Opinion: Australian cricket team out of touch like Hillary Clinton’s Democrats

OPINION: When it comes to the Australian cricket team, their performance lately can be likened to that of would-be US president Hillary Clinton.

THE Australian cricket team have shown themselves to be overpaid underachievers whose failure yesterday mirrored the demise of Hillary Clinton and her out-of-touch pollsters.

Hillary realised too late she’d failed to connect with the majority of Americans sick of political elites, and yesterday Steve Smith’s bumbling, fumbling, blundering XI further widened the yawning chasm between grassroots cricket supporters and what was once Australia’s elite sporting side.

Yesterday’s collapse of the Australian batting against an injury-hit but still potent South African bowling attack followed an inept and often reckless approach in the first innings and in the preceding Test.

It showed players with marshmallow spines and tissue-paper tenacity. With backs to the wall and on a promise to fight, the Australians threw away their wickets knowing that the rivers of gold would still be flowing into their bank accounts, regardless.

Australian skipper Steve Smith faces the media. Pic: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

The 16 consecutive Test wins compiled by sides led by Steve Waugh and then Ricky Ponting now seem the stuff of ancient history. Most of the Australian top order have CVs so thin they’re translucent.

Sure, cricket is a cyclical thing. Some years we’re on top, other years we struggle but Australia are down 2-0 against South Africa now and said to be facing their lowest point in 140 years as they stare at a 3-0 whitewash on home soil.

I’m so old that I’ve interviewed Diggers who landed at Gallipoli and cricketers who played in the 19th century, before Australia was even a country.

Both told me that even though we might suffer defeats – like we did at Gallipoli and at Pozieres – you could never underestimate the fighting spirit of Australians.

Hunter Hendry, the grand old man of Test cricket.

Yesterday’s demise reminded me of an interview I had with the grand old man of Test cricket, Hunter Hendry. His career came to an end in the 1920s when a young pup named Don Bradman was nipping at his heels.

In 1988, Hunter was finally given out aged 93, but he had lived long enough to see the ebb and flow of cricket many times. He told me that if you waited round long enough the seasons of plenty would return, no matter how bad things seemed.

Hunter first picked up a bat in the late 1890s in the years before the separate colonies formed an Australian nation.

He saw Australia dominate Test cricket in the ’20s, fold against Bodyline a decade later, ride victorious with Bradman’s Invincibles in the ’40s and then be wiped out by “Typhoon’’ Frank Tyson in the ’50s.

Our cricketers were struggling so badly in 1984 that dumped skipper Kim Hughes was reduced to tears.

Eventually, though, we came good.

But these days something is really rotten in the Australian camp.

Before this Test, skipper Steve Smith said there was a good vibe in the Australian team and that the “culture of excellence’’ was paramount. I’m still not sure if that was a gee-up but the results show that, like stale yoghurt, the Australian cricket culture has gone bad. Toxic, in fact.

The team’s performances this summer are a turn-off, as shown by poor Test TV ratings and oceans of empty seats in Perth and Hobart.

There is so much cricket these days and so much of it meaningless hit and giggle stuff, that it has eroded the gravitas of the important matches – Test cricket – the test of toughness and technique in all conditions.

The Sheffield Shield, once the lifeblood of the game in Australia, has floundered in the wake of TV creations like the Big Bash and the cupboard of quality replacements for the misfiring Aussies looks bare.

I recently called Neil Harvey, one of the great left-handed batsmen of all time, to chat about the state of modern cricket. Now 88, he reckoned changing technology had damaged the game irreparably.

The redesign of cricket bats meant that players who would have been mediocre in his time were now encouraged to hit “home runs’’ with every ball. This created holes in their defence and an inflated opinion of their ability.

Australian players, he said, no longer had the technique of the Bradmans, Chappells and McCabes.

Too much limited-overs cricket left them like Don Quixote, slashing at windmills in a bid to entertain when “head down over the ball’’ was the time-old recipe for survival.

“They’re using these great heavy bats these days that are jet-propelled,’’ said Harvey, who made a pittance from cricket but left a rich legacy helping his skippers Bradman and Richie Benaud to one Test triumph after another.

“These days players can mis-hit a ball and it will still go for six and that’s ridiculous.’’

Opener David Warner said recently that modern bats do not give players an advantage and that big hits were all down to the skill of the batsman.

How did Harvey feel about that? He thought about that claim for a while and the recent batting performances of Australia under pressure.

“Pig’s arse,’’ he said.

Originally published as Opinion: Australian cricket team out of touch like Hillary Clinton’s Democrats