What I learned this Summer

As part of a series on The Sledge, several online columnists were invited to submit what this past cricket season has taught them.  Featured contributors included cricket blogosphere stalwarts Ant Sims of Wicket Maiden, Dave Siddall of World Cricket Watch and Subash Jayaraman of The Sight Screen.  The following was Balanced Sports' contribution.

What I learned this summer:

Andrew Hilditch was really, really bad.

Let's not split hairs, I already knew this – so did everyone except Mitchell Johnson. But John Inverarity's relatively steady start at the helm of the Australian selection panel threw Hilditch's stint as Chairman of Selectors into sharp relief.

The guy wasn't bad, but comically inept.

Australian cricket has for years been regarded as a bastion against petty griping. Like any good marriage, the players and establishment held onto their grievances, only to let them pour out in flare-ups – like, say, World Series Cricket or the A-Team's Rebel Tour of South Africa. However, once there's been some resolution and a few years in which the establishment re-entrenches themselves into “best practice”, then suddenly Australia's competitive again.

With the ascent of journeymen like Ed Cowan and Dan Christian to the forefront of the national setup, Australia appears to be once more rewarding effort rather than physical gifts. This suggests the trough into which Australian cricket sunk wasn't so much the effects Warne, Langer and McGrath retiring, but of Hilditch's inconsistent selection methodology.

In his five years as head honcho, Hilditch debuted twenty-nine players, a neat half of which didn't play more than six Tests. It seems the only people he held to account were the newbies. Hilditch looked at players much like the fifteen year old who lusts at every girl who walks by. His tendencies varied from the youthful (Steven Smith) to the old bags (Bryce McGain).

Hilditch is gone, banished to the vagaries of law practice. Which is good, because we can still feel good about despising him.

The World realised they should have been giving Tendulkar runs a long time ago

Australia's bowling lineup isn't a patch on the attacks Sachin Tendulkar has flayed around the world for a generation. Siddle's pretty good, Harris is an injury looking for a body part, James Pattinson seems to have a bit about him, Hilfenhaus is good if your TV isn't Hi-Def while Nathan Hauritz Lyon failed to trouble any recognised batsmen for the entire Border-Gavaskar series. You could call the ugly stepsisters – in Siddle's case you'd be spot on, as the man has a head like a kicked-in biscuit tin.

But no matter how disheveled the Aussie attack, it's a novelty to write that Tendulkar failed with the bat. More poignantly, he couldn't complete that troublesome hundredth International hundred that's becoming an Obelix-sized bugbear for him and increasingly-frantic Indian media outlets.

Which is confusing, because he's broken nearly all the batting records there are. Records shouldn't trouble him, and especially this one, because it just doesn't mean much (it's a compilation of ODI and Test figures). However, it is a very pretty thing to have on one's resume.

Like an average Joe trying to impress a model, Sachin's got performance anxiety – something none of us would have attributed to such an accomplished player. The cricket world has now realised that bowling to Tendulkar is a lot easier when he's got 99 tons under his belt and they wish he'd just gotten there sooner.

Virat Kohli will be welcomed by Australian fans for the next decade

Aussie fans have always had someone from opposing teams to hate. We don't mind arrogance and cockiness from our own lot (unless it's Dean Jones), but when stuff is thrown at our boys, we get all Simon Katich pissy.

The ultimate example of this is Douglas Jardine. The last two decades have been rife with people who rubbed Aussie cricketers, and the populace at large, the wrong way. For the most part, these guys have been good players, which has only reinforced the average Skippy's frustration at them.

It reads almost biblically.

In the beginning, there was Douglas Jardine. Jardine begat Trevor Bailey, who batted with slowness of a one-legged (and dead) mule. Bailey begat Tony Greig, who in turn begat Richard Hadlee. Hadlee had a son, whose name was Pat Symcox, who in turn brought Sourav Ganguly into being. Ganguly bred his own nation of irritants, but none were more irritating than the spinner, Harbhajan Singh.

This was the first Border-Gavaskar series since 1999 in which Harbhajan Singh didn't play – and for the most part (and perhaps because they lost so badly), the team apparently didn't have anyone for us to actively root against: there was Tendulkar's timelessness, Dravid's stoic nature, Yadav's constant four-balls …

Except Virat Kohli. While succeeding leading the Indian batting averages, he p****d off every Australian he saw with an attitude as calming as the new tabasco-flavoured Red Bull.

And this will see him welcomed on these shores for the rest of his career – probably with the typical Aussie mix of grudging admiration and febrile swearing.

And on the eighth day, Harbhajan had a son, whose name was Virat Kohli.

Remembering the "A-Team", part 3

The Conclusion of our Special Feature on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the "A-Team's" Rebel Tour to apartheid-strewn South Africa.

For the record, I had rather a little too much fun working all this out.

To start with it was necessary to select the seventeen Rebel Tourists. What we did was to try and select the current players most resembling the 1985-87 tourists, based on his statistics up to that point, relative ages, reputations and playing styles. The ages don't tally up well because during that era players retired much earlier and as such a player at age 30 was much nearer the end of his career than a thirty-year old is today. Also matched, if possible, is their state of origin. As you'd expect, some comparisons proved easy, such as captain Hughes himself and the fast men while others weren't quite that simple.

In broad strokes, the touring party had to include:

- 7 players who played in Australia's most recent Test series (Australia in India),

- Australia's first-choice wicketkeeper, opening batsman and the two most damaging fast bowlers in the country, one out-and-out pace merchant and one who relies on the ball swinging,

and

- A few players who have played Test cricket but aren't currently around the team.

With these factors in minds, a direct comparison of the two teams could look a little like this:

"A-Team"	Current Equivalent	Reason for Selection / Comparison
Kim Hughes (c)	Mike Hussey (c) (WA)	Down-on-luck-and-form former best batsman in country, with spirit of the game first in thoughts
Terry Alderman	Ben Hilfenhaus (TAS)	Possibly Australia's premier fast-bowler, definitely the most rhythmic and best swing bowler
John Dyson	Phil Jacques (NSW)	NSW Opening batsman discarded by national selectors after being unable to convince despite opportunities
Peter Faulkner	John Hastings (VIC)	All-rounder capable with both bat and ball but without a dominant skill-set
Mike Haysman	Adam Voges (WA)	Exciting talent but largely ignored by national selectors. Also bowls useful off-spin.
Tom Hogan	Jason Krezja (TAS)	Tweaker examined and then ignored by national team leaders, perhaps unfairly. Also a reasonable bat and good team man.
Rodney Hogg	Mitchell Johnson (WA)	Inconsistent national teamer, match-winner on his day. Probably closer to the end of careers than care to admit
Trevor Hohns	Xavier Doherty (TAS)	Effective spinner with only middling first-class stats.
John Maguire	Nathan Bracken (NSW)	Fast-medium bowler with limited future Australian opportunities after being effecctively discarded
Rod McCurdy	Clint McKay (VIC)	Victorian fast-medium bowler with One-Day International experience but earmarked "Not of Test quality"
Carl Rackemann	Shaun Tait (SA)	Fastest bowler in Australia, more of a one-day specialist
Steve Rixon	Brad Haddin (NSW)	Incumbent wicketkeeper, perhaps reaching the end of his tether
Greg Shipperd	George Bailey (TAS)	Tasweigian top-ender never receiving adequate respect for abilities
Steve Smith	David Warner (NSW)	Swashbuckling opening bat, clearly labelled "Never again for Test matches"
Mick Taylor	Michael Klinger (SA)	Batsman toiling in obscurity yet with a fantastic average and many runs
Graham Yallop	Brad Hodge (VIC)	Experienced batsman inexplicably unselectable for Australia despite double-century within last five Test innings
Kepler Wessels	Shane Watson (NSW)	Best opener in country with most productive years ahead of him.

Now, if you were to put this squad down on paper against an Australian team suddenly deprived of their services the comparison becomes more interesting. The starting line-ups would probably look like:

Australia	Rebel Tourists
Simon Katich	Shane Watson
Phil Hughes	Phil Jacques
Ricky Ponting	Brad Hodge
Michael Clarke	Adam Voges
Usman Khawaja	Mike Hussey (c)
Marcus North	Michael Klinger
Tim Paine	Brad Haddin
Peter Siddle	Mitchell Johnson
Peter George	Clint McKay
Nathan Hauritz	Xavier Doherty
Doug Bollinger	Ben Hilfenhaus
12th Ryan Harris	12th George Bailey

Now if the challenge was to select one of these two squads to win a five match series, it isn't an easy choice. As the first Ashes Test so aptly reminded us, it's much easier to compensate for a lack of class in a team's batsmen than to replace premier strike bowlers. Because of this, any lack of batsmanship potentially suffered by the Rebels could be overcome by their stronger attack. True to form, the "A-Team" suffered more from batting inconsistencies than bowling impotency so comparison is encouraging at this stage.

Over the short term, a rebel tour today would gut Australian cricket stocks and first-choice depth would be reduced to such levels that the rebuilding would need to match that overseen by Simpson & Border. Like in 1985 with McDermott, Gilbert and Chris Matthews, the first choice bowlers would be inexperienced and as such returns would be unlikely until their successors had wrested control of the bowling positions. It wasn't Matthews and Gilbert who took Australia into their Golden Age but Merv Hughes, Bruce Reid and McDermott, who were around the national team within a year of the Rebel Tour but had yet to make their mark. This suggests that rather than the Peters George and Siddle, their eventual replacements - potentially Starc, McDermott Jr. and Pattinson - may prove the next strong Australian attack.

Again mirroring the situation in 1985, the batsmanship remains notably unaffected. Obviously without the services of Hussey and Haddin Australia would have lost the First Test with nary a whimper, but recently evidence indicates they're both on borrowed time at Test level. As with the bowlers, it wasn't the batsmen drafted in immediately to replace their A-Team counterparts who succeeded and subsequently helped form Australia into a world power. The team beaten for the Ashes in 1985 included three re-treads and one Tasmanian keg-on-legs newbie. Those retreads didn't survive for even a year as they were pushed aside by the exuberance of Jones, Marsh, Moody and Steve Waugh.

Subtracting seventeen high-quality players from any country's First-Class competition sets almost an entire generation to one side and brings through their successors irregardless of readiness. In 1985 that meant farewell to almost everyone born between 1955 to 1962 and a welcome to those born after that date. For Australia today, we could kiss good-bye to almost all our cricketers born from 1985 to 1990; meaning three to four years of pain before those born after 1990 mature to the point of being able to represent their country adequately. The younger generation then learns "the hard way" creating further teething problems followed by the results of that hard maturation process. It isn't just Australia who followed this process: the England teams that toured South Africa also went through growing pains before their eventual maturation. The West Indies had enough talent in the early 1980s to compensate for the Rebel teams that visited the Cape, testament to the ultimate strength and depth of West Indian cricket during that era. Those teams also included several older players rather than ones mid-career.

Though it's extremely unlikely that we will see another Rebel Tour, it's not too far-fetched an idea that a rebel cricket league such as World Series Cricket, the ICL or the Stanford Series could rob a country of many of it's top guns creating a similar talent-drain. Should the IPL become a larger concept then it could also conceivably do so. New Zealand has suffered since several national players signed ICL contracts including their premier bowler Shane Bond. Those once invincible West Indies now effectively suffers from Free Agency as players choose dollars over country. Should Australia - or indeed any country - lose seventeen of their top-level players then suddenly a team is thrust from gradual replenishment into full-throttle rebuilding.

Remembering the "A-Team", part 1

A three-part special feature on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Australian Rebel cricket tours to South Africa.

This month marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of an Australian squad's Rebel Tour of South Africa, an event which fostered a re-growth in Australian cricket and was also one of the last Rebel Tours to the apartheid-strewn land.

As a result of their racist apartheid policies, South Africa was essentially cut off from sporting ties with the rest of the globe. Each cricketing nation retracted any outstandig invitations for state-sanctioned teams to tour, while leaving any mail marked "South African Cricket Board" unopened and forgotten. The same applied for rugby, hockey and football: anyone who followed sport in South Africa was forced to rely on the domestic competitions for entertainment.

Although apartheid had been a featured South African government policy since 1948 and teams had visited the Cape Country, the major turning point proved to be the Basil D'Oliveira affair in 1968. A Cape-Coloured cricketer born in 1931, D'Oliveira emigrated to England as a twenty-nine year old due to the South African mandate of whites only representing their country in sport. By the age of 34 he had made his Test debut for England and was one of Wisden's Five cricketers of the year in 1967. As an MCC tour of South Africa loomed, sporting and political tensions rose between D'Olly's home and his adopted country and it became a common assumption that he would not be selected for the series after the South African Prime Minister made it known that he, and by extension any touring party containing him, would not be welcome.

D'Oliveira was not selected, but when paceman Tom Cartwright pulled up lame, he was selected as the injury-replacement for the hamstrung fast man. As with any bully, the South African government saw this decision as slight rather than a cricketing decision and Prime Minister Vorster retracted the tour invitation to tour and officially made sport "fair game" in the politics of apartheid. It was a decision which would haunt them as fortunately, the rest of the world played this "fair game" better than South Africa did.

When the Springboks toured England in 1970-71, a campaign of passive resistance led by Peter Hain proved such a hindrance to both the authorities and the South Africans and such a tour de force for raising awareness of those victimised by apartheid that further sporting tours were thought extremely insensitive, thoughtless and political suicide.

In 1981, the former South Africa cricket captain Dr. Ali Bacher became the head of the South African Cricket Union. Given there was no chance of the proto-Proteas participating in international matches until the demise of apartheid, the Union decided that cricket could only survive if a South African national side were to compete in unsanctioned internationals against international teams playing against the wishes of the United Nations, the International Cricket Council and their respective control boards. In order to induce players to tour, the individuals would have to be paid handsomely: reportedly the amount paid to each would would have fed 50,000 black South Africans for a year. The figures had to be that high as there were invariably recriminations against returning players. Bacher has since admitted that these were callous and insensitive steps.

The first Rebel Tour in 1982 was an English team led by Graham Gooch who faced several familiar, if ageing, South African cricket greats. Graeme Pollock, Mike Proctor, Clive Rice, Garth Le Roux, Peter Kirsten, Daryll Cullinan, Kepler Wessels, Hansie Cronje and Allan Donald all played for the South Africans against Rebel teams. The English tour was followed by tours from Sri Lanka and two West Indian sides led by Lawrence Rowe.

It was inevitable that an Australian XI would be approached.