Whatever happens in this year’s Champions Trophy, the Australian one-day team is doomed to a double existence. The current robust industrial dispute between administrators and players is as much about the philosophy of employment as the terms, but either way it will be seen to spill into the playing arena.
Any underperformance will be blamed on distraction by political conflict, while any brilliant innings or bag of wickets will be taken as a symbol of defiance, a marker laid down about the worth of players.
Sure, the stakes are substantial: this 50-over tournament between the game’s top eight teams begins on the first day of June, and by the last day of that month Australia’s elite international and domestic cricketers could be out of contract and effectively forced to strike.
At issue is Cricket Australia’s demand to restructure their pay model. But realistically once the tournament begins Australia’s cricketers will slot into the mode they most naturally occupy, trying to win a series, and the only difference will be the subject of the questions they’re asked in the post-match press conference.
As far as parallel stories go, there’s also the one comparing the current day to one quadrennial cycle ago. Where the 2013 Australians went to India to be humiliated across four Tests, today’s lot fought across the same number of games to a creditable last-gasp defeat.
Those 2013 Australians went on to be a shambles at a Champions Trophy in England: David Warner threw a fist of drunken knuckles at Joe Root, a nobody named Adam Voges who’d never worn a baggy green glued the struggling batting together, and the team was knocked from the tournament at the group stages.
This year Warner is a teetotal spiritualist, Voges has immovably rolled out a banana lounge on the Test average list next to Bradman, and it’s hard to see Australia going gently into any kind of night. A win here could consolidate the exorcism of that failed era.
There is also a sense of unfinished business: Australia might have won the World Cup five times, but the Champions Trophy only twice. Which to be fair is a bit like Manchester United lamenting that they haven’t won enough Europa Leagues, but it’s still a record that most involved would feel better for correcting.
Where the 50-over format can be an endless bat-fest, what excites about Australia is the bowling. For the first time we could see a line-up of Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Patrick Cummins and James Pattinson, all operating at over 140 kilometres per hour, three of them potentially above 150.
The first two are at the peak of their powers in all forms, the latter pair remain on injury comebacks, but if this gets them all clicking then cricket could be in for an extraordinary couple of years. Starc is the central star: left-arm devastating, hitting his first hundred ODI wickets last year from fewer games than any bowler in history.
He takes half his wickets by hitting the stumps or the pads, and has a by-now unnerving knack of getting one in the first over of a game. He’s too fast, too accurate, and in a game where batsmen have to manufacture scoring shots, swings the ball too much.
Starc’s preferred partner at the crease is Hazlewood, coming off a monster of a home summer. His accuracy is second to none, and experience should have him better able to harness it than on the 2015 Ashes tour, where he said English pitches had him thinking of miracle balls ahead of discipline.
His strength relies on restriction: he has gone for under four runs per over in 10 of his 34 ODI innings, and has only gone above five runs per over in 13 of them. Cummins brings pure pace, as seen in his bouncer attack on a placid Ranchi pitch during his comeback Test in March, while also having the tricks learned during the long years when Twenty20 cricket was all his body could stand.
Pattinson has speed and swing when his own corporeal assembly contrives to support them. Three of these four bowlers have a well documented ability to smash long balls with the bat, while Hazlewood is at least famous for sticking scorelessly around during long partnerships.
Very useful batting too comes from John Hastings, the forgotten extra, a man Kevin Pietersen once nominated as the best death bowler he’d seen. Parsimonious with his late-innings yorkers and mid-innings ability to slow scoring on most surfaces, Hastings is back to the place where he kicked off his surprise international career in 2015, grabbed out of Durham’s county side when the touring Australians needed reinforcements. He may struggle for a spot, but won’t let anyone down if given one.
Then there’s Adam Zampa, who bowls crooked and talks straight, firing down leg-breaks in between political arguments online. He was another surprise inclusion who has greatly impressed during his 18 months in the side: while he doesn’t turn the ball prodigiously, his speed variations and accuracy make him had to read. The resulting ability to undo players who try to attack him is what makes him such an effective force.
Australia is not short of batting power: Glenn Maxwell, Aaron Finch and Chris Lynn could be New Year’s Eve as far as fireworks go, while Travis Head has done everything asked of him in a young career, Marcus Stoinis played one of the all- time great ODI knocks in his second game in Auckland a couple of months ago, Warner has made six ODI hundreds in his last 11 starts, and Steve Smith in India affirmed his current status as the best batsman in the world. But, as with Cinderella, the ball is where all will be lost or won.
There is a likelihood of at least some bowler-friendly conditions in between the flat tracks of current style. England, bear in mind, just collapsed to 20 for 6 at Lord’s in a pre-tournament game against South Africa.
Australia’s components together should be enough to undo even the most daunting batting line-ups. Unless, of course, they’re distracted. But with a once-in- a-generation fast bowling attack coming together after so long, why would you spend match day thinking about anything else?
