The Australian Test team seems to be well settled, at least at the top. That might not necessarily be a good thing, given the team’s recent run
Daniel Brettig at the WACA06-Nov-2016Darren Lehmann is contracted to be Australia’s coach until after the 2019 World Cup and Ashes double. Steven Smith, at 27 years old, is to be Australia’s captain for as long as he wants the job. Australia’s squad of 12 for the Perth Test is to be retained, unchanged, regardless of the result at the WACA Ground.On the face of it, these factoids suggest stability at the top levels of Australian cricket. After the swings and roundabouts of the Michael Clarke era – both before and during his eventful captaincy – everyone connected with the game seemed eager for a period of consolidation with a new team. Around the time of his contract renewal in August, Lehmann refreshed his support staff in anticipation of the next four years.But the security around the national team and its leaders is growing increasingly at odds with the results being delivered. The ruthless exposure of Smith’s side by a South African team shorn of AB de Villiers (before the tour) and Dale Steyn (midway through the first innings) has been the equivalent of the tide going out to expose who has been swimming naked. Pretty much every batsman, as it turns out.Perth now appears likely to be Australia’s fourth consecutive Test match loss. Such a result would also be the first time an Australian Test team has lost the first match of a home summer since 1988. It will be of little comfort to Smith and Lehmann to know that, having been battered at the Gabba by Viv Richards’ indomitable West Indians, Allan Border’s men promptly lost Test matches two and three as well.Brisbane, of course, has always been seen as the Australian fortress, a venue where the team have remained unbeaten every year since the aforementioned defeat. If it does not attract the same scale of crowds that flock to the MCG on Boxing Day or the SCG in the New Year, the Gabba’s importance to the home summer is epitomised by the way the Australian team associates it with swift and brutal victories.Before this match, Smith talked of strutting around “like I own the place” as the sort of attitude he likes to project. It has always been easier for Australian cricketers to do that at the Gabba in the first Test of summer. Certainly it would have been easier for the hosts to do that in Brisbane against South Africa rather than in Perth, which just so happens to be a venue where these visitors have never lost.South Africa had plenty of history behind them entering this series. Victories in each of their past two series in Australia brought plenty of happy memories, as did the fact that Perth was the venue of the series-sealer in 2012, a melancholy final Test match for Ricky Ponting. They had been afforded, too, a lengthy and suitable preparation, mixing bouts with both the red ball in use in Perth and the latest iteration of the pink one to be unveiled for the third Test in Adelaide at the end of November.Australia’s players, meanwhile, have been shunted around. Not only from Brisbane to Perth, but between formats as well. It is near enough to unheard of for only one round of Sheffield Shield cricket to have been played before the first Test team is selected, and that too with a pink ball rather than a red one. At the start of the week, Josh Hazlewood was asked whether all this was going to be a problem. “You get used to it,” he said. “It is part of cricket.”That is undoubtedly true, as Cricket Australia chases new and bigger audiences for the game down under. However the question that seemingly has not been asked, is this. Are all these changes, and schedule compromises, something the present team is capable of coping with? The present evidence suggests not. Equally, it appears that the present regime is a little too comfortable given the present results. Four years is a long time for any coach to be guaranteed tenure – just ask Mickey Arthur. Twenty-seven is a young age to be a captain – just ask Kim Hughes.Overall then, Perth has exposed a troubling complacency around the Australian team. This has been as true in the micro as the macro. While South Africa have made the most of their resources, shrugging off the loss of Steyn with admirable resilience, the Australians have squandered many of their own, in turn exposing the likes of Mitchell Marsh to situations beyond his present state of aptitude.Anyone looking for an exemplar needed to look only as far as David Warner, running a quick single in the confident expectation that Temba Bavuma would struggle to field his off side push let a lone throw down the stumps, leading to Shaun Marsh’s exit moments later. Anyone looking for another could find Smith throwing the kitchen sink at a wide ball on a length some eight overs before the close, exposing Adam Voges to a rampaging Kagiso Rabada.At the start of the year, Voges’ average was vying with that of Bradman. Smith’s captaincy record was similarly lofty. Neither could have claimed to be mighty, but they have certainly fallen. So too has the Australian team. They, and their CA, bosses, have some serious thinking to do.
