His dismissal brings Misbah-ul-Haq to the crease. Already 33 years of age, Misbah has played just five Tests (for a highest score of 28 and a batting average of 13.33) and 12 one-day internationals (for a highest score of 50 not out and a batting average of 33.88). This is, in and of itself, unusual — Pakistan is renowned for producing and picking young players. Younis Khan, for example, is more than three years younger than Misbah, but has already racked up 53 Tests and 151 one-day internationals.

Misbah is what sportswriters politely describe as a journeyman.

In the space of three overs, Pakistan collapse to 6/77, having lost their remaining two recognised batsmen in Shoaib Malik and Shahid Afridi.

Pakistan now require 81 runs off 50 balls with only the tail to come. The required run rate is 9.88 per over.

Their fate rests squarely on Misbah’s shoulders.

In the eight overs which follow, Misbah produces an innings of unerring calm and assurance. He coolly bludgeons three mammoth sixes. He never looks like getting out.

At the start of the final over, Pakistan are down to their last wicket but only require 13 runs to complete what would be a famous and potentially format-defining victory. Misbah is on strike. Joginder Sharma’s first ball is a wide, reducing the target to 12 off six balls. Misbah plays and misses at the second ball. Sharma’s third ball is a full-toss — Misbah drives it straight back down the ground for a monstrous six. It is a hit which Hank Aaron would be proud of.

The target is now six off four balls. Misbah and Pakistan are one firm blow away from achieving what seemed impossible just over eight overs ago.

Sharma runs up to bowl the fourth ball of the final over. As soon as the ball leaves his hand, it is clear to all watching that it will pitch full and outside off. Eminently driveable. Game over surely — all Misbah has to do to seal victory is repeat the shot he executed to perfection the previous delivery. Instead, Misbah attempts an all-too-cute premeditated scoop shot and succeeds only in gifting Sreesanth a dolly at short fine-leg. India wins the inaugural World Twenty20 tournament.

It is as if Misbah, having ascended to within touching distance of the summit of Everest, slipped and fell on his own discarded Snickers wrapper.

Misbah’s heretofore nerveless and chanceless innings of 43 off 38 balls deserved to be remembered as the first truly significant international Twenty20 innings. As it turns out, Misbah’s innings was significant but not for the reasons it ought to have been — rather than standing as an example of the finest batsmanship under pressure, it heralded the birth of the Indian Premier League (“IPL”), an organisation which serves to further strengthen, economically and politically, Pakistan’s greatest rival.

February 6^th, 2012. Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. It is late on the fourth day of the Third Test between Pakistan and England. Abdur Rehman dismisses Monty Panesar LBW. Pakistan complete a 3-0 series whitewash of the world’s number one ranked Test side. Pakistan’s captain and middle-order linchpin? Misbah-ul-Haq.

It is the most improbable of comebacks for both the man and his proud cricketing nation.

In the years following his scoop shot at the Wanderers, Misbah was axed from the Pakistani side in all three formats of the game. Although he continued to churn out the runs at domestic level in Pakistan, he seemed cursed at international level.

Take, for example, the events which occurred in the first innings of the First Test against India in Delhi in November 2007. Misbah had again rescued Pakistan from a perilous situation: coming in at 3/59, Misbah single-handedly kept Pakistan’s innings together, patiently batting for over five hours to compile 82 from 243 balls (the next highest score was Kamran Akmal’s 30) and lead Pakistan to 8/229. Having done the hard work, a maiden Test century was within sight.

What happened next has to be viewed on YouTube to be believed — Misbah pushed one of Sourav Ganguly’s innocuous medium pacers to Dinesh Karthik at a deepish point and set off for the easy single; Karthik fielded the ball and had a shy at the stumps at the non-striker’s end; Misbah, by now already well within his crease, jumped up in the air to avoid getting struck by the ball thrown by Karthik. Unfortunately, Misbah was still suspended in mid-air when the ball crashed into the stumps at the non-striker’s end.

By August 2010, Misbah was 36 years old and out of the Pakistani side in all three formats of the game. His international career looked finished.

Meanwhile, Pakistan toured England without him. Included in that touring party was an 18 year old left-arm fast bowler by the name of Mohammad Amir. It was Amir’s first tour of England. With Pakistan 2-0 down in a four Test series, Amir took 5/52 in England’s second innings of the Third Test at the Oval to help dismiss the hosts for 222 and set up the target of 148 for victory which his batting colleagues duly chased down. With the series poised at 1-2 after the Oval Test and more bowler-friendly conditions expected at Lord’s, Pakistan remained an outside chance to level the four match series.

On August 26^th 2010, bad light and rain restricted play to just 12.3 overs on the opening day of the Fourth Test at Lord’s. Pakistani captain Salman Butt had won the toss and sent England into bat. Mohammad Asif, one of Pakistan’s opening bowlers, picked up the key wicket of England captain Andrew Strauss to leave England 1/39 at the close of day’s play.

The following day, August 27^th 2010, Amir made headlines around the cricketing world. He took six wickets to reduce England to 7/102. The deliveries which removed Alastair Cook and Paul Collingwood were unplayable. Bowling over the wicket to the left-handed ex-choirboy and latter day Liza Minnelli (circa 1972) lookalike Cook, Amir went wide of the crease and produced a good length ball which angled into Cook’s middle-and-off stump and swung away late. A textbook forward defensive prod was Cook’s only sensible option and a regulation edge to the keeper was the only possible outcome.

The ball which dismissed the right-handed Collingwood was even better. Coming over the wicket, Amir angled a fullish ball across Collingwood which pitched on middle stump. Again, a textbook forward defensive was the batsman’s only sensible option. And again, the ball swung late, doing just enough to evade Collingwood’s straight bat and cannon into his front pad. A plum LBW was the only possible outcome.

It was an astonishing display of pace, swing and precision from a boy not old enough to buy himself a drink in the United States of America. At an age when his cricketing contemporaries in Australia and England merely aim to make a national academy squad and still dream of making their first-class debut, Amir had effortlessly etched his name on the honour board at Lord’s. It is no exaggeration to say that Amir was the best bowler of his age anywhere in the world. He had the cricketing world at his feet. His sheer talent seemed almost other worldly. His personal journey from the tiny, dusty village of Changa Bangial to the hallowed turf of the home of cricket seemed almost too good to be true.

In a Shakespearean tragedy, this is the precise moment at which the eponymous hero’s fatal character vice would manifest itself to trigger his downfall. In the real world of 21^st century Britain, this manifested vice could only be revealed to the horrified audience in one way — the frontpage tabloid expose.

A day later, August 28^th 2010, Amir again made headlines around the world but, this time, for all the wrong reasons. The now-defunct News of the World ran a story which rocked the very foundations of Pakistani, and indeed world, cricket. As the BBC subsequently explained: “An undercover News of the World … reporter paid [Mazhar] Majeed [the agent of Pakistani cricketers Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir] £150,000 for details of the precise timing of three no-balls, which the players were persuaded to bowl, which were extremely valuable on the spot-fixing betting market.”

Butt, Asif and Amir were each subsequently handed long bans by the International Cricket Council and were convicted of the English criminal offences of conspiracy to cheat and conspiracy to accept corrupt payments. Butt and Asif were found guilty at trial, whereas Amir pleaded guilty. In November 2011, Mr Justice Cooke sentenced Butt to 30 months’ imprisonment, Asif to 12 months’ imprisonment and Amir to six months’ imprisonment.

Butt was Pakistan’s captain and an opening batsman. Asif and Amir were Pakistan’s first-choice opening bowlers.

This was Pakistani cricket’s darkest hour. A saviour was needed — the Pakistan Cricket Board turned to Misbah-ul-Haq. In October 2010, Misbah was appointed Test captain. His reign did not begin auspiciously — when asked about the reasons behind the 36 year old Misbah’s appointment, Mohsin Khan, Pakistan’s then chief selector, told ESPNcricinfo: “the selection committee has nothing to do with the appointment of the captain.”

Khan need not have feared — Pakistani cricket has not taken a backward step since Misbah’s appointment.

Since Misbah took over the Test captaincy, Pakistan have not lost a Test series, drawing 0-0 with South Africa in the UAE, beating New Zealand 1-0 in New Zealand, defeating Sri Lanka 1-0 in the UAE, steamrolling Bangladesh 2-0 in Bangladesh and besting England 3-0 in the UAE.

Misbah has achieved all this with a team and a style of play which defy all of our ingrained stereotypes about the Pakistani cricket team. The Pakistani cricket team is supposed to be mercurial — an intermittently brilliant but consistently inconsistent team stacked with teenage prodigies plucked from the streets of Lahore, chronically mismanaged by a politically chaotic board and opaque selection panel.

By contrast, Misbah’s side is metronomic — a team in the truest sense of the word, spearheaded by over-30 ex-journeymen turned international stars, which practises a patient game plan, featuring low scoring rates and defensive fields, successfully grinding their opposition into dust and is offended by the notion of a Test series defeat.

In this winter’s three Test series against England in the UAE, Pakistan’s innings run rate (excluding their successful 15-run final innings run chase in the First Test) never exceeded three an over and Pakistan never allowed England to score at more than three an over in any of their innings. Patience was the watchword. England’s then-in-form and star-studded batting line-up was successfully contained with a mixture of good bowling and defensive fields as Misbah waited patiently for the English batsmen to make an error whilst his bowlers subjected them to sustained pressure. With the bat, it was a case of slow but steady wins the race for Misbah’s new Pakistan.

It was old school attritional Test cricket of the highest order, well-suited to both the Arabian conditions and the peculiar resources Misbah had at his disposal.

Indeed, the main criticism of Misbah’s new Pakistan has been that their style of play lacks flair and entertainment value. The statement that their style of cricket lacks flair is true, but does it constitute a valid criticism? I submit that the answer is no.

Over the years, Pakistan has frequently had some of the best individual players in the world — Javed Miandad, Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Saqlain Mushtaq to name but a few — but have never remotely approximated the best team in the world over a prolonged period of time. Their teams lacked consistency and solidity which meant that they often added up to less than the sum of their parts.

Misbah has not only restored Pakistani cricket’s credibility but imbued the team with a steel and consistency which it has long lacked. So what if some of this steel and consistency (and resulting success) has come at the expense of flair? Why should Pakistan have to play the role of the perennially entertaining but typically vanquished foe? Besides, there is entertainment value aplenty in witnessing the application of the virtues of patience and discipline over the course of a five-day Test match.

Misbah’s team, from its composition to its playing style, is built in his image.

Historically, Pakistan has regularly possessed outstanding bowlers. They have typically been prodigious talents identified and picked (and in some instances, inexplicably discarded) at a young age. Pakistan’s last great off-spinner, Saqlain Mushtaq, made his Test debut at the age of 18 and had played the last of his 49 Tests by the time he was 27. Leg-spinners Mushtaq Ahmed and Abdul Qadir made their Test debuts at the ages of 19 and 22 respectively. Legendary pacemen Imran Khan and Wasim Akram played their first Test match at the age of 18 and Waqar Younis turned 18 on the second day of his first Test.

By contrast, Misbah’s strike bowler is a 34 year old off-spinner by the name of Saeed Ajmal who played his first Test match at the ripe old age of 31.

In the Test series against England in the UAE, Misbah’s two-man pace attack was led by the perennially and inexplicably underrated 27 year old Umar Gul. At the time the spot-fixing scandal broke in August 2010, Gul was, at best, Pakistan’s third choice quick behind Asif and Amir. In the UAE, Gul took 11 English wickets (at 22.27), the second-most of any seam bowler in the series. All but two of Gul’s series wickets belonged to specialist batsmen as he consistently snared key top-order wickets to expose England’s spin-vulnerable middle order to Pakistan’s three-man spin battery. Gul’s 4/63 in England’s second innings of the First Test, which consisted of England’s top four batsmen, not only helped win the Test match, but set the tone for the entire series — just as the well-credentialed English top order thought that they were beginning to adapt to playing spin in Arabian conditions, they were undone by pace on a slow pitch.

Misbah’s Test XI against England only featured two specialist batsmen aged in their 20s — Azhar Ali and Asad Shafiq — and even they are aged in their mid-, rather than, early-20s, and are level-headed, technically-proficient accumulators rather than rampaging ball-strikers of yore such as Shahid Afridi and Ijaz Ahmed.

Saeed Ajmal is, in many respects, emblematic of Misbah’s new Pakistan. Like his captain, Ajmal toiled away for over a decade in the obscurity (and penury) of Pakistani domestic cricket and, when he finally got the call to play for his country in his 30s, suffered abject humiliation in a World Twenty20 tournament. In the 2010 semi-final against Australia in St Lucia, Ajmal was tasked with the responsibility of bowling the final over with Australia needing a still improbable 18 to win, having looked dead, embalmed and soon to be buried at 7/144 after 17.1 overs chasing 192.

At the start of the final over, Ajmal’s bowling figures read: 1/23 off three overs. He had been bowling well, being unafraid to vary his line, length, flight and speed. Crucially, he had been willing to flight the ball when appropriate. The ball which removed Steve Smith, Australia’s last recognised batsman, in the 17^th over was the perfect example: a 57.1 mph delivery tossed up above Smith’s eye-line which lured the dangerous hitter down the crease for a big air swing and a stumping not even Kamran Akmal could miss.

The first ball of Ajmal’s final over was a portent of things to come: a flat, 71 mph yorker length dart which Mitchell Johnson managed to inside-edge for a single to get Mike Hussey on strike. The second ball was flat and fast (62 mph), but also inexplicably short of a good length on a slow pitch. Hussey has an eternity to lean back and get under the ball in order to pull it for six and he did just that — the ball disappeared over the mid-wicket boundary. With just 11 required off four balls, for the first time during Australia’s run chase, the odds were in Australia’s favour.

The third ball of Ajmal’s over would be crucial. A boundary would all but seal victory for Australia. A dot or a single would tip the odds back in Pakistan’s favour as Australia would then probably have to hit at least two boundaries off the last three balls to win. Ajmal’s third ball was faster (70.7 mph) but just as flat and almost as short as his previous delivery — Hussey has time to get down on one knee and hammer it over long-on for six. Australia now required just five off the last three balls and a famous victory was all but assured. Ajmal’s fourth ball was arguably the worst of an already nightmarish over — short and wide and slashed just over gully’s outstretched hand for four by Hussey. Australia now required one off the last two balls and Hussey had scored 54 runs off just 23 balls at a strike rate of 234.78. He could be forgiven for sealing the win with an easy single. Instead, Hussey brutally slammed Ajmal’s fifth ball of the over, yet another too flat and too short delivery, over the mid-wicket boundary for a towering six.

In 350 BC, Aristotle wrote in Poetics: “With respect to the requirements of art, a probable impossibility is to be preferred to a thing improbable and yet possible.” Two thousand three hundred and sixty years later, on a tiny island in the Caribbean Sea, the events which unfolded in a cricket match between Pakistan and Australia reminded the world of the eternal truth of Aristotle’s literary theory.

Aristotle’s argument was that if the artist can successfully weave a narrative which the audience willingly invests themselves in, then the audience “must accept” any “irrational incident[]” subsequently introduced by the artist within the framework of that established narrative because “the absurdity is veiled by the poetic charm with which the poet invests it.” This is the “probable impossibility” which Aristotle advocates and Aristotle cites Odysseus being left upon the shore of Ithaca as one example of an “irrational incident” which falls within the ambit of his definition of a “probable impossibility”.

The flip-side of Aristotle’s literary theory is that “[t]he element of the irrational … [is] justly censured when there is no inner necessity for introducing [it]”. In other words, in the absence of a well-constructed narrative, the artist should not introduce irrational incidents into their work. Such incidents are the “improbable possibilities” which Aristotle disapproves of. The Australian super-soaps, Neighbours and Home and Away, which, despite years of moderate ratings at home, continue to enjoy cultural icon status in the UK, provide countless examples of such “improbable possibilities”, but one from Neighbours shall suffice: in 1991, Harold Bishop disappeared off the edge of a seaside cliff; five years later he returned with the explanation that he was swept out to sea, picked up by a fishing trawler and suffering from amnesia.

By contrast, the events of the 2010 World Twenty20 semi-final between Pakistan and Australia neatly fit the “probable impossibility” aspect of Aristotle’s theory — no matter how “irrational” the last over might have seemed, we, the audience, accepted it because the incident took place within the well-established narrative framework of Pakistan’s recent history which features, amongst other things, allegations of match-fixing, ball-tampering, spot-fixing, terrorist-harbouring, terrorist-sponsoring and nuclear weapons proliferation.

And what of Saeed Ajmal, the noble vanquished foe of this Aristotelian cricketing tale? Less than two years after that traumatic five-ball spell in St Lucia, in the vast desert wastelands of Arabia, Ajmal topped the bowling charts in Pakistan’s 3-0 series victory over England, with 24 wickets at 14.70 apiece. He now stands on top of the world as the number one ranked spin bowler in Test cricket. Ironically enough, the flat, high-speed bowling which led to his downfall in St Lucia is what brought him super-success against England on the pitches of the UAE.

Sadly, for the people of Pakistan, the events of the last 20 years constitute not a cathartic work of literature, but a depressing work of non-fiction.

Their nation is a pariah, both in the cricketing, and the real geopolitical, world.

In addition to allegations of match-fixing, ball-tampering, and most recently, spot-fixing, their national cricket team has had to endure being stripped of the right to play international matches at home. Instead of the intimidating sights and hostile sounds of the National Stadium in Karachi, touring sides merely have to tolerate the sterile atmosphere of empty, state-of-the-art concrete bowls in the Arabian sands. Pakistani cricketers, already some of the worst-paid of the established Test-playing nations, have been banned from participating in the IPL, despite Pakistan having the best record of any nation in World Twenty20 tournaments.

On the geopolitical stage, on top of routine allegations of terrorist-harbouring, terrorist-sponsoring and nuclear weapons proliferation, in May 2011, the world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden, was found in Abbottabad, less than a mile from Pakistan’s pre-eminent military academy. A few months later, the late Christopher Hitchens described Pakistan as “an abject begging-bowl country that is nonetheless run by a super-rich and hyper-corrupt Punjabi elite”.

In a world where nothing seems to be going right for their country, Misbah’s team’s 3-0 series win over England in the Arabian desert and the manner of that victory — disciplined, clinical and professional — is something all cricket fans can respect, admire and yes, even celebrate.

Less than two years ago, Misbah and Ajmal could have allowed themselves to be consigned to the dust bin of history as limited-overs specialists and mediocre ones at that: big-time choke dogs who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in World Twenty20 tournaments. They did not. They weathered the slings and arrows of fortune and kept trying. Their determination has been richly rewarded.

Misbah will be remembered as the man whose calm intelligence rescued the Pakistani cricket team as it stared into the abyss and not only restored it to rude health, but led it to a comprehensive series whitewash against an England team justifiably ranked number one in the world. Ajmal is busy challenging Graeme Swann for the title of the best spinner in the world and could well finish his career as this decade’s first great spinner.

Some two thousand three hundred and fifty two years after Aristotle’s Poetics, Joss Whedon, one of the leading philosophical dramatists of my generation, wrote a memorable line for a vastly outnumbered freedom fighter in a war of independence: “We have done the impossible and that makes us mighty”.

Once upon a time, impossible victorious deeds were the exclusive domain of Pakistan’s opponents — the Hobart Test of 1999, featuring Justin Langer’s incredible creaking bat handle, springs to mind — but Misbah’s Pakistan have, through their professionalism, determination and skill, claimed a slice of that territory for themselves and the only question which remains is, in a transitional era following the fall of the Warne-McGrath Australian Empire where no Test-playing nation has been able to claim the world number one ranking for any substantial length of time, just how mighty could Misbah’s Pakistan become?

Following in the footsteps of Bob Massie and Terry Alderman, Hilfenhaus not only practised the art of swing bowling in English conditions better than the English themselves, but made a key member of England’s batting line-up his bunny — Hilfenhaus dismissed Ravi Bopara five times in 56 deliveries as Bopara averaged just 15 for the series before being dropped for Jonathan Trott for the last Test; not quite as memorable as the legend of Graham Gooch’s answering machine in 1989 (“I’m not here right now. I’m probably out … lbw to Terry Alderman”), but close.

Less than two years later, the bricklayer from Ulverstone, Tasmania was dropped in the aftermath of Australia’s 2010–11 Ashes debacle. With the recent emergence of a battery of promising young Australian quicks, it is entirely possible that Hilfenhaus, at the age of 28, has played his last Test for Australia.

That would be an injustice. Hilfenhaus has done little wrong and still has a lot to offer the Australian team.

After his successful 2009 Ashes tour, Hilfenhaus’s career continued its upward trajectory. He opened the bowling for Australia in the following home summer’s First Test against the West Indies — match figures of 5/70 won him the Man of the Match award as well as praise from captain Ricky Ponting for having developed the ability to “get the early [top order] wickets that we needed” in less-than-swing-friendly conditions.

Then injury struck. Knee tendonitis sidelined Hilfenhaus for the next six months.

Hilfenhaus made his comeback in the happy hunting grounds of the mother country in a two Test series against Pakistan in July 2010. He looked underdone but still performed creditably with series figures of 8 wickets at 23.75. Next came a two Test tour of India — in conditions which have so often proven to be an Australian fast bowlers’ graveyard, Hilfenhaus was Australia’s equal second highest wicket-taker behind Mitchell Johnson.

Accordingly, leading into the 2010–11 home Ashes series, it looked to all the world as if Hilfenhaus remained safely ensconced in Australia’s first-choice Test XI. The First Test at the Gabba began well enough — Hilfenhaus removed England captain Andrew Strauss with the third ball of the series. But he failed to take another wicket in the match, finishing with figures of 1/142 and was summarily dropped for the following Test in Adelaide as the Andrew Hilditch-led Australian selection panel continued its embrace of the England-in-the-90s policy of “one bad Test and you’re out”.

Although Hilfenhaus was recalled for the remaining three Tests of the series, he was roundly criticised for his inability to take wickets as England inflicted Australia’s first three-innings-defeat home Test series loss in 134 years of Test cricket. His critics had a point — there can be no escaping Test cricket’s sine qua non of 20 wickets for victory and Hilfenhaus’s series figures of 7 wickets at 59.28 from four Tests did little to help his team satisfy this condition.

However, Hilfenhaus’s fellow Australian bowlers found the going equally tough against an outstanding England batting line-up — no Australian bowler took more than 15 wickets and only Ryan Harris averaged less than 30 with the ball. As badly as Australia bowled in that series, England deserve due credit for batting superbly, demonstrating the old-fashioned virtues of patience and discipline which seemed to desert their Australian counterparts. And even at his worst, Hilfenhaus provided an excellent economy rate (his series economy rate of 2.62 was the best of the Australian bowlers) and the ability to bowl a lot of overs (despite missing one Test, he bowled 21.2 overs more than any other Australian bowler); qualities which, much like the ability to occupy the crease, are infrequently mentioned and deeply under-valued in contemporary Test cricket.

Yet Hilfenhaus was the sole member of the Ashes-losing pace attack axed from the Australian squad for the subsequent winter tours of Sri Lanka and South Africa.

Like all Australian bowlers, Hilfenhaus labours in the shadow of the twin giants of Warne and McGrath. Warne and McGrath simultaneously provided both economy and wicket-taking potency so the expectation is that their successors will do likewise. But such expectations are unrealistic, if not harmful — Warne and McGrath were once-in-a-generation bowlers and their ability to simultaneously perform both the aforementioned functions is one of the primary reasons why. The reality is that, in a bowling attack staffed by mere mortals, the two functions will, more often than not, have to be separated and performed by different bowlers.

As Warne himself wisely and frequently observes from the commentary box: bowling, like batting, works in partnerships. Hilfenhaus’s all-too-brief days as the leader of the Australian pace attack are probably over, but even in his cricketing middle age he can play an important role for the Australian team by, at minimum, diligently tying up an end whilst the young tyros let rip from the other end.

Hilfenhaus has never been an out-and-out strike bowler. Rather, he is, and always has been, a thoroughbred workhorse. His breakthrough Sheffield Shield season of 2006–07 tells the story: he took 60 wickets at 25.38, the third most in the Shield’s history, and bowled an astonishing 509.1 overs to do it, nearly 200 more than any other Shield fast bowler.

Since being dropped, Hilfenhaus has hit the gym to improve his fitness and eradicated a technical flaw in his action. His hard work has already reaped early season rewards: he currently sits fifth on the Shield wicket-taking list (having played one less match than three of the other top five wicket-takers) with 20 wickets at 28.60. He has the second lowest economy rate (2.76) but the highest strike-rate (61.9) of any bowler in the top five.

New Australia coach Mickey Arthur’s signalling of more frequent squad rotation and Hilfenhaus’s continued selection in Australia A sides offer hope that he forms part of the new selection panel’s future Test plans. He deserves to.

I hesitated for a long time to read Moneyball because, firstly, I have absolutely no interest in, or understanding of, baseball (it turned out that neither were necessary to comprehend and enjoy the book) and, secondly, as someone who studied economics at high school and university, I am acutely aware of the manifold dangers in mechanically applying statistical methodology to non-physical (that is, socio-economic) data — the fundamental difficulty in distinguishing between correlation and causality, the ease with which results can be manipulated by tweaking one variable in an equation or including/excluding data from a sample set and the inherent difficulties in detecting, much less correcting such manipulation. Accordingly, I am sceptical of any claims as to the revolutionary benefits of the application of such methodology to sport or, indeed, any socio-economic study.

There are, as Benjamin Disraeli noted, “three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”. Of course, statistical methodology can be useful in any socio-economic study but it must be applied and interpreted carefully; not as a wholesale substitution for substantive analytical thought. At its best, statistical methodology can tell you what happened; but it cannot, in and of itself, tell you why something happened — that requires a theory which is something no computer programme can generate. A theory can only be devised by a human being with a deep understanding not only of the particular socio-economic subject matter the statistical methodology is being applied to but, ideally, the broader historical, cultural, political and philosophical context in which that subject matter is situated.

That being said, by the time I finished reading Moneyball, I could readily accept Beane and Lewis’s low-threshold thesis that the empirical rigour and statistical methodology (christened “sabermetrics” by its founder, Bill James, after SABR, the acronym for the Society for American Baseball Research) embraced by Beane’s Oakland A’s, although by no means perfect, is at least better than the irrational impressionism and superstition which it replaced.

Lewis, a high-flying trader at Salomon Brothers (the Lehman Brothers of the shoulder-pads generation) in its mid-80s heyday, possesses not only a deep understanding of the statistical methodology which underpins derivatives and structured products, but the rare narrative verve necessary to explain the reasoning behind such dry subject matter and how it can be applied to baseball in a lucid and engaging manner.

All this is well and good but if Lewis stopped here, Moneyball would remain nothing more than a well-written economics journal article. What infuses the otherwise skeletal tale with a beating heart is Lewis’s interweaving of the exposition of Beane’s application of sabermetrics to baseball management with an intimate character study of Beane and the human beneficiaries of his empirical approach.

This interweaving reveals two profound ironies which stay with the reader long after “hits” and “on-base percentages” have faded from memory.

The first is that, as a player, Beane himself was the very embodiment of the traditional impressionistic aestheticism which he rejects as a manager — anointed as a future Hall of Famer by the baseball Powers That Be whilst still a high school student on the basis of traditional aesthetic virtues such as wheels, a hose and, most absurdly of all, a “Good Face”,[1] and drafted in the first round by the New York Mets. Beane never fulfils the establishment’s prophecies about him. He does play Major League Baseball but rather than retiring a legend at 37, he retires a journeyman at 27 when he should be at the very peak of his powers as a professional ballplayer, frustrated by his own inability to convert his undeniable talent into statistical results (ie runs) at the highest level.

Lewis poses but does not conclusively answer the question of whether Beane’s subsequent rejection of traditional impressionistic aestheticism as a general manager in favour of heretical sabermetrics is an existential reaction against his own fate as a player or the mere logical upshot of his rational and professional approach to baseball management.

The second irony revolves around the individual beneficiaries of Beane’s application of sabermetrics. We meet: Chad Bradford, the underarm pitcher from Byram, Mississippi who barely made his high school team and honed his craft on the backyard pitcher’s mound his paralysed father built for him with his bare hands; Jeremy Brown, the fat college catcher who can’t run; and Scott Hatteberg, the one-time Red Sox catcher who, courtesy of a nerve injury, can no longer throw a ball.

Lewis takes the time to get to know these people and paints their portraits with pathos and warmth. They are decent, hardworking men whose lives are changed for the better as a result of Beane’s application of sabermetrics. Lewis lets us feel their dreams and fears as they toil away in the obscurity of the minor leagues in Canada (Bradford) or college in Alabama (Brown) and player after player with inferior statistical performance but superior traditional aesthetics is promoted ahead of them; hoping, praying that someday, someone from a major league team will look past their atypical aesthetics to see their excellent statistical results and reward them with a shot at their dream. He captures their excitement and gratitude at finally being given the first or second chance they dreamed of but feared that they’d never get.

The irony is this: Beane himself treats his players like nothing more than economic assets to be bought (when undervalued by the market) and sold (when the profit to be made from their sale exceeds their utility to the team). As Lewis explains: “Players who just a couple of months earlier he’d sworn by he dumped, without so much as a wave good-bye.”[2] A man, in the famous words of one baseball fan, is treated like “a piece of fruit”, the flesh devoured and the peel discarded. Sabermetrics requires nothing less.

What, if anything, can Moneyball and the sabermetrics it champions tell us about cricket?

Broadly, Beane and Paul DePodesta, his Harvard economics graduate right-hand man and number-cruncher, employ two strategies — firstly, the application of non-traditional metrics to the existing data (for example, on-base percentage and pitches seen per plate appearance) and, secondly, the re-interpretation of existing, conventional metrics (for example, walks and home runs).

I expected to see the former stratagem in a book about statistical innovation authored by a former Wall Street trader. The application of such a data-intensive stratagem to cricket is beyond the scope of this article. In any event, it appears that the English Professional Cricketers’ Association, the Australian Cricketers’ Association and the England team have already started to do so.

As Ed Cowan explained, the ACA’s Most Valuable Player Award now awards points not only for “runs, wickets and catches but also for achieving such benchmarks as run- or economy rates, hundreds, volume of maidens, and even playing or captaining in winning sides.”

The England team’s statistician Nathan Leamon, hired by England coach Andy Flower after he read Moneyball, has utilised sabermetrics-style analysis to discover weaknesses in the batting technique of Sachin Tendulkar (struggles to score through the off-side early in his innings) and Mike Hussey (struggles against full balls pitched on middle-and-leg). These two contrasting examples serve as a reminder that the knowledge gained from sabermetrics, although undeniably useful, can only take a team so far — England’s sabermetrics-derived knowledge enabled them to dominate Tendulkar but it did not save them from being dominated by Hussey.

The latter stratagem was surprising if only because it appears, at first glance, to be so obvious as to go without saying. In any big time professional sport, it seems implausible that the management and coaching staff would ignore, misinterpret or fail to fully appreciate well-established, freely available conventional metrics.

But Beane and DePodesta realise that that is precisely what traditionalists are guilty of — they evaluate a young player on the basis of “what he looks like, or what he might become” rather than “what he has done”,[3] a player’s actual performances (as measured by statistics) are treated as less important than his possession of the five “tools”.

Beane’s high school batting average “collapse[s] from over .500 in his junior year to just over .300 in his senior year” and the scouts chasing him neither know nor care.[4]

Bradford statistically dominates Double-A ball and Triple-A ball and, for good measure, impresses in a two month stint with the White Sox, “finish[ing] with an earned run average of 3.23”,[5] but, until Beane comes along, he still can’t find a permanent spot on a major league roster because of his weird underarm throwing motion and speed-gun-slow fastball.

Brown, despite “own[ing] the Alabama record books”[6] and possessing “numbers … better than anyone’s in minor league baseball”[7] fails to even make Baseball America’s list of the top 25 amateur catchers.[8]

This dichotomy between statistical results achieved at the second-highest level of the game and what could be termed aesthetics or technique as seen through the eyes of the establishment, permeates cricket as much as it does baseball. Nowhere is it better exemplified than in the contrasting plights of Phil Hughes and Shaun Marsh.

Phil Hughes is 23 years of age and possesses a first-class average of 49.40, with 17 centuries from 64 matches. Shaun Marsh is 28 years of age and possesses a first-class average of 39.53, with 7 centuries from 65 matches. To put this into perspective, when Marsh was chosen to make his Test debut at the age of 28 against Sri Lanka a few months ago, he’d only scored 6 first-class centuries (he scored his 7^th on his Test debut); at the time Hughes was dropped from the Test XI in middle of the 2009 Ashes series, he’d already scored 10 first-class centuries.

Yet, at the dawn of a new era in Australian cricket, it is Hughes who finds himself under pressure to retain his place in the Test XI whereas Marsh, on the basis of three Tests, seems certain to reclaim his place in the side once he recovers from a back injury.

Why?

Looks.

At the crease, Hughes looks fidgety, hyperactive and streaky. Marsh is an idyllic island of composure and serenity.

Hughes, as his detractors point out, scores predominantly through the off-side (they fail to mention that this did not stop Sourav Ganguly and Herschelle Gibbs from having long, successful Test careers) and his footwork veers from unorthodox (scurrying away to leg to make room to slash the ball through the off-side) to non-existent. Marsh scores on both sides of the wicket, off both the front and back foot, and his footwork is beautifully orthodox.

Hughes hits a lot of balls in the air, particularly through the gully, point and cover regions. Marsh plays perfectly-timed classical strokes, keeping the ball on the ground wherever possible — even when he is scoring 115 off 58 balls in a T20 match.

Hughes is the son of a Macksville banana farmer. Marsh is the son of a former Australian Test batman and coach.

From the day he set foot in the Test arena, Hughes has had to endure a constant barrage of barbs from traditionalists aimed at his home-spun technique. On his maiden Ashes tour in 2009, The Times went so far as to label him “technically incompetent”. In the lead-up to Australia’s 2011 Test series against South Africa, his technique was ridiculed at length by Dominic Cork and Rob Key on SkySports. Cork and Key repeatedly questioned why Hughes was being picked ahead of other batsmen.

The answer is: sheer weight of first-class runs over a period of years in the face of inferior returns from his competitors.

The only alternative candidate Cork and Key mentioned by name was Callum Ferguson. Age: 27. First-class average: 34.63, with 6 centuries from 60 first-class matches. Statistically, not even on the same plane of existence as Hughes; but, like Marsh, Ferguson looks good at the crease.

What would a sabermetrician have to say about all this?

Firstly, it is important to distinguish between the market for major league baseballers and the market for Australian Test cricketers. Major League Baseball is a competitive market with 30 participant teams (albeit with different budget constraints) competing to sign, trade and draft players where the value of players fluctuates constantly. Cricket Australia is akin to a vertically integrated monopolist — Cricket Australia and its subsidiaries (the six state cricket associations) unilaterally determine the value of each and every Australian professional cricketer by awarding state and national contracts and selecting players for domestic and international sides.

In a Major League Baseball-style competitive market in which Beane was operating, a player like Hughes with his unconventional technique but outstanding first-class record, would be undervalued whereas a player such as Marsh with his classical technique but mediocre Shield record, would be overvalued. So Hughes would be relatively cheaper than Marsh, that is, Hughes would offer more bang per buck even if his absolute level of performance at the top-level turned out to be lower than Marsh’s. That in itself would be sufficient justification for Beane, operating with a limited budget, to acquire Hughes over Marsh. But that motivation clearly does not apply to Cricket Australia which is only interested in the absolute level of a player’s performance at the top level and can pick any Australian player it wishes.

Upon examining this first-class statistical data, a sabermetrician would not argue that it conclusively proves that Hughes will be a better Test batsman than Marsh or Ferguson. What the sabermetrician would argue is that the data suggests that Hughes deserves a fair go at the highest level. Until now, Hughes’s bad look has denied him that — he was dropped in the middle of the 2009 Ashes series just three Tests after scoring twin centuries in a Test at Kingsmead against a South African attack led by Dale Steyn, and he only returned to the Test XI on a full-time basis after Simon Katich was controversially axed from the Cricket Australia contract list in June.

What Hughes will do with such an opportunity is inherently and unavoidably uncertain. In Moneyball parlance, Hughes could go the way of Chad Bradford and Scott Hatteberg, who went on to enjoy long and successful major league careers, or he could just as easily go the way of Jeremy Brown, who ended up only playing 5 major league games. What is clear is that, empirically, Hughes has earned a fair go.

This victory capped the remarkable two-year rise of the current England Test team captained by Andrew Strauss and coached by Andy Flower; one which not many observers could have predicted after the Strauss-Flower administration’s inauspicious start — a farcical away Test series defeat to the then equal second last ranked West Indies in March 2009.

However, since that early nadir, the Strauss-Flower administration has barely put a foot wrong in the Test arena — a clichéd metaphor which applies almost literally in the case of Ian Bell — unexpectedly reclaiming the Ashes in nail-biting fashion on home soil, emphatically retaining the Ashes in record-breaking fashion in Australia, drawing with South Africa in South Africa, and ruthlessly whitewashing an Indian side containing the likes of Dravid, Sehwag, Tendulkar, Laxman, Dhoni and Gambhir in England.

Strangely, this rise has been met with somewhat muffled applause from commentators and players across the cricket-playing world. The Guardian’s Andy Bull neatly summed up the varied and manifold equivocations circulating the cricketing world in the aftermath of England’s rise to number 1 and the correct response to them:

Shut down the part of you that demands to know whether England won this series because India’s top players were too old, or too ill-prepared, or too obsessed with the Indian Premier League. Shout down the voice that wonders whether England are only No 1 because the competition is not as strong as it once was or could be. Ignore the questions about whether they will be able to win on the sub-continent, or who their batting reserves might be, or whether or not Monty Panesar is going to be good enough to cut it as their second spinner, if Strauss’s form and Chris Tremlett’s fitness are worth worrying about. The caveats belong in the small print, and can be kept for another occasion.

I find these equivocations unfair — and I’m Australian.

England are thoroughly deserving holders of the world number 1 Test ranking. Here’s why:

1.       The Best Bowling Unit in the World: The Ability to Take 20 Wickets

A world-class batting line-up enables a Test side to put itself in a position to win a Test match and/or ensure that it does not lose a Test match. However, it does not, in and of itself, enable a side to actually complete the act of winning a Test match, because to do that, a side must be able to take 20 wickets — the threshold requirement which distinguishes Test cricket from all the other lesser forms of the game.

Accordingly, although a world-class batting line-up is a sine qua non for a very good Test side, it is not in itself sufficient to create a world number 1 Test side. What distinguishes the latter from the former is the ability to consistently take 20 wickets in all conditions, which enables the latter to win Test matches at will, rather than merely not lose Test matches.

At present, England boast one of the best batting line-ups in the world. However, it can reasonably be argued that several other Test playing nations — India (with Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman, Dhoni and Gambhir), South Africa (with Kallis, Amla, de Villiers and Smith), Sri Lanka (with Sangakkara, Jayawardene and Dilshan) and perhaps even Australia (with Ponting, Hussey and Clarke) — possess batting line-ups which are, on paper at least, nearly as good.

What differentiates England from these opponents is England’s bowling unit which is, at present, the best in the world by which I mean that it is the squad of bowlers who have empirically proven that they are the most capable of consistently taking 20 wickets in all conditions. This should not come as any great surprise since the possession of the world’s best bowling unit is the same feature which distinguished Test cricket’s two preceding dominant sides — the West Indies circa 1980 to 1995 and Australia circa 1995 to 2007 — from their competitors.

The Strauss-Flower administration typically picks a Test XI containing four specialist bowlers — three quicks and one spinner. In this respect they have departed notably from the five bowlers strategy employed so often in the preceding Vaughan-Fletcher era and instead mirrored the great West Indies sides (circa 1980 to 1995) in the number of specialist bowlers chosen and the great Australian sides (circa 1995 to 2007) in both the number and composition of specialist bowlers chosen.

Indeed, when one compares the current England bowling unit to the Australian bowling unit during the recently concluded and much lamented Warne-McGrath era, it is clear that imitation, whether conscious or not, is the sincerest form of flattery.

Of the three quicks, there is one leader of the attack who is a certain pick and is the best in the world at his peculiar sub-discipline — Glenn McGrath at line and length, and Jimmy Anderson at swing. Both learned to adapt and add more strings to their bow as their careers progressed to deal with situations where their primary skill could not secure the breakthrough — McGrath developed the ability to swing the ball more and Anderson has improved his line, length and control to the point where he is as effective in the crackling dry heat of an Australian December as in a moist, overcast English July.

The two other quicks consist of one near-certain pick with solid batting technique (Gillespie for Australia; Broad for England) and one who rotates depending on fitness, form and pitch conditions — Finn, Tremlett, Onions and/or Bresnan for England and Lee, Kasprowicz, Bichel, Fleming and/or Reiffel for Australia.

The lone spinner in both teams is a charismatic rogue who loves his football club, is loved by the public at large, is always ready with a quotable quote for the media and has, at various times in his career, been viewed with suspicion by the cricket establishment. But, most importantly of all, he is one of the best in the world at what he does, having attained that elusive balance which only a genuine world-class spinner possesses — between control and aggression, economy and wicket-taking potency. Needless to say, he possesses the ability to bowl his team to victory in the fourth innings at will — Swann at The Oval to help England regain the Ashes in 2009, at Kingsmead in Durban later that year to clinch England’s sole victory in a drawn series, at the Adelaide Oval in December 2011 to seal the first of a record-breaking three innings victories on Australian soil, and at The Oval this summer to claim a series whitewash against India. Warne’s match-winning feats are too numerous to list in full but here are some edited highlights: the 1993 Boxing Day Test against the West Indies, Old Trafford 1993, the 1994 Gabba Ashes Test, Karachi 1994, Old Trafford 1997, the 1998 SCG Test against South Africa, the entire 2005 Ashes tour and, of course, the Adelaide and Melbourne Ashes Tests of 2006.

Yes — I just compared Graeme Swann to Shane Warne. The fact that, just over two years ago, that act would have been sufficient to land me in the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane illustrates just how far Strauss and Flower’s England have come in a short space of time.

At the macro level, the current England bowling unit and the Warne-McGrath era Australian bowling unit boast the rare virtue of both breadth (three quicks of differing styles and strengths and a spinner who can operate in all conditions) and depth: when, as inevitably happens at the highest level, one bowler falls victim to injury, poor form or unsuitable conditions, another slots seamlessly into his place.

Australia began their watershed tour of the West Indies in 1995 with a four-man attack consisting of McDermott, Fleming, Reiffel and Warne. It is easy to forget that the two senior pacemen, McDermott and Fleming, succumbed to injury before the start of the First Test in Bridgetown. Up stepped Brendon Julian and an unheralded 25-year old beanpole from Narromine (population: 6,509) named Glenn Donald McGrath. McGrath took 17 wickets at 21.70 in that series, demonstrating the metronomic line and length which were to become his trade mark, and never looked back.

Similarly, England started their 2010–11 Ashes tour with a four-pronged attack consisting of Anderson, Broad, Finn and Swann. When Broad went down with a torn abdominal muscle in the Second Test in Adelaide, Tremlett came in and took 17 wickets at 23.35 in the remaining three Tests, menacing the Australians with his hulking physique, steepling bounce, pace and accuracy. When Finn’s high economy rate and hit-the-deck style were deemed unsuitable for the slow Melbourne wicket with the series delicately poised at 1-1, Bresnan was brought in and proceeded to take 11 wickets at 19.54 in the remaining two Tests, both of which England won by an innings, demonstrating the control, stamina and variation required to take wickets on slow pitches.

2.       A Broad and Deep Squad

At the turn of the century, in the midst of his successful reign as captain of Australia, Steve Waugh advocated and practised a policy of squad rotation in one-dayers, particularly of fast bowlers: “why shouldn’t we rotate. It is in all other sports basically. I can guarantee you, in 12 to 18 months time every other cricket team will be doing it. The sooner people get their heads around it and realise it is common sense the better.”

Waugh, a supremely talented footballer in his youth (the late, great former Australian football captain Johnny Warren described one of his Wednesday night schoolboy goals as “a goal of which the legendary Franz Beckenbauer would have been proud”) before choosing cricket, even cited Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United as an example of the successful implementation of such a policy in elite team sport.

Waugh’s policy met with a less than enthusiastic reception from substantial sections of the Australian cricket media and public and, ultimately, it was a key contributing factor in his termination from the Australian one-day team altogether — the rotation of team stalwarts, including twin brother Mark, coincided with three consecutive losses to open the home triangular one-day series in 2002, Australia subsequently failed to make the finals for only the third time in 22 years and Waugh was controversially sacked a year out from the 2003 World Cup.

The passage of time has proven that, as has so often been the case, Waugh’s thinking was nothing short of prescient. For example, Matthew Hayden was not even included in Australia’s original one-day squad for the 2001 tour of India and, had Waugh not rotated Hayden into Australia’s one-day set-up in the early 2000s at the initial expense of his twin brother’s place and, ultimately, at the cost of his own place in the side, Hayden may never have been given the opportunity to notch up 652 runs at an average of 73.22 and a strike rate of 101.07 in the 2007 World Cup and it is unclear whether Australia would have romped to a record third consecutive World Cup.

The current world number 1 ranked England team is not just a first XI but a squad in the truest, modern sense of the word. This summer alone, they have suffered injuries to Bresnan, Tremlett and Trott, but that has not stopped them sweeping India in both the Test and one-day series, as their replacements have proven up to the task each and every time. As such, they can be viewed, ironically enough, as the corporeal fulfilment of the prophecy espoused by their forebears’ greatest tormentor.

At the domestic level in Australia, the dominant force over the past decade, with three Shields, one one-day title and four T20 titles, has been Victoria whose coach, Greg Shipperd, has expressly endorsed a policy of rotation which has been applied to bowlers, batsmen and even wicketkeepers — the Powers That Be at Cricket Victoria could not decide between Matthew Wade and Adam Crosthwaite, so they rotated them for two seasons, sometimes even playing both in the same XI, until the latter moved north in search of a more permanent position.

3.       The Least Worst of a Mediocre Current Crop Is The Best in the World

Perhaps the most logically indefensible of the equivocations aimed at the current England side has been the three-fold comparative argument that: they are merely the best of a mediocre current crop of Test sides; they are not as good as the great sides of the past; and unlike those great sides, they have yet to win on the sub-continent against any of the three major sub-continental powers.

Taking each limb of this argument in turn, firstly, as a matter of logic, the argument that the current England side have merely taken advantage of an on-field lacuna in global cricketing power is unfair — England can only physically beat the opponents who exist in their era. What can be said is that, at this point in their development, they have achieved everything that it’s possible for them to achieve by besting each and every opponent placed in front of them. They can do no more.

The paucity of genuine alternative number ones is a logically sound, albeit cosmetically unappealing, argument. Indeed, when one turns to examine the four possible alternative contenders for the number 1 spot, even England’s harshest critics must acknowledge that, at minimum, England are the least worst of a mediocre current crop:

• India: One of the modern game’s greatest ever Test batting line-ups enabled India to reign briefly as number 1 from December 2009 to 13 August 2011. Unfortunately for their billion plus fans, their reign was destined to be a brief one as the three members of the Holy Trinity were, at the time of their ascension, the wrong side of 35 and the bowling attack, which never had the ability to consistently take 20 wickets in all conditions, is now beginning to acquire a distinctly pop-gun look.
• South Africa: As always, look good on paper and certainly good enough to mount a serious challenge for the number 1 spot, but, in practice, still serial chokers who follow even the greatest triumphs, such as becoming the first touring side in nearly 16 years to win a Test series on Australian soil in December 2008, with inexplicable self-combustion — immediately losing the return home series against the same opponent in 10 days.
• Australia: In transition. Hit rock bottom with the 3-1 Ashes defeat at home — the first time in 134 years of Test cricket that Australia lost a home series by the humiliating margin of three innings defeats. On their way back up but nowhere near reaching the summit right now.
• Sri Lanka: In a period of even greater transition than Australia. No Murali, no Vaas and no Malinga in their Test XI means that they no longer have a bowling attack capable of consistently taking 20 wickets, even at home. They still have a strong batting line-up but, as explained above, that’s not enough to be the world’s number 1 Test team.

What is all too often forgotten is that, as a matter of logic, the least worst of even a mediocre current crop still equates to the best in the world. As Sir Winston Churchill drily pointed out in 1947, after saving parliamentary democracy and the British state from extinction, only to be ejected from office by the British voters immediately afterwards: “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.

Secondly, with the current England side having just claimed the number 1 ranking, it is far too early to be even contemplating comparing them to the great sides of the past, much less denigrating them on the basis of such premature comparisons.

Thirdly, it is unfair and illogical to attempt to diminish England’s achievements by reference to the fact that they have failed to win on the sub-continent against any of the three major sub-continental powers because there is a very good and very simple reason for this — the Strauss-Flower administration’s England have yet to play any of the three major sub-continental powers on their home soil. Indeed, this is the next challenge which awaits England — away Test series against Pakistan and Sri Lanka this winter and India next winter. Any argument derived from England’s putative record on the sub-continent against the three major sub-continental powers must be deferred until they actually have one. As Rahul Dravid pointed out, “they’ve got the team and the skills to do it [ie win in India] but it still needs to be done.”

4.       Rational, Far-Sighted and Unsentimental Selectors

I can think of no other major international team sport in which an extra-coaching body determines the composition of a side. In football, basketball and rugby union, a manager or head coach is generally the sole repository of the power to pick the side; sometimes alongside a sporting director (called a team “president” in the US, a prominent example being Pat Riley at the Miami Heat) who is responsible for shaping the long-term composition of the squad.

By contrast, in international cricket, the power to pick teams and touring squads resides with a small body of individuals, typically composed of ex-players, known as selectors, who generally do not include the captain and the coach unless the team is on tour. They, as the likes of Dean Jones, Simon Katich, Owais Shah and Graeme Hick can testify, have the power to terminate international careers at the stroke of a pen.

Accordingly, good selectors are a sine qua non for a world number 1 Test side.

The current England selectors, led by Geoff Miller, have done an outstanding job, practising, whether consciously or otherwise, many of the same principles and policies embraced by Australia’s selectors during their period of dominance.

Firstly, giving the benefit of any doubt at the selection table to youth and having the guts to back their own judgement and the ability of the young player in question by giving him a fair go even when a run of poor form has many calling for his head.

The Australian selectors famously waited 42 Test innings for Steve Waugh to produce his first Test century, a majestic 177 not out at Headingley in the first innings of the First Test of the epochal 1989 Ashes Tour, and were duly rewarded with a further 31 more, including a full set against every Test playing nation. Ricky Ponting went on the era-defining 1995 tour of the West Indies as a 20 year old next batsman in line and was duly promoted ahead of the more experienced Stuart Law when a permanent position in the batting line-up became available shortly thereafter. Shane Warne was picked for the Test XI when he was not yet a regular in Victoria’s Shield XI and he was not discarded like a piece of fruit after a Test debut which yielded match figures of 1/150.

Similarly, the England selectors’ faith in Alistair Cook never wavered in the face of a paltry return of 226 runs at an average of 22.60 in the six Tests of the English home summer which preceded the 2010–11 Ashes tour. Since the First Test of that Ashes tour at The Gabba in November 2010, Cook has prodded, nudged, squirted, pushed, worked, guided and occasionally smacked a total of 1504 Test runs at a truly Bradmanesque average of 94.00.

As for golden boy Stuart Broad, it is hard to remember a prolonged period of time when his position in the England Test XI has not been the subject of intense (and largely empirically justifiable) scrutiny by the fans and media alike. Before the Fourth Test of the 2009 Ashes at Headingley, Broad’s career Test bowling figures read: 52 wickets in 20 Tests at 40.21. Still, the England selectors persevered despite the clamour for their Anointed One’s head. In the final two Tests of the 2009 Ashes, Broad produced 12 wickets at 16.58, including a series-winning 5/36 in Australia’s first innings in the deciding Test at The Oval — a bowling performance so utterly unrecognisable from his previous Test performances up to that point that had it subsequently been revealed by a Panorama investigation that it was the product of a successful joint MI5–ECB experiment to transfer the consciousness of Harold Larwood circa 1932 into Broad’s 2009 body, nary an eyebrow would have been raised. In the three Test series against Sri Lanka this summer, Broad’s figures read: 8 wickets at 48.75. Broad was even dropped for the final and deciding one-dayer of the five match one-day series against Sri Lanka, despite being the England T20 captain and the England one-day vice-captain. Accordingly, leading into the four Test series against the then world number 1 ranked Indians, the pressure on Broad to retain his place was immense. Yet again, there were calls for the golden boy’s head. Broad’s figures for the series against India: 25 wickets at 13.84.

Secondly, ruthlessly and unsentimentally discarding even once great players as soon as they are past their use-by date.

Boon, Border, Taylor, Mark Waugh, Steve Waugh, Healy and Hayden — none of them, with the possible exception of Steve Waugh, retired at a time wholly of their own choosing; all of them received a form-induced tap on the shoulder, whether express or implied, from the selectors. The England selectors have, in recent times, shown a similar flinty-hearted resolve, consigning one-time Ashes hero Steve Harmison to the scrapheap and not only sacking the former middle-order linchpin in all three formats, Paul Collingwood, as T20 captain but dropping him from both limited overs sides altogether.

Thirdly, backing their judgement and having the courage to drop any individual player, irrespective of age, reputation and/or talent, if it is in the best interests of the team.

In April 1999, the Australian touring selectors, consisting of captain Steve Waugh, vice-captain Shane Warne and coach Geoff Marsh, dropped Warne himself for the fourth and final Test against the West Indies in Antigua. The result: Australia won the Test, squared the series, retained the Frank Worrell Trophy and instead of Australia’s nascent reign as the world’s best Test team being interrupted at the delicate moment of transition from Taylor to Waugh, Australia under Waugh were able to strengthen their grip on the crown acquired under Taylor and within 6 months, the Lara-inspired series draw in the Caribbean was but a dim and distant memory as Waugh’s Australia commenced their record run of 16 consecutive Test victories.

In November 1992, the Australian selectors, consisting of Bob Simpson, John Benaud, Jim Higgs and Lawrie Sawle, sat down to pick the side for the First Test of the five match home series against the West Indies. With Boon opening alongside Taylor, and Mark Waugh and Border pencilled in at four and six, two of the four spots in the middle-order remained up for grabs. Damien Martyn’s youth and irresistible form for Western Australia won him the number five position. That left the problematic number three position to fill. There were two candidates for the position — the 31-year old Dean Jones and the 27-year old Steve Waugh. The former boasted a Test average of 46.55, a Test double-century batting at number three and was coming off an unbeaten century and series average of 55.20 on the preceding tour of Sri Lanka; the latter had a Test average of 37.44, had only batted at number three once in Tests and, apart from a two-Test cameo as a bowling all-rounder batting at seven, had been out of the Test XI since January 1991.

History records that the selectors opted for Steve Waugh who went on to play a further 124 Tests, score a further 8830 runs at an average of 55.88 and lead arguably the greatest Test team of all time. Jones never played another Test. In Victoria, we tend to remember that Jones was unjustly dropped; we tend to forget who he was dropped for. On such matters of judgement, empires rise and fall.

England’s reign has only just begun, so it is impossible to make such firm historical evaluations of the wisdom of analogous decisions by the England selectors. Nevertheless, right now, it can certainly be argued that in the years to come, decisions such as that to drop Bopara for Trott for the deciding Fifth Ashes Test at The Oval in 2009 will be seen in a similar light. At minimum, it cannot be disputed that that decision was necessary to enable England to win that Test and reclaim the Ashes. Bopara had only managed 105 runs at 15 for the series, having succumbed to Ben Hilfenhaus’s powers of swing; the same fate which befell his batting mentor Graham Gooch in the 1989 Ashes series when confronted by the same powers deployed by Terry Alderman. Trott was able to better that tally in one Test match, notch up a maiden, Ashes-winning hundred in the process and is now a fixture in the England Test XI, having racked up close to 2000 runs at 57.79 from 23 Tests by the simple expedient of shuffling towards off and prodding the ball to the leg-side.

With the benefit of hindsight, the decision to replace Bopara with Trott appears to be an easy and self-evidently correct one but it must be remembered that, at the time, it was anything but — Bopara had peeled off centuries in three consecutive Test innings in the immediately preceding series against the West Indies and justifiably had his supporters after scoring a mountain of runs for Essex and patiently biding his time for a permanent position in the England batting line-up.

Fourthly, rational consistency in selection and a de facto cab rank rule, which give the players certainty if not fairness.

In December 1995, Steve Waugh was at the peak of his powers as a Test batsman. Unfortunately, in the lead-up to the First Test against Sri Lanka at the WACA, he picked up a groin injury. This, combined with the dropping of Greg Blewett, meant that two vacancies suddenly appeared in the Australian batting order. It was clear that, on the basis of their first-class form, the next two cabs off the rank were Ricky Ponting and Stuart Law. Accordingly, they both came into the XI to make their Test debuts. The match is remembered for Ponting’s 96 on debut, adjudged LBW to a Vaas delivery which was going over leg stump; what tends to be forgotten is that Law also performed well on debut, scoring an unbeaten half century. When Waugh returned to full fitness before the following Test in Melbourne, it was clear that, by virtue of an outstanding first-class record and youth, Ponting (who had already been picked as the spare batsman for the 1995 tour of the West Indies as a 20 year old) would retain his place in the XI ahead of Law. At the time of writing, Ricky Ponting has scored 12,487 Test runs at 53.13, and won at least one Test series, home and away, against every Test playing nation in the world. Despite 27,080 first-class runs and five Sheffield Shields, Stuart Law never wore the baggy green again. Such is the cruelty of selectorial excellence.

Similarly, Paul Collingwood’s retirement from Tests in January 2011 created a vacancy in the England batting line-up. There were two candidates for the position — Ravi Bopara and Eoin Morgan. The England selectors had already signalled their intentions by picking Morgan to fill the temporary vacancies created by the resting of Collingwood for the home series against Bangladesh in 2010 and the foot injury to Ian Bell which ruled him out of the following series against Pakistan, and as the spare batsman for the 2010–11 Ashes tour, despite Morgan’s inferior first-class record. Notwithstanding Bopara’s strong start to this English summer with Essex whilst Morgan made hay in the Indian Premier League, the England selectors adhered to their de facto cab rank rule and promoted Morgan to the full-time position; a decision made all the more straightforward by Morgan’s timely 193 for the England Lions on the eve of the summer’s first Test. To date, Morgan has largely vindicated the selectors’ decision by getting the job done on the admittedly limited occasions when his services have been called for.

So there you have it, credit where it’s due — England deserve to be number 1 because they have the best bowling unit, the best squad and the best selectors. Nevertheless, like most twenty-something Australian males, I have absolutely no intention of breaking a lifelong habit of calling them the worst team in Test cricket … well, except for all the others.

The reality was that he wasn’t just the obvious choice; he was the only viable one in a team populated primarily by players at opposite ends of the age-experience spectrum with nothing much in between. This was illustrated by the fact that the main alternative candidates floated in the Australian media at the beginning of the last Australian summer — Marcus North and Simon Katich — have both been subsequently dropped (the formerly justly, the latter unjustly), not just from the Test XI, but from Cricket Australia’s national contract list altogether.

This then seems an apposite time to ask — why does a seemingly substantial proportion of the Australian public and the Australian cricketing fraternity appear vehemently opposed to the very idea of Clarke as captain?

First, let’s look off the field — the obvious reason which springs to mind is the Tall Poppy Syndrome. By way of explanation for our non-Australian readers, this is an oft-cited Australian cultural term which refers to an alleged tendency on the part of the Australian media and general public to cut down tall poppies, namely, people who accrue excessive fame and/or wealth and particularly those who do so overnight. The most common explanation for the syndrome is that Australia is a self-described egalitarian nation which is consequently suspicious of individual excess and the inequality that entails.

Clarke would appear to neatly fit the classic definition of a tall poppy. Even before he’d made his Test debut, he’d already signed “the biggest sporting-brand sponsorship deal in Australian cricket history” and was driving around in a BMW convertible. Before long, he was dating then engaged to Australia’s most well-known glamour model and modelling men’s underwear himself. He has tattoos. He wears ear-rings.

However, the problem with the Tall Poppy Syndrome explanation for Clarke’s apparent unpopularity is that many other (immensely popular) modern Australian cricketers also satisfy the definition of a tall poppy.

Dean Jones’s then landmark sponsorship deal with Kookaburra in the late 80s never affected his hero status — particularly in his home state of Victoria his axing from the Australian side is still universally remembered as premature and unjust.

Michael Slater was a popular player and remains a popular TV commentator despite a penchant for Ferraris early in his career.

Shane Warne’s endorsement of everything from Advanced Hair hair replacement therapy to Nicorette nicotine-substitute patches — not to mention his catalogue of well-publicised extra-marital dalliances and acceptance of cash from subcontinental bookmakers in exchange for pitch and weather information — have never substantially affected his standing in the eyes of the Australian public. Indeed, for my generation, Warnie’s tireless promotion of Advanced Hair’s “strand by strand” hair replacement technology is now as part of the fabric of the Australian summer as the sight of Richie Benaud in a cream blazer.

So Clarke’s accruement of wealth and enjoyment of the trappings of fame seem unlikely to constitute an adequate explanation for his apparent unpopularity with the Australian public given that the most popular Australian cricketer of the past two decades engaged in similar conduct from the beginning to the end of his career.

What about on the field then? Maybe Clarke’s performed poorly as a batsman at key moments in big matches? Or maybe he hasn’t batted well enough in the series which really matter? Or maybe he just hasn’t got going when the going’s gotten tough?

Nope — not one of these hypothetical charges is supported by the empirical evidence.

Clarke’s sparkling 151 on Test debut against India in October 2004 helped Australia to its first Test series win in India in 35 years thereby conquering the last remaining frontier for the great Australian team of 1995 to 2007.

Even on the very rare occasion when that great Australian side lost, most notably in England in 2005, Clarke performed relatively well — his second innings 91 and 155 run partnership with Damien Martyn at Lord’s helped set the Australians up for their solitary Test win in that series and his series average of 37.22, whilst mediocre compared to his current career average of 46.49, ranked him third in Australia’s batting averages for that series and was higher than that of more illustrious compatriots Hayden, Martyn and Gilchrist.

His recall to the Australian Test XI was a substantial factor in Australia’s ruthless whitewashing of England in 2006–07. He averaged 77.80 for the series and stood up in the big moments. His 124 in Australia’s first innings in Adelaide helped eliminate any realistic prospect of defeat when the series was still delicately poised with Australia only 1-0 up and England in the ascendancy in the Second Test, and set the platform for Australia to conjure up a famous victory from the limp embers of a seemingly inevitable draw. His calm unbeaten 21 in the second innings was instrumental in making the impossible a nightmarish reality for the shell-shocked English tourists. His top score of a rapid and unbeaten 135 in Australia’s second innings in the Third Test at the WACA was invaluable in giving his bowlers the time and the runs to comfortably bowl out the English to reclaim the Ashes at the earliest possible opportunity.

He was Australia’s best batsman in the 2009 Ashes series defeat in England, topping the team batting charts with an average of 64.00 and crucial knocks of 103 not out at Edgbaston, which saved the Third Test with Australia already 1-0 down in the series, and a brisk 93 in challenging batting conditions at Headingley, which set Australia up for their solitary Test win in the series.

Australia has won 9 of the 14 Tests in which he’s scored a hundred.  

However, there is one legitimate, albeit very specific, charge which can be levelled against Clarke’s on-field performance — his brain fades just before the end of a session in big Test matches which result in him getting out to an innocuous delivery when well-set. The most recent and painful example would be his dismissal for 80 to the part-time off-spin of Kevin Pietersen just before the close of play on the fourth day in Adelaide in 2010 as Australia was fighting to save the Second Test with the series evenly poised at 0-0. But even this one well-evidenced charge implicitly contains a back-handed compliment, namely, that even when Clarke fails in big matches, he’s been good enough to get to 80-odd, which is a failing ordinary Test batsmen would love to have on their CVs.

Let’s look more closely then at his off-field conduct. As Jarrod Kimber pointed out, Clarke’s an odd figure to hate because he’s “bland” and “does everything he can to not get involved in controversy”. But therein lies what I believe to be the true, underlying cultural cause of Clarke’s apparent unpopularity — he’s seen as a fake, a “try hard” in Australian schoolyard parlance; a far worse sin than merely being a tall poppy.

He had a manager before he was even a regular in the Australian Test side. From the very outset of his career, he’s taken great care to dot his I’s and cross his T’s and establish himself as a favourite of the establishment. However, by so conspicuously straining to always do things by the book, Clarke has come off looking synthesised to an Australian public which loves its cricketing heroes honest, raw, gritty and bluntly spoken — think Ian Chappell, Allan Border, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting.

Two salient illustrations of Clarke’s image-anxiety spring to mind.

Clarke is a passionate and lifelong Wests Tigers fan. Nothing unusual or wrong about that given that he was born and bred in Sydney’s working-class west. However, in 2008, he, or more precisely his management team, refused to allow him to be photographed with Wests Tigers superstars Benji Marshall and Robbie Farah on the grounds that being photographed with rugby league players could adversely affect his public image.

By contrast, Steve Waugh never hid his love of association football at a time when it was still derided in some parts of Australia as a game played by “Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters”, and Ricky Ponting has never hidden his love of dog-racing (which earned him his nickname of “Punter”) despite its distinctly working-class hue.

The second example is the now infamous dressing room incident with Simon Katich after Australia’s victory over South Africa in the January 2009 SCG Test. The incident boiled down to a disagreement over the observance of one of the cherished rituals of the Australian cricket team — the singing of the team song, Under the Southern Cross I Stand, following a victory. Tradition has it that one member of the team is appointed custodian of the song. It is he who has the honour of leading the team in the song and it is he who possesses the power to decide when it is sung. In January 2009, the holder of that office was Mike Hussey. It seems that Clarke attempted to cajole Hussey to sing the song early so that the team could leave the dressing room in time for a team dinner he’d arranged with family and friends (including Clarke’s then fiancée, Lara Bingle). Katich told Clarke, his vice-captain, to “f**k off”. Clarke responded by telling Katich not to swear at him. Katich then grabbed Clarke by the throat and the two had to be physically separated by teammates.

Now, I’m a massive Katich fan and a proud supporter of the campaign to restore him to the Test XI. Nonetheless, I would readily concede that, no matter the degree of verbal provocation, it is not acceptable to grab your vice-captain, or any fellow citizen for that matter, by the throat. It should be noted that, to the credit of both Clarke and Katich, they spoke directly to one another soon after the incident to quickly and quietly settle the matter in private.

But that doesn’t explain why, after the incident was made public, polls consistently showed that a vast majority of the Australian public supported Katich. After all, if you asked an ordinary Australian on the street whether, even in response to verbal provocation, it was acceptable to grab a fellow citizen, much less a superior at work, by the throat, the answer would be “no”.

The answer is that Katich is rightly seen as a genuine bloke — which is what counts in the eyes of the Australian public. Like all genuine blokes, he’s not perfect and his flaw is an at times short fuse. Clearly, grabbing another human being by the throat was wrong. But he accepted responsibility for his wrongful conduct and was man enough to speak directly to Clarke to quickly resolve the matter. And his actions, although disproportionate and wrongful, were taken in defence of values cherished by all Australians — mateship and team spirit.

By contrast, Clarke is, for the reasons set out above, perceived to be a try hard and a fake.

In truth, Michael Clarke may well be, and probably is, a good bloke — it’s just hard for us to tell behind that professionally crafted media facade.

My completely unsolicited armchair advice is that he just needs to convince Australia that he’s a genuine bloke, not even necessarily a top bloke. Stop trying to look perfect, and just be himself. Who knows, people may actually like the man beneath the carefully constructed public persona. After all, there seems to be plenty of evidence to indicate that that person is a thoroughly decent human being who gives generously and quietly to charity, never misses his junior cricket club’s breakfast, and is renowned for his generosity and loyalty towards his family and friends.

What’s the worst that could happen? Even if the Australian public decide that they don’t like the real Michael Clarke, it’s still better to be disliked for who you are, than be ridiculed for an artificial image constructed by a battalion of overpaid professional minders. At the end of the day, you’re living your childhood dream. Even if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, you’d be remembered as a very fine Test batsman. If people dislike you for who you are, then so be it.

Indeed, such is my enthusiasm for the ICC’s never-ending, commercially exploitative tournament format, I’m writing this update in a biergarten in Vienna as I pass the time waiting for the train to the beer-soaked heaven of Prague. Anyway, back to the point, which I believe is Australia’s performance so far and our prospects in the knock-out rounds. It’s difficult to draw any substantive conclusions from the group stage because the unfortunate wash out meant that we weren’t tested until our final group game against Pakistan. And, yes, we lost and it wasn’t a great performance from our batting line-up but one bad performance in a meaningless one-day game hardly says anything about a team’s prospects of winning three consecutive sudden death matches — which is what this World Cup comes down to. It doesn’t even particularly matter in what order you face the opposition. The bottom line is that in order to win a World Cup on the sub-continent in this format, you’re inevitably going to have to beat one or more of the sub-continental powers at some point — so I’m not overly fussed that we drew India in the quarters.

What will be of concern to the Australian team hierarchy is the lack of wickets from our spinners and the continued poor batting form of Ponting and Cameron White, our Unofficial Deputy Vice-Captain and arguably our best one-day batsman since his coming of age on the one-day segment of the 2009 Ashes tour. White’s batting form has been mysteriously mediocre ever since he was elevated to the Australian T20I captaincy a few months ago — another sad example of Australia today somehow managing to slowly morph into England in the 90s. Ponting’s one-day international and, in particular, World Cup record provide substantial comfort that he will come good when it matters in the knock-out matches. But, as much as I hate to say it as a Victorian, White’s position has to be under scrutiny.  Given Tait’s excellent wicket-taking form (yes, his economy rate’s been a tad high but that’s always been the case with Tait and it’s surely a risk one has to accept in picking him) and the potential weakness of certain members of the Indian batting line-up against brute pace and short-pitched bowling, I was surprised to hear rumours that Tait may be the one who’ll have to make way if the selectors choose to bring in bowling all-rounder John Hastings. Surely, White should be the one in line for the chop in light of his non-contribution with both bat and ball and Hasting’s proven slogging ability.

I’m still not convinced by Haddin partnering Watson at the top. If it’s a slightly dodgy batting wicket then surely Tim Paine is better equipped technically to play the anchor role next to Watson at the top of the order. The spinners would also appreciate Paine’s superior keeping on a turning deck. If it’s a flat track and the plan is all-out attack at the top of the order then Paine, with his outstanding domestic T20 record, also appears to be the better option to partner Watson. Haddin’s dismissal in the 40s against Pakistan was another example of his frustrating habit of getting out when well-set in difficult batting conditions and the team needs him to kick on and make a big score.

Our three-pronged pace attack has done its wicket-taking job and Brett Lee, as willing and lion-hearted as ever, has been immense. It’s a shame that his body no longer allows him to play Test cricket. As for our spinners, the combination of a lack of wickets and not exactly frugal economy rates is a concern, but there’s not much the selectors can do at this point. In terms of wickets, Krejza and Smith are the most aggressive limited overs spinners Australia has and they’re already in the XI. In terms of economy rate, the selectors could bring in David Hussey, who’d also bolster the batting, but that hardly solves the primary problem of taking wickets and, in any event, both Smith and Krejza can bat (even if the latter hasn’t shown it up to this point in the tournament). Hauritz would be useful right now (two years ago, I never thought I’d type those words) but he’s injured.

It’s sad that Ponting’s chance to win three consecutive World Cups as captain without dropping a single match has now gone but a third consecutive World Cup as captain, particularly one including a win over a hugely-hyped Indian side on their home turf, would at least go some way to repairing his legacy as captain after a third Ashes series defeat.

We still have every chance of beating India and winning this World Cup — but then, so does every other side which made the quarters (yes, I’m including the West Indies and New Zealand). If our batting line-up fires (and everything in Ponting’s World Cup record indicates that he will deliver now that it counts) and we post a good total on the board, then you’d back our bowlers to finish the job. But, if our batting line-up has another one of their by now disturbingly familiar collapses, then our bowlers and, in particular, our still internationally inexperienced spinners will face a grim day at the office.

Finally, a few words about England. First off, well-done to the England players for having the class to go and celebrate with, and congratulate, the Irish lads after their win. Not a great day for the England bowlers who weren’t at their best but even if they were, there’s not much any bowler can do on a pitch that flat against a batsman in a state of grace like Kevin O’Brien was. You just have to doff your cap to him and shake his hand. As the man himself admitted after the match, he’ll never bat that well again, and his international record to date indicates that he’d never batted that well before! Also, let’s not forget that the England bowlers have been on tour since November. They got three days at home between the end of the Ashes tour and the start of the World Cup. Strauss has rightly refused to use that as an excuse but there’s no doubt that exhaustion would be affecting bowlers like Anderson who bowled their hearts out to retain the Ashes on Australian soil for the first time in 23 years. And for all the boundary balls Anderson’s served up in this tournament, don’t forget that he single-handedly dragged England back into their match against South Africa with a lethal mid-innings spell and, in hindsight, that victory was the key to England’s eventual qualification for the quarters. It’d be a foolish man who’d bet against Anderson being decisive for England in the knock-out rounds.

Second, congratulations to the England selectors whose balls of steel have again paid off. They dropped the Ashes series leading wicket-taker Steve Finn for Tim Bresnan for the Boxing Day Test and were rewarded with a match-winning performance from the Yorkie and a series-clinching win. Heading into England’s must-win group game against the West Indies, the selectors dropped the leader of their pace attack and their all-time leading international one-day run scorer. Their replacements — the unheralded James Tredwell and the much-maligned jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none Luke Wright — made match-winning contributions as England got the win they needed in their trade mark nerve-shredding fashion. More disturbing examples of England slowly morphing into Australia circa 1995 to 2007.

All the quarter-finalists have a decent shot at winning this World Cup. But, if I have to back someone, I’ll back England. They have the hunger, the right mix of bowlers, a strong batting line-up, an excellent fielding unit and most importantly of all in a knock-out cup … Lady Luck and a sense of destiny on their side as they complete their ascension as the best all-round cricket side in the world. A few years ago, in the wake of England’s 5-0 Ashes humiliation, when some England and Wales Cricket Board suit announced their goal of winning back and retaining the Ashes and winning both limited overs World Cups, I laughed out loud (in my defence, I was hardly alone). I’m not laughing any more.

Once upon a time in the mid-to-late ’90s, winning the one-day World Cup mattered to the Australian public. I suspect that this was because it offered the only means by which to obtain formal confirmation that the Australian team was, as their consistent Test performances since toppling the West Indian Empire at Sabina Park in 1995 indicated, the best in the world. After all, world titles always fit much more snugly when they are not self-proclaimed — no matter how well-reasoned one’s self-proclamation may be. Moreover, an ascent to the very summit of world cricket, capped by a World Cup victory, would complete a virtuous circle — the long and arduous ascent having begun with an unexpected triumph in the 1987 World Cup by a young Australian side emerging from the dark doldrums of the post-Chappell-Marsh-Lillee years.

This desire only intensified after the 1996 World Cup when, after a thrilling tournament featuring a mammoth run chase in the quarters against New Zealand (I still maintain that that wasn’t Chris Harris batting) and a “I see it but I don’t believe it” back-from-the-dead win over the West Indies in the semis, the Mark Taylor-led Australians went down in the final to a well-drilled Sri Lankan unit led by the cunning Arjuna Ranatunga. Yeah, I reckon Ranatunga was a bit of a douche bag and his unnecessarily inflammatory conduct at the SCG in the final of the triangular one-day series preceding the World Cup was a low point in the history of world cricket but … you have to acknowledge that he was a tactically astute captain who got the best out of a hard-working but moderately talented side who, although they still weren’t able to compete with Australia in the Test arena, deservedly won that World Cup final. Having studied the local conditions in Lahore for the day-night final, Ranatunga realised that the build-up of moisture and dew as day turned to night would make it difficult for any spinner to grip the ball. When he won the toss, he duly sent Australia into bat and Warne, who in 1996 was truly at his zenith (back then, the flipper was still a regularly deployed weapon rather than a carefully constructed urban myth dutifully digested by a generation of gullible Englishmen), was effectively negated.

In his excellent tour diary, Steve Waugh candidly admitted that the dew factor was something which the Australians failed to factor into their pre-game planning. I’d argue that Taylor failed to factor it into his in-game tactics too as he bowled Warne for his full 10 overs (he went for close to 6 an over and took no wickets) despite it being plainly evident that he couldn’t grip the ball. Taylor was a good captain but, to this day, I find it odd that his captaincy appears to be beyond criticism and that there exists a persistent school of thought (led by Ian Chappell) in Australian cricket circles which not only insists that Taylor was a better and more aggressive captain than Waugh, but seems to think that the best way to promote this thesis is to attack Waugh’s captaincy.

In the case of the 1996 World Cup final, a failure to research local conditions causing a failure to realise that your strike bowler’s powers could be severely diminished, seems to be a significant tactical mistake on the part of a captain, worthy of at least substantive comment in the national media.  As far as I remember, there was barely a whisper. It seems a tad unfair that Taylor was never subjected to any scrutiny for such decisions — because his successors certainly have been. Indeed, if Ponting or Waugh had ever done the same thing, the decision would (rightly) have been argued to be a substantive, and possibly match-losing, tactical error on the part of the captain.

Anyway, I digress (you’ll find that I do this frequently and at length so best to stop reading now if that bothers you). Back to the point — why the one-day World Cup actually mattered to Australians back in the mid-to-late ’90s. In short, it represented the official flag which we wanted to unfurl and plant at the summit of world cricket, after an arduous, decade-long climb back to the top. A succession of thrilling day-nighters in Australia also helped cement the position of one-dayers as popular entertainment and the annual triangular one-day tournament as a national institution. Every Australian male who grew up in the ’90s remembers Michael Bevan’s last ball four (a perfect straight drive back down the ground) off Roger Harper to win a day-nighter at the SCG — “A four to win / Off Roger’s spin / The perfect play of plays”. Lines from a poem quoted in Steve Waugh’s 1996 World Cup tour diary. I seem to recall that it was written by a member of the 1996 tour party but I can’t, for the life of me, remember who.

So, when the next World Cup rolled around in 1999, the Australian team and the Australian public were even more determined to take home the trophy. After a difficult start (including a 5 wicket loss to New Zealand) left Steve Waugh’s Australians on the brink of elimination, the team went unbeaten in seven consecutive matches, including a win and a tie in consecutive matches against South Africa, to win the World Cup. Those two games against South Africa rank as arguably Australia’s greatest in the one-day arena. Steve Waugh’s unbeaten century as Australia successfully chased 272 in the final Super Six match, Warne’s 4/29 as South Africa collapsed from 0/47 to 4/61 in the semi-final and the sight of Allan Donald wandering around, batless and seemingly clueless, mid-pitch, as Fleming calmly rolled the ball down the other end for Gilchrist to run out Donald to tie the semi-final and put Australia through to the final (by virtue of a superior net run rate), after South Africa had appeared to have the semi-final wrapped up with only 1 needed off the last 4 balls and the player of the tournament, Lance Klusener, on strike, unbeaten on 31 off 14 balls — these moments left an indelible imprint on the hearts and minds of every Australian cricket follower who was alive in 1999.

The one-day game had reached its zenith in Australia.

Jubilant scenes greeted the players upon their return to Australia. The Victorians on the team were paid the ultimate sporting accolade: appearances on the Melbourne The Footy Show. I even seem to recall a ticker-tape parade in Sydney which drew a crowd of 100,000.

Like the British Empire before it, the one-day game looked like it would live forever but was, instead, eased into a graceful retirement by its own success, leaving behind a debateable legacy.

After the ecstasy of 1999, each successive World Cup has become progressively less satisfying and interest in the one-day game has declined commensurately. Nowhere near the same level of celebrations greeted Australia’s subsequent World Cup victories and the tournaments themselves were memorable more for the endemic administrative incompetence of the ICC (the empty stadiums and sterile atmosphere of 2007) and the serial choking of the Proteas (who contrived to successfully chase down the wrong Duckworth-Lewis target in front of their home crowd in 2003).

Take nothing away from the 2003 and 2007 champion Australian sides — Ponting and Martyn’s batting masterclass in the 2003 final (the latter batting with a broken finger), Symonds (finally) coming of age as an international cricketer in 2003, Hayden swatting aside all before him in 2007, and Tait filling Brett Lee’s shoes in 2007. These were all top-class performances, worthy of a tournament supposed to represent the pinnacle of the game. But the World Cup tournaments themselves paled in comparison to the titanic Test series against India in 2001 and 2004, and the Ashes series against England in 2005, 2006–7 and 2009. Whilst the former were routine and lop-sided, the latter were nuanced and thrilling.

Ironically, part of the reason these Test series were so much better was the positive influence one-day cricket had had on Test cricket. Far from, as some predicted at the inception of World Series cricket, killing Test cricket in Australia, one-day cricket revitalised and evolved Test cricket for the better. The modern skills developed and honed by one-day cricket — improved fielding, running between the wickets and run rates — were, particularly under Steve Waugh’s captaincy, successfully applied to Test cricket to create one of the most dominant sporting teams in history. Quite simply, Steve Waugh’s Australian team changed the way Test cricket is played — by making 4-an-over the norm, they made a result possible in nearly every Test match they played and ambitiously pushed for the win even when, as in India in 2001, this was to the detriment of their win-loss record but the benefit of the game as a whole.

Ultimately, like the British Empire before it, the one-day game’s success was self-defeating. By forever changing Test cricket for the better, the one-day game exposed its own limitations and rendered itself obsolete. Similarly, by imparting ideas such as individual liberty, parliamentary democracy and the common law to its colonies, the British Empire could hardly resist the colonies’ subsequent cries for independence.

Of course, the legacies left behind by both the one-day game and the Empire were not, by any measure, wholly good and should not be whitewashed. The one-day game is partly responsible for, amongst other things:

• the permanent and severe reduction in the popularity of Test cricket in every Test-playing nation except for Australia and England (and India … if they’re winning);
• the birth of a generation of followers, particularly on the subcontinent, who neither appreciate nor like Test cricket;
• the preferencing of bat over ball;
• the systematic flattening of pitches around the world;
• the diminution of the importance of mental discipline and technique to batting;
• the spectre known as the middle overs; and
• an environment conducive to match-fixing and spot-fixing.

Similarly, the British Empire was responsible for, amongst other things:

• negligence in the face of famine in Ireland and India;
• the Amritsar massacre;
• the Matabele wars; and
• we could go on … and on and on but there are only so many hours in a day.

What is clear is that, like the British Empire before it, the time has come for the one-day game to depart gracefully having forever changed the world, and leave others to debate its enduring legacy.

One-day cricket’s original role as popular, prime-time entertainment for casual cricket followers has been taken over by T20 which is essentially one-day cricket minus the middle overs where batting sides, fielding sides and the game’s law-makers conspire to put viewers into a coma by forcing the field back and allowing batsmen to stroll four singles every over.

One-day cricket holds little appeal for dedicated cricket followers who will always have Test cricket and have been fortunate enough over the past decade to dine out on a succession of fiercely contested series against England, India and South Africa.

Test cricket is chess.

T20 is checkers.

Both have their place.

But one-day cricket is neither and, as such, it is now the Zeppo of the cricketing family. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it — it just serves no purpose.

It should come as no surprise then that, in recent years, one-day crowds in Australia have been anaemic and Warne has wisely called for the abolition of one-dayers altogether.

Until then, victory in the World Cup would serve:

• the important purpose of allowing Ponting to retire gracefully on a high, being remembered as Australia’s greatest batsman since Bradman and a captain who won three consecutive World Cups without dropping a single game, rather than the man who lost three Ashes series and tried to bowl out Panesar and Anderson in Cardiff with the awesome power of Marcus North’s offies; and
• the semi-important purpose of providing a decent confidence boost for the lads who are also part of the Test squad.

But, a fourth consecutive World Cup won’t remotely make up for losing a home Ashes series for the first time in 23 years (in the process, becoming the first side in Australia’s 134 year Test history to lose two, much less three, home Tests by an innings) and the general trend of Australia’s consistently mediocre performances in the Test arena over the past few years.

Batsmen

1. Ricky Ponting (Captain): The only batsman in the world who can legitimately challenge Sachin Tendulkar’s claim to the title of Greatest One-Day Batsman Ever. The man’s racked up over 13,000 runs at an average of 42.60 and a strike rate of 80.55, with 29 centuries. He’s playing in his fourth consecutive World Cup and has yet to play in an Australian team which failed to make the final. As captain, he has never lost a World Cup match. One of the few strong emotions motivating me to watch the World Cup is a desire to see Australia win so that Ponting’s able to retire gracefully on a high — being fondly remembered as one of Australia’s greatest batsmen since Bradman and a captain who won three consecutive World Cups without dropping a single game, rather than the man who lost three Ashes series and tried to bowl out Panesar and Anderson at Cardiff with Marcus North’s offies.
2. Michael Clarke (Vice-Captain): Yes, he’s endured a rough trot recently with the bat in all forms of the game. Yes, his metro ways and stage-managed approach to his professional career seem to have provoked a severe response from a fairly large segment of the Australian population and safely anonymous members of the Australian cricket community. Yes, his one-day international strike rate has declined over the last few years, but it’s still a very healthy 77.96, with an average of 44.19. This compares favourably with the most successful one-day anchor-style batsman of the last two decades — Jacques Kallis averages 45.36 at a strike rate of 72.73. Nope, Clarke’s recent one-day form is not nearly as bad as some would have you believe — many of his low strike-rate innings have come when he’s dug in in difficult batting conditions, when the rest of the batting order has collapsed, to build a platform for an eventual Australian victory (for example, the 2009 one-day series in England) and he’s been guilty of getting out cheaply on flat pitches when quick, easy runs have been on offer to boost his strike rate. Moreover, the presence of Tim Paine at the top of the order when Haddin was out injured led to a duplication of functions at the top of the order as both Paine (one-day international strike rate: 68.73) and Clarke tried to play the same anchor role. The result often was that Clarke would feel pressured to depart from his natural game in order to up the scoring rate and get out (typically, in ugly fashion) in the process. With Haddin back, this should no longer be a problem. The bottom line is that Clarke’s still very well-suited to playing the anchor role at the top of the order and he should be opening to complement Watson’s more aggressive approach with Haddin coming in down the order with a licence to smash it.
3. Cameron White (Unofficial Deputy Vice-Captain): Has never fulfilled his early promise as a Kumble-style top-spinner. Tried to change his natural game (never a good idea) by remodelling his bowling action to become a more conventional leg-spinner. Gave up after about a season and went back to his natural action but his bowling’s never recovered. Fortunately, his batting and his captaincy for Victoria have more than made up for his regression as a bowler. Finally started to transfer his outstanding domestic batting form to the international arena when given a chance at the top of the order in the 2009 one-day series in England. Has been one of Australia’s most consistent batsmen at one-day international and T20I level ever since and was rewarded with the captaincy of the T20I side. Had a surprisingly subdued, but not disastrous, home summer in one-day international colours in the lead-up to the World Cup — in 10 matches against England and Sri Lanka, he only averaged 27.00 at a strike rate of 68.78, well below his career average of 36.87 at a strike rate of 81.86.
4. David Hussey: Tremendous natural ball striker with an outstanding domestic record, but has never performed consistently at international level, not even in T20Is where, believe it or not, brother Mike has a better strike rate. Recalled unexpectedly to the Australian one-day squad for the home series against England preceding the World Cup despite a mediocre one-day international record against Test-playing nations (an average in the mid-20s batting predominantly at number 4) and a mediocre domestic one-day record this summer. However, in this case, there is a method to the selectors’ madness because Hussey Junior has really been picked as an all-rounder. His economical offies have proven highly effective at domestic one-day and T20I level and should be handy on the sub-continent. Also, there’s no doubting his sheer ability with the bat — although, at 33 years of age, it’s about time he delivered on that promise at international level. In the same position as Symonds was going into the 2003 World Cup — on the basis of his performances to date at international level, very lucky to be on the plane. But, hopefully, like Symonds in 2003, he’ll repay the selectors’ faith and finally showcase his effortless ball-striking power on the international stage.
5. Mike Hussey: Unlucky to be withdrawn from the initial 15 man squad. A victim of circumstances — with Ponting and Steve Smith also carrying knocks leading into the tournament, his hamstring injury was deemed too much of a risk. Even throughout his prolonged form drought in the Test arena (happily, now a distant memory after a superlative Ashes series), his one-day form never wavered. A consummate one-day finisher. Cool, calm and consistent. Can clear the fences and/or work the ones and twos. Lightning runner between the wickets. Michael Bevan with substantially upgraded boundary-hitting abilities and a superior strike rate. Entitled to feel aggrieved by the selectors’ decision to withdraw him from the initial 15-man squad as this decision departed from the precedent set in 2003 when the selectors retained an injured Symonds in the World Cup squad and allowed him to work his way back to full fitness for the knock-out rounds. Hussey is now back in the squad courtesy of an injury to Doug Bollinger.
6. Callum Ferguson: Last minute injury replacement for Mike Hussey. Probably would not have been picked if Shaun Marsh had been fit. Despite having an unremarkable first-class record, Ferguson’s one-day international record is impressive — he averages 44.00 at a strike rate of 85.60. Looks unlikely to get a game with the selectors preferring the hitting power of White, the finishing skills of Mike Hussey and/or the all-round flexibility offered by Hussey Junior.

Bowlers

1. Brett Lee: The leader of Australia’s three-pronged brute force pace attack. A string of injuries forced him to retire from Test cricket. Showed real guts to work his way back to full fitness for this World Cup. Despite being 34 years of age, he hasn’t lost much, if any, pace and, in his later years, has added greater guile to his raw pace. Looks fit and motivated for this World Cup after missing the 2007 World Cup through an injury on the eve of the tournament. His one-day international record is phenomenal: 338 wickets in 195 matches at an average of 23.10 and an economy rate of 4.73. Handy lower-order hitter with the bat too. A second World Cup victory would be a fitting swansong for a great servant of Australian cricket.
2. Mitchell Johnson: The shorter forms of the game leave less scope for his famously bipolar form to manifest itself. Also seems more comfortable in one-day colours than in the baggy green because, with Lee and Tait in the one-day bowling line-up, the wicket-taking burden is spread more evenly and there is less pressure on him to lead the attack. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that his one-day international economy rate is only 4.90. Throw in a batting strike rate of 94.53 and you’ve got a quality one-day bowling all-rounder.
3. Shaun Tait: Australia’s most potent wicket-taking weapon in the post-Warne-McGrath era. Earned his first baggy green by nearly killing Justin Langer in the nets in the lead-up to the Trent Bridge Test in 2005. When fit, Tait is so lethal that Hayden candidly admitted in his autobiography that he refused to face him in the nets. Unfortunately, he isn’t fit nearly as often as he or the selectors would like. Controversially retired from first-class and Test cricket to prolong his career in the shorter forms of the game. He’d be an automatic pick for the Test side if fit and available — Ponting even excitedly said so in the lead-up to the Ashes. Unfortunately, he’s shown no interest in making himself available for Test selection again. Like most Australian cricket fans, I find it hard to comprehend that someone with the ability to play Test cricket for Australia would not want to do so. That being said, I appreciate that, in the modern game, it’s asking a lot to ask a young, injury-prone, 20-something year old professional to potentially jeopardise his career and his livelihood for the honour of representing his country at Test level. Rod Marsh took a dim view of Tait’s decision to make himself unavailable for Test selection: “I cannot believe a man doesn’t want to play for his country. It’s hard work – and that’s why he doesn’t want to do it. Twenty years from now no-one will remember who Shaun Tait was. We’ve become too professional – we’ve got to get back to basics.” Hayden did note in his autobiography that Tait’s cardio fitness is surprisingly poor which means that he gets puffed after a couple of overs. Although a bowler can’t always do much about muscular or bone injuries, one would think that cardio fitness is something easily remedied by hitting the gym. So, is Tait a lazy coward or a sensible young professional? Only he himself knows the answer to that question. What we do know is that, when fit, he’s one of the most potent wicket-takers in the world.
4. Jason Krejza: Even three weeks before the tournament started, if you’d put 10 bucks on him to be in Australia’s World Cup squad, much less the XI,  you’d be a very wealthy dilettante by now. Krejza was not named in Australia’s preliminary 30-man World Cup squad, had never played a one-day international, had not played a Test match since December 2008 and his Tasmanian team-mate Xavier Doherty was firmly entrenched as Nathan Hauritz’s deputy in the Australian one-day set-up. In the blink of an eye, both Hauritz and Doherty went down injured and Krejza was called up to Australia’s one-day side for the home series against England. An aggressive, wicket-taking off-spinner who loves to toss the ball up, Krejza has improved his batting (he bats as high as 7 for Tasmania’s T20 side) and successfully developed a doosra since being dropped from Australia’s Test team for leaking too many runs.

All-Rounders

1. Shane Watson: When first promoted to the one-day team as a hugely-hyped all-rounder in the early 2000s, Watson’s classical batting technique meant that he struggled to hit over the top and his bowling had neither variety nor pace. Then spent most the decade being cut down by bowling injuries. Showed real character to fight his way back to full fitness and is now one of the first names on the team sheet in all three forms of the game. Has improved his hitting ability so much that it’s had an adverse effect on his ability to capitalise on starts in Test innings. Successfully remodelled his bowling action — his new side-on action not only allows him to swing the ball, but made career-threatening injuries, previously a weekly occurrence for Watson, a thing of the past. Improved his bowling variations and has had success bowling in sub-continental conditions in the IPL. Weaknesses: afraid of Welsh ghosts.
2. Steve Smith: Steve Waugh called him “one of the most exciting players in Australian cricket in 20 years.” Like Phil Hughes, Smith’s copped a lot of stick for his unorthodox batting technique which, at times, makes him look more like a flailing lumberjack than a composed international batsman. My two cents is that a young batsman’s natural technique (which, incidentally, has brought him a healthy first-class average of 42.11, which is far superior to that possessed by classical technicians such as Callum Ferguson) should not be substantially tampered with. However, in the Test arena at least, Smith could tweak his shot selection by leaving ambitious shots such as his half-front-foot cleave through mid-wicket (he really should name that) at the bottom of the kit bag, in the same way that Steve Waugh ditched the hook and pull shots. This is less of an issue in one-dayers where his current batting role, as a lower-order hitter, suits his aggressive temperament. An aggressive leggie who’s not afraid to toss the ball up even when he’s being attacked. Bowled well at the World T20 last year.
3. John Hastings: A New South Welshman by birth and upbringing, Hastings moved south to Victoria to improve his chances of playing first-class cricket as his NSW contemporary, Moises Henriques, was (and arguably still is) rated the finest all-round prospect in the land. It’s proven to be a wise move as Hastings has now narrowly moved ahead of Henriques in the international pecking order. Despite having only a handful of games’ experience at international level, Hastings has been picked to fill the medium pace bowler/lower order hitter role which James Hopes competently performed in between World Cups. Pretty harsh on Hopes who hasn’t really done anything wrong — a bowling economy rate of 4.53 and a batting strike rate of 93.71 at one-day international level compares favourably with the likes of Jacques Kallis (a bowling economy rate of 4.82 and a batting strike rate of 72.72), Yusuf Pathan (a bowling economy rate of 5.64 and a batting strike rate of 115.29) and Tim Bresnan (a bowling economy rate of 5.33 and a batting strike rate of 95.74). Nonetheless, Hastings has been an excellent player for Victoria and has earned his place in the squad with his intelligent bowling variations and muscular lower order hitting.

Keepers

1. Brad Haddin: Dutifully served a 7 year apprenticeship to Gilchrist but now finds his place under scrutiny after the recent emergence of Tim Paine. A lovely timer of the ball but can be incredibly frustrating to watch as he has a tendency to throw his wicket away when well-set. As the insightful teenager seated behind us at last year’s Boxing Day Test put it: “Haddin just can’t help himself”. Even Ponting, a captain normally loathe to criticise his own players in public, scolded Haddin for this annoying habit just before the World Cup. Must be glad that Australia’s selectors are no longer as ruthless as they were back in 1993–94 when a 23 year old Damien Martyn played one reckless shot against South Africa and got banished to the Test wilderness for 6 years. My two cents is that Haddin has little margin for error in his performances as a batsman because he certainly can’t command a place in the side as a keeper. He managed to fumble three stumping chances in one one-dayer against England a few months ago. I watched Haddin keep at Lord’s in an Ashes Test in 2009 and Tim Paine keep there in a Test against Pakistan a year later — if the gulf in their respective keeping performances could be corporealised, cartographers could finally justify their continued existence as a profession by devising a new word for it.
2. Tim Paine: An aesthetically pleasing, technically correct batsman who possesses a surprisingly mediocre first-class (average: 31.03) and one-day international record (an average of 30.41 at an anaemic strike rate of 68.73, playing mostly as an opener) but, equally, a surprisingly good T20 record (strike rate: 145.27). Since stepping up to the national side, he has impressed everyone with his faultless keeping, demonstrating textbook footwork and velvet hands. He has the technique, temperament and ball-striking ability to be a quality top order batsman at both Test and one-day international level and he will be looking to churn out the runs in the next few years to crank up the growing pressure on Haddin.     

Conclusion

It’s a well-balanced squad in a tournament where the top 7 or 8 sides are fairly evenly matched and, thanks to the ICC’s patented Guaranteed-Not-To-Eliminate-India tournament format, all those teams are guaranteed a place in the quarters. Once there, it’s just three wins to the trophy. We have as good a chance as any of the other top 7 or 8 teams (yes, I’m including the West Indies and New Zealand) — we’ve got a strong batting line-up (like the great South African Choke-Dogs of the ‘90s and noughties, we now bat all the way down to 10), an aggressive wicket-taking bowling attack, a good fielding unit and a captain whose tactical limitations are largely nullified by the one-day format. I can’t contain my excitement.

I couldn’t sign off without at least one minor quibble so here it is — in the absence of the retired Nathan Bracken, we could have gone for Hilfenhaus instead of Hastings, Ferguson, David Hussey or even one of the keepers. Hilfenhaus’s one-day international stats aren’t crash hot but his swing-bowling suits sub-continental conditions, offers a different tact to the brute force of the other pacemen and he was our best bowler on the recent tour of India. And don’t forget who our best bowler was in the last World Cup held on the sub-continent — Damien Fleming — and Hilfenhaus is the closest thing we have now to Fleming. Our bowling plan “A” — express pace plus multiple spinners — is a good one but if that doesn’t work, it’s difficult to see where plan “B” is going to come from. If we cast our minds back to last year’s football World Cup, Dunga, Brazil’s manager did something similar, placing all his creative eggs in the basket labelled “Kaka”, leaving the likes of Ronaldinho, Pato, Adriano and Diego at home — and look how that turned out.

However, there can be no doubt that he is a distinguished and experienced commercial solicitor. He is a partner in a leading commercial law firm with offices in Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. He has a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) degree from the University of Sydney. He has acted on multi-million dollar legal claims. He has published articles in distinguished legal journals.

Accordingly, he would no doubt be familiar with the basic legal concept of “due diligence”, the process whereby a buyer of, or an investor in, a company or business investigates the records of the target entity to ascertain its true value. The buyer/investor will typically engage a firm of solicitors to conduct this investigation. So if, for example, during the due diligence process, the buyer’s solicitors discover that the target, say an oil company, is responsible for a series of oil spills then the buyer will be able to negotiate a lower price which factors in the target’s legal and economic liability for those spills. The due diligence process, as many an articled clerk will attest, is a tedious one, requiring patience, thoroughness, discipline and strong research skills. Nonetheless, the competent conduct of the due diligence process is crucial for the buyer-client as it ensures that the correct price is paid for the target and that the client-buyer is not saddled with any unexpected (and costly) legal problems.

Therefore, it comes as something of a surprise that the decision-making of the Australian National Selection Panel (“NSP”) during Mr Hilditch’s tenure as Chairman displays an utter lack of anything resembling due diligence.

At the start of Mr Hilditch’s tenure, the big decision facing the NSP was who was going to replace Andrew Symonds at number 6 in the Test side. The selectors opted for Marcus North, who possessed a first-class batting average in the low 40s and the ability to chip-in with some part-time off-spin, over Brad Hodge, who possessed a first-class batting average in the high 40s and a Test batting average in the 50s. Unfortunately, after nearly two years and 21 Tests, the NSP was forced to drop North midway through a home Ashes series. His batting average after 35 Test innings: 35.48. The cause: a chronic inability to get starts. However, this problem in North’s game should have come as no surprise to the NSP — it was empirically evident throughout North’s entire first-class career. But he was picked anyway over an alternative candidate whose extensive first-class record (and brief international record for that matter) revealed no such problems.

Such decision-making indicates that Mr Hilditch was either unaware of the problem (that is, ignorance caused by a lack of due diligence) or that Mr Hilditch was aware of the problem but chose to ignore it (that is, a very special species of stupidity or, as lawyers like to call it, “wilful blindness”). Either way — not the kind of trait one would want to see in the leader of the body entrusted with handpicking the Australian cricket team.

The biggest challenge faced by the NSP during Mr Hilditch’s tenure has been to find a suitable long-term replacement spinner in the wake of Shane Warne’s retirement. In the four years since Warne retired, the NSP has gone through no less than 10 replacements. They have, amongst other things:

• picked a 25 year old left-arm Chinaman to make his Test debut in the West Indies then dropped him, without explanation, for the following tour of India after he returned match figures of 3/129 on debut — Beau Casson has since suffered a relapse of chronic fatigue syndrome, been dropped from the New South Wales Shield side and was last seen playing grade cricket in the Northern Territory;
• picked a batsman, who, as Victoria’s Shield captain no longer bowled himself, as a specialist leg-spinner for a Test tour of India and then dropped him when, astonishingly, his bowling proved inadequate when faced with the world’s best players of spin on their home turf — Cameron White was last seen batting in the top order for Australia in the shorter forms of the game … but not bowling;
• dropped an aggressive off-spinner one Test after he took 12 wickets on his Test debut in India against a batting line-up containing Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman, on the basis that he took 1/204 against South Africa on a WACA pitch which could have doubled for an autobahn — Jason Krejza spent the next 2 years competing with Xavier Doherty for a place in Tasmania’s Shield side, working on his batting and (successfully) developed a doosra, before being called up to the Australian one-day side and then the Australian World Cup squad in February 2011 after injuries befell both Doherty and Nathan Hauritz;
• recalled a defensive off-spinner to the Test team when his first-class bowling average was in the 40s and he wasn’t even in New South Wales’s Shield XI, then dropped him for a home Ashes series after he had taken 58 wickets at 36.22 in 16 Tests following his recall (including, saliently, 38 wickets in 9 Tests on home soil at an average of 29.65, and 10 wickets in 3 Tests versus England at an average of 32.10) and the captain had publicly described him as a “lock” for the Ashes — Nathan Hauritz was last seen taking wickets and scoring first-class centuries for New South Wales before being recalled to the Australian one-day side for the World Cup only to be subsequently ruled out with a shoulder injury;
• picked a leg-spinner with the best recent record in Shield cricket and then dropped him after one bad Test — Bryce McGain was last seen taking first-class wickets for Essex and competing with Jon Holland for the spinner’s spot in the Victorian side;
• picked a limited overs specialist left-arm orthodox spinner, with a first-class bowling average of 48.26, to be Australia’s frontline Test spinner in a home Ashes series and then dropped him two Tests later after he struggled to take any wickets against a proper Test batting line-up — Xavier Doherty returned to his previous occupation as a limited overs specialist and probably would have been called up to Australia’s World Cup squad after Hauritz got injured, but for his own untimely injury; and
• called up a 26 year old specialist left-arm orthodox spinner with 7 games of first-class experience for the Test squad in the middle of an Ashes series, purportedly on the basis of his knowledge of local conditions at the WACA, despite being a born-and-bred Victorian who only moved to Western Australia at the beginning of his one, and to date only, season of first-class cricket — Michael Beer was last seen bowling serviceably for Australia on his Test debut at the SCG … a ground which he’d never played on.

The second-biggest challenge faced by the NSP during Mr Hilditch’s tenure has been to find an opening partner for Simon Katich after Matt Hayden retired in early 2009. The NSP sensibly picked Phil Hughes to fill the position — presumably on the basis that, at the time, he was 20 years old and possessed a Shield average of 60.38 after 17 matches for New South Wales. Hughes made his debut in a three Test series in South Africa against a South African side which had just become the first tourists to win a Test series in Australia in 16 years. Hughes notched up 415 runs at an average of 69.16, including twin centuries in his second Test, on green decks against a bowling attack led by Dale Steyn which targeted his perceived weakness against the short ball.

In preparation for the 2009 Ashes tour which followed the tour of South Africa, Hughes signed on for a short-term stint with Middlesex. Despite barbs about his unconventional and ungainly home-spun technique, the boy raised on a banana farm in northern New South Wales scored 574 runs in five first-class innings for Middlesex, averaging 143.50. The names “Hughes” and “Bradman” were used in the same sentence in sports pages across England. He was then summarily axed after a mediocre, but by no means disastrous, return of 57 runs at an average of 19 from just three innings in the opening two Ashes Tests. Hughes has not been the same since. He has been in and out of the Test side as an injury replacement and his average of 26.66 in five Tests after his dropping pales in comparison to his average of 52.44 in five Tests before his dropping. Even his domestic form has suffered. He has been dropped from the NSW T20 side and his Shield average has started a downward trend — before his axing in July 2009, he averaged 62.11 in the 2007–08 Shield season and 68.79 in the 2008–09 Shield season; after his axing, he averaged a still outstanding 56.06 in the 2009–10 Shield season but he then endured the first truly torrid run of his first-class career in the 2010–11 Shield season, averaging just 21.67.

Hughes’s replacement, Shane Watson, has, in addition to an admirable willingness to bat out of position to seize the opportunity to play Test cricket, demonstrated incredible consistency and solid technique since coming into the side. However, he has also exhibited all the classic signs of a lifelong middle-order strokemaker being played out of position as a Test opener — getting out to loose, overly ambitious shots when well-set and not converting his plentiful starts. In 27 Tests, he has notched up 15 half-centuries but just two tons. This problem cannot be seen in Watson’s first-class record where he has batted almost exclusively in the middle-order — if we exclude his Test scores, Watson has racked up 23 half-centuries and 15 centuries at first-class level. A Hughes–Katich opening partnership with Watson slotting in down the order as a batting all-rounder (in place of the tremendously talented but not-quite-ready-yet-for-Test-cricket Steve Smith) would be the obvious solution. But, it’s a bit late for that now given that Hughes’s form and, most importantly, his confidence in his natural ability and home-spun technique, lie in tatters.

It is easy to forget that, before his maiden tour of England in 1930, similar concerns surrounded the highly unorthodox technique of another self-taught, diminutive young country lad from New South Wales who was swatting aside Shield run-scoring records like so many flies from the brim of his hat. A chorus of critics lined up in the London broadsheets to pronounce his turned-in bottom-hand grip and predilection for playing the hook and pull shots inadequate for English conditions. His name: Donald Bradman.

One such critic, a Mr Percy Fender memorably wrote:

he will always be in the category of the brilliant, if unsound, ones. Promise there is in Bradman in plenty, though watching him does not inspire one with any confidence that he desires to take the only course which will lead him to a fulfilment of that promise. He makes a mistake, then makes it again and again; he does not correct it, or look as if he were trying to do so.

Sir Donald’s explanation of why, as a young batsman, he ignored the technical advice of coaches to change his grip makes for instructive reading for Mr Hilditch today:

I experimented — worked out the pros and cons — and eventually decided not to change my natural grip. Throughout a long career my grip caused many arguments but I think it is sufficient to prove that any young player should be allowed to develop his own natural style providing [that] he is not revealing an obvious error. A player is not necessarily wrong just because he is different.

Turning to the 50-over and T20I sides, the NSP’s choice of openers has not demonstrated any greater degree of logic or reason. Shaun Marsh, with a one day international average of 36.62 at a strike rate of 75.95 and an astonishing IPL average in India of 63.58 at a strike rate in excess of 130, was rightly groomed for two and a half years as one of Australia’s first-choice openers for the 2011 World Cup on the subcontinent. Having done nothing wrong in any form of limited overs cricket, he was abruptly dumped on the eve of the World Cup — omitted from both Australia’s original one-day squad for the home series preceding the World Cup and Australia’s initial 15 man World Cup squad. Bizarrely, the NSP chose to dump Marsh without even selecting a genuine specialist replacement; instead relying on sorta-batsman-who-keeps Brad Haddin to step up to fulfil the role in the only important one-day tournament on the international calendar.

Marsh can’t even get a game for Australia’s T20I side, with the selectors preferring the occasionally superhuman but mostly inconsistent David Warner to fill the second opener’s spot beside Shane Watson. Confusingly, the NSP promoted Marsh to both the Australian T20I and 50-over sides in mid-2008 on the basis of his astonishing T20 form in the 2008 IPL season, but then quickly discarded him from the T20I side in favour of Warner.

So IPL T20 form gets you in the Australian 50-over side but not the Australian T2OI side.

One would think that Warner must possess a vastly superior overall T20 record to Marsh. Sadly, this is not the case — Marsh averages 45.30 at a strike rate of 135.01, whereas Warner averages 28.87 at a strike rate of 142.88 (proof, if it were needed, that his boom-or-bust reputation is empirically justified). Even in T20 cricket, it seems odd to prefer a 7.87 point increase in strike rate at the cost of 16.43 runs per innings.

If Mr Hilditch had conducted his law practice in the same strange and inexplicable manner the NSP has selected players during his tenure as Chairman, he may well have been slapped with a professional negligence suit by now. Sadly for Australian cricket fans, Mr Hilditch’s brand of reasoning (or lack thereof) as Chairman of the NSP has been more Kafka-esque than Dixon-esque. Instead of the logical fairness of “a strict and complete legalism” we have, as Steve Waugh pointed out recently, been treated to blatant departures from precedent.

However, despite all the legitimate criticisms levelled at his decision-making as Chairman of the NSP, it must be emphasised that there is nothing to indicate that Mr Hilditch is anything other than an honourable, honest and decent man.

Accordingly, this post concludes with a plea to those undoubted virtues: please, Mr Hilditch, do the right thing by Australian cricket and fall on your sword.