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danieldwilliamWith two tests of the current Ashes series down and only one win or two draws required for Australia (1) to win back the Ashes it’s time to reflect on hubris and my understanding of the deep strategy of Australian Cricket.
Firstly, a note on the context. Cricket is the sport that defines Australia’s emergence as a nation-state distinct and separate from the UK or the Empire. Being good at cricket. Being the best at cricket. Being better than the inventors of cricket at cricket is as much a part of the Australian creation myth as the First Fleet (2), Ned Kelly (3), the Eureka Stockade (4) and Kylie Minogue (5).
With that in mind, what is the point of Australian Cricket and therefore, what is an appropriate strategic response?
With Ned Kelly martyred, the Eureka Stockade burnt down, Chinese Australian miners (6) allowed to mine gold and Kylie able to pretty much look after herself clearly the entire efforts of the Australian nation are available for cricket. This is somewhat of an exaggeration. There is a fair amount of uranium and coal to be dug up and somewhere in Sydney some real estate needs selling or a cocktail mixing or something and no doubt the yanks or the poms or both will need digging out of some war or other in the near future. In any event, those beers won’t all drink themselves. Australia is a young country with much to be busy about. However, cricket is important in Australia and some resources are available.
What, then, is the end to which the considerable resources of sporting Australian Australian-hood should be bent like the arm of Muttiah Muralitharan at full pelt?
To have a team that consistently wins test matches? Well, yeah, but that’s hardly a challenge. To have a team that consistently wins test series handsomely? Okay, but it’s not about the team. This is an issue wider than just 11 blokes on a field having a good couple of days at work.
To be the best team in the world? Sic transit gloria mundi. Strength in depth is required. Then is our aim to have a squad of players from which the best team in the world is regularly selected? Or which could field the two best teams in the world?
No, Australia (1) requires more than just the statistical likelihood of cricketing success. Cricketers’ careers are fleeting. Winning is forever.
The aim of Australian Cricket shouldn’t be to aspire to anything as temporary as cobbling together a group of Australians who are good at cricket. For a start, there’s not much of a challenge to that. Unless you’re recruiting in the Darwin Centre for Recovering Substance Abusers or you’ve been over run by Drop Bears finding 11 Australians who are good at cricket is actually easier than failing to find 11 Aussie cricketers. Secondly, this is a national effort. If we are weave our foundational stories about a sport let them say something more about us than “We quite like this game and occasionally we randomly assign 11 players to it who are pretty good”. If cricketing prowess is to define Australia tomorrow as it did yesterday then nothing less than complete and eternal hegemony of the game is good enough. Not to have a winning team or a winning squad but to be undeniably and indisputably the best cricketing nation on this or any other planet, permanently. Forever and ever. Amen.
To be a nation so renowned for cricket that opposing teams consider themselves fortunate to avoid a whitewash and privileged to be considered worthy opponents.
To win forever.
From this simple requirement unfolds the primary strategic aim of Australian Cricket – to build and maintain a system of cricket that consistently produces a squad and a reserve squad from which the best two cricket teams in the world can be drawn. Where the B team is able to beat any other Test side at full strength. If you like, a cricketing version of the strategy of the Royal Navy from 1750 until 1950. Hegemony. Pure and simple. Not just in the present but in the unknowable future. For generation and generation and generation. That my sons and daughters (7) should look forward to generations of Australian cricketing success to come just as my father before me does. Ozymandius (8) is not an Australian.
Was there ever a nation more finely disposed to cricketing hegemony than Australia; a land where vast acreages of land are permanently given over to not much happening very slowly? Where it can take a full test match’s worth of commentary just to drive to the local pub and back for a schooner? Where rain delays play is a joke from another age and another country and the sun itself rises and sets like the looping delivery of a Shane Warne leg-break?
With the above in mind my own emotional response to the recent performance of the Australian cricket team is not the savage blood lust of hubris tinged with the brutal realisation that my time must surely come and my day pass so I’d better get some banter in fast. Rather, I am sad and relieved in equal measure. Relieved that the dark days may be over. That the years when it was doubted that that Australia was the best cricket team may be done. We may have passed the time when “Australia is the best cricketing nation” is not axiomatic. Sad that it has taken so long for the glimmer of hope, nay of faith, to be re-kindled. Sad at the loss of ten wasted years when the world could have benefited from watching the best cricketing nation play the best cricket the best. Grief and relief that at last Australian cricket may be living up to the promise it made in 1882 when it burned English cricket and created a nation from the ashes of the stumps and the dust of the wicket.
Let Us Rejoice! For we are young and free.
(1) Australia! Australia! Australia! You beauty.
(2) Criminals.
(3) A criminal concerned about racism.
(4) Some miners, concerned about racism.
(5) Sort of my sister, concerned about railways.
(6) Or as I like to call them Australian miners
(7) And this success should come both home and away.
(8) Not even Bruce Ozymandius or Forsyth as he is known in Britain.
Firstly, a note on the context. Cricket is the sport that defines Australia’s emergence as a nation-state distinct and separate from the UK or the Empire. Being good at cricket. Being the best at cricket. Being better than the inventors of cricket at cricket is as much a part of the Australian creation myth as the First Fleet (2), Ned Kelly (3), the Eureka Stockade (4) and Kylie Minogue (5).
With that in mind, what is the point of Australian Cricket and therefore, what is an appropriate strategic response?
With Ned Kelly martyred, the Eureka Stockade burnt down, Chinese Australian miners (6) allowed to mine gold and Kylie able to pretty much look after herself clearly the entire efforts of the Australian nation are available for cricket. This is somewhat of an exaggeration. There is a fair amount of uranium and coal to be dug up and somewhere in Sydney some real estate needs selling or a cocktail mixing or something and no doubt the yanks or the poms or both will need digging out of some war or other in the near future. In any event, those beers won’t all drink themselves. Australia is a young country with much to be busy about. However, cricket is important in Australia and some resources are available.
What, then, is the end to which the considerable resources of sporting Australian Australian-hood should be bent like the arm of Muttiah Muralitharan at full pelt?
To have a team that consistently wins test matches? Well, yeah, but that’s hardly a challenge. To have a team that consistently wins test series handsomely? Okay, but it’s not about the team. This is an issue wider than just 11 blokes on a field having a good couple of days at work.
To be the best team in the world? Sic transit gloria mundi. Strength in depth is required. Then is our aim to have a squad of players from which the best team in the world is regularly selected? Or which could field the two best teams in the world?
No, Australia (1) requires more than just the statistical likelihood of cricketing success. Cricketers’ careers are fleeting. Winning is forever.
The aim of Australian Cricket shouldn’t be to aspire to anything as temporary as cobbling together a group of Australians who are good at cricket. For a start, there’s not much of a challenge to that. Unless you’re recruiting in the Darwin Centre for Recovering Substance Abusers or you’ve been over run by Drop Bears finding 11 Australians who are good at cricket is actually easier than failing to find 11 Aussie cricketers. Secondly, this is a national effort. If we are weave our foundational stories about a sport let them say something more about us than “We quite like this game and occasionally we randomly assign 11 players to it who are pretty good”. If cricketing prowess is to define Australia tomorrow as it did yesterday then nothing less than complete and eternal hegemony of the game is good enough. Not to have a winning team or a winning squad but to be undeniably and indisputably the best cricketing nation on this or any other planet, permanently. Forever and ever. Amen.
To be a nation so renowned for cricket that opposing teams consider themselves fortunate to avoid a whitewash and privileged to be considered worthy opponents.
To win forever.
From this simple requirement unfolds the primary strategic aim of Australian Cricket – to build and maintain a system of cricket that consistently produces a squad and a reserve squad from which the best two cricket teams in the world can be drawn. Where the B team is able to beat any other Test side at full strength. If you like, a cricketing version of the strategy of the Royal Navy from 1750 until 1950. Hegemony. Pure and simple. Not just in the present but in the unknowable future. For generation and generation and generation. That my sons and daughters (7) should look forward to generations of Australian cricketing success to come just as my father before me does. Ozymandius (8) is not an Australian.
Was there ever a nation more finely disposed to cricketing hegemony than Australia; a land where vast acreages of land are permanently given over to not much happening very slowly? Where it can take a full test match’s worth of commentary just to drive to the local pub and back for a schooner? Where rain delays play is a joke from another age and another country and the sun itself rises and sets like the looping delivery of a Shane Warne leg-break?
With the above in mind my own emotional response to the recent performance of the Australian cricket team is not the savage blood lust of hubris tinged with the brutal realisation that my time must surely come and my day pass so I’d better get some banter in fast. Rather, I am sad and relieved in equal measure. Relieved that the dark days may be over. That the years when it was doubted that that Australia was the best cricket team may be done. We may have passed the time when “Australia is the best cricketing nation” is not axiomatic. Sad that it has taken so long for the glimmer of hope, nay of faith, to be re-kindled. Sad at the loss of ten wasted years when the world could have benefited from watching the best cricketing nation play the best cricket the best. Grief and relief that at last Australian cricket may be living up to the promise it made in 1882 when it burned English cricket and created a nation from the ashes of the stumps and the dust of the wicket.
Let Us Rejoice! For we are young and free.
(1) Australia! Australia! Australia! You beauty.
(2) Criminals.
(3) A criminal concerned about racism.
(4) Some miners, concerned about racism.
(5) Sort of my sister, concerned about railways.
(6) Or as I like to call them Australian miners
(7) And this success should come both home and away.
(8) Not even Bruce Ozymandius or Forsyth as he is known in Britain.
