Different team, same result as Australia receive Test cricket lesson

WHY in the whole of Australia is there not a single young batsman capable of playing as did 22-year-old Joe Root, with such patience and aplomb.

Michael Clarke congratulates Joe Root

IN the lead-up to this second Test at Lord's, Cricket AustraliaÂ’s chief executive officer James Sutherland expressed delight at the gelling of the national team with its new coach Darren Lehmann. In three weeks since LehmannÂ’s appointment, Sutherland said, the scene had been transformed: it was a "different team" in a "different place", and he was "really excited about the place this team is in".

Which place was he talking about? The Royal Garden in Kensington is a finely-appointed hotel to be sure. But really? Yes, really. “It's not just … one or two relationships - I'm talking about the whole team environment,” Sutherland continued. “You can see it in the way they're moving around the hotel, you can see the way they're walking onto the ground.”

Well, that’s it, then. Is it too late to change the venue of the Third Test to a hotel? There, evidently, you see the real Australia, nailing those lifts, executing their skill sets at the breakfast buffet, putting it in good areas with the concierge.

And walking onto the ground? The way the players handle those gates, and effortlessly avoid tripping over the boundary ropes - why, it’s clear how much they have gleaned from Lehmann, justly famous for his walking onto grounds, first one leg, then the other, socks on, shoelaces tied.

Because what is happening for Australia after the hotel and the walking bit remains stubbornly problematic. After the previous day’s 16-wicket pile-up, traffic conditions in the second Test yesterday reverted to something smoother and saner.

Australia were held at bay all day by a batsman who looks too young to star in a Harry Potter movie, Joe Root, and confounded by the black magic of the slow-motion replay depriving them of a key wicket, Ian Bell. One wonders how confidently the visitors were moving round their hotel in the evening - rather like they were themselves in slow-motion would be my guess.

Anyone, of course, can make a duff prediction - mine of England only winning these Ashes 3-1 is now looking like deranged optimism. But if Sutherland genuinely believes that Australia is suddenly a “different team” in a “different place” then he is on a different planet. What this second Test has shown in cruel relief is not just the diminished condition of Australian cricket but the wishful thinking that surrounds it - thinking that is arguably now an obstacle to its restoration.

Football clubs famously incline to a similar mentality, where in adversity the coach is first under the bus. Except that not even football clubs talk of instant change, formerly dead eyes suddenly developing killer glints, and the cocky strut in a hotel foyer preluding imminent restoration of former greatness.

But in Australian cricket, such fantasies are growingly abundant. In January, most conspicuously, Shane Warne published on his website what soon became known as the Warnifesto, a bullet-point digest of how he would revive Australian cricket’s fortunes, with a list of his preferred picks, a bunch of official jobs for favoured confreres, and a good old bellyache about the selectors’ little-loved rotation policy.

At the time, CA poo-pooed it. The Australian team was going just fine thanks, and Warne’s remarks were deemed just Warnie being Warnie. But although much has since changed in Australian cricket, it appears that several of his “time to go back to basics” prescriptions were unconsciously digested.

In with Darren Lehmann, part of Warne’s own mooted hierarchy: “Boof understands the game as good as anyone and has a great outlook on the game, he’s a good balance of old school and what the needs are of the current day player.” Out with rotation, which Warne argued would “never work”. Back to Shane Watson at number one; out with Ed Cowan and Mitchell Johnson inter alia.

Which is not to say that Warne is a bad judge, or that Lehmann is a poor coach, or that rotation did not have a host of foreseeably unfortunate entailments. It is that CA seems by its words and deeds to have abandoned its former gradualism in favour of a quick-fix mentality better suited to radio shock jocks and tabloid newspapers.

Pick the kid: thus Ashton Agar. Gather the old stagers round and partake of their lore: thus the presence round the playing group this week of Warne, Steve Waugh and Glenn McGrath. Out with the players that years have been spent getting here: thus kiss offs for Cowan and Nathan Lyon, after they battled through defeat and distraction in India. Let’s do it the old Aussie way, with a laugh, a joke and a post-play coldie.

This also serves to stave off more serious questions such as: how strong is our first-class system?; what is the impact of carving two months out of the middle of it to play domestic T20?; does our Centre of Excellence work as advertised?; why in the whole of Australia is there not a single young batsman capable of playing as yesterday did 22-year-old Root, with such patience and aplomb, attempting nothing exotic until he was well in, otherwise methodically turning the strike over until the field seemed like one big gap.

This was actually old-fashioned Test match batting:140 in 58 overs in the first two sessions, 162 from 32 overs in the last, as the bowlers unsurprisingly flagged, having only had three hours off in the three days thanks to Australia’s bedraggled innings. Australia used to excel at it; it now comes as naturally as translating Linear B into Latin in iambic pentameters.

The non-dismissal of Bell was entirely ludicrous, Smith’s catch at backward point being as obvious as a Dan Brown plot until technology obscured it. It led at least to one moment of candour, an anonymous poster on the Cricket Australia Twitter stream speaking his or her mind: “That decision sucks ass. #bullshit.” It’s actually one of the more sensible remarks to emanate from CA recently. Needless to say, it was hastily and apologetically withdrawn.