevin Pietersen stirred the sleeping giant by verballing Mitchell Johnson. Johnson was suddenly more emotionally involved in the contest, and produced a spell that turned the test match and perhaps the series.

Suddenly, the Aussies were sledging the English, and this is for the better, because a verbally aggressive Australian side is usually a successful one. However, this on-field banter, despite being obvious to all and sundry watching at home on the High Definition TV sets, did not set off the left-wing sporting intelligensia of the Fairfax press and their associated cheering brigade the way it did when we were playing India. To sledge a white South African playing for England is A-OK, but to do it to an Indian of colour is racism and shames all Australians. What tosh.

I don't really care if the Australians are liked or make friends. They are paid, very well in fact, to win games of cricket, and they lost a whole bunch of them quietly, but only when they started to show some real backbone and started to talk back to an English line-up starting to resemble their supporters for annoyance and arrogance, they started playing better cricket and the results came swiftly and dramatically.

So, here's to the Australia of old, in it to win it, taking no prisoners, and not caring what people outside of the team think about their manners and other such bunkum. On to Melbourne for Boxing Day, and hopefully the Christmas spirit of generosity won't extend to the field of contest.

Tanking for Dummies (and cricketers)

Before the expansion Suns and Giants came around to steal the AFL club's much beloved priority picks, it was in vogue, when met with a situation where finals were impossible, to try to ensure you won less than 5 matches for the year. This would mean an extra pick either at the start or the end of the first round, depending on the length of a club's malaise.

Well, considering the Cricket Australia selection panel's desperate ability to grasp onto any hope of a reversal of fortune before making any sort of significant change to the side, the reality is clear that for the long term success of the Australian Test Team, they need to lose in Perth, in addition to the match already lost in Adelaide. The selectors need to be convinced as soon as possible that the Ashes are not for reclaiming this time around. Only then are the selectors likely to embrace the hard decisions that are now well past overdue.

We are now as far away from an Ashes series as one can be in the current cycle, overlooking the current "contest" we are playing in. The next Ashes are in England in 2013, more than two-and-a-half years away. So, if Test success is the pinnacle for Australian cricket, and the Ashes are the most important series for Australia, then now is the ideal time to start the rebuild. And it must start, rather surprisingly considering our inability to bowl anyone out without a hat trick, with the top seven in the batting order.

You see, this is where the age is. All of our bowlers are under 30, including the blokes who are on the outer depending on who got belted most recently. So, rather than recommend who is to be dropped and who is to be played, it would be better if the selectors just settled on a line-up and gave them some time to work together.

The top seven is a different story entirely. If the Australian Test team is to renew and rebuild, some very hard decisions need to be made about the top and middle order of the batting.

Take Simon Katich for example. As tough and courageous as he is, he doesn't convert enough of his scores into hundreds, has a Achilles injury that will keep him out for the rest of the series, and is well into his thirties. Hopefully Phil Hughes makes plenty of runs after he replaces Katich so the decision is made easy, but time's probably up for Katich's international career.

It would also be a tough decision to leave Michael Hussey and Brad Haddin out, as without these two Australia would be 2-0 down in the series. But no one can honestly expect them to be in England in 2013 in anything other than a commentary capacity, or perhaps hosting a tour of Aussie cricket fans. Haddin should probably survive the rest of the summer due to Tim Paine's injury, but Hussey is keeping a youngster out who needs experience.

It is clear that neither Ricky Ponting's captaincy, or batting, for that matter, are up to scratch, and at nearly 36, he should probably retire at the end of this summer to go and earn some serious coin hitting bowlers all over grounds the size of tennis courts in the IPL.

There is no defence for Marcus North - there should be a riot if he survives to Perth.

That leaves Shane Watson and Michael Clarke, who should be retained. Watson is a bankable 50 runs at the top of the order, and a valuable change bowler who makes the batsman play and can swing the old ball. Clarke is still one of the two or three most talented cricketers in the country, but the sooner he gives away the Twenty20 garbage, the better for all and sundry.

Anyway, here's my side for Perth, and hopefully the selector's side for Melbourne:

Hughes
Watson
Ponting (c) (to be replaced at the end of the season by Usman Khawaja)
Clarke
Ferguson
White
Haddin (to be replaced at the end of the season by Tim Paine)
Doherty
Johnson
Bollinger
Harris
Siddle - 12th man

I wish the selectors all the best, but I suspect they'll only have the courage of a dummy.