With 10 days between the early end of the Perth Test and the start of Adelaide, this is the Australian cricket supporter witching hour. They can cope with a close loss to an opponent doing something special: nobody was burning effigies in the streets of Greenslopes earlier this year when Shamar Joseph on one foot bowled West Indies to a sizzling Gabba win. But it’s very different after a beating like the one that India just handed out, when an Australian team that was storming the field after two sessions failed to fire a shot for the next seven.
Now, those supporters are angry. They’re swarming talkback lines, writing to papers, voicing disdain in pubs. They can’t stand a team looking incompetent, they want to know what will be done to avoid that happening again. And they have a lot of time on their hands, with no Test player due to face or bowl a ball at any other level in the interim, while a Sheffield Shield round plays out with plenty of potential replacements on display.
For Andrew McDonald and Pat Cummins, as coach-captain axis of the Australian team for three years and counting, the approach has always been about cool and composure. Their mantra has been to avoid overreacting to performances, whether good or bad. Nobody is unstoppable, nobody is terrible. Even after his team took two hammerings in India last year, ending with a collective neurological fritz while batting in Dehli, Cummins was calm as a lilo afternoon. Australia went on to win the third Test of the series and draw the fourth.
Their approach is probably right. It’s probably the most sustainable. But that doesn’t help soothe people who are angry. When they’re angry, being calm and reasonable makes it worse. It chafes. Sustainability is what a lot of Cummins’ critics most dislike about him. They would prefer to watch things burn.
So Andrew McDonald’s press chat after the Perth Test won’t have done anything to help. Their preparation? Happy with it. Their position? Sure, “a bit of work to do”. Changes? Same squad, no worries. Jasprit Bumrah’s bowling devastation in a best-on-ground performance? “He was good.” Being battered on the scoreboard? “Sometimes the margins don’t really reflect what happened in the game.” In this game, the margin very much reflected what had happened. Namely that Australia fell in a heap within 25 overs, then couldn’t take a single wicket in 63 of them.
This is where an effort to project calm can become a stroll into the hinterland of unreality. On Marnus Labuschagne, the focus of so much attention for looking so horribly out of touch, “we’re really confident that, at his best, he’s the player that we need”. Sure, great. The rest of the country agrees about a guy who once averaged 62. But his last 10 innings have produced one score above 10 runs. So how about we deal with the question of when he’s not at his best?
Or the firming suspicion that the Australian camp got too cute by half with their opening batters since David Warner’s retirement. Steve Smith was apparently clamouring for the job, then four Tests later was clamouring to go back to the middle order. Nathan McSweeney has come from South Australia’s Shield middle order to open in Tests. Going out to face Bumrah in the dark on evening three, he looked like he was being sent to face a firing squad. He lasted about as long. Meanwhile specialist openers have been left to wither on the vine.
Cameron Bancroft and Marcus Harris have runs again in the ongoing Shield round, highlighting the contrast with Test players. But it will make no difference. Clearly, management doesn’t think Harris is good enough – so often the reserve, only for the team to go through contortions to avoid picking him when the chance arrives. They must not rate Bancroft either, despite the massive state seasons that players are told to produce. And either assessment might be valid, if a case were made for why, but nobody will ever say as much. When your actions tell players that their state performances don’t matter, it should be a matter of courtesy to have your words do the same.
This is the part that grates with the current set-up, staffed by decent people who lean too far towards playing it safe. Being straightforward publicly does carry risk, but hey, maybe give it a try. Succeed or fail by your rationale, because avoiding it is dissembling. The emphasis on calm and composure at a time like this looks the same. When things have so evidently gone wrong, it would play better with the public to at least show that you know as much.
