Skepticlawyer

I’ve been watching from afar as Australia’s cricketing fortunes have taken a tumble over the last few series. All sorts of prognostications and punditry have been engaged in by all sorts, but for me, it’s pretty simple. What goes up must come down. We had a lengthy period in the sun, one which is now coming to an end. I don’t think we’ll ever be really rubbish, but a drop to about number three or four on the table of test ranked nations looks in order, at least for a while.

Yes, we’ve been dudded by our own selectors and some uninspired captaincy (for a great blow by blow account of dodgy decisions as they’re made, follow Tony the Teacher’s commentary over at the After Grog Blog), but even with those errors corrected for, South Africa in particular were going to beat us sooner or later, especially in their own country. I think that they can look forward to a decent run of their own at the top, too. Not as long as ours was — they’ll struggle to beat India at home thanks to lack of a quality spinner — but India in their turn won’t be able to touch South Africa in South Africa. 

Where does this leave Australia, now the mighty have fallen? We’ll bump around for a bit while things sort themselves out. There are good players in the side — Mitchell Johnson, Simon Katich, Brad Haddin, Mike Hussey and Peter Siddle are all obviously very talented. They’re likely to be the core of the team for a while to come. The once great Matty Hayden has had his day, and it’s sad to watch his mental demons play out on the national stage in the way they have, but that’s what often happens at the end of a career. I think it’s best for him to go quietly — seeing Rahul Dravid scratch around like an old chook for an even longer period until he finally made (an agonizingly slow) hundred in a dull draw wasn’t pretty. The Indian selectors — like ours — seem inclined to let great players ‘pick their time’.

Will we be number one again? Soon? Of course to the first, but I think we’ll have a right old battle on our hands for the next five years or so. We’ll lose to India in India, and probably beat them at home. Ditto, I suspect, for England (so yes, Punter may twice lose the Ashes). South Africa will ride high both home and away for a goodly little while. Australia’s strong domestic structure will save us from the fate of the West Indies and Pakistan, once great teams humbled as much by their own administrators of the game as by anything else.

One thing I do hope is that South Africa have the talent to play attacking, attractive cricket while being number one. India — on the whole — try to play the longer form of the game attractively. Sometimes it brings them undone (as it does us), but no-one denies that it’s fabulous to watch. While not siding with the purists already in premature mourning, I do believe that Test Cricket is under challenge in ways not seen before, and not only from abbreviated forms of the game.

There are a mass of unresolved administrative issues swirling around the ICC, and India’s cricket establishment — if not the players — does not seem to take well to being the richest playing nation without simultaneously being ranked number one. They’ll now have to share with South Africa, and I suspect will find the ‘Yarpies’ considerably more difficult to browbeat with various forms of post-colonial guilt.

As it looks pretty likely we’ll lose the current test, I think Sydney is a time to start rebuilding in dead earnest. Find Katich an opening partner, for a start, and a replacement for Symonds and Lee. Give Krejza another go on a spinner’s deck. We may lose again, but we’ll also know that the only way from there is up.