Martin’s Blog

Katich(c)
Hughes
Ponting
Clarke
Hussey
North(vc)
Haddin(wk)
Johnson
Krejza
Bollinger
Hilfenhaus

You couldn’t really do this to the bowlers – now that you’ve picked Hauritz and Siddle you should stick with them for a while. I also wouldn’t be upset with Rogers instead of Hughes – the selectors just need to pick who they think will be the best opener for Australia in the next 5 years and I think that could be either (or Jacques).

But I am serious about the captaincy changes. The current leadership is bereft of ideas when things don’t go to plan. I don’t really know whether it’s Clarke’s fault but he is part of the Ponting inner sanctum that needs to be shaken up.

And I don’t know what Hayden’s doing in the team at the age of 37 – they say he’s there for England but he’s never been able to handle the swinging ball anyway.

McDonald I have no idea about but hopefully he’ll be useful. I just don’t really like bits and pieces allrounders. I think you need to pick good cricket players – one of North as a batting allrounder or Noffke as a bowling allrounder is surely better.

I have no concrete cricket watching memories before the 1994/1995 season (the one day series involving Australia A) – just vague images of Allan Border scratching for runs and Craig McDermott running in hard. I certainly don’t remember the 1992/1993 home loss to the West Indies.

So although it might be a bit melodramatic, I could say that Tuesday December 30, 2008 was the day my childhood finally ended. It was the day I saw the fallibility of the Australian cricket team exposed, not in some far flung land but at the fortress that is the MCG.

Even at the start of the fourth day I believed that Australia would be able to bat for four sessions and save the game. But as is usual batting to save a game is very difficult. And Hayden came out deciding to blast his way out of bad form when a cursory examination of every other time he’s got his form back would show him playing horrible grinding innings in the v.

And from there there was a horrible inevitability about the dismissals – Hussey bad luck, Clarke hasn’t got the belief to drag a game back by himself, Ponting once again showed that despite being an amazing batsman he is incapable of thought.

And then an injured Brett Lee for some reason opened the bowling at the 140km/h pace that with his trajectory just slides onto and then off opposition bats. Siddle tries hard but has got it right once in about 6 opportunities in his test career so far. Johnson is becoming a good bowler but he can’t do it every time. Hauritz is a non-entity in terms of causing a collapse.

So congratulations to the South Africans and farewell to Australian exceptionalism. All this talk of how we play the game in some special Australian way is shown for the rubbish it is – McGrath and Warne allowed us to bat with an attitude that we probably can’t afford any more.