Australian cricket is lacking personality and people are switching off, writes Robert Craddock

AUSTRALIA is not just fighting to save a series on Tuesday - it’s fighting to wake a disconnected nation from its Test match slumber.

Australian captain Steve Smith batting on day three of the second Test in Hobart on Monday.

AUSTRALIA is not just fighting to save a series on Tuesday - it’s fighting to wake a disconnected nation from its Test match slumber.

No matter what happens at Bellerive Oval on Tuesday in the second Test against South Africa, the greatest crisis facing Australian cricket is that it is starting to lose its soul.

Test cricket in Australia needs a thunderclap moment, a stirring against the odds triumph, a match which grabs its audience around the throat and drags them out of midday meetings to the office television.

This is Steve Smith’s challenge today. To wake up Australia.

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It is no easy task for something strange and very unfamiliar is happening — cricket fans by the thousands have stopped caring deeply about the Test team.

It’s almost as if they have put a fence around their emotions and declared “call me when things improve ... I’d rather not watch.’’

Australian captain Steve Smith batting on day three of the second Test in Hobart on Monday.

Perversely, when some sporting teams like the mighty All Blacks take a stumble it can actually enhance interest because its stirs up robust debate that seems to make the game greater.

It proves people care.

But the problem with the Australian Test team is years of average results aligned to a collective lack of personality and character means people are switching off in droves.

Poor Test television ratings and modest Test crowds that a vivid story of detachment.

But it’s more than that. And it’s everywhere.

It’s walking into an office during the day and noticing the television had been switched off the cricket onto a news channel. Many summers ago that would have been like switching from the moon landing.

It’s the lack of cricket chatter in bars and restaurants and even at water coolers where people have stopped asking that one word that needed no further explanation “score?’’

It’s the intrusion of sports like AFL, rugby league, rugby union, basketball and soccer on summer airtime which cricket once ruled unchallenged.

The lack of passion in individual states is telling.

When was the last time you saw a state collectively outraged by the omission of a player?

Remember the old days when South Australia would almost demand a royal commission into the reasons why Darren Lehmann was left out of the Test team?

Remember the when Queensland’s Sunday Mail ran a Matt The Bat campaign trying to get Matthew Hayden in the Test team and actually published the fax number of Cricket Australia and encouraged people to send messages of protest.

Cricket Australian officials were livid at arriving for work Monday to see more than 200 messages but even as they blew up one of them conceded “at least it proves people care.’’

It did. And this fact should not be underestimated. Cricket can never take public support for granted.

Which is why today is so important as we crave a fightback for the ages that would revive the pulse of Australian cricket.