I knew a while back when we saw the likes of Shane Warne, Glen McGrath, Justin Langer, Brett Lee retired. I guess it could have dated back to when Mark Waugh retired due to bad form and having to deal with the media scrutiny and the selectors jumping on his back.
From then I saw the slow demise of some of Australias legendary cricketers after the Chappell, Thompson and Lillee era. Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh took up captaincies, then retired. We saw Ricky Ponting take up the captaincy. In my opinion, Ricky had it easy. He had a handful of seasoned, experienced players. Glen McGrath retired, so did Adam Gilchrist, Shane Warne, Brett Lee, Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden.
The thing between these players and the current players of the team I find is that the opposition are lacking in fear. There is simply nothing left for them to fear. Brett Lee would fire the ball down at 160 kmph, Glenn McGrath could land the ball at the perfect length every ball he bowled and consistenly do it for hours on end, frustrating the batsmen, while getting under their skin with a few words at them. Shane Warne, well he’s the spin king. Able to bowl someone around their legs and leave you guessing as to which way his next ball will spin.
Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer were both fighters, tooth and nail for every run they got. But when the ball was a bad one and was there to be punshed, that’s exactly what they did. Belted the cover off it.
Australia just seems to lack that with this current team, Ricky Ponting has lost confidence, and it doesn’t seem to help with selectors that can’t make up their mind and media the second guess every decision he makes.
Looking to our future, Michael Clarke has more talen than you can poke a stick at. But he seems more noted for his break up with Lara Bingle than actually being a cricket player. Personally, the media needs to bugger off and let them play cricket.
They still lack fear in a bowling attack though, and it doesn’t help when they can’t get a player to stay in the team long enough to gain experience with the players around him. Why is Ricky Ponting setting a field that the bowler doesn’t want, or can bowl to?
What do I think when I see the Australian Cricket team now? Well… Gilette, Swisse Multivites, Bonds Underwear, Gatorade and “heres my new biography/cookbook”. Just to name a few.
Is now about the time I say the Ausses are going a ‘Scott Muller’?
Our current opening partnership of Watson and Katitch are lacking in almost everything. They haven’t made much of a performance, they are boring, and really are middle order batsman. Ponting needs to go further down the order until he knows what a bat is for and we need a pace attack that is more intimidating than The Wiggles. I’m pretty sure Dorothy the Dinosaur has a better batting average than Marcus North currently.