Back to where we were three years ago

Australia rank third in Tests, fourth in ODIs, and second in T20. These are middling rankings for a country steeped in cricket.

Tim Paine is back playing for Tasmania, there being no Tests until the end of the year

It hardly seems fair to evaluate the COVIDsafe cricket summer of 2020-21 by the standards of an ordinary season, it feeling nearly miraculous that it happened at all.

So much that could have gone wrong did not; so much that went right defied direct comparison; so unprecedented were the challenges and so nimble the solutions.

Adding to the weirdness was the cricket’s screening on a free-to-air network that spent most of the time indulging in performative buyer’s remorse, and who, quite frankly, can go to buggery.

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Anyway, we made it through. Although eight Sheffield Shield fixtures remain, the National Rugby League is under way, and the Australian Football League is in the offing.

A pause impends in our international cricket, which will be longer than it should be, even if cancellation of the Pakistan Super League and England’s too-clever-by-half rotation policy in India have underlined the potential pitfalls of operating in a viral environment.

So where are we? In the case of Australia’s male cricket teams, the answer is: not far from where they were three years ago, when the departures of Steve Smith and Darren Lehmann caused a general spill of leadership positions.

Australia rank third in Test cricket, fourth in one-day international cricket, and second in T20 international cricket (rankings for the last of which are notoriously volatile given the thinness of the competition).

These are middling rankings for a country so steeped in cricket, and for a Test team that boasts the second and third-ranked batsmen (Smith and Marnus Labuschagne) and first and fourth-ranked bowlers (Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood).

This suggests deficiencies elsewhere, individual and systemic. Are the best coaches where they should be? Is the high-performance system really delivering on the substantial investment in it? Why has a decade of the Big Bash League failed to develop a formidable international T20 capability?

Occasional gouts of on-field frustration during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and kvetching about Justin Langer afterwards were suggestive of an outfit dissatisfied with its progress and searching for answers.

Unfortunately, Tim Paine’s men will not find those answers not playing — the team needed the South African tour every bit as much as the host.

Instead, as this column observed a few weeks ago, we’ve become global cricket’s willing wallflowers, which has done our reputation, patched but not polished over the last three years, no good at all.

Since Sandpapergate we have undertaken precisely one Test tour. One. To England. Ridiculous. We look idle and self-involved as a teenager lounging on the couch expecting to be waited on.

Yet, somehow, there’s shoulder shrugging all round, at Jolimont, and among fans.

By rights, fancying ourselves as we do to be diehard Test match devotees, Australians should have cared deeply about their team’s failure to make the World Test Championship Final.

That we didn’t, I grant you, is partly because of the competition — uneven, diffuse and palpably unfit for purpose. But it also says something about the national team’s perceived representative qualities.

Let’s be honest. How many people really minded India winning the summer’s Tests? The visitors were easy to warm to. They had a red hot go; they surmounted setbacks, rose about injuries; they were young and bold and fun.

How long since we have been able to say that of this proficient but rather earnest Australian team? It was hardly their fault this season, of course, but, sequestered in their bubble, Paine’s team felt more aloof than ever.

Likewise not playing enough are Australia’s women, even before the postponement of their inbound tour by India, which prevented their picking up the threads of that joyous T20 World Cup triumph a year ago.

The loss of under-15 and under-17 pathways competitions this season was also more disruptive of women’s cricket because of its shallower club roots and earlier promotion of promising cricketers.

At least the Women’s Big Bash League and National League did not fall victim to the COVID austerity regime, for which CA is to be commended. Next month’s World Cup campaign also looms as an opportunity, with no distraction from the men’s team and New Zealand a picturesque venue.

But it’s not only the statue deficit needing remedy in women’s cricket hereabouts; it’s the ratio of practice and preparation to actual play. Professionalism is about more than pay cheques, promotion about more than events.

It’s hard to be critical of the distribution of cricket this summer, so disrupted was it by public health and flagrant electioneering — and what a micromanagerial farce last week about Riley Meredith. There were beneficiaries too: Manuka Oval is a terrific venue.

But by giving Perth and Hobart such short shrift, cricket has left itself exposed to the west and to the south. The people of both cities deserve better, which is building some pressure. Truce rather than peace prevails in relations between CA, its owners and its main content providers.

Anecdotally, clubs showed their value this summer as places to renew community interaction and rebuild social capital. But cost cutbacks at state associations have been felt at grassroots level.

How is it that there remains a locum CEO at Jolimont after nine months? Has anyone looked at the players’ charter or the independent review of Australia’s cricket culture since they were rolled out amid such fanfare two and a half years ago?

COVID, right? Baleful as it was, it also provided some cover for a game with an aptitude for kicking cans down the road. Maybe some breathing space is timely. Because there’s a bit of catching up to do.