Ashes 2021/22: Series domination only the start of Australia’s journey to the top, writes Robert Craddock

Australia has been searching for a player like Cameron Green for 70 years. And a switch flicked inside the young all-rounder in the Ashes series, writes Robert Craddock.

Australia was relentlessly brilliant against England in the Ashes, but this is just the start of the journey to top, not the summit itself.

Fascinating times lie ahead because Australia has unearthed some key weapons which could help it shine in the Holy Grail series in Asia against Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India over the next 14 months.

As great as this series was for Australia, the final rating of the team will rest on what it does offshore.

Cameron Green could be anything and shapes as the key man in every plan moving forward. Australia has been searching for a cricketer like him for 70 years since the Keith Miller era – a player good enough to hold his place as a batsman or bowler.

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Cameron Green shapes as the key man in every plan moving forward. Picture: Steve Bell/Getty Images

They are the rarest and most valuable players in the game and often take years to mature. He is making lightning progress already and his confidence has risen significantly in the last two Tests, as if a switch has gone off inside him and he suddenly realises how good he can be.

If Green stays sound, he could lift this team from good to great because he is essentially two cricketers in one.

When he roughed up England and took three quick wickets on Sunday night, it was as if he decided that this would be his last bowl of the series and it was time to let fly and forget about workload management.

He is as good as a frontline quick and has the potential to average 40-plus with the bat. That’s gold. Only injury will stop him.

With openers David Warner and Usman Khawaja both 35, there is a chance that they may not be around in a few years time when Green reaches his absolute peak but, if they are, the side should be very formidable.

Scott Boland (18 wickets at nine) has morphed from workhorse to thoroughbred with three excellent Test performance, where he has barely bowled a bad ball.

Unpretentious, earnest and gritty, he can put a ball on a five cent piece and it drives batsmen crazy

Scott Boland is almost undroppable now. Picture: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

It’s anyone’s guess what will happen in Pakistan when experienced Josh Hazlewood returns but Boland’s record makes him almost undroppable.

It seemed strange watching the Australian side come together on the podium to celebrate their Ashes triumph at 10.13pm Hobart time on day three of the Test after a horrible England collapse.

As exciting as it was for Australian fans, this was a horrible moment for England, who had not even lost a wicket an over before tea, yet were bowled out with more than half an hour to go in the last session.

Australia needs to play a team better than England to work out precisely what sort of form it is in.

England were meek in all departments all tour with only two batsmen (Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root) averaging over 30. Bairstow was the only century maker and his ton came in Sydney when the Ashes were gone.

Their batsmen, raised on a heavy diet of white ball cricket, are weak technically and mentally and wouldn’t tackle a ham sandwich when the going got tough.

The downfall of Superman Smith

Australian cricket is being confronted by the chastening reality that Steve Smith is no longer Superman.

You can see it is his recent numbers and his demeanour. Suddenly he feels more Clark Kent than the man with the cape.

Bowlers who once felt they were bowling to a man with a bat as wide as a barn door, suddenly feel in the game against him.

Smith is still chipping in but is no longer walking with the gods like he was a few years ago.

The man who used to score centuries for fun has made one three-figure score in his past 25 Test innings.

Smith left Blundstone Arena a pained figure after ending his series against England with a skied hook to fine leg, a victim of the game’s most obvious thimble and pea trick off the tireless and terrific Mark Wood.

Mark Wood and England celebrate the wicket of Steve Smith on day three of the fifth Test. Picture: William WEST/AFP

Smith finished the five Test series with 244 runs at 30.5 – about half of his Test average.

It was not a disaster in a rubber featuring lively green decks and plenty of blue overall scrapping for both top orders, but five Australians scored more than he did.

This followed Smith’s averages of 44 against India last summer, 42 against New Zealand the season before and 20 against Pakistan.

These numbers were in stark contrast to the series which preceded them – his comeback series after the ball tampering affair when he scored an earth-quaking 774 runs at 110 against England in England in 2019.

That was also the series where he was struck by England’s rampaging fast man Jofra Archer and ruled out of the Lord’s Test with concussion.

This was the first Ashes series for a decade which has not featured a Smith century.

Smith’s best score in this series was 93 in Adelaide but he never really looked settled.

Because he is such an idiosyncratic sort of player, with more movements that a circus juggler, it’s difficult to get an accurate read on his body language.

But he has looked particularly restless at the crease, as if he was snatching for form which used to flow naturally, if via all sorts of quirky channels.

Several dismissals have been his own fault such as his last one and getting bowled by left-arm spinner Jack Leach – something which may come down to a concentration lapse.

The Aussie star averaged 30.5 for the series. Picture: William WEST/AFP

Smith’s figures may be the result of teams doing extra homework on him.

Each team who have played him recently have tried something different with New Zealand, via Neil Wagner, bouncing him with short balls, and India bowling straight and giving him no width.

The short-pitched plan, which worked for England, is a major weapon against him now.

There is also a feeling that in Test cricket, unless your name is Bradman, most great batsmen build their records on three or four amazing years which are balanced out by some poor series and so-so ones in the middle and it all rounds out to an average of around 50.

Smith had five years out of six where he played more than eight Tests and averaged more than 70. It was freakish stuff.

Logic suggests the forces of gravity would eventually whittle down that average.

It must be said this series has been a rugged one for batsmen with plenty of bowler-friendly decks, which have provided some compelling contests in which bowlers have often been kings.

Originally published as Ashes 2021/22: Series domination only the start of Australia’s journey to the top, writes Robert Craddock