I blame Hayden and Co.

The Aussie cricket team have a problem.  The problem is its batting.  That is about all that people can agree on.  Everything seems to be the reason for this problem: in separate articles, T20, the coaching structure, the selection policy and the state of Sheffield shield pitches, among others, have each been blamed for the Aussies poor batting in the past few days.  I am surprised that the GFC and global warming weren't the subject of articles -at least not that I saw.  The problem with the vast majority of these articles was that they were all looking for a single reason, and thus a silver bullet to fix it.  The trouble is that, like most real world problems, this problem is more complex than many would like.  Here we will look at some of the issues that have contributed to the problem.

Firstly, I blame Hayden and company - not that I would want to go back and change the way they played.   Matthew Hayden intimidated many a bowling attack, hitting them  to all parts of the ground.  Those that followed him often faced a battered bowling attack, and were able to score at pace.  A whole generation of cricketers grew up expecting that dominating good bowlers was the norm.  What they forget is that Hayden didn't succeed the first time he played test cricket. He went away, tightened his technique, and came back to take advantage of years of Australian domination to establish himself  as the brutaliser of bowlers he became.  He had a solid technique, a sound defence, good judgement and decent concentration, not to mention the back up of  five or six world class batsmen.  Many of the batsmen today want the domination without working on the rest.

This desire to dominate is exacerbated by T20.  It is a format that promotes big hitting.  It is also one that does not promote long innings- at best your innings lasts 20 overs.  In reality a quick fire 30 or 40 is good in this format.  An 80 at pace can win a match.  A failure is disappointing but expected given the need to throw the bat.  The problem isn't the format itself; after all Hayden and Gilchrist were champions in this format as well as Tests.  The problem is that this is now the format that many young cricketers are learning their craft and making their money.  With the Big Bucks League (BBL) players can make as much money in the T20 format as in Sheffield Shield.  The best of these can earn a huge amount in the Irresponsible Pay League (IPL).  The incentive to tighten up technique and learn to build innings is not as great.

This priority of T20 at the state level is emphasised by the way it dominates the summer.  The BBL has the prime school holiday weeks while the 50 over competition and the Shield matches are pushed to the edges of the season.  After mid-December there is no possibility to build a long innings until the end of January, or this coming summer, well into February.  I can understand that this makes the money, but what it gives in cash it robs in skill.  When players need to be learning to build a big innings, they are being encouraged to throw the bat.  After all it seemed to work for Hayden and Co.

Once they get into the test arena, the pressure to perform or face the chop is huge.  The first innings of this current series, Phil Hughes was the one who rebuilt the innings with Agar.  Agar got the headlines, but without Hughes, Agar's heroics would not have happened.  Two failures at Lord's have several commentators indicating that Hughes is batting for his place in the current tour match.  It is good to have competition for places, but there also needs to be moderation of the pressure on a batsman.  Even Clarke seems to be feeling the pressure to perform as the only established batsman in the top six.

Next time I will look at what this Aussie team needs to do two matches down in a ten match Ashes bout.