Redemption, one last hurrah for old guard
OPINION
Malcolm Conn
April 22, 2006
THE most successful era in Australian cricket can end in stunning fashion, with one of the oldest teams assembled reclaiming the Ashes and creating history with a third successive World Cup.
The Australian Test team is a ticking time bomb.
The multi-million-dollar question is will it remain intact long enough to right the wrong of last year's England failure and go out to the ringing cheers of a grateful nation?
The answer appears to be yes. Australia could not have responded to the gut-wrenching Ashes loss in a more emphatic way, thrashing a World XI in last October's Super Test on the way to claiming 11 victories and a draw in 12 Tests during seven hectic months of cricket.
Now the players will have at least five months off, an unprecedented rest in modern times, to prime themselves for a contest that many regard as unfinished business.
This is in complete contrast to England, which is in danger of limping into Australia this November after 18 months of constant cricket.
Already the England hierarchy is talking about sacrificing the Champions Trophy one-day tournament in India during October to ensure the best players are not exhausted.
Fresh and playing in their own conditions, which will not allow the same extraordinary swing generated by England's pacemen last year, the Australians have every reason to be confident.
But for many of the national heroes, this series is going to mean death or glory to their careers.
There is unlikely to be much middle ground.
By the time the coin is tossed to begin the first Test at Brisbane's Gabba on November 23, seven of the likely Australian side will be 35 or older. It simply cannot last much longer at the top without significant renewal.
If the same formula for the side is continued from the 3-0 thrashing of South Africa last month, then no player will be under 30. The average age will be pushing towards 33 and a half, taking the team into rare territory.
The last national side collectively older than this contained Don Bradman, making his Test debut. It was 1928 and the first Test to be played in Brisbane was about to take place at the Exhibition Ground.
The present team is so old because it has been so successful. It is testament to a team that has contained some of the greats taking the game to another level.
Not even the teams under Bradman's stewardship can match this millennium of achievement. While Bradman, who was in charge of the 1948 Invincibles, won 62.5 per cent of his matches as captain (15 of 24), Steve Waugh's sides won an amazing 72 per cent of games (41 of 57), unprecedented for any captain who has been in charge for more than 10 Tests.
Now Ricky Ponting's record is even better. Despite heavy and often unreasonable criticism of his captaincy following the narrow Ashes loss, Ponting has lost just three of 30 Tests, winning 22 and drawing five.
The reality is that Justin Langer will be Australia's oldest opening batsman since World War II when he fronts up at the Gabba in November and Matthew Hayden will not be far behind.
They continue to form the greatest Australian top-order combination of all time. But the pressure from Phil Jaques, who is a decade younger, is becoming irresistible and Langer is coming off a season which was marred by injuries.
For all the attempts to renew the side after the Ashes, the selectors ended up going back to the past by recalling Damien Martyn, Michael Kasprowicz and Jason Gillespie.
This suggests the next generation is not putting its collective hand up.
It is not as if players on the fringe have been ignored. In the 17 Tests from the beginning of the ill-fated Ashes series, 22 players have been given a chance to stake a claim.
Two new players have excelled. Mike Hussey has just scored his fourth century in his first 11 Tests and Stuart Clark had an amazing debut series in South Africa filling in for Glenn McGrath, who is helping wife, Jane, through her latest battle with cancer.
To the astonishment of everyone, Clark was man of the series with 20 wickets at 15 apiece in the three Tests against the Proteas.
Clearly 30 is the new 20 in Australian Test cricket, given that Hussey and Clark had been on the first-class scene for years.
Clark's spectacular debut may keep Gillespie out of the first Ashes Test despite his heroics with bat and ball in Bangladesh.
The frontline pace attack is likely to be Brett Lee, Clark and McGrath, although much will depend on how McGrath, 36, returns to international cricket following an extended break.
Martyn's match-winning century in the last Test against South Africa is likely to see him retained, while Michael Clarke's immediate Test future appears to revolve around whether the selectors will continue to experiment with an all-rounder.
Given the age of the attack and the workload over another long season this is the likely scenario, but who will it be? Andrew Symonds has had just two good Tests in 10 and Shane Watson has never been fit for long enough to claim a place.
Recent history suggests one certainty: no one will retire.
Of the 37 players who have represented Australia in Test cricket during the seven years since Mark Taylor stepped down, only one has left the Test arena on his own terms.
That was Steve Waugh, who ignored advice from retiring chairman of selectors Trevor Hohns to quit and narrowly escaped the axe before having a draining, season-long retirement circus around the country in 2003-04. Waugh was 38 when he eventually went.
Taylor, now a Cricket Australia board member, believes the regeneration of the national side will be one of the major issues that must soon be faced.
"The players are getting paid good money these days," Taylor said in an interview with The Weekend Australian.
"I really feel just looking at the whole side now that there are going to be less and less guys who are going to retire.
"It's going to be a very tough call on the selectors from now on to make players retire.
"If the side keeps playing well they're going to want to keep playing. It makes it very difficult for a selection panel to blood younger players when those senior players are still doing quite well."
Now that Hohns has stepped down it will be up to newly appointed chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch to become a silent assassin.
As Hilditch points out, he has been on the selection panel for a decade and has been part of many difficult selection issues.
"There are tough decisions to be made," Hilditch said.
"Some of the great players of all time will leave the game in the next few years, but that has been a process that has been going on for the whole time I've been in the job.
"Our goal is to pick the best possible Australian side with an eye on the future.
"It's mainly hard to make (decisions) because we're dealing with a great side with probably some of the best players of all time.
"It's always going to be tough. There's no doubt about that."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,18886813-2722,00.html
OPINION
Malcolm Conn
April 22, 2006
THE most successful era in Australian cricket can end in stunning fashion, with one of the oldest teams assembled reclaiming the Ashes and creating history with a third successive World Cup.
The Australian Test team is a ticking time bomb.
The multi-million-dollar question is will it remain intact long enough to right the wrong of last year's England failure and go out to the ringing cheers of a grateful nation?
The answer appears to be yes. Australia could not have responded to the gut-wrenching Ashes loss in a more emphatic way, thrashing a World XI in last October's Super Test on the way to claiming 11 victories and a draw in 12 Tests during seven hectic months of cricket.
Now the players will have at least five months off, an unprecedented rest in modern times, to prime themselves for a contest that many regard as unfinished business.
This is in complete contrast to England, which is in danger of limping into Australia this November after 18 months of constant cricket.
Already the England hierarchy is talking about sacrificing the Champions Trophy one-day tournament in India during October to ensure the best players are not exhausted.
Fresh and playing in their own conditions, which will not allow the same extraordinary swing generated by England's pacemen last year, the Australians have every reason to be confident.
But for many of the national heroes, this series is going to mean death or glory to their careers.
There is unlikely to be much middle ground.
By the time the coin is tossed to begin the first Test at Brisbane's Gabba on November 23, seven of the likely Australian side will be 35 or older. It simply cannot last much longer at the top without significant renewal.
If the same formula for the side is continued from the 3-0 thrashing of South Africa last month, then no player will be under 30. The average age will be pushing towards 33 and a half, taking the team into rare territory.
The last national side collectively older than this contained Don Bradman, making his Test debut. It was 1928 and the first Test to be played in Brisbane was about to take place at the Exhibition Ground.
The present team is so old because it has been so successful. It is testament to a team that has contained some of the greats taking the game to another level.
Not even the teams under Bradman's stewardship can match this millennium of achievement. While Bradman, who was in charge of the 1948 Invincibles, won 62.5 per cent of his matches as captain (15 of 24), Steve Waugh's sides won an amazing 72 per cent of games (41 of 57), unprecedented for any captain who has been in charge for more than 10 Tests.
Now Ricky Ponting's record is even better. Despite heavy and often unreasonable criticism of his captaincy following the narrow Ashes loss, Ponting has lost just three of 30 Tests, winning 22 and drawing five.
The reality is that Justin Langer will be Australia's oldest opening batsman since World War II when he fronts up at the Gabba in November and Matthew Hayden will not be far behind.
They continue to form the greatest Australian top-order combination of all time. But the pressure from Phil Jaques, who is a decade younger, is becoming irresistible and Langer is coming off a season which was marred by injuries.
For all the attempts to renew the side after the Ashes, the selectors ended up going back to the past by recalling Damien Martyn, Michael Kasprowicz and Jason Gillespie.
This suggests the next generation is not putting its collective hand up.
It is not as if players on the fringe have been ignored. In the 17 Tests from the beginning of the ill-fated Ashes series, 22 players have been given a chance to stake a claim.
Two new players have excelled. Mike Hussey has just scored his fourth century in his first 11 Tests and Stuart Clark had an amazing debut series in South Africa filling in for Glenn McGrath, who is helping wife, Jane, through her latest battle with cancer.
To the astonishment of everyone, Clark was man of the series with 20 wickets at 15 apiece in the three Tests against the Proteas.
Clearly 30 is the new 20 in Australian Test cricket, given that Hussey and Clark had been on the first-class scene for years.
Clark's spectacular debut may keep Gillespie out of the first Ashes Test despite his heroics with bat and ball in Bangladesh.
The frontline pace attack is likely to be Brett Lee, Clark and McGrath, although much will depend on how McGrath, 36, returns to international cricket following an extended break.
Martyn's match-winning century in the last Test against South Africa is likely to see him retained, while Michael Clarke's immediate Test future appears to revolve around whether the selectors will continue to experiment with an all-rounder.
Given the age of the attack and the workload over another long season this is the likely scenario, but who will it be? Andrew Symonds has had just two good Tests in 10 and Shane Watson has never been fit for long enough to claim a place.
Recent history suggests one certainty: no one will retire.
Of the 37 players who have represented Australia in Test cricket during the seven years since Mark Taylor stepped down, only one has left the Test arena on his own terms.
That was Steve Waugh, who ignored advice from retiring chairman of selectors Trevor Hohns to quit and narrowly escaped the axe before having a draining, season-long retirement circus around the country in 2003-04. Waugh was 38 when he eventually went.
Taylor, now a Cricket Australia board member, believes the regeneration of the national side will be one of the major issues that must soon be faced.
"The players are getting paid good money these days," Taylor said in an interview with The Weekend Australian.
"I really feel just looking at the whole side now that there are going to be less and less guys who are going to retire.
"It's going to be a very tough call on the selectors from now on to make players retire.
"If the side keeps playing well they're going to want to keep playing. It makes it very difficult for a selection panel to blood younger players when those senior players are still doing quite well."
Now that Hohns has stepped down it will be up to newly appointed chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch to become a silent assassin.
As Hilditch points out, he has been on the selection panel for a decade and has been part of many difficult selection issues.
"There are tough decisions to be made," Hilditch said.
"Some of the great players of all time will leave the game in the next few years, but that has been a process that has been going on for the whole time I've been in the job.
"Our goal is to pick the best possible Australian side with an eye on the future.
"It's mainly hard to make (decisions) because we're dealing with a great side with probably some of the best players of all time.
"It's always going to be tough. There's no doubt about that."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,18886813-2722,00.html