AUSTRALIAN cricket has made for an interesting spectacle lately. A
long period of unhappiness culminated last week in the sacking of their
coach, South African Mickey Arthur, weeks before the next Ashes series.
Rarely has Australia cricket been forced to make such drastic decisions
on the hoof. For decades it has been a model of unity, its selectors,
players and administrators working in unison, as it churned out record
after record and result after result. What has changed?
Well, the results changed. An era ended — one dominated by some of cricket’s all-time greats. And as Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden all hung up their boots, so Australian cricket slowly relinquished its vice-like grip on the top position in world cricket.
The remarkable thing about the past two decades is not the fact that Australia produced a single generation of geniuses, but that it produced two — back to back. The Waugh brothers, Michael Slater, Mark Taylor, David Boon, Ian Healy ... these people, although perhaps just a fraction below the statistical greatness of the players who defined the Ponting era, laid the basis for what followed. They elevated Australia to the top.
One generation seamlessly merged into another and the result was 20 years of brutal and peerless cricket. Success breeds success, they say, and so it was with Australia. It is remarkable how often good results on the pitch make for a generally good working relationship between administrators and players.
And so, while Australia crushed all in front of them, so the processes and structures that supported the team flourished. The Australian Cricket Academy, responsible for so many modern Australian greats, was touted internationally as a model of success and replicated elsewhere. Selectors, flush with enough talent to field two Test teams, hardly ever put a foot wrong. Young talent, which had to perform feats of greatness just to be considered, could be gently nurtured into national cricket, the fear of failure diluted by the strength of the team’s core players. And coaches stayed on for years; even when internal conflict emerged, it could be endured on the grounds that, well, Australia never lost.
It was a far cry from the current crisis: player dissent, the academy’s effectiveness being questioned (as it appears no new generation of greats is being produced), and selectors at each other’s throats and routinely chopped and changed. An injury is doubly problematic, for it exposes Australian cricket’s lack of depth rather than serving as an opportunity to advertise its strength, and no coach is secure in the position as the team’s results plummet.
And, in the background, a national horde of fanatical supporters, grown fat on success and demanding nothing else, constantly baying for blood.
It is going to be a long haul to turn this ship around.
There are many lessons here for South African cricket. We have risen to the top through hard graft, not the chance production of an unrivalled generation of greats. True, we now have many greats, and others who, through hard work, have become great. But getting to the top was never easy. They did not inherit the title "world’s best" as Ponting’s generation did. They had to work at it for years.
With that success, much of the ugliness that defined our national cricket administration in the past has vanished, or so it would appear. No public spats about transformation. No public outrage at poor selection. And our coach enjoys a reputation on a par with that of the team — he has even been able to implement a succession plan at his own discretion. When was the last time that happened? Normally a coach fails, or falls out with the players or administrators, and is replaced in a far more brutal fashion.
Success brings with it a whole range of benefits, of which harmony would seem to the chief advantage.
For anyone wanting evidence that divides still exist, you need do no more than cast your eye away from the national set-up and towards the provinces. Gauteng cricket, for example, could not be in a greater state of self-imposed chaos if it tried.
The question, then, is what sort of cracks in South African cricket have been filled by success and what is being done to address them now, so that when our reign at the top inevitably draws to a close they do not fracture into public chasms. Because they are all waiting for an opportunity to manifest, and nothing makes real unarticulated unhappiness more quickly than failure.
Mark Boucher has been forced to retire early. In years to come, Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis will follow suit. Will South Africa produce another generation of greats, as Australia did and for 10 years consolidated its position at the top? Or is this team a one-off?
These are questions all worthy of careful consideration by the cricketing powers that be. If Australian cricket can teach us anything, it is that success generates unity and risks complacency. It is not easy to plan for uncertainty, but unless you do, the future will define you, not vice versa.
Perhaps the time has come for Cricket South Africa to set out a long-term set of goals or, if it has them already, to explain these to the public. What is our plan to maintain our standard and what is being do to overcome those issues we seem happy to have put to rest while we indulge our current status? When the end comes, will we revert to type or has our success changed us in a meaningful way?
Well, the results changed. An era ended — one dominated by some of cricket’s all-time greats. And as Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden all hung up their boots, so Australian cricket slowly relinquished its vice-like grip on the top position in world cricket.
The remarkable thing about the past two decades is not the fact that Australia produced a single generation of geniuses, but that it produced two — back to back. The Waugh brothers, Michael Slater, Mark Taylor, David Boon, Ian Healy ... these people, although perhaps just a fraction below the statistical greatness of the players who defined the Ponting era, laid the basis for what followed. They elevated Australia to the top.
One generation seamlessly merged into another and the result was 20 years of brutal and peerless cricket. Success breeds success, they say, and so it was with Australia. It is remarkable how often good results on the pitch make for a generally good working relationship between administrators and players.
And so, while Australia crushed all in front of them, so the processes and structures that supported the team flourished. The Australian Cricket Academy, responsible for so many modern Australian greats, was touted internationally as a model of success and replicated elsewhere. Selectors, flush with enough talent to field two Test teams, hardly ever put a foot wrong. Young talent, which had to perform feats of greatness just to be considered, could be gently nurtured into national cricket, the fear of failure diluted by the strength of the team’s core players. And coaches stayed on for years; even when internal conflict emerged, it could be endured on the grounds that, well, Australia never lost.
It was a far cry from the current crisis: player dissent, the academy’s effectiveness being questioned (as it appears no new generation of greats is being produced), and selectors at each other’s throats and routinely chopped and changed. An injury is doubly problematic, for it exposes Australian cricket’s lack of depth rather than serving as an opportunity to advertise its strength, and no coach is secure in the position as the team’s results plummet.
And, in the background, a national horde of fanatical supporters, grown fat on success and demanding nothing else, constantly baying for blood.
It is going to be a long haul to turn this ship around.
There are many lessons here for South African cricket. We have risen to the top through hard graft, not the chance production of an unrivalled generation of greats. True, we now have many greats, and others who, through hard work, have become great. But getting to the top was never easy. They did not inherit the title "world’s best" as Ponting’s generation did. They had to work at it for years.
With that success, much of the ugliness that defined our national cricket administration in the past has vanished, or so it would appear. No public spats about transformation. No public outrage at poor selection. And our coach enjoys a reputation on a par with that of the team — he has even been able to implement a succession plan at his own discretion. When was the last time that happened? Normally a coach fails, or falls out with the players or administrators, and is replaced in a far more brutal fashion.
Success brings with it a whole range of benefits, of which harmony would seem to the chief advantage.
For anyone wanting evidence that divides still exist, you need do no more than cast your eye away from the national set-up and towards the provinces. Gauteng cricket, for example, could not be in a greater state of self-imposed chaos if it tried.
The question, then, is what sort of cracks in South African cricket have been filled by success and what is being done to address them now, so that when our reign at the top inevitably draws to a close they do not fracture into public chasms. Because they are all waiting for an opportunity to manifest, and nothing makes real unarticulated unhappiness more quickly than failure.
Mark Boucher has been forced to retire early. In years to come, Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis will follow suit. Will South Africa produce another generation of greats, as Australia did and for 10 years consolidated its position at the top? Or is this team a one-off?
These are questions all worthy of careful consideration by the cricketing powers that be. If Australian cricket can teach us anything, it is that success generates unity and risks complacency. It is not easy to plan for uncertainty, but unless you do, the future will define you, not vice versa.
Perhaps the time has come for Cricket South Africa to set out a long-term set of goals or, if it has them already, to explain these to the public. What is our plan to maintain our standard and what is being do to overcome those issues we seem happy to have put to rest while we indulge our current status? When the end comes, will we revert to type or has our success changed us in a meaningful way?
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