“We’re giving blokes thumbs up when they beat us outside off stump. That’s just ridiculous. Don’t go stupid but play Australian, hard-nosed cricket. Bloody hell.” – Allan Border.
Anytime Australia loses a Test match, a familiar undercurrent seeps through the national conversation. Somehow, at some level, the match wasn’t lost on skill, experience, preparation or execution.
Instead it was forfeited because Australia’s cricketers were not “hard” enough, too accommodating, lacking passion and commitment. Cue the analysis of any evidence of smiles or amiability towards opponents.
Pat Cummins in the spotlight after the Nagpur loss.Credit:Getty Images
In a trice, Australia were belted in Nagpur because Steve Smith gave credit to an opponent for bowling a well-pitched delivery, or because Matt Renshaw was captured on cameras in the team dugout, laughing for a split second amid a day’s play that customarily lasts six hours.
It is as though, for many, the harder truths of Nagpur or any other sporting defeat are subsumed within a more jingoistic frame – Australian exceptionalism, where victories are won by fighting spirit, guts and determination, sledging and psyching out opponents.
That framing is encouraged by those who sold it to the public for years in past generations. First it was the Australian athletes who triumphed globally when this country bounced back more quickly than European nations wracked by the wages of the world wars. Then in the 1980s, ’90s and ’00s, younger men and women reaped the benefits of Australia’s sporting systems adopting better coaching, training or contracting methods before the rest caught up.
Right in the middle of that group was the Australian men’s cricket team led by Border, Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting. Yes, they had a hard edge and were largely disliked around the world for unsociability with opponents. And yes, they glorified the baggy green cap.
But the truer reason for their many victories was the establishment of a central contract and academy system underpinning domestic cricket that other nations, England most obviously, did not adopt until Australia were about 15 years ahead.
India’s recent dominance of Test series at home and away is a product of a similar process of professionalisation, building greater depth and making use of cricket talent from all over the game’s most populous power, rather than just a few key centres as was the case for decades.
The current Australian side, though, is pilloried for not looking crestfallen enough in defeat, or being too “friendly” in the heat of a game that is all too often mistaken for a battle. Its players and leaders take this criticism with a sizeable grain of salt.
Why? Because they have been here before. In 2016, the Test side then led by Smith lost five Tests in a row. Three in Sri Lanka on pitches similar to that of Nagpur, then two at home to South Africa.
At the end of that sequence came a demand from the top to start winning again, during a tense encounter in the dressing room in Hobart after the second Proteas loss. What followed was a reassertion of the need for the Australian team to be harder, more vocal and more passionate, summed up by the efficient Peter Nevill’s replacement as wicketkeeper by the noisy Matthew Wade. Headbutt the line, remember that?
Ultimately, those instructions led a young team down the shadowy road towards the Newlands ball-tampering scandal. Smith, skipper Pat Cummins and most of the rest of the team still keep that sequence in the backs of their minds. And as grim as Nagpur may have been, they are adamant about not wanting to go back there.
What Australia must do on this tour is hold the line in terms of the team’s planning. Changing things around after a bad initial experience tends to lead to further misadventure: just ask Ponting after his hellish 2001 trip to India, where a good ball first-up from Harbhajan Singh was followed by attempts to sweep, play from the crease and get down the pitch, all leading to further failures.
That 2016 Sri Lanka tour was another where sound initial plans melted away after first contact with the enemy. A mentality of helplessness crept in, in parallel with capricious selections that were compounded on the return home.
There were signs in Nagpur of players questioning themselves, and not getting the balance right. In particular, the sight of David Warner barely deigning to play any shots in the second innings was a desperate one for an inveterate shotmaker.
David Warner after his second innings exit.Credit:Getty Images
If there are changes to be seriously looked at, they lie far more in the realm of Australian cricket’s broader structures and priorities. Some of those, like the scaling down of the National Cricket Centre as a finishing school for success overseas, need urgent attention.
Cricket Australia has much more money than it possessed in the mid-1980s, so it is a question of being smarter and more alert to the best ways to prepare young players in mindset and technique for the challenges of India, England and elsewhere. Fewer soul-searching drinkathons, more sensible evolution of the contract system, as is currently being negotiated between Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers Association.
But for Cummins and the rest in the here and now, the team’s more contemporary approach has been about concentration on process, not worrying so much about results and also finding ways to keep perspective on cricket as a game to be enjoyed, not a trial to be endured.
To that end, one of the more helpful statements this week actually came from Ben Stokes in New Zealand, when he reflected on his own side’s brave shift away from much of what had characterised English cricket in the past.
“Things are going pretty smoothly at the moment, but if it doesn’t go well we won’t shy away from it,” he said. “We showed that against South Africa when we got beat [in the first Test last year]. When you fail, it’s an opportunity to bounce back and show you’re not worried or scared to go out there and try the same thing.”
Determination to see Australia’s current project through, where the team stays true to itself and does not jump back into the old tropes of an “ugly Australia”, runs deep in Cummins’ veins. Delhi will be a key test of that resolve.
News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.
