Australia's - Michael Clarke
After Australia’s dramatic loss to South Africa has everyone talking and once again paying interest to the game. The Australian team was bowled out for their second lowest Test total ever, suffered a humiliating defeat, and suddenly ears start to prick up.
Otherwise, it’s just another game of cricket. Test cricket at that, which most people, except myself, find extremely dull.
Test cricket was most interesting in the 70s and 80s and early 90s. All teams had some pretty good players in them, some real iconic players and characters too. Being relatively wet behind the ears, I still look back at re-runs and wish I was able to be there in the flesh.
They also had some bad players in the mix which made them vulnerable. The players weren’t all professional so anything could happen.
Then came that era where Australia was going around easily beating everyone. It almost killed the game.
It was that era where the game’s rule-makers started coming up with attempts at making the sport more interesting to get people watching, like Twenty20, or whatever it’s called.
Is this a coincidence? No it isn’t.
It’s because Test cricket was becoming so methodical, so predictable due to a dominating, yet dull Australian side, that you knew what was going to happen.
There were other reasons of course. Such as the loss of talent in other countries teams. In that era, usually good teams turned bad and couldn’t compete.
The English were unbelievably bad; the West Indies totally lost the plot; Pakistan too; India and South Africa were only just okay.
Australia were the only team with good players in it, ruled by this new professionalism that bleached any interest – no collapses, no glimmers of brilliance followed by poor – nothing but dull professional technique.
Glen McGrath was lauded as a great even, the dullest bowler to roll the arm over – couldn’t swing it, not particularly fast, constant line and length.
Australia seems now a troubled side.
Most Aussie supporters are angry about it. They are beside themselves with all sorts of theories as to why this is so.
But the team has talent in it; there are some very good bowlers and batters still. They can still produce some good innings; bowl a team out for little.
But the great thing about it is they can also collapse in the batting, and the bowlers can produce some very ordinary spells.
This all means that anything can happen.
The first Test is a perfect example of it. Clarke gets 151, yet still the team collapses and falls over.
Australia will never be a totally hopeless side, ever. But they can now be beaten, and beaten with some astonishingly poor performances, which is worth tuning in just for the chance to see it.
So there’s no need for analysis and getting all worked up over whether Michael Clarke is too metro-sexual to be a decent captain.
Just enjoy the fact that the Aussie team is how it should be and Test cricket now has some new life pumped into it.
There is now that lovely thing in sport called competition, so enjoy.
