Wednesday 22 October 2008

Battered Australia to rise again

So high have Australia flown over the last decade in Test cricket that every singed feather has been greedily seized upon by detractors, held up and proclaimed as evidence of irreversible decline. Two series defeats in India proved to be mere blips; the gloating that followed their Ashes reverse in 2005 led to a fierce recoil, and an 18 month period of concentrated, driven excellence. But even Australia, who, hydra-like, overcame the loss of Mark Taylor's entire batting unit, were never going to be able to revert to full power after the exodus that followed the last Ashes series. It was just a question of how they, shorn of the unique controlling mechanism that was Warne and McGrath, would cope with a team that no longer inhabited a higher plane, and how well opponents would rise to the challenge, something they had tended not to do well in the past.

It is tempting, in the wake of what must rank as their lowest point for two decades, to sink the boot into Australia with some confidence. There have been defeats before; they have been outplayed. But tenacity and talent nearly always dragged them back into contention, often to improbable victory. The most worrying thing for them here was the manner of defeat: once Tendulkar and Ganguly had batted India away from danger at 163-4, India never lost control of the game; worse, Australia never looked like wresting it from them. Perhaps the signs were there in Bangalore, where they were frustrated by India's tailenders and flaccid in their efforts to dismiss India on the fifth day.

Australia struggling in India is hardly news, and should not rank as a surprise, bearing in mind their record there even during their best years and India's tendency to run them hard even in their fortresses down under. The magnitude of defeat just serves to underline the point that Australia cannot now dominate as they have done. More than anything they were outbowled, most acutely by the Indian seam duo of Zaheer and Ishant Sharma, who found movement which eluded the Australians. Their mastery over the Australian top-order, continuing from the series last winter, offers hope for this Indian side to base itself on foundations other than the habitual pillars of middle-order batting and spin bowling.

But if the result at Mohali was a rude awakening, the new reality is one which bears a distinct likeness to its forerunner. Australia are still the best team around: even an unlikely 3-0 series result for India would only prove so much, and they are overripe for a changing of the guard which will weaken them as much as recent losses have Australia. South Africa, who have already begun to rattle sabres, do not have the resources to make good their talk. Past a core of Smith, Kallis and Steyn they are short on matchwinners; their commendable series win in England, which they did not have to play brilliantly to earn, reflected more on the state of the home side than anything else.

Two areas of weakness Australia need to sort are their opening pair and spin option. Matthew Hayden has struggled, but those who seek to write him off should remember that he has barely played since the beginning of the year, when Australia's top-order looked ragged in his absence. With Phil Jaques' back injury ruling him out for months rather than weeks, Australia are not yet ready to move out of Hayden's considerable shadow, and he should come again back on the familiar home pitches where he has always scored so heavily. Australia have been made to regret their reluctance to back their most credible frontline spinner, Beau Casson. The punt, Jason Krezja, was blown out of the water in a single practice match and will not be risked. Cameron White has been miscast as a replacement for Stuart MacGill, rather than Andrew Symonds, into whose shoes he would have fitted more easily. Australia went into the series with the notion that their seamers would cover the slow-bowling shortfall. That will be their working hypothesis until a genuine spinner emerges, but only Mitchell Johnson of the pace trio has proved fit and ready enough for the task.

That Australia are some way below full strength is part of their problem. With Andrew Symonds absent and Hayden and Lee below-par, they have been functioning without their three main attacking players, their batting and bowling leaders. Yet they remain formidable: Ponting demonstrated in Bangalore how far willpower can take him when he is truly focused, even if his subsequent troubles - unexpectedly against seam rather than spin bowling - have indicated his opening century was something of an anomaly on his Indian record. He leads a middle-order which still ranks alongside that any other side can offer, even if Michael Clarke has been strangely subdued on the pitches where he made an instant reputation for himself four years ago. When Stuart Clark regains his fitness, and Brett Lee his focus, they will again boast the best seam attack in the world. This tour may prove to be a write-off for Australia, and it will stand as a further black-mark against Ricky Ponting's captaincy should they not resurrect it, but it is on their results over the next year that Australia must be judged. It would be a surprise if, come November 2009, they have not emphatically proved the doomsayers wrong once again.

Monday 20 October 2008

Monty finds the worm has turned

More than ever, international players seem to be judged by the common consensus of the media. Take Steve Harmison, who, dropped after the last in a long line of insipid performances in March, was deemed, quite reasonably, to have little prospect of an international future. Six months down the line, one Test and four wickets later, Harmison has been welcomed back into the journalistic embrace as England's matchwinner. With the Harmison story no longer interesting, attention has been turned to England's incumbent spinner, Monty Panesar. When Panesar was doing well - though never brilliantly - he was England's spin bowling messiah, the long-sought missing piece. Everyone loved Monty. But all party-lines become boring after a time: his relentlessness is now mundanity; bubbly enthusiasm is irritating over-oppealing; cult-status is arrogance. Shane Warne would no-doubt be amused and delighted to learn that barely a relevant article is written without his catchy but trite assessment of Panesar's career being faithfully trotted out.

In fairness, Panesar has not made the strides he might have over the past year. Like the team, he has been successful against a weak New Zealand side and much less so when the tougher challenges of Sri Lanka and South Africa presented themselves. Yet while Panesar was a palpable disappointment in Sri Lanka, failing to either restrict or dismiss batsmen with any regularity, his efforts against South Africa were, on the face of it, reasonable. Critics point to his failure to win games in the fourth innings at Lord's and Edgbaston, overlooking the extreme placidity of the pitch at HQ and the fact that - but for an understandable umpiring error - he would have dismissed Graeme Smith at Birmingham and opened the door for England to win the game.

Invariably, in such situations, the cry goes up for Panesar to flight the ball and experiment with variations. It is generic advice for a very specific bowler. He has had success through a well-honed method: buzzing the ball in at a quickish pace, imparting heavy revolutions on it and giving it the best chance of exploiting what bounce and turn the surface has to offer. On hard, abrasive pitches, Old Trafford being the best example, he has thrived and been a matchwinner. His failings this summer have been more of control than limitation. He has dished up too many short balls, releasing any pressure built up and compromising the accuracy which has been, and needs to be, a hallmark. Panesar is a mechanical bowler, and asking him to concentrate on flighting the ball requires him to do what does not come naturally, an unhappy situation.

Comparisons are most easily made with Test cricket's other current left-arm spinner of note, New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori. Party-line here is that Panesar has much to learn from the Kiwi. And he is an admirable bowler and cricketer, a spinner of flight and guile, rather than jarring repetition. At Lord's last summer, where Panesar struggled on a flat pitch, he swept up a five-wicket, first innings haul, the sure sign of an accomplished practitioner. Yet in the next Test, at Panesar's favourite Manchester stomping ground, he was ineffective as England easily chased down 294, a scenario which had been set up by Panesar, who knifed through New Zealand's second innings with 6-37 from just 17 overs. They are two different bowlers, who prosper in different circumstances and have different areas of strength and weakness. That Vettori fits the more classical idea of a spin bowler does not make him a better one, something borne out by the statsitics, which in terms of average and strike rate are similar, slightly favouring the Englishman.

The England management have picked up on the issue fairly quickly and sent Panesar off to Sri Lanka for a month's club cricket in anticipation of the Indian Test series in December. It is a good move, and hopefully it will help him improve his weak sub-continental record when England visit India. But those who are expecting Panesar to blossom into a crafty, protean practitioner should prepare to be disappointed. If spin bowling is a form of code-breaking, his is a brute-force method, and essentially that will never change. There are subtleties to be added to his game, but they are adjustments, not redefinitions, which will come with time, of which Panesar has had only two and a half years as an international cricketer. And for those who worry he will stagnate because of a lack of comeptition, there is the comforting thought that it may be only one more season before Adil Rashid is giving Monty even more to worry about.