Opinion
In an attempt to put the crushing second Test loss to South Africa into perspective, Pat Cummins said the result might be a good thing if it could “kick the side into gear”, and that perhaps the victory in Durban the previous week had papered over some hefty cracks.
Was the captain trying to do an England on us and claim a moral victory when the scorecard told a very different story?
I can’t remember a loss by an innings in what was effectively a three-and-half-day match – after winning the toss, sending the opponent in and getting the best of both the bowling and batting conditions – having been presented as having an upside.
Cummins was correct about the wallpaper, though.
“Bowlers win games, batters save them” has been a cricket adage since WG Grace replaced the bails, and this Australian squad has worn that maxim out. And why not, when you have four or five of the world’s best doing their thing?
Temba Bavuma batting with the lower order saved South Africa from a sub-200 innings, and then his bowlers did the winning.
Australia’s decision to pick a bespoke attack sans Nathan Lyon and his 573 Test wickets proved to be an error of judgment.
As Bavuma dug in with his lower order, Cummins searched for variety and had to settle for the truly part-time spin of Matt Renshaw, Nic Maddinson and Marnus Labuschagne. It did not work. Beau Webster kept the runs down, but didn’t look like making a breakthrough.
Cummins did catch Lyon’s eye, but only because he was wearing hi-vis and delivering comestibles at the boundary’s edge. All he lacked was a scooter, funky helmet and a loose regard for the road rules to complete his newest role.
Australia’s batsmen had excellent conditions in which to grind past the follow-on, reassess the time and how the pitch might be changing under the South African sun. But they could not save the game.
Travis Head played an excellent innings within the confines of his most ebullient strokeplay but eventually fell again to the ball moving into him, dragging on for the umpteenth time – on this occasion with the wicketkeeper standing up and restricting his mental space as much as the physical.
Australia are the No.1 ranked Test team because of their bowling and in spite of their batting.
The batting order and personnel have been much debated, but you can’t put players in a structure if you aren’t sure of their actual skills, and their skills are measurably different depending on cricket education and experience.
They can’t all bat at five, so it is a blessing Steve Smith is now (after the twilight zone opening experiment) first inked on the team sheet at No.4. Sure, he batted at seven in the second innings, but that was due to the employment of a nightwatchman and a neck twinge, and it failed miserably. So back to second drop in Cape Town.
Maddinson’s selection has rendered the entire Sheffield Shield competition irrelevant.
Why does the best batsman in the world come in at seven when the captain reckons he was fit to bat the night before? Perhaps it was not the best use of resources.
Selecting four No.5s sounds great, but someone has to open and someone with some basic batting form and technique has to bat No.3. Which brings back the circular and by now hackneyed argument over Labuschagne’s tenure, and puts the spotlight on Maddinson’s elevation from domestic 50-over cricket to opening in a Test match against a top-line attack.
Labuschagne is no longer a lame duck, he’s a dead one. His time is up. He is not producing and hasn’t done so for a number of years.
Cummins says Labuschagne is “hitting the ball well”. That notion is open to dispute, but even if we concede for the sake of argument that Cummins is on the money, the bottom line for any batsmen in any era is “how many” rather than “how”.
Skill is a precursor to performance. Marnus is not performing. This is selection 101, whereas you would have to write a new “concept” chapter to find any text for Maddinson’s return to Test cricket.
His selection has rendered the entire Sheffield Shield competition irrelevant. Maddinson did not play any Shield last season and had minimal underperforming appearances the year before.
Recovery from serious health concerns naturally took precedence, although he was slated for a return as NSW captain this summer before being called to Africa.
The message sent to every budding Test player, which should be just about everyone plying their trade in the cricket world’s premier first-class competition, is that the national selectors don’t care what you are doing, how intensely you are competing, or how you deliver in the varying environments served up around the country.
George Bailey, Tony Dodemaide, Andrew McDonald and Cummins (on tour) have such a low regard for the competition which has been the staple for Test selection for 130 years that they will pick from whatever white-ball competition happens to be flogging bowlers.
Even more bizarre was the suggestion from Cummins that Mitchell Marsh was in line for the first Test even though he had retired from first-class cricket. At least Maddinson was still on a playing roster.
When Dodemaide was the general manger of Cricket Victoria, he championed a move for the Sheffield Shield to be restricted to one round because the costs were too great to justify a home and way profile.
In focussing on the cost, he was ignoring the value of the competition. The Maddinson selection (and the Marsh intonation) is a bold, underlined, italicised manifestation of that thought process.
Under Dodemaide’s proposal, the burden of forming a Test team would then fall on performances in T20, 50-over and club cricket. A non-competitive Test team would lose support, attendances and sponsorships, media rights would fade away and the Shield would lose funding. A self-fulfilling prophecy.
On the brighter side, the Shield is going gangbusters in the first couple of rounds, with young guns and veterans making runs and taking wickets and some thrilling results to boot.
Might be an idea if the national selectors took note, or CA employed some people who will.
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