Australia bemoans loss of the back-yard heroes
There are fears Down Under that the legendary breeding-ground is becoming a thing of the past, says Simon Briggs
‘I despise coaches. They do more damage than sudden hail storms’
Admit it. When you saw the potential Australian XI for the first Ashes Test, a tiny flower of hope bloomed in your chest. Cameron Bancroft? Shaun Marsh? Tim Paine? These are not the giants who used to walk among us. As a chronicler of a different bat-and-ball sport once put it: “Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio?”
Such tentative optimism may have withered by next weekend. It only takes a couple of head-hunting, stomach-churning spells – such as those Mitchell Johnson delivered four years ago – to turn a series.
As a team, though, Australia continue to look like a superpower in decline. And one plausible explanation can be found in a book published in 2009, even as Ricky Ponting’s Ashes expedition was coming to grief.
First Tests argues that the genius of Sir Don Bradman, Greg Chappell and Adam Gilchrist was built close to home. Literally, at home, in fact. “It’s the Australian back yards, the open space and fair weather, that have given Australia its real competitive advantage,” explains the author, Steve Cannane.
He also quotes Chappell’s father, Martin. “I spent 22 years in club cricket,” says Chappell Snr. “But by the time each one of the boys was 14, he had faced more deliveries than I had in my whole career.”
Now comes the kicker. “With the decline in unstructured play and the demise of the suburban back-yard,” writes Cannane, “we’re witnessing the beginning of the end of Australia’s cricket dominance.”
So, were English administrators playing down the wrong line when they built a duplicate of the Australian Cricket Academy, and imported hard-bitten ocker Rod Marsh to run it?
Cannane would certainly say so. When it comes to supercharging skill development, he suggests, organised cricket cannot compete with the DIY variety.
Look at Bradman’s schoolboy routine involving a stump, a golf ball and a water tank. “The game would pass a productivity commission with flying colours,” Cannane writes. “The whole set-up was conducive to maximising the number of balls faced before Mum called you in for dinner.”
The other weakness of academies is that they produce ball-playing automata, predictable and programmable but lacking in resilience. Whereas, self-teaching creates chaos and variety. It is like the difference between cloning animals and breeding them.
Take Bill O’reilly, the man Bradman described as the greatest bowler he ever faced. O’reilly’s home-grown legspinning action was said to resemble “a kangaroo in the legs and a windmill in the arms”. Yet he resisted any attempts to change it, and rightly so. “I despise coaches,” he wrote. “They do more damage than sudden hail storms.”
This sort of self-belief is a quality shared by great players. Environments shape players. The great fast bowler Ray Lindwall grew up in the 1930s with a neighbour who kept a ferocious pet magpie on a long chain.
He was afraid to hit to leg, for fear of being pecked, and so favoured the off side in his two Test centuries.
Among the modern Australian team, the most eccentric technique belongs to the captain, Steve Smith. He takes guard outside leg stump, before shuffling sideways across the crease. You will not find that in any textbook, but it leaves opponents unsure where to bowl.
Smith’s Test average of 59 shows that Australian cricket has not wholly lost its independent, resourceful streak. Yet it is not quite the talent factory of old. Next week’s team – a mixture of giants and newbies – could use some more back-yard brio.