Until such time as CA is prepared to tackle its issues from the CEO down, we will continue to see spineless performances such as the recent Ashes series. The CA executive, including Sutherland needs a massive shake-up. Cricket Australia should be worried about the impotence of its young players and Tim Neilson and his band of inept, technically deficient coaches have to go to. T20 cricket has seen the decline of technique and the ability to leave the ball outside off stump. While the diminishing of techniques was anticipated I doubt many of us expected the decline to manifest itself so quickly. Anyone who saw Steve Smith bottom edge his pull shot onto his stumps in the Melbourne test will appreciate the decline. No foot work whatsoever and he seemed surprised that he failed to control his bat and the shot. The Australian selectors also have to cop their fair share of the blame as well. They made a series of atrocious decisions including:
- Waiting for the Ashes series to drop Marcus North. Should have been done before Indian series.
- Leaving Nathan Hauritz out with no plan to replace him. They had plenty of opportunity to ditch both Hauritz and North before the Ashes yet they left it until the series had already begun.
- Bollinger playing injured and obviously underdone
- No spinner in Melbourne
- Steve Smith being selected as a specialist no 6 batsman.
- Phillip Hughes being selected over Shaun Marsh with an average of 16 v 57.
- Kept selecting Hilfenhaus when he was obviously still struggling with a knee injury.
- The selection of David Hussey with his obvious technical flaw of backing away and trying to flay everything over cover.
- Not insisting that Ponting bat at 6 when his pride was saying otherwise.
- The inability to recognise young talent coming through and sticking with it. Dan Christian is the perfect example. Australian ODI team is screaming out for a middle order batsman who can bowl medium pace yet we continually pick 33 year old David Hussey and the overrated Adam Voges.
- The selection of Michael Beer. Terrible spinner. How many cans did Boonie have when he recommended him? Jason Krezja's form over the summer warranted a recall to the test side and ironically it took the selectors until the last game of the season to realise that albeit a meaningless game in Perth.
- The selection of 4 quicks Johnson, Tait, Lee and Bollinger for the World Cup. If those 4 play in the same 11 the opposition will get 350+ on the flat wickets of the Sub Continent.
It was welcoming to hear yesterday that no one’s job is safe and CA is undergoing a radical review of its structure and performance. Hopefully this will bring about the death knell for Hilditch and Neilson, which is a step in the right direction. The new coaching staff needs to demand the highest standards. A back-room packed with experts in public relations and media should be thrown out the door never to return. Cricket does not exist to make money. Commerce is a means to an end; that is all. The emphasis should be a return to basics, an involvement in the game at the grassroots. You need to do the basics right and play to your strengths in order to get the best results you can - the current England set up is the perfect example of doing that.
If we look back 25 years when Australia had to last rebuild - Captain grumpy, a Coach that could terrify players and bringing in and trying younger players was a formula that worked. It really took those 4-5 years to find and develop a core of players that would start to bring Australia back as a force in world cricket. This sort of thing will not be immediate and it is right to look at the administration as well as the players. People bagging Michael Clark as not being right for captaincy need to look at what he was doing in the Sydney Test..... Ok he didn't score any runs, but he will come back to form and has a lot of runs in the bank. His handling of Mitch Johnston was excellent - bowl 2 overs of rubbish, get dragged and come back later. He did that with a number of bowlers and at one stage had Beer and Watson bowling because they were the ones who could put it in the right spot. His captaincy was a lot more patient than Ponting and I honestly think he is the man for the job. I also think it is time to bring back Captain Grumpy and make him coach. It is also time to ask Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh and Dennis Lillee to take over and oversee the selection of Australian cricket over the next ten years.
Spot on Shane about Hilditch and Nielsen and may be Sutherland. My fear is that the CA review won't go far enough. The reason we got pumped by the Poms, aside from the fact that they are a bloody good team in good form, is that simply we did not have enough good players to pick from. Sounds simple but with injuries, a spate of recent retirements and difficulties retaining taleneted youngsters in the game the review needs to look at the structure of cricket. The current arrangement (state based teams) is a good competition but was set up last century. To my mind there is not enough depth in australian cricket. Increase the number of teams, increase the number contracted players and the improvement will follow. We have six clubs (states) to pick teams for tests, ODIs and T20s. It was originally set up to feed only one form of the game. You know its makes sense.
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