Drought in the land of Baggy Green: Fall of the Aussie Empire

Clarke and Crisis

he Frank Worrel trophy, 1995 is considered by many as the turning point of modern cricket. The series which marks the shift of power from West Indies to Australia, was controversial for many reasons and at the centre of the controversies was Steve Waugh, who was to later pivot his nation to cricket’s pinnacle.

Mark Taylor’s Australia won the series 2-1, beating West Indies at home after 22 years. Waugh gathered 429 runs at 107.5 a match, also collected a few bruises and went to sleep with his team jersey, socks and cap on, after the final match. It wasn’t just a victory of one nation over another. In many ways that series symbolised the triumph of grit over power, determination over raw talent and aggression over gentility.

In the first Test at Barbados, he was accused of dishonesty for claiming to have taken the catch of Lara, which T.V replays showed to be doubtful. Lara’s dismissal triggered West Indian batting collapse and eventually led to their loss. The second incident came in the third Test when Waugh collided with none other than the Carribean giant Curtly Ambrose. Ambrose exchanged intimidating glares and the Australian responded with verbal abuse, the incident went so far that the bowler had to be dragged away by his captain Richie Richardson.

With the transfer of crown, cricket was never the same again. Australians were a brute force. If you could not retaliate, you did not exist; if you could, well, you stood a chance for a hard-fought draw. In their heydays, I would not have expected an Australian bowler to replay Walsh’s courteous act of the 1992 World Cup. It would have been too foolish for a self-respected Australian to let an opposition batsman survive, so what if it is in the name of ‘sportsman spirit’.

The historic scuffle between Waugh and Ambrose

And that is what Australian cricket was about. Call it whatever you may, they took pride from it. John Arlott in his book, Concerning Cricket, published in 1949, defined ‘Australianism’ as a “single-minded determination to win”. Though written more than six decades ago — when cricket was still war but fought predominantly between England and Australia — Arlott’s sentiments echoed in our minds till even half a decade ago.

In their days of dominance, Australians were invincible; they could make the opposition’s conduct look ridiculously perfunctory. They could decimate the best of the players to the status of schoolboy cricketers. They could mock you, laugh at you, spit profanities and swagger out of the cricket field with medals and trophies.

Steve Waugh’s famous words, “You’ve just dropped the World Cup” (directed at Herschelle Gibbs after the latter dropped his catch during one of the defining matches of 1999 World Cup) had a distinct cocksureness that, given the fact that his team were playing against the tournament favourites and weren’t even in the semis, could have come from only an Australian’s mouth. Australia went on to win the match and then beat South Africa again in the semis and a match later they were world champions.

Nothing was impossible. A few beers down, they believed the word never existed and we should be thankful that they seemed perpetually drunk. To borrow from Arlott again, “Where the impossible is(was) within the realms of what the human beings can do, there are(were) Australians who believe(d) they can(could) do it.”

We loved to hate them. Hate Ponting for fake appeals. Hate Symonds for the monkey-gate scandal. And so on. But there was always a peculiar assurance that their empire would never cater to archeologists’ fancy. Call it colonial hangover, but most people would agree that there are few events scarier than to witness your ruler’s demise; for even if with disgust, you had always looked up to them.

So, seeing the Australians fold up for 47 runs against South Africa, earlier this year, was anything but heartening. That was not all. They struggled against a rather average Kiwi attack and were bowled out for 136 runs in the first innings of the Test match at Hobart — New Zealand won the match by seven runs to register their first win in Australia after 26 years.

he talks about the fall of the Roman Empire often conclude with riddled arguments. While there is Edward Gibbon’s theory of waning civic virtue, Ferril’s blaming military decline, and Toynbee and Burke’s calling the Empire rotten from the root, the post-Roman romantics have never been able to reach a consensus.

Similarly, for even the best of the chroniclers and finest of raconteurs it is hard to talk in exactitude about when and how the mighty Australians fell. Was it in India in 2001 when Sourav Ganguly’s men halted the Australian juggernaut in the historic series which ended 2-1 in favour of the hosts? Was it in 2003 when the same Indians drew a hard-fought series back in Australia’s own backyard? Or was it in 2005 when a resurgent English side snatched the Ashes away from where it had rested for almost 19 years?

You could pick any or agree on none. Rot never spreads in a day; it takes routine dumping to build a wasteland. However, if you look at the mentioned dates carefully, you would see a discordant pattern. Clamours rose in incoherence. They were omens of decay. But the ageing stars showed individual flashes and we were transported back to our reveries.

I understand the difficulty to part with proven warriors, who for so long had stomped the battlefield, never flinched, mastered their own wounds and the wounded alike. But being Australian they could have avoided such emotional hyperbole.

Since the start of 2009, Ponting has scored 1,959 runs at an average of 35 and if you consider this year alone, his average is down to 26. He has scored a hundred against New Zealand recently but it came after a wait of almost two years. Mike Hussey, whose performance is better than Punter but nowhere near the Mr. Cricket we knew, has scored 599 runs at an average of 37.43 in the last 12 months. And this I say without mentioning Hussey’s poverty-stricken average of 15 against South Africa and 7.6 against New Zealand.

What baffles is the kind of support they still garner from the country’s brightest brains.

Former Test batsman Dean Jones when asked about Ricky Ponting’s continuity replied saying, “Cricket Australia made the call that the criteria was to pick the teams that will play in the 2013 Ashes and the 2015 World Cup. I’ve got the feeling Ponting still wants both of those.”

Ponting goes down after his team's loss to India in this World Cup

It is hard to believe that the same Australians dropped Mark Waugh and more importantly Steve Waugh while at helm, and never allowed them to play another One-dayer after one dismal series in 2001. Similar fate ended ODI specialist Michael Bevan and wicket-keeper Ian Healy’s career before that. Michael Slater, part of each of the 16 Test winning Australian team became a burden only half a year later. Jason Gillespie was dismissed after scoring a double hundred, and Damien Martyn was divorced with heartless silence.

It was during the end of the Warne-Hayden-McGrath era when they attempted the oriental tear-jerking tradition and have since been dwelling in “interesting times”. Warne, McGrath, Hayden and Langer were all given extended run. And that Warne was reportedly asked to reconsider his retirement was possibly the final bolt on Arlott’s Australianism.

Still on a more consoling note, we could pardon their selectors and fans for the blur that covered their foresight. Apart from Michael Clarke, Mike Hussey,  Shane Watson and Brett Lee, Australia in the transition period has failed to produce players, who forget dominating could even stand up and compete in fisticuffs. David Hussey and Brad Hodge were way past their prime when they were drafted in, the selectors never showed any love for Martin Love and Stuart Macgill never benefited from being Warne’s understudy.

“Where the impossible is(was) within the realms of what the human beings can do, there are(were) Australians who believe(d) they can(could) do it.”- John Arlott

It is appalling to see that the team which could once afford to make players like Darren Lehman, Stuart Law, Damien Fleming and Andy Bichel watch from the sidelines, are now throwing up average domestic talents in every next series. Since 2008, 26 cricketers have made their debut in ODIs and a staggering 27 players have bagged the baggy green; while from 1995-2008, only 41 and 34 new players — in the respective versions — could earn national calling.

While, one should not ignore the fact that Phil Hughes, Tim Paine, Peter Siddle, Shaun Marsh and Marcus North have all shown considerable promise, either injuries or the strobe lights of international cricket have intermittently blighted their budding careers. And Mitchell Johnson, possibly the best of them all, now stands as an allegory which combines both these ailments.

Johnson paints the trite story of ‘what could have been’. The lanky player, who in 47 Tests has 1,287 runs and 190 wickets to his name, was once called thebest fast bowler in the world, by none other than Peter Roebuck. Now he looks “like someone auditioning for the part of snarling Australian fast bowler, not the chosen one,” at least in the words of cricket writer Osman Samiuddin. But the latest studded and tattooed look apart, injuries have never allowed him to perform to his capabilities and secure a regular place in the team.

Cameron White and Steven Smith, both of whom were popularly billed to do the undoable — to fill the vacuum left by Shane Warne — have looked clueless and flustered under enormous expectations. While Smith is still 22 and has time on his side, White’s Test career seems almost over. That’s not to say that White himself escapes blame. Some fatal tendencies of the Australian cricketers like preferring fishing over cricket (remember Symonds?) and pub brawls over press conferences remain unfathomable.

There are hopes that an ageing Doug Bollinger, a young James Pattinson or Pat Cummins will lend his fingers to the team’s revival. Still hopes they are and they float in limbo. It is ironical that there was a time, not many seasons ago, when one could not think of a better place to groom a budding cricketer than Australia. What has gone so awfully wrong and so soon in their cricket schools remains an enigma.

At times I am lured to give in to the thought that the world is being too harsh on the current crop. Like second generation celebrities, like lab mice, they are being treated with a mixture of cruelty and curiosity. I know it is too soon to measure Michael Clarke’s captaincy to that of Waugh, Taylor and Ponting’s. To compare Cummins and Pattinson to the calibre of McGrath and Gillespie would be absurd. But the Australians had taught us to stretch our imaginations beyond the facade of possibilities. And we had accepted their mastery even when they harried out batsmen, pushed our bowlers and demoralised our team in pre-match conferences. Twenty six years is a lot of time, enough to enslave you to habits, and time is what we need to realise that ‘Australianism’ needs to be redefined in our dictionaries.