Player autonomy reflective of the age

Steve Smith is out lbw to Ravichandran Ashwin during day three of the second Test in Delhi. Picture: Getty Images.

Former East Germans have an expression, ostalgie, to describe nostalgia for the dismal but iron-clad certainties of life under communism.

Something similar pervades our cricket – call it Austalgie – whereby nobody and nothing can possibly measure up to the giants of yesteryear, now remembered only by their personal achievements and collective successes.

It’s not new. Nothing much in cricket is.

Having researched more or less every period of the history of the game in this country, let me assure you that Austalgie ain’t what it used to be.

Even the Invincibles, Bradman’s 1948 Australians, were compared unfavourably to the 1921 Australians, who were compared unfavourably to the 1902 Australians, who were compared unfavourably to the 1882 Australians.

Before contemporary detractors like Jack Fingleton and Bill O’Reilly, Bradman was contrasted unflatteringly to masters of the past by such players turned pundits Warwick Armstrong, Herbie Collins and Eric Barbour.

It’s actually no bad thing to feel allegiance for greats of the past – I have my favourites, as you will have yours.

But as a general principle it makes as much sense as an unbending belief in the superiority of contemporary standards.

Which leads us to the present coolness in relations between the current Australian team and those members of The Greatest Generation – past players of the Taylor-Waugh-Ponting era, with media and social media profiles.

Justin Langer made their involvement a characteristic feature of his coaching, from the moment in his first press conference where he argued that ‘‘one of the things we’ve got in Australian cricket unlike other countries is that we’ve got great players … and we’re lucky to draw on those.’’

Four of the eight episodes of the first series of The Test, that excellent series covering the first eighteen months of Langer’s tenure, feature the likes of Ricky Ponting, Steve Waugh, Adam Gilchrist and Allan Border in harmonious communion with Tim Paine’s team.

“Make the next ball the most important thing in your life,” Gilchrist declares solemnly in the dressing room at Old Trafford, amid nods of assent.

The inference was that while anyone might tell you to prioritise the next ball, in Gilchrist’s voice it carried additional weight.

But then, of course, Langer departed, in line with the expressed preference in Pat Cummins’ team for “a more collaborative approach”, much to the touch-one, touch-all disapproval of the coach’s admired peers.

With Langer went some of the more obvious forms of ancestor worship.

The custom of baggy green presentation by a former great instigated by Waugh, earlier interrupted by Covid, has not been restored.

The second series of The Test focuses entirely on the current players, to the exclusion even of Langer’s coaching successors.

A newly-popular genre of sports article, enabled and magnified by social media, is the “former Test great” who “lashes” Australia for this or that, usually for lack of toughness and/or excess of money.

Hence brainstorms such as: what Cummins’ team need right now is advice on the sweep from Matthew Hayden, who has offered it. This has been reinforced by the likes of Michael Clarke, that new weather vane of cricket sentiment, who calls it a “no-brainer”.

To be fair, Hayden is an excellent communicator — viz the incisive exposition on the sweep he provided our Cricket Etc podcast last week. A genuine man, his offer would be entirely sincere. The same cannot always be said.

But is it really knowledge this team is lacking? If Steve Smith makes a mess of a sweep, is it because he did not “know” it was a prudent measure to get his front pad outside the line, or because under the pressure of a great bowler in Ashwin he didn’t do it? It certainly looked like Smith tried to get a generous stride in, while ball tracker suggested that the delivery would merely have nicked leg stump. On another day….

What this manifests is a rather crude conception of the role of “the coach” in cricket, which is popularly imagined comparable to that of “the coach” in the football codes — and a 1990s football coach at that.

In this model, the coach’s decrees are implemented in real time, ideally to the letter. In cricket, however, the player remains largely autonomous. Individuals may fail in the face of the most comprehensive preparation and messaging, falling back under pressure on an old habit or in the instant making a poor choice — and no game punishes poor choices like cricket.

Even the best players err. Dismissed first ball in the first innings in Kolkata in 2001, Gilchrist went to the wicket in the second innings repeating to himself: “Don’t sweep, don’t sweep, don’t sweep.” Inevitably, he swept. Result: a rueful king pair. The Greatest Generation had their failures in India too.

Another borrowing from football is that old chestnut: “The players don’t want it enough.” As though cricket is merely a forum of competing desires, and that failure thereby manifests moral weakness — including, in the case of Cummins’ team, insufficient fealty to the past. When they lose, they will not even provide us with the satisfaction of performative contrition.

The Australians, this argument runs, are being beaten by India because they are well-paid and pampered; never mind that the Indians are paid vastly more and treated like royalty.

This is payback, the critique continues, for having engineered Langer’s unceremonious departure; never mind that Langer’s coaching tenure included two home defeats by India. How fitting in the land of karma!

Langer, a great servant, was poorly treated. Cricket Australia’s offer of a sixth-month contract was as pointless as it was insulting. But more than a year on, the labouring of this point is pure carping.

Zero-two tells its own tale, and aspects of Australia’s preparation may have been amiss here. It has, as I’ve said previously, been worrying to hear players justify “proactivity” in terms of the inevitability of receiving an unplayable delivery — a negativity with the potential to be self-sabotaging.

How could Matthew Renshaw and Alex Carey so lack trust in their defence at Delhi? Perhaps because of Smith’s example.

I should add the proviso that a subscriber to the Australians’ approach was Hayden, who in his autobiography also commended the sweep to batters in India: “If you hide in your trench and let the enemy get too close, someone will eventually roll a grenade in.” But I suspect Hayden would agree that these are always matters of proportion, about which one cannot be too prescriptive.

Underlying all nostalgia is an unease with change, and there are, to be sure, plenty of changes about cricket to object to — I mean, how long have you got?

But players no more choose their era than we do. Might as well blame Anthony Albanese for not being John Curtin. Actually there are those who probably do ….