The Ashes (and perhaps other cricket stories)

[Peter B]

Okay, I'll admit it...

This 2013 series is turning into a debacle for Australia. We have one of the least experienced teams in years, and we're in the process of being walloped by an English team containing players who are better at just about everything.

With the retirement of batsmen like Ponting and Hussey, this Australian team is considerably less skilled than the Australian team of even a couple of years ago. It must be frustrating for captain Michael Clark to think back to the quality of the team when he made his debut.

The last time Australia experienced such a loss of experienced personnel was in the early 1980s when the stars of the 1970s (Lillee, Marsh, the Chappell brothers) all retired. It took Australia about six years to find a winning combination to replace them. I have a suspicion that the players who will lead Australia's next cricket revival may still be in the middle of high school.

In the meantime, I suspect this series, and the next one in Australia, are going to be tough for Aussie supporters to endure.

[smartcooky]

The last time Australia experienced such a loss of experienced personnel was in the early 1980s when the stars of the 1970s (Lillee, Marsh, the Chappell brothers) all retired. It took Australia about six years to find a winning combination to replace them.

...but not before we managed to give you guys a lesson (1-0 & 2-1 IIRC)

That was when we had some of the the greats of our game all playing in the same era; Hadlee, Cairns, the Crowe brothers, Chatfield, Collinge, Edgar, Wright, Coney & Ian Smith.

[Peter B]

Well, this is why I should stay out of the predictioneering business.

After losing the 2013 England-Australia series 3-0, Australia turned things around in about four months and won the return series in Australia 5-0. While there was a lot of cricket involved, I think the issues behind the turnaround are worthy of wider discussion.

Up to the mid-2000s Australia was the pre-eminent cricket team in the world, with world-best batsmen and bowlers. Then, Australia unexpectedly stumbled in 2005 to lose a series in England, the first time England had beaten Australia in a series in nearly 20 years. Australia returned the favour in the next English tour of Australia (2006-07), but England then handily won the 2009 and 2010-11 series. This coincided with the retirement of many of the Australian players from the 2006-07 series. Suddenly Australia was a middle-ranking cricket power.

In the summer of 2012-13, Australia lost a three test series to South Africa, then seemingly returned to form to beat Sri Lanka.

Then came the debacle of a 4-0 defeat in India. What made things even more ignominious was that after the second test four members of the Australian squad were made ineligible for selection for the third test by the coach for a breach of discipline - in this case a failure to complete homework. One of those so infracted was the vice captain. I can't imagine much which would have been a greater distraction to a losing team on a tough overseas tour.

In a way it wasn't a surprise that Australia lost to England so comprehensively four months later.

Things going wrong included:

1. Sacking the coach less than a month before the first test against England. Mickey Arthur had a good reputation as South African coach, but it seems his style just didn't match that of the Australian team. The period of Arthur's stewardship coincided with the lowest period in Australia's rankings. I get the impression that as the team's performance decreased, Arthur imposed his will all the more strongly, and the players rebelled in the form of discipline breaches, as well as still not improving in performance. His replacement, former Australian player Darren Lehmann was widely praised, but it seems he also took a while to build a relationship with the team.

2. Continued ill-discipline. This manifested itself in a number of ways, both off-field and on-field. The worst of the off-field incidents involved Australian players Dave Warner taking a swing at English player Joe Root when they happened to run into each other in a pub. Warner was stood down for the first two tests, and his later selection was part of the problem of finding a consistent batting line-up. On-field, a couple of players wasted valuable Umpire Decision Reviews when they would have been better to accept the umpire's original decision (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umpire_Decision_Review_System).

3. Erratic selections. Australia had a different fast bowling trio in each of the five tests (actually a quartet in the fifth test) with only one bowler playing in all five tests. Australia also dropped their best performing spin bowler for the first test, only to reinstate him in the third test for the rest of the series. And the batting line-up changed in every test too. With no sense of consistency within the team it's not surprising their performances were erratic too.

4. Luck. Better lucky than good, I suppose. But England certainly seemed to get the edge in this department - technical problems, the occasional umpiring decision and the weather being three examples.

Despite all this, and despite losing the series 3-0, Australia still posted the two highest team scores of the series (in the two drawn games) and led England after the first innings in two of the three games they lost.

It was an odd feeling. On the one hand Australia seemed to have been comprehensively beaten in the series and to have often been scrambling to keep in contention in individual matches. On the other hand the series margin somehow seemed to flatter England. It was as though the English did only just as much as they needed to win the series.

Despite all this, at the time it seemed to me that Australia was in a very deep hole.

[Peter B]

And then in the space of another four months, it turned around in dramatic fashion.

Bizarrely, it wasn't as though the Australian team changed dramatically. But something about their attitude, application and planning did. And the same thing seemed to happen in reverse to England.

1. The coach. Lehmann seems to have had the time to get to know his team, and to have had time to develop plans for dealing with each of the English batsmen.

2. Discipline. The Australians were given their plans, and they were able to stick to them with devastating effect.

3. Consistency of selection. The team chosen for the first test remained unchanged for the entire series, which is unprecedented. At least one of the Australian bowlers was pushing through severe pain in the last couple of tests, and it remains to be seen how this will affect his performance in the upcoming tour of South Africa. But it must also have been a tremendous boost for the players to know that they were consistently being trusted to perform.

4. Luck. This time it seemed to go Australia's way as much as it went England's way in the previous series. In particular the Australian team emerged with no serious injuries.

But was this all? England fielded very similar teams in the two series, but they seemed a jaded and even scared shadow of themselves from the start of the Australian series. Several times in the series they pushed Australia into tricky positions, only to fail to press home the advantage and let Australia wriggle off the hook. Were they tired from too much play? Were they genuinely put off by the aggressive bowling of Mitchell Johnson? Were they perhaps complacent, and not expecting Australia to have improved so much? Certainly by the end of the series their batsmen seemed to be doing little more than going through the motions, which was in stark contrast to the way the Australians tried all the way through the series in England (if only with erratic results).

And not only was the series result a comprehensive victory. In pretty much every statistic - batting, bowling, you name it - Australia excelled over England. The difference between the teams was much greater than it was in the English summer even though Australia won only two more matches. In particular, the victory margins in all five games were large.

The Australians head off to South Africa in a couple of weeks. An away series against currently the best cricket team in the world will be a daunting challenge, even for a team riding on a high like Australia is currently doing.

[Al Johnston]

Yes, this winter of discontent was a nasty flashback to the days of "There are generations yet unborn who will think that 'Englandbattingcollapse' is all one word," and "England have only three minor technical deficiencies: they can't bat, they can't bowl, and they can't field."

The summer victories were dependent, if not entirely on luck, at least on individuals pulling their team out of a mess at critical moments: sadly not a viable long-term strategy, as events have demonstrated...