As I was restocking the fruit shelves from the weekend trading and hoping not to get hit by all those lightning strikes this morning, I listened again to Michael Clarke’s time worn excuses for being humiliated by a team that has one tenth the resources and ten times the hunger of ours.
It was the same old BS echoed by every coach and player in the Australian system. It’s low and slow and we’re not used to it. But I reckon you’re not a true test cricketer if you’re not effective on all surfaces.
Clarke says we can turn things around in two days but if you haven’t learned to play that sort of cricket in 25 to 30 years what’s two days going to do.
I wish them luck.
Maybe it’ll be like the Barbie Cup where a team gets 300 one day and only 65 the next only to score 300 two days later. The final yesterday in front of a crowd of five coves and two missus was just a continuation of very unwatchable cricket. It took Ian Healy to do his best to talk it up on behalf of the host broadcaster (who puts butter on his bread) banging on about good swing bowling when the batsman just played about a foot down the wrong line against a gun barrel straight one from a bowler who wouldn’t have made the Essendon first grade side in the 70s.
Is Australian Cricket becoming ruled by all these overpaid ‘elite’ players just like Australian Rugby and Indian Cricket? Is it time for some very strong management by knowledgeable administrators with some real cricket background and proper business sense as well?
Shouldn’t we be getting back to teaching our kids the way me and Stacky and Paul Sheahan were taught. By the time we were ten we could play spin bowling on all sorts of surfaces like the park, the back lane and the wet sand at Willy, the yard, the skiddy nets at school. We could turn it a mile with a side on action. So if you didn’t want to get out you used your feet.
Good points here Lou.
The ball can turn a lot on a blue stone lane way pitch.
Bravo Lou. It would be a nice change to hear a simple “our opposition was better over the five days, so we need to do better as a team.”
The conditions? “No excuse, our opponents had to deal with the same conditions we did and they were much better at handling them than we were.”
When has the team that has won the toss not had the advantage. Answer! When the South African Team won the toss and put the Australians in.
Lou, did you see Boof Lehmann has been reading your columns.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/pakistan-v-australia-2014/content/story/793125.html?CMP=NLC-DLY