Brilliant Aussies still worried about future

October 15, 2002 by neil manthorp

Neil Man­thorp — 15/10/2002

For­give me for writ­ing once again about Aus­tralia but I have just enjoyed an unusu­al hol­i­day with Bris­bane as the venue so it is nat­ur­al that the Waugh broth­ers’ col­lec­tive lack of form in Shar­jah should be on my mind.

Let me say upfront that my hol­i­day was unusu­al in the sense that a very, very close friend of mine (also a crick­et writer) was mar­ried in Bris­bane so I was in the com­pa­ny of sev­er­al sports jour­nal­ists and yet I was­n’t work­ing. Strange feeling.

Dur­ing the week of my accli­ma­ti­sa­tion peri­od (impor­tant to pre­pare prop­er­ly for a wed­ding, espe­cial­ly when you’re one of the speak­ers) I set­tled down with a cou­ple of beers with the Aussies to watch the sec­ond Test again­jst Pak­istan in Shar­jah. Of course, it was all over before we could order our third XXXX Gold, lit­er­al­ly. We only start­ed watch­ing at lunch on the sec­ond day.

Instead of cel­e­brat­ing an extra­or­di­nary win, the over­whelm­ing feel­ing among my ‘learned’ friends as well as the assort­ed pub clien­tele was that Pak­istan were a joke and the vic­to­ry there­fore mean­ing­less. But worse still, they reck­oned the per­for­mance once again illus­trat­ed just how often the Aus­tralian team relies on the same, few play­ers for their best results.

So many of the best Aus­tralian play­ers are head­ing towards their mid 30s while the Waugh boys, as every­body keeps remind­ing them, are 37. Even the obvi­ous ‘next gen­er­a­tion’ like Jim­my Maher and Simon Katich are in their late 20s.

When I point­ed out that Aus­tralia ‘A’ had just belt­ed South Africa ‘A’ 5:1 in a one-day series last month, they all scoffed. “Who,” they asked, “were the fast bowlers who stood out in that team as nat­ur­al replace­ments for Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie?”

“Brad Williams?” I ven­tured. My mates scoffed some more. They were any­thing but con­vinced. “A big, lum­ber­ing, injury-prone no-hop­er,” was the consensus.

I have not­ed very lit­tle praise or crit­i­cism of South Africa’s nation­al selec­tors for ven­tur­ing beyond the exclu­sive clique of 14 or so nation­al play­ers this sea­son. Per­haps we are all a lit­tle shocked to see so many new names in nation­al colours in so short a space of time.

But I assure you that many Aus­tralians are des­per­ate for their selec­tors to do the same. “We have a team that could col­lapse as a unit, bar­ring three or four play­ers, and there’ll be nobody with inter­na­tion­al expe­ri­ence to take their place. We’re dic­ing with com­plete ignominy,” my mate said the night before wedding.

Right or wrong, I thought it pro­vid­ed some inter­est­ing per­spec­tive on what Omar Hen­ry and his men are try­ing to do.

The wed­ding, inci­den­tal­ly, was tru­ly magnificent.