“What do you call an Aussie at the Twenty20? A spectator,” joked the Daily Mirror, after what was Australia’s fifth successive Twenty20 defeat.
One commentator wrote: “Since they touched down in England 12 days ago, Australia’s tour has gone exactly according to plan… England’s plan.”
Yes, well — this was always going to happen to a team that had not just dominated, but decimated, all opposition for over a decade and, in the process, made themselves thoroughly unloved by the cricket-watching public everywhere but in their native land. [This blog out of New Zealand is fairly representative of how Australia’s exit is being greeted — ‘Feeling Sri Lankan, says the blogger; See Ya, Shielas, is the headline in The Sun.]
Appropriately enough, the defeat at the hands of Sri Lanka appears to have given Ricky Ponting the sort of ‘record’ he doesn’t need: He is now the international captain with the most defeats in T20, having edged ahead of the other team to crash out of the World Cup last evening: Mohammad Ashraful’s Bangladesh.
Over the course of their unchallenged supremacy, international teams including India [and professional and amateur cricket writers, including self] looked to take their cricketing cues from Australia, watching how they picked teams, practiced, played in the various formats; we all looked to distill Aussie best practices and see if they could be imported to our respective regions. How times change: the Sydney Morning Herald suggests in an editorial that maybe Australia should take a few cues from India.
Most of Australia’s elite cricketers play very little Twenty20 cricket at either domestic or international level. Of the 12 players who featured in the pool games over the past three days, only David Warner, Brett Lee and David Hussey played in the recent Premier League and only Warner, Hussey, James Hopes and Nathan Bracken featured in the Australian domestic competition.
It would be harsh to call Australia clueless at this form of cricket but they are clearly one of the most inexperienced teams going around.
Perhaps Australia should follow reigning champion India’s formula for success. Admittedly it was more by accident than design that India adopted a youth policy before the last World Championships, but it has worked a treat and if Australia are to succeed at this format, they will need to pick a team that will play more than a handful of Twenty20 games a year.
India have picked 23 players in the their history of Twenty20 internationals – Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble and Sourav Ganguly have played just one between them. Australia, on the other hand, have used 39 players since 2005.
With Australia having gotten some unexpected time off, the Independent inter alia suggests what Ponting and his men could do:
The Aussies face a week of Ashes training in Leicester after yesterday’s disaster. What can they do there?
*Visit the National Space Centre, although Ponting’s men may be sick of looking at the skies given the number of sixes they have conceded.
*Savour a curry in one of the city’s many fine establishments – nothing, so they say, soothes a battered ego like a chicken tikka masala.
*Enjoy a day at Abbey Park, Leicester’s premier park. Highlights include a pet’s corner.
In sportal.com, Andrew Wu complains that Australia were too conservative — and suggests that the cure [there’s that IPL connection again] is not something the Australian public will readily accept.
Australia’s failure in the ICC World Twenty20 is not only a headache for the players but also a thorny dilemma for Cricket Australia.
The embarrassment of making a straight-sets exit at the tournament, while cricket minnow Ireland advances to the next stage, is nothing a good sleep and a stiff drink can’t fix.
But making sure it doesn’t happen again is not.
….Cricket Australia’s heavyweights also have some thinking to do.
If it’s serious about winning the Twenty20 world championship, it has to allow its players to play in the IPL.
But that clashes with its commitment to the ICC’s Future Tours Program.
Taking the matter up with the ICC is also fraught with danger, not least from a PR point of view.
The Australian public will not approve of well-paid players swelling their bank accounts even further by putting the IPL before country. And it will laugh at any reasoning offered by CA.
Australia’s Twenty20 flop will be forgotten by the end of the Ashes series. That’s why it won’t be a surprise if we fail at the next ICC World Twenty20.
For some close of post fun, here’s Anand Ramachandran — familiar to blog junkies as Son of Bosey — with his idiosyncratic take on the perils of being Australia, the further perils of being a commentator, and much else.
