When I first started watching cricket as a boy, Australia were terrible. It was around 1986, and the Ashes were played in Australia. England's batting line-up included tweedles Gatting and Lamb, the mercurial David Gower and the inebriated Ian Botham. And boy, did they and their team mates give Australia a pasting.
And now, it is without question that the Australian side has come to closely resemble the side of my youth. It's about bloody time.
To enjoy and value success, failure needs to be a living memory. Cricket might be taken awfully seriously by a great many adults, but to all but the most crazed of them, the real life-blood supporters of a nation's teams are its youth. To the ten year-olds of 2010, men like Peter Siddle are their heroes, and rightly so. Just because he is not a bowler of the calibre of Glen McGrath, Dennis Lillee, Craig McDermott (or even, God forbid, Merv Hughes) is hardly the point; youth worships primarily at the culture of now, not yesterday.
The greats of the past will live forever in the hallowed halls of statistics, and that's where they belong. But it's the players of today, who will toil, and fail, and toil some more that will etch their way into the mind of the next generation of cricket supporters. I want the youth of today to see players who, in spite of their lack of ability and success, just keep trying. Siddle may not (to me) be the most exciting cricketer to watch, but for a child watching the game, I have no problem at all in him being an object of admiration. After all, winning is a virtual formality when you're better than your opponents.
In time, people might come to see the failures in Adelaide and Melbourne as less important than the glorious victory in Perth. Because on those few days at the WACA, an inferior side outplayed a superior one. That's worth remembering.
So what does the future hold for our current crop of players? It means that for some, time is up. Ponting's career is almost over, and his Captaincy is surely at an end. That there is no stand-out player to replace him is to miss the point; the failures of 2011 need to belong to a player in his prime, not one in his twilight, even if the replacement is an inferior player. Call me a cynic, but you'd be desperately unlucky to annoint an inferior tactician.
That Ponting has tried his best is not in doubt. It's just that I don't think he's come to terms with being in a second-rate side, after more than a decade of playing in (by some distance) the best side in the world. The kind of arrogance needed to be that good just looks ridiculous when transplated into a lesser side. Imagine if Viv Richards sauntered around like he did in the 1980's as leader of the current West Indian side. He'd look like an absolute twat.
Plus, Ponting's departure, (and soon, Hussey's, Katich's, and then on form, Clarke's) will make it far, far easier for older fans to hope the Australian side can rebuild itself anew. Prolonged success breds contempt. Granted, failure doesn't taste that nice, but sometimes a team, and a nation needs to take its bitter medicine, and just keep its head down for a while.
I look forward to the time when Australia is a strong cricketing nation again. After a few years in the doldrums, I know they'll deserve it. But they're going to need to shed the arrogance of the great sides of the 1990's and 2000's, and replace it with tenacity. They'll need to lose the contempt, and summon some guile; ditch the sledging, and find some gamemanship. Players of Ponting's ilk, or Warne's, McGrath's or Hayden's aren't going to come along that often. And that's ok. We need to stop looking for them. Trust me, if one appears, I doubt they'll go unnoticed.
Until then, we need young players with guts and determination. No one over the age of 25 should be debut for the Australian side in the next few years. The selectors, if they had brains and balls, would be scouring the state sides for the young kids who'd go out to bat without a helmet, or even a bat (or box) come to think of it, just for a chance to play. They're the future; not some well-padded thirty-two year old making big scores against (or for) Tasmania.
We are a second rate cricketing nation right now, and we need to accept it. When we see ourselves as the underdog once more, the spark and spirit that made the success for Border, Boon and others taste so very sweet will return.
I for one look forward to it. So, to any Pommy bastards reading this; we're coming for you. In 2017....
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