Mollycoddled Australian cricketers not up to the task, writes Robert Craddock

AUSTRALIAN cricket is facing its greatest crisis in 30 years - and it only has itself to blame, writes Robert Craddock.

Australian batsmen Adam Voges (left) and Steve Smith in Hobart.

AUSTRALIAN cricket is facing its greatest crisis in 30 years - and it only has itself to blame.

The shambolic loss of a Test and a series to South Africa in Hobart on Tuesday may yet prove a blessing to an Australian set-up which has lost touch with the demands of producing flint hard Test players that once did our nation proud.

Australian cricket has lost its menace and its mojo.

Stunned and shattered by the loss, Australia has made the unprecedented move to send the majority of its players back to Sheffield Shield cricket on Thursday.

Hooray for that. Shame they could have done it at the start of the summer when the same players were craving Sheffield Shield matches and got just one game.

Preparing for the might of South Africa on one Sheffield Shield game is like trying to run a marathon on a ham sandwich - you’ll get found out eventually.

And so they were, brutally, clinically and with a sad inevitability that resembled lemmings jumping off a cliff in a miserable procession of wickets on Tuesday.

Victory went to the team which was everything Australia were not - clear-thinking, cleverly selected, totally unified and scrupulously prepared.

Australian batsmen Adam Voges (left) and Steve Smith in Hobart.

Australia’s Test team, by contrast, is a shambles with selectors fighting with medical men over workloads, captain Steve Smith occasionally not getting the team he wants and the summer schedule of pink red and white ball cricket more confusing than a chinese crossword.

Careers on on the line. The heat is so great that chairman of selectors Rod Marsh could be sacked even before his contract ends in June and coach Darren Lehmann, performance boss Pat Howard and Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland are all under extreme pressure because they are the architects of a system that does not work.

Only four players _ Steve Smith, David Warner, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc _ are certain to be retained for the third Test in Adelaide as Australia confronts its worsts selection crisis since a rebel Australian tour of South Africa rocked Australia with a series of defections in the mid-1980s.

At least that 1980s team had an excuse. This one doesn’t.

Australia’s players are overpaid and mollycoddled to the point where the priceless quality that separates the great from the good - resilience - is almost invisible.

Watch the Australian team at training and you often spot more support staff than players.

It can even seem at times as if the support staff are the permanent ones and the players just a passing parade.

The pampering breeds soft players and begs the question how much support does a player need before they stop thinking for themselves?

At least eight of the 11 players who lost so horrendously on Tuesday earn more than $1 million a year from Cricket Australia.

They are paid like princes yet played like paupers. Financially have made it before they have made it.

The challenge to rebuild is not easy. The depth around the country is shallower than a baby’s bath.

Australia is facing the reality that old fashioned, stone faced Test match warriors like Allan Border and Steve Waugh are a dying breed.

Australian batsmen these days train to hit rather than to bat but not to face tough conditions.

Tuesday’s debacle was watched by Kepler Wessels, who played Test cricket for both countries, and used to prepare for tough conditions by throwing gravel on the pitch in the nets so that that ball would deviated and be hard to hit.

Compare that to the current day where a lot of Australia’s top bowlers are restricted from bowling in the nets which means that batsmen often have to face more unsung net bowlers.

It makes for a softer life - it does not make you a tough Test batsman.