When the Sydney Swans were at their ruinous worst in 1993, winning just one AFL game, the skit show, Full Frontal, lined them up. The scene: a man arriving home, his wife quizzing about his earlier whereabouts. He pleads with her, promising he has only been having an affair. She doesn’t believe him, pulling out a pair of red footy socks from his bag: “I knew it all along, you’ve been playing for the Sydney Swans!”
The same gag could be repurposed for Australian Test batsmen after day one of the second Test against South Africa. It would win the same laughs. If the five stages of grief reach finality with acceptance, surely the epilogue is humour. And as Australia’s collapse gathered pace on Saturday morning in Hobart, to joke was all that was left. All out for 85 is a score made for derision. Two batsmen in double figures on a scorecard much the same.
It wasn’t long ago that performances like this prompted despair. A slew of front pages and a sense of national shock. At Trent Bridge last year where the Ashes were ceded in spectacular style. Cape Town in 2011. The MCG on Boxing Day for another Ashes shaming. You know those stories; we all know those stories.
After a while, ranking the latest shemozzle becomes routine. This time? The 11th lowest home innings of all time and the worst effort in this country for 32 years, to pick a couple. The mayonnaise: it was the ninth time in three years that all of Australia’s wickets have fallen in the space of 90 runs, and the second time in eight days.
Naturally, it didn’t take long before those two words - Trent and Bridge - were getting a work out. The skittish selection, the green track, the moisture, the coin coming down the wrong way. That every nick carried and every catch stuck.
Yet these collapses need to start somewhere. Inevitably David Warner’s wide swipe and nick was chalked up by commentary supporters to “playing his natural game”. It will be argued that to revel in his run-a-ball centuries, this is the corresponding cost. But his team’s dreadful turnaround in Perth made his demise look that much worse. The chaos that came next was overwhelmingly a product of it.
Former opener Chris Rogers’ radio commentary was instructive through the passage that followed, describing the way that top-order players have to adapt to a moving ball. A version of French Cricket, getting the bat well in front of the pad to address the danger with a limited backlift and the softest of hands. He was explaining survival on English greentops. Bellerive on Saturday was effectively that, CricViz calculating that seam deliveries were deviating on average twice as much as the first morning at the Waca Ground.
Another opener Simon Katich argued that batsmen are not spending formative years in England anymore. Adam Voges aside, Australia’s other top seven batsmen have played 31 games of county cricket between them. Those who have toured England for the Ashes have been forced to learn on the job. Granted, this is something Cricket Australia are trying to redress, sending Travis Head, Cameron Bancroft and Jake Lehmann abroad last winter with an eye to future England contests and days like Saturday. But that’s cold comfort now.
South African captain Faf Du Plessis said before this tour that his plan was to cut the head off the proverbial snake. He wanted his counterpart Steve Smith. But instead Australia’s skipper highlighted the art of the possible and the virtue of patience, compiling an unbeaten 48 as the carnage played out around him. Du Plessis will care little after skinning enough of the rest of the reptile to make himself a nice belt.
After lucking in with Warner, Vernon Philander didn’t wait long for Usman Khawaja’s edge. When dropped in Sri Lanka, Khawaja claimed to be the scapegoat. Today he was just outclassed. His career already teetering, Voges fell to a ball that moved further off the seam than any on the day, much as in the second innings at Perth. A hard-luck story is being written. Up the other end, Burns got one from Kyle Abbott that swung in before seaming back. By the time debutant Callum Ferguson was run out, the score was 17-5 and the Test was as good as over. The wickets taken on Saturday afternoon and forecasted rain on Sunday surely won’t save them.
Chuckles aside, for a national side once so revered, losing at home is barely accepted and humiliation has a price. Reviews are commissioned, players get sacked, administrators follow. Recently reappointed coach Darren Lehmann isn’t naïve to this pressure: asked if his side is in crisis, he didn’t deny it. Nor could he. This is getting ugly and fast.
