INDIA TOUR OF AUSTRALIA, 2018-19

Where did the real Australia go?

by Bharat Sundaresan • Published on

Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon have faced 977 balls between them after handling all the workload with the ball © AFP

After almost three Tests, you literally had to pinch yourself, sitting at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, on a Boxing Day Test, wondering, was this really Australia? Was this top order the best in a country that has consistently produced batsmen who have beaten opposition bowlers into submission by sheer force of will? Was, this, really, genuinely, comprehensively, the best challenge the home team could put up against the No. 1 ranked Test team in the world?

But, leaving questions aside for a moment, keeping an open mind, giving each member of this squad the benefit of doubt, expectations, however low they were, have not been met.

Marcus Harris is so new to the game that his similarities to Justin Langer or Marcus North do not extend beyond his stance or how he leaves the ball.

Aaron Finch talks a great game and always appears ready for a brawl - a doppleganger for WWE star Triple H too - chewing his gum as though that was a personal battle in itself, but surely his success in the UAE, where the best place to bat on a soft pitch is against the new ball, cannot be the basis on which he is converted into an opener in Australian conditions.

Usman Khawaja has the look of an opener trapped in a middle-order batsman's body. He should have been the backbone around which the Australian line-up grew, but instead he has been unsure of himself, not decisive on when to attack and when to just occupy the crease.

Shaun Marsh starts nervously, and this has been overlooked because he has made it count when he has overcome stage fright. But, in this series, he has been worked over so consistently upon arrival at the crease that there has been no scope for him to play to his strength.

Travis Head is Australia's top-scorer in this series. Just reading that sentence should give you the jitters if you are a supporter of Tim Paine's team. Head is a competent, steady batsman, but how many Australian teams over the years - maybe not even the one earlier this year prior to Operation Cape Town - would he fit into?

All through this series, there have been two batsmen who have had their reputations enhanced, their auras expanded, without so much as lifting a bat. The shadows that Steven Smith and David Warner have cast have lengthened with every Australian collapse, and darkened with every situation where India have been ahead of the game and stayed there. But the world knows why Smith and Warner are not part of this team.

But, it doesn't take a historian to look back at Australian cricket and find a list of players who would be cursing the fact that they were born when they were. Jamie Cox, Michael di Venuto, Brad Hodge, Martin Love, Jamie Siddons, Michael Bevan and Stuart Law played 30 Tests between the seven of them. Mitch Marsh has already played 31.

Consider also that Australia's batting all series has begun in earnest with Tim Paine, while Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon have faced 977 balls between them after handling all the workload with the ball.

Just how did things come to such a pass? It's been suggested that the scheduling of domestic cricket, with the Big Bash League taking precedence over the Sheffield Shield, in more ways than one, is a major cause. But, the obvious counter to this is that India's cricket in the 50-over format and in some ways in Tests, has benefited significantly from its players taking part in the IPL.

Jasprit Bumrah, India's Test spearhead and someone being spoken off as the most penetrative bowler in the world at the moment, would not have been discovered as quickly as he was had it not been for John Wright and the Mumbai Indians. Long before Mayank Agarwal had his bumper domestic season, he hit the headlines through the runs he made for the Royal Challengers Bangalore.

But, while it can be argued that what works in India may not necessarily work in Australia, it's worth looking at the Sheffield Shield in isolation. The numbers are damning: As many as 22 batsmen in the 2017-18 season scored over 500 runs, but only three of them were consistent enough to average over 50.

Sometimes the truth is hard to face. Sometimes reality is bitter. But if the feeder system - once the envy of the world, once a competition where the best in the world came to prove themselves, once a system that ensured Australia exported more cricket coaches than wheat - is not doing the job, then how well stocked can the Test cupboard be?

The writing is on the wall.

© Cricbuzz

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