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Sport Nation
Hold or fold: has this era of Aussie cricket reached a cliff?
Tom Morris • November 23rd, 2024 11:57 pm
The eternal challenge of list management in the footy world is knowing when to rebuild and when to top up in search of a premiership.
Finding the right balance is a craft. Geelong and Sydney have refused to regenerate - bucking the trend - while others such as Melbourne have done so out of necessity, eventually achieving success in 2021 to justify the strategy. Hawthorn hopped in and out of a rebuild superbly in 2024.
Australian cricket may be in a similar predicament to Collingwood or even Geelong. But in truth, they are probably more like Richmond in 2023, holding on for something special, even if the evidence suggests those glory days are gone.
After a period of success, do they still blindly trust the team which won them a World Test Championship in 2023? Or is it time to put faith in unproven replacements as a means to shake the status quo, with no certainty of improved results?
In any sport, a byproduct of a great era is the dreaded cliff. The best players are difficult to drop and the logically very best teams have the most very good players. Australia has players who are not yet bad enough to be replaced, but no longer playing well enough to be automatic locks.
In Usman Khawaja (37), Steve Smith (35), Mitchell Marsh (33) and Marnus Labuchagne (30), Australia has a quartet of batters with worrying formlines.
Khawaja has gone 24 Test knocks without a ton, Labuchagne has gone 17 digs but has made a single figure score in six of his last seven attempts.
It's 18 Test innings since Marsh reached three figures and 22 for Smith.
All four made centuries in the 2023 Ashes. All four are hundred-less ever since. If we are to be hyper-critical, it's almost as if last summer was the beginning of the end. Of course, we hope this is a grossly premature assessment. We hope. It's day two of 25 this summer.
It’s debatable whether this Aussie team will be considered ‘great’ by historians of the future, but retaining the ashes twice, winning the World Test Champions and two white ball World Cups offshore warrant significant admiration.
The challenge for George Bailey is the challenge a poker player faces: When to hold and when to fold.
If Labuschagne fails in the second innings, is his position untenable? If Smith struggles in Adelaide, do they need to have a chat about his future?
Travis Head might be a matchwinner, but he’s passed 30 just once in his last 12 digs. He needs better coverage from the top order. And he needs it soon. And he needs to be more consistent.
It's one thing to appreciate a problem. It's another thing to solve it. There is no National Draft to stockpile talent. No trade period to exchange commodities in a mutually-beneficial manner. The only method for improvement is a strong pathway system from juniors through to the first-class system, coupled with shrewd selection policies.
Unlike footy clubs which replenish via the draft, Australian Shield cricket is fairly baron. There is no conveyer-belt of 18 year olds ready to step into the top level. Cricket is a nuanced craft. Reaching the top is difficult, it's why we appreciate those who do with such acclaim.
Even with these realities, It's indisputable that there has never been so few options for the Australian selectors to choose from if they elect to commit to a regeneration.
Josh Inglis is the next batter in. OK, who is the one after that? Marcus Harris? Matt Renshaw? Sam Konstas? You can have your opinions, but it's not exactly clear.
Nostalgic bliss is as glorious as it is jarring in times like this. Remember the days when Stuart Law, Michael Bevan, Michael Di Venuto, Brad Hodge and Chris Rogers couldn’t get a gig? When Mark Waugh was dropped in October 2002, Darren Lehmann replaced him in the XI and Damien Martyn shifted from six to four, where he would remain for a further four years.
Rediscovering this depth is impossible given the fragmented landscape of cricket formats, but in his private moments surely George Bailey would concede it would be nice to have a few more options to select from. A couple more batters, shall we say, bangin' down the door. Will Pucovski's exit hurts this cause, as he was the anointed one.
So when the cliff comes - assuming somewhat optimistically it hasn’t arrived already - what will Bailey do? And are he and coach Andrew McDonald brave enough to shift things mid-series in a similar manner to the post-mortem against South Africa in 2016?
And if they do take the nuclear approach, does it even work? Matt Renshaw, Peter Handscomb and Nic Maddinson came and went as Test players. All may feature again, but it's not as if the three debutants post-Hobart justified the wholesale changes that were made. Adam Voges, Callum Ferguson and Joe Burns were the scapegoats.
After Australia lost to the West Indies in January - perhaps an early sign of problems - McDonald was asked whether the team balance was right.
“We are not in the mood to change the batting order,” he said defiantly.
Would he be as categoric after this test if Smith and co fail again?
At some stage in the next 12-14 months, change is coming. If this summer continues the way it's begun, it may arrive sooner than we thought.
