Jarrod Kimber's Blog, page 33

Ireland Cricket: Part 1 – the origin story

In December 2006, Warren Deutrom entered the office of the Ireland Cricket Union. His role was CEO, replacing Peter Thompson, who had left the job six months earlier. It had taken the ICU months to even work out if they wanted another CEO.

Their only other off-field staff member was a part-time PA called Marie. They had email accounts. That was about all.

Their offices were shared with organisations that looked after rowing, mountaineering, university sports and community games. All had bigger offices. Were more professional. And had far more staff.

Despite having qualified for the World Cup, Irish cricket was a minnow even compared to mountaineering.

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“In the soft grey silence he could hear the bump of the balls: and from here and from there through the quiet air the sound of the cricket bats: pick, pack, pock, puck: like drops of water in a fountain falling softly in the brimming bowl,” wrote James Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Cricket fans from the Test-playing nations, even the newer ones, like to suggest that cricket is theirs. That people from other countries aren’t smart or cultured enough to get the great game. But cricket was played at least as far back as the 1730s in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

Clongowes Wood College was playing cricket in the 1820s, and had its own local playing regulations – that you couldn’t be out if you dragged on, and that the long stop could stop the ball with his coat. It was the school of Joyce. Colin Farrell played junior cricket. Samuel Beckett played two first-class games. Even Jedward have played cricket.

In 1855, Ireland beat the Gentlemen of England. At that stage cricket was the biggest sport in Ireland. WG Grace visited heaps of times. Ireland’s debut as a first-class team was in 1902, when they beat a London County side that included Grace.

John Wisden took a seven-wicket haul against them. In 1865 they even had their own version of Wisden, John Lawrence’s Handbook of Cricket in Ireland. In Sir Stanley Cochrane they had their own version of Kerry Packer and Allen Stanford, who built a ground, brought in big teams, paid county stars to play and also built a railway line into his ground.

Cricket was a major part of Ireland.

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There is a Trent Johnston in every pub in Australia. Even if you didn’t know he was Australian, one look at him would probably confirm it. Leaning on the bar, looking weathered from a life outdoors, getting on with everyone. The man’s man. It’s hard to imagine Johnston ever being young. It was as if he was born exactly the age he seems to have been since the 2007 World Cup, roughly mid-30s.

This quintessential Aussie bloke has become an Irish hero. Kids running around playing cricket behind the stands at Malahide have his name on their back.

For major international teams, Johnston probably wouldn’t be good enough. His bowling is nagging but slow. His batting is powerful, but his highest ODI score is 45 not out. For a major side he would be a bits-and-pieces player who is just not good enough at either discipline. For Ireland he is perfect. A utility player who can fill any gap. He has been the captain, the aggressor, the motivator, the professional, new-ball bowler and death-overs specialist. He has moved around the batting order and done whatever he needs to do for his adopted country. He’s been their rock and their kick up the ass.

In the future, should Ireland continue to progress as they have done, they won’t need players like Johnston. But without him over the last decade, Irish cricket wouldn’t be where it is right now.

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Malahide is a cricket ground. That is all. There is no grandstand. No gates. No toilets. Not even an indoor training facility. There is a Malahide Cricket Club building, but if it had better days, they were long ago.

Nothing else at Malahide is permanent. You might have seen the ground when Ireland hosted England and thought you saw more, but that was all an illusion, a costly illusion. An over €375,000 illusion. A 10,000-seat dream of what Ireland want. A home. As a joke, some locals were calling it Fortress Malahide as the temporary stands were erected.

Three weeks before the game was held, all the plans had to be changed when the grandstands were found to be in the wrong place. Nothing is easy in Irish Cricket.

Each seat cost roughly €15 to be brought in and installed. Then those seats were sold for €40. That is €25 per seat to hire security, pay for England’s travel, the brochures, promotion and everything else that goes with setting up a 10,000 people event. By the end, Cricket Ireland will have hoped to make a €30,000-40,000 profit. But this game was not about making money, it was about doing it right and making sure people noticed.

In other countries any profit from tickets is a bonus. The real money is made by the TV rights. Cricket Ireland gets its money from the ICC, from the two governments (Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland), sponsors, and then a retainer from the ECB. Due to a particular quirk of the European broadcast rights, the rights are not done on a country-by-country basis; England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are one market. And the ECB manages that deal by paying Ireland a small retainer.

Ireland could say no, and try to get their rights out of this deal, but would the ECB still send teams to play them, and would Sky buy the rights off them for more than the retainer fee?

It means that unlike for the ten Test-playing nations, TV rights are the fourth-biggest source of revenue for Ireland, not the largest.

If India came to Ireland to play two ODIs, and Cricket Ireland could sell these games on without the ECB being involved, they would essentially completely change their entire financial situation in one go. That can’t happen at the moment. When the IPL was interested in playing games in Ireland during their off season, the ECB said no due to many reasons, one of which may have been that Sony owns the IPL rights.

Cricket Ireland’s full-time staff tops out at 20. That includes coaches and on-field support staff. It is not uncommon for a Cricket Ireland employee to cover six or seven areas in their job. A cricket development officer will man a booth at Malahide during the break because they have simply run out of people to do it. These are people who are passionate cricket fans, but even more passionate Irish cricket fans. The press box wifi network name was “Go team Ireland”, the password was “Bangalore2011″. The Cricket Ireland employees cheered every wicket and boundary during the England game.

Then there were the volunteers. The day before the game there seemed to be hundreds of them. All proud to be involved, doing any job. Showing their family and friends around the ground like they’d built Rome. Considering where Irish cricket had come from, it was their Rome, at Fortress Malahide.

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Despite repeated calls from those who loved and played cricket in Ireland, no official board was brought together during the 1800s. Unlike in other countries, no group of crusty old men in blazers sat around complaining about things while also doing important things like inventing competitions. Cricket in Ireland had no administration at all. It simply existed. Not that it mattered when it was the most played sport in Ireland.

Cricket’s decline in Ireland was much like that in the USA. Both were proud, nationalistic cultures that saw cricket as the most English game; two countries that were proud of who they were and resented the English in many ways. Both turned to their own sports. Ireland took to Gaelic football and hurling, the USA to baseball and American football.

With no one in charge of cricket or no real formal set-up, the game in Ireland slowly evaporated. Cricket, being the insular, conservative, private gentleman’s club it has always been, just let these two nations fade away.

The Gaelic Athletic Association was formed in 1884. There was an Irish Cricket Union, but it did little more than select the national team. The GAA did far more than that. It started off by structuring the country’s sports, creating competitions that still exist today. It then went about attacking the other sports. Most importantly the foreign sports that were not part of the association.

In 1901, the GAA brought in law 27, which banned GAA players from participating in or watching the English sports of rugby, football and cricket. If you played these foreign games, you would be banned from hurling and Gaelic football. The true Irish sports. The feeling was well known that if you played cricket, you were less Irish. “The ban”, as it was called, was not the final nail, it just made it more official.

According to Ger Siggins’ book Green Days: Cricket in Ireland, former Ireland head of government Éamon de Valera was at a cricket game once when he picked up a cricket bat and showed some decent cricket skills. A photographer ran over with a camera. The Fianna Fáil founder dropped the bat straight away. He knew that a photo like that would mean he wouldn’t be invited to Croke Park, the home of Gaelic football. With stories like that, it is amazing that cricket survived as well as it did.

The effects of the patriotism, missing admin, the ban, lack of interest, or even knowledge are what cricket in Ireland is still fighting today. For every border patrol officer who is upset that England won’t send their best players to play his country, another ten Irish people don’t know the sport exists.

The perception of cricket, when people know of it at all, is often that of a middle-class garrison, Protestant and snobby sport. Those who do play are the same sorts of people who are referred to as West Brits by the local Irish: people who think of themselves as posh and above the local culture.

These are the thoughts of the people who love the GAA sports. The sort of people who wear their Gaelic shirts with pride as they walk around the streets. Those shirts are often made by a company called O’Neills.

O’Neills is also the Irish cricket team’s shirt-maker. In a perfect case of O’Neills trying to reach a new market and Cricket Ireland trying to show how Irish it really is, these two organisations have met in the middle to form a partnership that they probably both believe is beneficial.

For Cricket Ireland, they want to feel as Irish and home-grown as possible. While Ed Joyce might be the best player, he lives in the UK, and is middle class. John Mooney doesn’t look or sound like he should be a cricket player. In fact, he has talked about not telling people he played cricket when he was younger. It was Mooney who tweeted that he hoped Margaret Thatcher’s death was “slow and painful”. That’s not the sort of thing a posh West Brit would do.

Cricket Ireland regularly uses Mooney ahead of other higher-profile players as a promotional tool, much in the way Lonwabo Tsotsobe or Fawad Ahmed might be used in campaigns by CSA and CA to reach non-traditional cricket markets. When you are a minority sport, and a minority team within your sport, you have to use everything you have.

Ireland cricket benefited from the economic boom. Not just by attracting sponsors but also because as money flowed into the coffers of cricket clubs, they could afford more and more pros in their clubs. They could afford overseas players for their county limited-overs team. They could afford to hire professional coaches.

Johnston came to Ireland for club cricket. Then he stayed. He wasn’t the only one. Jeremy Bray did the same. Andre Botha and Naseer Shaukat also came over. These players all strengthened the club system, before strengthening the national team. The booming times had made Ireland a great country to emigrate to, and cricket certainly benefited from that.

Ireland was multicultural. Their talisman was an Aussie. Botha was South African. Their most consistent batsman, Bray, was another Aussie. Shaukat was a Pakistani first-class cricketer. Their coach was Adrian Birrell from South Africa, and then he was replaced by former West Indies player Phil Simmons. Even their CEO was English.

These men brought a culture of professionalism. They used experience, immigration and naturalisation to move Ireland to the next level: a team that could upset major nations.

Johnston, as captain, was often the main focus of this. There is a long- standing joke in Australian cricket that New Zealand can take all the Aussie-born players they want, since Australia got Clarrie Grimmett from New Zealand. Australia had Tiger Bill O’Reilly in the 1930s and ’40s, a man clearly of Irish ancestry. Had he been eligible for Ireland at that stage, he would have been wasted on them. Johnston may not be as good as Tiger Bill, but he was the right man at the right time.

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In 1990, Raman Lamba upset his new Irish team-mates by refusing to pay for his Irish kit. He was virtually the only professional player in a team of amateurs, and as a professional he didn’t see why he would have to buy a jumper. When Ireland were trying to qualify for the 1999 World Cup, journalist James Fitzgerald had to substitute, twice, because of injuries. In the preparation for the 2007 World Cup qualifiers, captain Jason Mollins would fly back from London every weekend to play club cricket in Ireland. Kevin O’Brien talks in his book Six After Six about learning professionalism when playing on an ODI contract at Notts. Until 2009, Ireland had no international player contracts. Their only professional players were county players. For the 2012 World Twenty20, Craig McDermott was their bowling coach, and he was paid by the ICC.

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The Irish Cricket Union was officially founded in 1923. It was too late, as the damage had been done, but finally there was a board in charge of the Irish game.

On the field they beat South Africa in 1904, and West Indies in 1928. But until they arrived in the World Cup, there was only one game anyone wanted to talk about.

In 1969, West Indies went to Sion Mills straight from a Test match against the English. They were there for an exhibition match. There was not even a toss, as both teams agreed the crowd was there to watch West Indies, so they should bat first. Perhaps Basil Butcher didn’t look at the pitch before he made this decision. This was a pitch that was more glue than grass.

Each ball took a chunk out of the surface, and then deviated in any direction it wanted to. West Indies also ran into perhaps the greatest talent Ireland had produced in years, the allrounder Alec O’Riordan. Even the Australians rated O’Riordan. He was backed up by Doug Goodwin, a decent bowler in his own right. These two took nine wickets between them, West Indies made 25 runs. That included a 13-run last-wicket partnership.

In Batmen – The Story of Irish Cricket Ozzie Calhoun suggests the Irish boys let West Indies off the hook a bit. West Indies refused to wait for the ball, and were continually caught in the ring as they tried to play their expansive shots. Sion Mills was not the village ground for driving on the up like Butcher (2) did. Neither was it made for the extravagant whip through mid-on Clive Lloyd (1) tried. And it couldn’t have been any further from the sort of place you lean back and hit a left-arm bowler over cover for six like Clyde Walcott (6) did.

On his way off, Lloyd could be seen chatting to one of the Irish players, who just had a massive smile on his face. Walcott was not smiling; at one stage he walked down the wicket and smashed the surface back into place with the full force of the back of his bat. It had probably been a while since he’d needed to do that.

Instead of being a comeback to the glory days, it was more of a weird flare-up that Ireland could never replicate. Rather than anything else the win was more about West Indies’ humiliation at being smashed by a country that didn’t even play cricket.

In 25 first-class matches, Alec O’Riordan would average 21.38 with the ball.

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Ireland were patronised, laughed at, and couldn’t stop nicking off in their first game at the 2007 World Cup. Against a Zimbabwe team that had just decided it was not good enough for Test cricket, Ireland struggled to 221. Johnston had done his bit, a sloggy 20 off 24. A signature sort of innings.

In the field Ireland struggled to keep Zimbabwe to the small total. It was not a pretty game, it was two out-of-touch teams slinging mud at each other. Zimbabwe trying to get out of the puddle, Ireland not letting them. Johnston had been predictably accurate, miserly and stubborn with his 1 for 32 off ten.

Now it was his captaincy that was needed. He stomped around the pitch, screaming at his players. He was not trying to gee them up, he was literally trying to scream them into action. His eyes were wild. He looked more like a man looking for the bloke who punched his daughter than a captain of an international cricket team. It wasn’t subtle motivational captaincy. He was loud and angry. He wanted this win. He wanted his players to want it like he did. And he wanted Zimbabwe to know how much Ireland wanted it.

In the last over, Zimbabwe needed nine runs, with Stuart Matsikenyeri and the No. 11 at the crease. In an MS Dhoni type move of true faith, instead of using his seamers, who had overs left and were in form, Johnston went with allrounder Andrew White, who had only bowled two overs in the day. It was a messy last over. Zimbabwe tried to give their wickets away, White bowled more than a few boundary balls, and with one ball to go, and Matsikenyeri back on strike, the scores were tied.

They would remain like that after the last ball. A tie. Ireland had tied their first-ever World Cup match.

In the Setanta documentary Batmen – The Story of Irish Cricket, there is footage of just after that match of coach Burrell telling his side that they can also beat Pakistan. Johnston is behind him, topless, playing with his chest hair.

During the Pakistan match it was Johnston who gave the speech. It was the sort of speech many Australian and Irish sports legends have made before. Angry, passionate and direct. He suggested that if the players didn’t want to go back to their day jobs straight away, working as postmen and buying fabric, they had better win the game. It was, much like his cricket, blunt and effective.

In that game it was Johnston who hit the winning runs. A dirty slog to the leg side from a ball outside off. On St Patrick’s Day Ireland had won their first World Cup game, and a whole country found out it had a cricket team.

To be continued tomorrow…

The lost White hope

When he was a teenager, people said Cameron White was the next Warne, who could bat and might captain Australia. It was a lot to carry.

White looked like he could carry it. Until you’re standing near him, you don’t quite get the full effect. His nickname is from a polar bear that appears in rum ads. Which when you’re close to him you fully understand. He’s not built like a batsman, or even a cricketer. He’s built more like a gym-body beach bum.

His shoulders are epic. White is constantly pulling at his sleeves. It is probably a tic from a lifetime of ill-fitting shirts. He has what sports commentators like to refer to as an impressive frame. He looks like he could pick up most cricketers and toss them back over his shoulder just for fun.

If that’s what he looks like, it’s often the complete opposite of how he actually is on the field.

When White bowls he seems one ball away from breakdown. A stock ball that produces few worries. He relies on pushing his even straighter ball through a bit quicker and trapping a player back on the crease. It is a risky practice. And unless you have the genius of Anil Kumble, you are going to fail more than you succeed. The only way it works is if you believe in your method completely. It seemed like White never has. At times of late, he has even resorted to medium pace. Giving up legspin for medium pace is the last resort of any leggie.

When White bats he has two modes. Angel of death or dead duck. Early on he always looks one full and straight ball away from a dismissal. Other men with his power intimidate bowlers, but unlike Symonds or Watson, White can look awkward and out of place in the middle. Until he hits the ball long and straight, his innings seem to be played with a handbrake on. When he does take a ball long, he often leaves his bat up for a good few seconds. On other batsmen it looks arrogant. For White, it is almost surprise at what he can do.

There is not a bowler on earth that he can’t lift down the ground and into the stands. Most of them well beyond that. When he is in a purple patch of form, your best chance of getting him caught is in the second tier. And once in that form, the good form can last for months. Unfortunately, the bad form can last just as long. And he has seemingly no middle ground.

The only time you see White as he should be is in the field. If he’s unsure as a bowler and flawed as a batsman, as a captain he’s a king. David Hookes was given great credit for giving White the captaincy at such a young age, but Hookes would have been pronounced blind had he not seen the phenomenal tactical nous of White.

White reads cricket as well as any modern player. It has not been taught by coaches or academies, it is a natural gift. To see him in the field is to see a captain as one should be. Upbeat, attacking, in charge, active, and ahead of the game. In limited- overs cricket he understands angles about as well as any captain. He has the energy and spirit of a young captain who is not scarred despite ten years of professional captaincy. For captaincy nerds, it is worth just watching him in the field. He’s Shane Warne 2.0 without the “all lost to win” attitude in every game. Results-wise he is the best captain Victoria have ever had, and he’s still only 30.

From the start of his international career he was in the circle, giving Ponting advice. Sometimes Ponting liked it, sometimes it appeared as if he had a headache. Before, Ponting had listened to titans of Australian cricket – Gilchrist, Lehmann and Warne. Now a young kid who looked like he’d got lost on the way back from a beach was yapping at him, and pointing to all the places he thought Ponting should be attacking or defending.

Australia thought so much of White that when Michael Clarke stepped down from T20 cricket, White took the job. It wasn’t a big surprise. He had led Victoria as they dominated Australian domestic T20 cricket. He broke records in English T20 cricket, and was one of the first players tapped on the shoulder for the IPL. He was known to most as a captain before he was known as a cricketer.

White’s reign was short. Six games. As a batsman he struggled due to one of his hauntingly long form lapses. He never bowled. Soon he was out of the ODI team and lost his role as captain. White has not played ODI cricket since 2011, and was not in the current T20 side to play England.

At one stage he was future Warne. At another, future Australia Test captain. Now he is a very occasional bowler who will barely be remembered as a former Australia T20 captain. If he ever could have put the confidence and belief he had in captaincy into the rest of his game, he would have become the sort of Australian cricketer their team needs so much now. He has elements of the three kinds of cricketers Australia want most. A spinner. A batsman. And a leader.

At 30, he has been replaced as Victoria’s captain. Matthew Wade has taken the job. It is a massive move to dump the second-most successful captain in Shield cricket when he is only 30. But it is only partly about White.

Cricket Victoria felt the indirect pressure of Cricket Australia to provide Australia with a potential future captain. There is a leadership gap in Australian cricket, and Cricket Victoria (Cricket New South Wales replaced Simon Katich with Stephen O’Keeffe) is trying to fill it. Wade is a fighter, someone who has overcome cancer and a poor wicketkeeping technique to make it as Australia’s first-choice keeper, right up until the Ashes. Yet the major reason Brad Haddin was brought back was for leadership. Which seems odd, considering Wade’s new job.

In the push for youth and magic potions, Cricket Australia have often discarded their strength, a strong Sheffield Shield competition. Their tampering with the Futures League was a disaster that they are rectifying. Cricket Australia constantly rewards youth over skill and experience. While some would love it if the kids all had a go, if the kids all have a go and there is no one around to test them, what is the point? What will they learn playing in Cricket Australia’s indirect age-group series? This pressure on the states to find leaders is just another short-term fix that won’t help. Wade, 25, is a potential leader. White, 30, is out.

The only problem is, Australian Test captains rarely come from Shield cricket these days. Australian captains are picked from within the team. Mostly from the players who have played several years of international cricket, which makes them unavailable for Shield cricket. Border, Taylor, Waugh, Ponting and Clarke didn’t get to play entire seasons as Shield captains. Perhaps with the exception of Taylor, they really learnt the job as second in charge of the Test team, or through captaining the limited-overs sides.

With Haddin averaging 22 in his comeback series, the chances are Wade will be the keeper in all three formats and he’ll barely captain Victoria. With Haddin out of the side, if the Australian team really rate Wade, he’d be made vice-captain of the Test side. If Victoria really wanted to replace White with a potential future captain who could get invaluable experience, they’d be better off with Alex Keath or Peter Hanscomb. They are both older than White was when he took over from Darren Berry.

Or they could have left White there to help develop the next generation of cricketers. Other than as an occasional member of the limited-overs side, the one thing that White can still give Australian cricket is his captaincy. Not at the international level but at domestic. A young first-class batsman should be examined by a smart captain. Poking at a technique that has been largely untested in age-group cricket and academies. A Victorian bowler with promise being mentored by an expert. A player trying to get back into the Test team up against a captain who knows how to make him struggle.

White’s batting and bowling might not have been Test quality, but his captaincy is. The one thing he did best, the one way he could continue to help Australian cricket, is now being taken out of Shield cricket. How soon before he drifts into the life of a T20 freelancer and is virtually lost to Australian cricket altogether?

You’d think a country that is having so many problems producing skilled cricketers would be a little more hesitant to throw away the ones they have. A few days after his 30th birthday, Australian cricket has started to distance itself from one of its lost generation. In doing so, they continue to lose.

Cops stop Oval party

David Warner made his way to the boundary and the crowd cheered. Then they gave him the Rocky theme song. Then they chanted “Warner, Warner give us a punch.” Then Dave Warner scratched his backside and the crowd cheered.

The last day of the Ashes crowd was essentially like being in a T20 crowd where people actually understood the game.

People who have never screamed wide in their life, screamed at a ball slightly wide of off stump. People who only ever clap politely raised their hands above their heads. Spontaneous cheering took over normal human beings. Leg byes made people shriek. If there was a fancy dress booth behind the pavilion, the members would have hired batman costumes and danced on the balcony. Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott were told to get on with it. Kevin Pietersen’s arrival was celebrated like Elvis’s second coming.

It was not like a normal day of Test cricket in almost any way. It was like Test cricket had a pulse and meant something deeply. One guy ripped his shirt off at an Australian wicket. Forget politeness and muted enjoyment, this was a party. The England fans were here to party with their boys.

The Australia fans sat lifeless in one area, like wallflowers at a school dance. Their faces had 3-0, and for a time probably 4-0, written all over them. Their wallets had been worked over, their national identity had been worked over and now they had to sit at the party while the other team enjoyed every single minute. There was not a smile between them.

The rest of the crowd enjoyed every shot, booed every attempt at Australia slowing down the game and couldn’t believe their luck that they were about to see an amazing win that almost none of them could have believed would happen. They were probably so excited, they never even noticed the light fade. Until the lights in the pavilion became obvious, there was no need too.

Then the party was stopped, as if the police said the music was too loud. No one agreed.

The way the crowd had formed into a cheering single entity that was intent on a good time, you could have been forgiven for thinking a riot was about to happen. Instead a lot of booing and literally a handful of empty plastic beer cups were thrown at no one in particular. Between the boos the crowd made the sound of confusion, which is hard to describe, but you know it when 20,000 people do it at once.

The umpires were booed as they walked off and then booed as they got their awards. Aleem Dar waved at them. The match referee was booed as well. As was the third and fourth umpire. If the umpires had a mascot, it also would have been booed.

The ground was still virtually full, except where the Australians had left. Those Aussies who remained sat in a tight group. Safety in very small numbers.

Shane Watson receiving the Man-of the-Match award was booed. It was hard to know why. When Mike Atherton announced Warner, there was more booing. But Warner had earned it. Atherton tried his best to educate the mob about the light rulings from a stage not facing half of them with slightly delayed audio. Surprisingly it didn’t work.

Then Michael Clarke was booed. And then clapped. Even on a day you saw him try and drag the umpires off for bad light, he’s still not the villain Ricky Ponting was for opposition fans.

Then Alastair Cook was booed. It wasn’t a personal thing. He just tried to defend the umpires, and that was a no go area, even if you had just won the Ashes.

There was far more clapping of course. Sometimes during the boos. Sometimes just after. The players were cheered for each medal. They were cheered for each gesture. People cheered for the fireworks (which would have only been useful in conditions this dark). People cheered for champagne. People cheered as the players walked around the ground with their kids. People cheered for cheering’s sake.

If you were watching on TV you wouldn’t have understood it. You had to be there. See the excitement. Hear the noise. Feel the party. It was Test cricket at its very best. The crowd cheered. The crowd booed. The crowd were entertained.

It was a party. An Ashes party. A Test match party. A celebration of England. A celebration for Test cricket. It was loud. It was fun. It was nonsensical. It was cricket.

Dear Ashes

How Australia got here

There is something wrong. Your work has lost the plot. They want to know exactly what all the problems are. They appoint an independent commission to get all the facts. You go into the meeting ready to give your full and frank opinion in a safe and anonymous way.

But in the room is your boss. He says, you can ask him to leave if you want.

Would you ask him to leave? And let him know that you are essentially about to badmouth him.

Would you keep him there, but still be as frank and honest as you would be without him being there?

Or would you leave him there, and say the sort of things that would keep your relationship with him super sweet?

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In the last eight Tests, this hard-working, infighting, disorganized, magic-seeking Australia team has lost seven times and not won once. They’ve lost three of their last four series. They haven’t made an ICC final in their last two attempts. And the words Australian cricketer no longer mean a monster that will destroy your hopes and dreams, unless you are Australian.

Australia’s Test team has slipped, their ODI side hasn’t made the semi-finals of the last two ICC tournaments and their T20 side is ranked seventh (as laughable as those rankings are). At the end of this Test, Australia will be ranked fifth in the world. If there were to be a World Test Championship, Australia would not invited. That’s not a myth, that’s fact. It’s also not a mistake, it’s well earned.

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Jason Gillespie never made it to the revenge Ashes. Damien Martyn, Justin Langer, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne retired at them. Matthew Hayden stayed on for another couple of years with Adam Gilchrist. Brett Lee couldn’t get through Tests, and ultimately ODIs. Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey went in the same summer. That is ten pretty decent players to leave in seven years.

Players do retire. To be with their families, to take up new positions. Because they’re tired. Because they’re struggling. Because they’re old. Even Sachin isn’t going to be playing until he is 50. Things change.

But Australia lost more than just the big names during that period. The ICL came and claimed some of their most experienced and well-respected Shield players. Names like Ian Harvey, Matthew Elliott, Jimmy Maher, Michael Kasprowicz, Stuart Law, Michael Bevan and even Gillespie, again, were lost. Cricket Australia decided that any players who were part of the ICL were effectively radioactive. There was pressure from the BCCI, but it was CA who made the decision. Those players who were in the Shield, would never play again, instantly weakening it. Those who were coaching candidates would take a few years before they were let back into the ground.

At around the same time, Cricket Australia changed the National 2nd XI competition to the Futures League. The Futures League was not the name of a horrible sci-fi film, but a way of getting more young players into the Shield system. A new rule of this competition meant that a minimum of eight players had to be under 23. Turning what was one of the strongest non-first-class competitions in cricket’s history into an under-23 competition with a few wise heads. They also shortened it to three days, and even more bizarrely had capped overs for innings (96 in the first, 48 in the second). A once proud and important part of Australian cricket had been experimented with the way stoner pizza makers do on the late shift.

The 2nd XI competition was always very important in Australia, as only six teams made up the Shield, so they needed a way to groom and expose new players. It was also a combination of young fresh-faced hopefuls, Shield players who were not regulars and grizzled club cricketers who had been performing well that year. It was brutal and uncaring, the perfect way to prepare for first-class cricket. And if you listen to the many, many, many Shield cricketers who complain about it, Cricket Australia turned it into a friendly crèche for spoiled children.

One way or another, it is certainly the case that Shield cricket went from the best first-class competition on earth to just another first-class competition. And it did so quickly. In the early 2000s David Hussey was averaging 45 for Victoria and 65 for Nottinghamshire. By 2011 his former team-mate Damien Wright was saying that county cricket was stronger than Shield cricket. Now even if he was wrong, the fact that the two could be compared showed how much Shield cricket had slipped.

There are others who aim their guns at the Big Bash League. Now the BBL has many flaws. Instead of being contracted for and developed by one club, you add another that in many ways never needed to be added. At one stage a few years ago, Pat Cummins was getting advice from the national, state and franchise physios depending on what time of the season it was. It also means that a young player can be paid far more by a franchise than they can for being a first-class player. Cricket Australia is telling these players, directly at times, that T20 is more important than Shield cricket.

The BBL is also midway through the Shield season. It stops Shield cricket dead. Shield cricket ceases to exist for just shy of two months next season. That means for a player who is just a first-class specialist, he gets almost two months off with no first-class games to play during the major part of the summer, and also can’t push his name forward for the Test side in that time. If that player does choose to play, it’s also not like they’re playing in a strong competition. It has eight teams not six, spreading the talent further. At that time of the year it is practically impossible for the Australian Test players to play. And generally, the overseas players who do play are not the best players on earth.

Then there are some who will say T20 techniques are changing the way young Australians bat, but what country doesn’t play T20? Alastair Cook has played T20 for Essex, Jonathan Trott has played for England in T20, and KP plays in the IPL. As do Dravid, Kohli, Tendulkar, Kallis, Smith, De Villiers, Sangakkara, Jayawardene and Gayle. Since the IPL started, Chris Gayle’s Test average has gone up four runs. That is despite the fact that he plays in almost every T20 competition on the planet.

The IPL, which does not stop the Ranji Trophy midway through and does have stars from India and the world, is also not to blame. The South African players are in the IPL, Champions League, and they have their own T20 tournament. They seem to handle all this. It doesn’t affect their Test team being the best on earth. Their techniques and behaviour seem unaffected by the big money and constant slogging.

The IPL has even helped Australia in the past. Shane Watson used the first tournament as a celebration of himself as a star. Shaun Marsh showed the selectors he was around. Ryan Harris used it to learn subcontinental bowling. And countless Australian players are given free lessons in playing spin on the subcontinent.

It also means that Aussie Rules football finally has to compete with cricket. Since Aussie Rules went professional, every player who was good at both sports, and since they share a heritage and grounds, it is a lot, chose football. Almost every champion Aussie Rules footballer has a story about how they were equally good at cricket. How they could be in the top order for Australia had they not chosen another sport. Shane Warne partly chose cricket because he was a failed footballer. Brad Hodge tried to play football. Jamie Siddons, Max Walker, Keith Miller and Simon O’Donnell all played both codes.

But there are more than 500 active professional football jobs in Australia every year. There are fewer than 100 cricket jobs. Dan Marsh was in the first 40 cricketers for Australia for a few years, and he probably gets recognised in the street twice a year. A comparable footballer would still be getting VIP nightclub treatment five or ten years after he retired. But now cricket can fight back, with the two devils the IPL and the BBL, kids know there are more jobs, with more pay, that can also make them more famous. Mitchell Marsh, Alex Keath and Meyrick Buchanan all chose cricket over football in the last few years. It isn’t many, and only Marsh has really made it, but with Aussie Rules getting bigger, and more sports being played in Australia than ever before, any kids who choose cricket first is a win.

Especially as Australia’s recent sporting efforts would suggest that they are no longer the powerhouses they once were at sport.

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In 2003 an Australian was in a sports bar in New York watching an NBA game. The guys at the bar heard his accent. They treated him like he was an Australian athlete worth of praise, not a pudgy world traveller on the way to the World Cup. They also told him that Australians were, by far, the greatest athletes on the planet. At that stage Australians were known for two things – Steve Irwin and being better than everyone else at sport. The Australian tried to tell them it was a bit of a bubble, and that it wasn’t actually a mythical country. Had they found a court, he would have shown them his jump-shot to disprove the theory for once and all. Instead the legend kept growing.

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In the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Australia won no gold medals, and only five medals all together. In Sydney 2000, they won 16 and 58, in 2004 Athens it was 17 and 50. In Montreal, they were the 32nd ranked nation, in Sydney and Athens, they were fourth. How did the world’s 52nd most populous country on earth, with about 20 million people, end up the world’s fourth best sporting nation on earth during consecutive Olympics?

It was helped by the conditions. An active outdoor lifestyle helped. Most suburbs and country towns had sport at their heart. A joint football, cricket, netball and tennis club was where people spent their time, playing, watching, and drinking. The weather helped too. Summer sports can be played almost all year round in many parts of the country. Queensland, as a state on its own, embarrasses whole nations by the number of golds it has won in Olympic pools. Partly, at least, because it’s hot there and you want to be swimming all the time. But other countries have good weather and active lifestyles.

It’s not genetic. Unlike other small countries who have done well, it wasn’t a genetic predisposition to one or two sports; Australians dominated the world in almost everything that could be classed as a sport other than football. They’ve won medals in the summer and winter Olympics. They have been blessed with naturally athletic indigenous athletes, but despite their phenomenal success, they are only less than 2% of the population and aren’t the reason Australia was so successful.

So what was the most important part of Australia’s rise to the top? Money and hard work.

While other countries treated sport as a pastime, Australia looked at it as a business. They found the world’s best coaches and ploughed money into sports science. They created academies, scholarships and institutes while everyone else outside of the American Collegiate system or the very elite end of sport was working a day job and playing a bit of sport when they could. Sports psychologists joined physios, doctors and nutritionists. Their athletes were better trained, equipped and looked after than those of most nations on earth.

This led to phenomenal success. This led to the myth. But recently it has all started falling down. And it isn’t just cricket.

The latest Olympics were very average for Australia. Only seven gold medals, and their worst result since 1988. In tennis, Australia have produced one grand slam winner in ten years. They were beaten at home by the British Lions in rugby. In the latest FINA World Swimming Championships Australia came sixth with three golds. In 2001 they had 13 golds and were the No. 1 team.

There will still be people all around the world who see Australians as these mythical sporting beings who cannot be beaten. But they do get beaten, and they are very much sporting mortals. The rest of the world has simply caught up.

Australian society has changed as well.

People don’t congregate around sporting clubs like they used to. There are simply other things to do. The majority of Australia live in the suburbs, and the suburbs have changed. The suburbs were once an isolating place where sport was virtually the only distraction. Australian suburbs now have never ending shopping centres. They almost all have movie theatres, pubs, gambling, gyms, and late night shopping. Country towns are now just around the corner from a regional centre which will have live bands almost every night, LGBT clubs, and poetry readings at independent book stores.

Even Australian backyards have changed. Once they were sporting meccas where future stars were first shown how to play. And now every new housing development seems to have smaller and smaller land plots, backyards are now entertainment courtyards. With enough room for a BBQ and an outside dining set, but not to kick a footy or shoot some hoops.

Immigration and gentrification have changed Australia. As has its obscene wealth. Australia is third in the world for GDP according to Kevin Rudd election propaganda handed out at Lord’s. What constitutes an Australian is more diverse than ever. A Cosmopolitan-drinking tofu eater is in some parts of Australia as Australian as a plumber wearing a singlet and shorts having a VB watching the cricket.

Many Australian fans hark back to captains like Chappelli, AB and Tugga, but Michael Clarke is a much truer representation of how Australia is right now.

Cricket Australia has changed as well. Their chairman of selectors, John Inverarity, is not an ocker unpaid Aussie cricketer, but a former master of Hale school and professional chairman of the NSP. They are a marketing machine with a Travel lifestyle magazine. Their tour packages of England aren’t for cricket fans, but for wealthy tourists who happen to love cricket. They have slogans and viral campaigns. They have interns and corporate team-building days. They even have an executive general manager of people and culture.

Cricket Australia is many people. Some of their employees are exceptional. Stephanie Beltrame, the General Manager Media Rights, is probably in the top five cricket administrators on the planet. Chief legal counsel Dean Kino is probably the most important person in cricket you’ve never heard of. These two spearheaded Cricket Australia’s rights deal. There are other quality people as well. Most of them love cricket, or at the very least, Australian cricket. They work hard, they spin, they market, they plan and they run cricket as best they can.

But the Australia men’s team is what they are judged on. It’s what funds their big TV deals, it’s what gives them any power. That team is failing, and it’s partly to do with their mistakes.

The Futures League was stupid. The split innings List A games were stupid. Giving Greg Chappell the position of National Talent Manager was stupid. Banning the ICL players was stupid. Extending Tim Nielsen’s contract for three years was stupid. Making Clarke a selector was stupid. Sacking your coach only two weeks before a major series was stupid.

Also stupid was hiring Pat Howard as the man who would be ultimately responsible, and then letting him fire someone else when things got bad. That was an Argus report recommendation. Another was paying the players based on their performance. But the administrators are not paid on their performance.

James Sutherland is paid to be the CEO of Cricket Australia. Because the chairman’s role in Australian cricket is rotated every two years, it means that Sutherland is by far the most important person in Australian cricket. Sutherland has been in charge since 2001. Brad Haddin made his debut that year. Every other current player joined the team later than that.

That makes Sutherland a veteran by anyone’s definition. And this year has been horrible for Australian cricket in every way bar financially. It would take someone of staggering incompetence not to get Cricket Australia a huge amount of TV money, and Sutherland is not incompetent. He’s a very skilled operator who has turned a semi-professional organisation into a professional one. But, other countries are too. And even some who aren’t are just outperforming Australia on the field. If Sutherland had a Howard in charge of him, he would never have lasted this long. And it’s not just this year. For the past five years Australia have been in decline.

Since the 2007 World Cup, the only major or unexpected wins since then are Australia beating South Africa in 2009, winning the Champions Trophy the same year and making one other ICC final in that time. Ricky Ponting stepped down, Nielsen left after being asked to reapply for his job, Andrew Hilditch was replaced, Greg Chappell’s position was downsized and Mickey Arthur was sacked.

The person in charge of the whole show is still in charge. And unless there is a coup in the Jolimont office, it’s hard to see that changing.

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During the Argus Review, James Sutherland sat in the room while people gave their testimony. Things that could have been said weren’t said. Things that should have been said more vehemently were watered down. It instantly compromised what was supposed to be an independent commission into problems in cricket.

Two years on from the Argus review, Australian cricket has not progressed. Howard gets more blame, but the performance on the field, and the decisions off the field, continue to be baffling. And Australia continue to lose.

According to the Argus review, the buck has to stop somewhere. Australia have tried stopping it at the captain, chairman of selectors, general manager of team performance and two coaches, but eventually, the buck has to stop with the CEO. And that time is now.

For Australian cricket to progress it needs someone new. It needs James Sutherland to get out of the room.

Dear Cricket Fans

Watson’s long walk

There are men who are walk to the gallows with more spring in their steps than Shane Watson leaving the crease once he’s been dismissed. It’s a depressing waddle, with many head turns, a puzzled look at the screen, and the sad face of a child who doesn’t really understand why he has to go home. For a good part of his Test career, these walks have taken longer than his innings.

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Watson smiles a fair bit off the field. It’s the sunny, full smile of someone who is pretty happy with life. He can even pull it off after the worst day of cricket, when he has been sent to speak to the press because no one else wants too.

This is a man who earlier in his life seemed to only speak in front of a press pack. Like a young wannabe starlet who hounds the paparazzi, Watson was always there and always available. All the while being too honest for his own good. The Australian media, which can, when raw meat is thrown at them, be merciless, honestly like Watson as much as he seems to like them.

But not everyone likes Watson.

His team’s own press officer leaked the story about him being afraid of ghosts during the 2005 tour. Another Cricket Australia employee once remarked that the most dangerous place in the Australia dressing room was between Watson and a mirror. Cricket Australia’s general manager of team performance, Pat Howard, suggested he wasn’t always a team player. And according to his former coach, his current captain thinks he is a cancer.

During the last Australian summer Watson made a public play for the opening position and suggested he may never bowl again. Shortly after that, he was suspended, along with three others, for not doing everything in his power to prepare Australia to win a Test match. He then left the tour for the birth of his child, which was also right after he had been suspended. He resigned from the vice-captaincy. He then played in the IPL, and bowled.

This, and many other reasons are why the Australian public, and some of the cricket community, find it hard to warm to him.

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When Watson is in charge of a cricket match, it’s a sight worth seeing. Partly it’s the way he hits a cricket ball. He is the perfect combination of timing and power. Not graceful, nor a slog, it’s a cracking bass riff on a rock anthem. It makes the sort of noises that Adam West’s Batman had to use sound effects for.

When Watson takes control of a tournament, it is his. The first time that Watson really showed everyone this was in the 2007 World Cup. Hidden in the middle order, and barely needed, Watson hit 145 runs, with a strike rate of 170.58, and was out once. In any other team they would have made billboards in his honour.

When the first IPL came around, Watson was bought by Rajasthan for US$125,000. He went on to be the player of the tournament with 472 runs at a strike rate of 151.76, to go with 17 wickets at 22.52. Against poor IPL attacks, Watson was a circus strongman taking on local farmers and throwing them back into the crowd. Rajasthan won.

By the time the World Twenty20 arrived in Sri Lanka last year, Watson had proven he was good enough. That he could inflict serious damage. But no one expected what followed, which was four innings in which he beat teams on his own. Dav Whatmore suggested that poisoning Watson might be a good idea. And, in those first four games, it’s doubtful if even that would have worked. It was as if Watson was picking which orbiting satellites he could hit out of the air. Watson was Australia in that tournament, as they unexpectedly made the semi-finals.

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There is something perpetually not right about Watson’s back pad. Virtually every ball he rearranges it, either before the bowler comes in, or even as the bowler comes in. Like most batting ticks, it is impossible to ignore it once you’ve seen it. It is the sort of things old veterans just pick up as their careers go. For someone as brutal as he can be, it is the first sign of weakness. Not that it means he is weak. Just that he isn’t the big hitting heavyweight he would love to be.

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Watson’s first game of Shield cricket was for Tasmania. David Saker also played. Watson had left Queensland for Tasmania when they offered him a place. Queensland had Martin Love, Stuart Law, Jimmy Maher and Andrew Symonds in their side, they couldn’t promise Watson a place. Watson wouldn’t wait.

It meant that even before his first game, Watson was under pressure to show how good he was. On top of leaving his home state, he also had the pressure of being something that Australia had been craving since Keith Miller retired. A proper Test-match allrounder. Not a bits-and-pieces player, or a batsman who could bowl, or bowler who could bat. But a player who could bat top order and bowl serious overs. Watson could bowl really quick, and could bat at three. He was almost too good to be true.

It turned out that it wasn’t completely true. But he is still the most complete allrounder, on talent alone, that Australia have had in a very long time. At his very best Watson gives Australia a proper fifth bowling option, and that was something the great sides of the 1990s and 2000s couldn’t rely on.

It’s amazing to think this player, who could help transform the Australia line-up and win games with bat or ball, is only 46 Tests into a career that he was so desperate to start 13 years ago he left home as a teenager.

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It feels like no one has ever proved to Watson that he bowls medium pace. Every ball that a batsman smashes, he looks visibly distressed that the batsman could do that to him. For most of an over, he has his hands on his head, bemoaning how close he came to taking a wicket. There is very rarely a delivery that comes from Watson’s hand that he doesn’t believe should give him a wicket.

The weird thing about Watson’s bowling is although he still seems to think he is quite quick, he is five times the bowler he was when he was actually quick. When he was quick, he was really rubbish. His bowling was gun barrel straight, he had this windmill action that could generate pace and little else. In his early international matches, he got the sort of treatment he gave to England debutant Simon Kerrigan from South Africa batsmen who were laughing at him.

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An infographic of Shane Watson’s injuries would take weeks to prepare. And you’d find yourself hovering over it for days, not really believing that one man can have this many faults. It seems he has quit, threatened to quit, or had it suggested he should quit bowling in almost every season of his life.

It was the injuries and constant need for attention that turned people off him. Large parts of the public saw him as a big head with a soft body. He teased them with talent, but showed little of it on the field. The seven years between making his ODI debut and being a consistent player in the Test team were full of hate and mocking from the crowd.

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When Watson bowls you feel like you can hear his joints straining under the pressure. Some deliveries it is as if he won’t make it to the crease in one piece. When he does, and he’s finished showing how shocked or disappointed he was with the result, he trudges back to his mark.

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When Watson was 28, he sought the help of batting guru Greg Chappell. He wanted to become Andrew Flintoff. A No. 6 batsman who would come out and make a mark on the opposition and then back it up with the ball.

Instead he became an opening batsman after saying he was up for the job as the media beat Phillip Hughes more than Flintoff ever did.

But regardless of what was often said, Watson wasn’t an all-smashing opening batsman who burned down the attacks of the world. In fact, he was a reliable opening batsman who could tie Australia down and often gave away starts when he was in total control. It was a consistency that Australia needed, and he and Simon Katich out-batted their far-more respected counterparts down the order. Watson lost his opening partner, as Katich was dropped and gagged. Then Watson lost his form.

DRS being used in almost every series didn’t help him. In a new team, he became vice-captain and a leader, but his batting was stuck in neutral. No longer was his front leg a statement of intent, now it was a hittable target. He failed as an opener in 2011, he failed in every other position after that as well. Teams now hit is front pad without much trouble. And failing to go on and make hundreds was now the sort of problem he wished he still had.

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Shane Watson run-outs and DRS use can sometimes seem so unfunny because you’ve seen them so many times. They’re now basically internet memes. Cricket’s keyboard cat or subtitled Hitler videos. You see them, it takes a second to work out you haven’t seen that exact one before, you smile, and then you move on.

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Shane Watson has not been dropped since the 2009 Ashes. He’s been injured and suspended, but not dropped. He worked his batting average up over 42, before dropping it under 35. But he hasn’t been dropped because unlike when he had to move states for a chance, there are no batsmen of his talent sitting around in Australia. He is something special and, flawed or not, they have chosen to keep him. Even if it doesn’t always look like the best option.

It is also why he gets more flack than other players. It’s why he has frustrated fans for over a decade. And today, as brilliant and brutal as he was, it was hard not to think back to his entire career and wonder how on earth this was only his third Test-match hundred and one of very few game-changing innings he has played in Tests.

Watson has spent far too much of his talent tossing around lesser bowlers in lower forms of cricket. In his 176 at The Oval he used those skills to devour Kerrigan and Chris Woakes. But to think of it purely as an innings of that kind would be wrong. Early on he had to survive James Anderson and Stuart Broad moving the ball and strangling Australia. He then had to get up off the dirt after almost losing his head to Broad. And then, perhaps scariest of all, he had to slay the 100 dragon that has mocked him even on his best days. He did it all. Later on, he even killed his DRS troll. It was a Shane Watson day, and the world had to sit back and wait for him to finish.

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When Watson left the crease today, he did it quickly. It wasn’t the walk of a haunted man; it was the walk of someone who had done something. He moved so quickly he almost forgot to raise his bat. Australia have had the potential Watson, the injured Watson, the one-day monster Watson, the moping Watson and the confused Watson.

Now they need Watson the destroyer. One hundred and seventy six was a good start. They, and he, deserve more.

Dear Simon Kerrigan

Australia’s futile chase (beep, beep)

Wile E. Coyote spent his entire cartoon life thinking he would catch the roadrunner. On so many occasions he thought he had his dinner, only to end up falling off a cliff, getting caught in his own trap, being outsmarted or just blowing himself up.

Australia put England in an innings-long chokehold to gain the momentum. And then give it away with a bad collapse in their innings. Snap. Australia take three quick wickets to take charge of the match. And then can’t stop Kevin Pietersen and Ian Bell. Beep, beep. Australia take Bell and Matt Prior in two balls to keep the total chasable. And then England’s tail mock them. Thud. Australia start their innings like the total of 299 is easy. And then they lose one wicket. Bam.

Australia put England in an innings-long chokehold to gain the momentum. And then give it away with a bad collapse in their innings. Snap. Australia take three quick wickets to take charge of the match. And then can’t stop Kevin Pietersen and Ian Bell. Beep, beep. Australia take Bell and Matt Prior in two balls to keep the total chasable. And then England’s tail mock them. Thud. Australia start their innings like the total of 299 is easy. And then they lose one wicket. Bam.

Other than routinely giving away good positions, Australia have done nothing consistently. Even their two collapses in this Test weren’t consistent. One was half hearted after trying very hard to get a lead. The other was whole and complete. They stepped into the doom entirely, even before the clouds came over.

There are things they cannot be blamed for. Bell is better than them. Stuart Broad has those Tests. England are more professional. England have better players. England have a coach they’re used to. England are playing at home. England are the better side.

But Australia are now 3-0 down from four Tests. In three of those Tests they have had chances. One was denied by weather, and KP. The other two they combined their worst with some of England’s best. As far as losers go, they’ve been good ones. But losers just the same.

Ryan Harris probably doesn’t deserve to be thought of as a loser. When in two years time he can’t walk without wincing, it’ll be because of days like today when he had to do the entirety of the world. As Tim Bresnan slogged him you could hear the fluid in his knee joints boil.

Peter Siddle was the batsman who offered the final catch as the dark clouds hovered above Lumley castle. In Ashes cricket he’s taken hat tricks, large hauls, and put every single vital organ on the line Test after Test. For his trouble he’s lost three Ashes series. Nathan Lyon, the spinner that nobody wanted, took seven wickets. Shane Watson came in at No. 6, a position he would have found unpalatable a few weeks ago, and played his best Test innings since he was at the Wanderers in 2011.

Even the accidental opening partnership did well. A player that Australia ignored because they always assumed they could find someone better, and the other who almost missed the entire tour for being an idiot. They batted in such a way that Australia believed they could finally catch England. David Warner proved again that when his head is still, and he wants to use it, he can score runs at important times. Chris Rogers hang on to the side of the boat for both innings, but no matter how many times England tried to force him off, he clung on.

But that’s all Australia have been this Test, this series and of recent times, a team that can cling onto the edge and wait for the other team to break their fingers so they fall off. And when Australia fall, they fall. Today they fell so quickly it was impossible to distinguish each body from the next.

Had they been beaten by a truly great team, or even a team playing at their very best, they could draw something from that. This is not the case. England can only get better. Australia are two injuries to Harris and Clarke away from being a club side with grand ambitions. If Tony Hill and Aleem Dar could see Australia’s future, they’d take them off the field for being too dark.

They will continue to fight, win the odd moral battle, have some great individual performances, and even steal the odd Test.

They can see the roadrunner, but he’s just better than them, and despite the odd good sign, they might not catch it for a long time.

Dear Ian Bell