Mcg Test To Usher In New Order
The Age
Thursday December 26, 1996
Two cricket fables are going up the chimney with Santa Claus as the third Test begins at the MCG today. One is that the West Indies are still a cricket superpower. The other is that a place in the Australian team is a sinecure.
Victory to this latest version of Australia - likely to be different by four players from the one that won the second Test - would give it successive series wins over the Windies for the first time since Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer were in kindergarten.
It would also re-establish Australia at the top of Wisden's imperfect, but none the less plausible and laudable, Test cricket ladder.
In defeat, the Windies could no longer kid themselves or the world that they are still the champions who happen to have fallen on a bit of hard luck. Truth is, there has been an element of kidology all along in the idea that they are playing Australia as equals here.
They appear out of date, a team looking forward to yesterday instead of tomorrow. Their attack has only one dimension - pace - and their batting lacks one - class.
Once their fast bowlers attacked in waves, but now rules about bouncers and over rates act like breakwaters on them. Their former greats are nearly washed up and the next set is a long way behind. That is not to say that the West Indies are not still dangerous on their day, only that their days are further and further apart.
Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh will play in an MCG Test for the last time. Walsh remains tireless and ageless, but Ambrose, with three wickets in the series, has had as little impact as luck. Australia no longer suffers from what Allan Border used to call Recent Trauma Syndrome when facing him. He will still bowl 10 overs for 16 in a one-day game, but so did Simon Davis.
Much was made of Ian Bishop's form against Victoria in Wangaratta. But Bishop was already the West Indies' best bowler in this series anyway, so it was not a genuine gain.
As for their batting, Sherwin Campbell and Shivnarine Chanderpaul have fought with every sinew, but Brian Lara has no more than flexed his muscles yet and a team that depends on Carl Hooper is by definition fragile.
Australian captain Mark Taylor said again yesterday he liked to think that it was not only that the West Indies had declined, but that Australia had improved. He said Australia was a markedly better team - man for man - now than it was in the Caribbean in 1995 when it upset the Windies at home.
But who are these men? What is the Australian team? Seemingly, it is something different every Test, now a team of fearless stroke players, now a team of gritty accumulators, now with three spinners, now with one, now lit up by youth, now bristling with veterans. It is more a squad than a team.
For this match, it will have new men at Nos 2, 3, 6 and 8. New? Two, Steve Waugh and Paul Reiffel, are stalwarts back from injury, and the other two, Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer, are one-time golden-haired boys who are now grey at the temples and chafing at the bit of a second chance. Australia, the country, champions youth. Australia, the cricket team, has an average age of almost 28.
Michael Slater is but a memory, Ricky Ponting has gone as well and Michael Bevan has only a toehold left (surprisingly, the toe of a bowling boot). By saying yesterday that Bevan had been picked as a second spinner rather than a seventh batsman, Taylor as good as announced him as 12th man.
In the days when it was said to be more difficult to get out of the Australian team than get into it, such wholesale changes to a winning team would have been deplored. And as Australia has won seven of its past nine Tests, it is not as if drastic measures were demanded.
So the pass has arrived where the West Indies would desperately like to make changes and can't, while Australia does not need to make changes and is making them anyway. Thus it was yesterday that Taylor, who is not a selector, found himself defending a policy that for all anyone knows does not sit easily with him.
"At the moment we're trying to find a top six who are all playing well," Taylor said. "We're looking at the younger, newer guys - one, two or three of them - to grab their chance, to make that good Test 100 and demand selection for the next game, and that hasn't been happening the last 18 months."
If these winds of change are allowed to blow too long, they must eventually send a chill down Taylor's own spine. He was brilliant last summer, but in his six Test innings this season has not passed 50 (though he has reached double figures in them all). But he is, of course, captain, and such a good one that he is worth half a player in that capacity alone.
Border wondered aloud the other day if Taylor the captain was shouldering too much responsbility for the good of Taylor the batsman. Taylor's defence was as expected: he was hitting the ball well, but getting out at inopportune moments and in incongruous ways.
BOXING DAY - THE TRADITION CONTINUES
Tests that have started at the MCG on Boxing Day: 15. (The first was in 1968-69, but the tradition did not really kick off until 1980-81). In all, there have been 20 days played on Boxing Day).
Most runs: 308 by Pakistan in 1983-84. The only Boxing Day to yield more than 300 runs.
Average runs (discounting the rain-ruined 1993-94 Test against South Africa): 225.
Most runs by an individual: 152 by Pakistan opener Moshin Khan in 1983-84.
Most wickets: 14. Dennis Lillee bowled Viv Richards with the last ball of the day to leave the West Indies 4/10 after Holding, Roberts, Garner and Croft routed Australia for 198.
Average wickets: 7.5.
Most wickets by an individual: 6 by South African off-spinner Hugh Tayfield, 1952-53.
Centuries: Kim Hughes, Aust (100, 1981-82), Moshin Khan, Pak (152, 1983-84).
Five wickets or more: Hugh Tayfield, Sth Africa (1952-53), Jeff Thomson, Aust (1975-76), Michael Holding, WI (1981-82), Ian Botham, Eng, (1986-87), Bruce Reid, Aust (1991-92).
THE TEAMS
AUSTRALIA
MARK TAYLOR (capt)
MATTHEW HAYDEN
JUSTIN LANGER
MARK WAUGH
STEVE WAUGH
GREG BLEWETT
IAN HEALY
PAUL REIFFEL
SHANE WARNE
JASON GILLESPIE
GLENN McGRATH
MICHAEL BEVAN (likely 12th man)
WEST INDIES
SHERWIN CAMPBELL
ROBERT SAMUELS
BRIAN LARA
CARL HOOPER
SHIVNARINE CHANDERPAUL
JIMMY ADAMS
JUNIOR MURRAY
IAN BISHOP
KENNETH BENJAMIN
CURTLY AMBROSE
COURTNEY WALSH (capt)
NIXON McLEAN (likely 12th man)
© 1996 The Age