THE bigger they are, the harder they fall. It's an old saying but a goodie, and one that fits like a cricket boot for Australia after the series loss to South Africa rubber-stamped the end of a sustained period of world domination.
It was always going to happen. No team in any sport where money is not king can succeed forever. The natural cycle will see to that, and it is to Australia’s credit that they sat atop the tree for so abnormally long.
Three successive World Cups, home-and-away wins against every Test-playing nation of note, a Champions Trophy and an undefeated home Test series run of 15 years - it's a double-edged sword that marks an immense dynasty yet offers the harshest of contrasts when times turn sour.
But the inevitability of Australia’s slide should not hide, nor excuse, the selection and management issues that have beset the team and exacerbated its decline.
The biggest cock-up of the summer has involved Andrew Symonds. Australia’s handling of the mercurial all-rounder has been equal parts mystifying and disgraceful.
It can only be assumed Symonds would have been selected for Sydney were it not for his knee injury, but selectors should be held accountable for the fact that he played even one game for his country this season.
It was as good as common knowledge inside Queensland that Symonds was not in the right head space to play Test cricket after the ‘Gone Fishing’ saga that almost ended his career. “He is no longer the player they think he is - his head is not right," one Bulls player said.
If that wasn’t enough, the fact Symonds could barely buy a run for his state should have set alarm bells ringing. But no. Symonds was allowed to resume his Test career at the expense of Shane Watson, a younger man who excelled in India, offers as much with the bat and who is a vastly better bowler than his fellow Queenslander.
Australia’s spin cycle is a glaringly obvious problem. Since Warne’s exit two years ago, Australia have flirted with seven spinners and look no closer to a resolution. Jason Krejza was almost a chancy find in India, but, instead of counting their blessings, selectors halted his career after Perth and incongruously plumped for Nathan Hauritz
Talk about muddled thinking. One of the sobering realities of modern Australia is an attack that struggles to take 20 wickets. Having failed to defend 414 in the fourth innings in Perth, Australia eschewed Krejza in favour of a fellow greenhorn who by his own admission is more content holding up an end than tossing the ball up to take wickets.
MARIA Sharapova says she hopes to be fit to defend Australian Open title in January, despite pulling out of an exhibition event in Hong Kong next month.
In a statement posted on her website, Sharapova said she regretted pulling out of the JB Group Classic team tennis tournament, scheduled for January 7-10 in Hong Kong.
Something dies in a sportsman once he begins to contemplate retirement. For that reason the selectors made the correct decision when they resisted the temptation yesterday to recall Michael Vaughan for the tour to the West Indies starting next month. Vaughan aside, there were no high-profile casualties, with Christmas goodwill extended to players who returned from India without a win in any form of the game. They are in the selectors’ debt.
More surprising than the faith shown to the Test team was the absence of a radical rethink of England’s one-day strategy after they were outplayed, out-thought and off the pace in India. The selectors responded with sticking plaster rather than surgery. Dimitri Mascarenhas, unlucky to have been omitted in the first place, returns, while there is a call-up for Steven Davies, Worcestershire’s highly rated wicketkeeper. In this instance, surgery would have been the better option.
Ian Bell, Monty Panesar and Stephen Harmison were the big names with the most to lose after the Test matches in India but all have survived. Panesar, though, will feel threatened by the official inclusion for the first time of Adil Rashid, the Yorkshire leg spinner, and Ryan Sidebottom’s return after injury ensures that if Harmison continues to give the impression that playing for England is a chore rather than a privilege, a proven replacement is at hand.
A selection meeting lasting 5½ hours suggests that the selectors agonised over whether such a show of faith could be justified when set against modest returns. On balance, it can. Against Harmison’s sullenness in Madras (Chennai) is his outstanding record in the Caribbean, the significant success he has enjoyed against West Indies and the feeling that, if England are to reclaim the Ashes next summer, he will have an important role to play. Panesar, meanwhile, would have been unlucky to miss out after the first blip in his international career. And while taking three spinners to the Caribbean appears a luxury, Rashid should benefit greatly from further exposure to the England team.
Logic is with the selectors on those issues as it is with the retention of Bell and Owais Shah over Vaughan. Neither is proven at No 3 in a way that Vaughan is, or has been, but I don’t subscribe to the theories that Bell is not a dominant enough personality to do justice to a key position, or that Shah is technically suspect against pace. Ultimately, the drive and desire to succeed of two cricketers in their prime outweighs the benefits of recalling a cricketer past his best.
Vaughan has repeatedly stated his desire to return to international cricket and tried to structure his winter plans to that effect. But after his emotional resignation speech in August there has been little evidence that his body has responded to his mind’s desire. Both he and Geoff Miller, the national selector, accepted that a volume of runs was necessary to justify a return, but they have not been forthcoming. Those who argued for Vaughan’s return, most notably the newspaper for which he writes and Duncan Fletcher, his former coach with England, did so out of recognition of past achievements and a belief that, as an Ashes-winning captain, Vaughan would be able to sprinkle some magic Ashes-winning dust on this underachieving squad. Kevin Pietersen, it was said, would benefit from Vaughan’s experience and knowledge.
But the past two Ashes series — the stirring victory in 2005 and the subsequent whitewash — showed how dangerous it is to rely on the past and to ignore the benefits of moving on. Before the 2005 series, Vaughan was part of a selection panel that discarded Graham Thorpe, on the ground of fitness and the suspicion that his reflexes had slowed. Vaughan, rightly, said that he wanted a fresh approach from players not scarred by past failures. Eighteen months later England tried to recreate something that had been lost and paid a heavy penalty.
After Vaughan’s resignation, his agent was sounding out potential post-career opportunities and that illustrated Vaughan’s true state of mind. When a cricketer starts to think about life beyond the popping crease, and when thoughts turn to family, home and career, it is incredibly difficult to rediscover the selfish, all-consuming passion necessary to succeed at the highest level.
Miller was happy to leave the door ajar yesterday, but unless the man in possession has a horror in the Caribbean, Vaughan’s international career looks all but over.