When a team implodes the way Australia did at the weekend – with calculated aggression, appalling shot selection, and lemming-like devotion to inept strategy – questions are bound to be asked. Where did it all go wrong? Who’s to blame? What happens next?
The last frontier
India is the toughest place in the world to play cricket and touring sides very rarely win there. From Australia’s last 10 tours, only one has been victorious – the 2-1 series win in 2004-05. Indian cricketers are tough, stress-tested early in ferocious street games and venerated like gods. This India side boasts batting titans such as Virat Kohli, Cheteshwar Pujara and Rohit Sharma. Australia has its aces in Steve Smith, Marnus Labuschagne, Usman Khawaja and Travis Head, but all are playing very differently to their counterparts. Instead of moving their feet to where the ball is pitching to hit straight, in Delhi they turned to the sweep shot all too often – with disastrous consequences.
Poor preparation
Who was behind this calamitous tactic? After Sunday’s debacle – bowled out in a single session, losing four major wickets in 11 balls and nine for 48 runs – no one is claiming it. Under most scrutiny is head coach Andrew McDonald, who took over when Justin Langer was forced out in April last year, and whose style is not to coach but instead let everyone develop their own game plans. Team batting coach Michael DiVenuto will also be sweating. Bearing the brunt will be captain Pat Cummins, a brilliant bowler whose brainless sweep on his first ball won him a golden duck. Is Cricket Australia (CA) to blame? It prepared the side for subcontinental conditions on tours to Pakistan in March and Sri Lanka in July but went into this series with no warm-up games.
Unnatural selection
It’s clear CA’s head selector George Bailey sent the wrong men to do the job. The touring party of 18 included the injured Mitchell Starc, Cameron Green and Josh Hazlewood and none have proven fit for duty. Spinner Mitchell Swepson might have played in Delhi but he had flown home for the birth of his child, a trip CA must have known was inevitable. Meanwhile, incumbents Head and Ashton Agar were axed and replaced for the first Test, a dis-endorsement that shot Agar’s confidence and risked scrambling Head’s brain. Head’s inept replacement Matt Renshaw has scores of 0, 2 and 2, while questions are also being asked of the wretchedly out-of-form and now concussed David Warner (1, 10 and 15) with two Tests to play and pride on the line.
Pitch battles
Test cricket is a unique game because the natural world plays such a massive role. Heat and moisture can change a playing surface of grass, soil and clay on an hourly basis, and 40 hours of sweaty hands, dewy topsoil and battering by willow will warp a leather ball in strange, unpredictable ways. In India this goes tenfold. Aside from the noise and humidity, there is also the smog to contend with. The unnatural world also plays a part. For the first Test in Nagpur, groundsmen were filmed being told where to water and mow to suit the bowling attack India were going to pick for the batters Australia would inevitably select. Doctoring a pitch is unethical, yet all nations do it to a degree; none as flagrantly as India.
Baggy Green brandspeak
Australia’s cricketers used to speak from the heart, and occasionally the brain. After the abject first Test defeat, Cummins (a bachelor of business graduate from Sydney’s University of Technology), spouted this: “You’re going to fail over here – it’s about failing the right way.” As if the defeat was a journey of self-discovery, not a test of character. Similarly, where most coaches (like Langer) might have ripped into his players, McDonald’s positive spin on an ugly loss within three days was “more time to think about what to do next”. Cricket fans don’t want corporate cliches or self-help weasel words, they want gritty promises to do better next time.
Taken for a spin
Australia can spin this calamity as much as they like off-field. On the field they have been spun out. Australia has one great spinner, Nathan Lyon (and maybe another in first Test hero Todd Murphy), but India have proven masters of spin bowling in Ravi Ashwin, Ravi Jadeja and Axar Patel. Their fingers can turn any pitch into a nightmare for batters – and they have (16 of the 20 Australian wickets on offer in both Tests fell to spin). Yet to combat India’s No 1 weapon Australian batters’ sole strategy appears to be ‘hit out before you get out’. It’s a fatal hangover from T20 cricket. But the demands of the 20-over format are lightyears from the skills of Tests, where patience is a virtue and games are won in the mind. And in India, innings are built in days not minutes, and series are won by years of planning.
