Adam Gilchrist believes the Australian public “felt a little bit flat” towards the Australian cricket team during the T20 World Cup.
Australia’s underwhelming campaign came to an end over the weekend when the tournament hosts finished third in their group behind New Zealand and England, falling short of the semi-finals.
After being thrashed by New Zealand in the opening game, a defence of Australia’s T20 World Cup win last year never looked likely.
It’s crunch time at the T20 World Cup and you can catch every match live and ad-free in play on Kayo. New to Kayo? Start your free trial now >
The small crowds at Australia’s Super 12 matches struggled to half-fill a stadium’s capacity and raised eyebrows among cricket pundits.
A crowd of 34,756 attended Australia’s match against New Zealand at the SCG, while 25,061 turned up for the game against Sri Lanka at Perth Stadium.
The crowd of 37,566 at the MCG for the abandoned game against England can be excused, but the paltry attendances for must-win matches against Ireland at the Gabba (18,869) and Afghanistan at the Adelaide Oval (18,672) were seriously disappointing.
“You’ve only got to look at the crowds, the crowds were down,” Gilchrist told SEN on Monday.
“There was no feeling of a huge excitement about this World Cup from the way crowds turned up to the Australian games.
“On the flip side of that, look at what was almost a dead rubber on Sunday night in Melbourne, Zimbabwe vs India and there’s 82,000 people there. That’s just a whole different conversation isn’t it, that’s one of the great phenomenons of sport. The Indian passion for the game continues to go to new levels.
“That’s something that’s really positive and exciting about cricket.”
Gilchrist was unsure if the low crowd numbers were a reflection of the public’s attitude to the current Australian team, but said “people vote with their feet”.
“Whether those crowds being down and the appetite and enthusiasm for World Cup is reflective of the current team, I’ve got no idea,” the former Australian wicketkeeper said.
“People vote with their feet, but I don’t know if it was too early in the summer, whether the footy season was so recently completed that we weren’t ready to move to cricket mode yet.
“Any time Australia have hosted a World Cup, men’s or women’s, it’s always been at the end of the summer, so there’s a whole build-up and promotion of it and expectation for it.
“It felt a little bit flat in that regard around the Aussie team.
“We’ll see how it plays out over the summer because there’s plenty of cricket coming up.”
Gilchrist’s comments come after ex-Australian captain Michael Clarke labelled the team’s World Cup performance as “un-Australian”.
“I think Australians in general on the biggest stage, when you’re under the most amount of pressure, always put it on the line,” he said on Sky Sports Radio.
“They have a crack. We’re not scared to lose. We picked an aggressive XI in this World Cup squad, yet played so defensively. Very un-Australian.”
He said it seems fans are happy the Australian team failed.
“I said it on here a few weeks back — at the moment it feels like there is a real dislike for the Aussie team,” he said.
“I want to see that change. We’ve already got messages this morning. So many people are happy that Australia lost. There’s still angst around Justin Langer being sacked, or resigning, whatever happened there. There’s still angst around our style of play and how we’re playing.
“I think the fans feel like they’ve been left out.”
“Australian cricket has alway tried to be the No. 1 team in the country, yet we’re nowhere near that now.
“Normally this is prime time. This is normally where you look at every TV and there’s cricket advertised and the players are on billboards and the players are in the ads for companies doing TV commercials. I don’t know. Whatever Cricket Australia is doing at the moment, it doesn’t seem to be working with the fans.”
Former Australian cricketer Simon O’Donnell said on SEN Breakfast on Monday he can trace it back to the storm that surrounded Justin Langer’s resignation as coach of the Australian team.
It is just one of several threads woven into the general theme that the entire team is on the nose for whatever reason.
“The Langer thing is big in this,” O’Donnell said.
“People didn’t like how that happened. Justin Langer was much loved. And that unceremonious dumping of the coach and the players’ activity behind the scenes, that has left a sour taste in a lot of people’s mouth.”
He said it “gets up my goat” that T20 captain Aaron Finch had said the team was “fatigued” before the tournament even started.
“I couldn’t understand how emotionless we were, particularly in that format,” he said.
He went on to say: “I think that’s a problem that needs to be further discussed and addressed, particularly when a captain of the national team is saying it before a tournament starts. That’s white flag stuff before it even starts.
“You’re playing for your country. Before you play a tournament for your country, you’re saying ‘we’re very tired’. It’s just not right. I’m not saying they weren’t fatigued, but if they were, something has to be addressed. You can’t now go to the 50 over World Cup and say ‘we’re tired’.”
News Corp cricket writer Robert Craddock said Glenn Maxwell’s comments that Australia’s World Cup exit “doesn’t mean anything” won’t go down well with Aussie fans.
“Glenn Maxwell’s press conference on Saturday when he said, ‘look, it doesn’t really matter, we just go onto the next tournament’, I think Glenn would regret saying that,” Craddock told SEN’s Whateley.
“It’s probably how he felt, and I think the modern professional does just drift from one tournament to another, but this was a World Cup on home soil.
“There was no crackerjack, there was no spark.
“I was staggered by only 18,000 people at the Adelaide Oval the other night given it was the second leg of a double-header.
“You could not get a smaller crowd on a balmy night in Adelaide. That said there is a disconnect and a slight hangover from the Justin Langer era.
“Simon O’Donnell was right. Justin may not have been the players’ favourite, but there was a lot of residual affection for that guy out in the public.
“I hear it, I see it in comments at the bottom of my stories. I get the players’ argument about why Langer had to go and I get that, but given his record, there was a lot of public affection for him.”
