The Day After

GH on the shock of Darwin

Is the sun setting on Australian cricket?

Over the last decade and a half, Australia have been cricket’s foremost meliorists, hastening slowly, tuning finely, heavily invested in incremental change. For sure, there have been tragedies and scandals. But the response at Jolimont has always been tamped down - a plan, a report, a new appointment, an adjustment to the organisation plan. The course is steady-as-she-goes, and the attitude check-the-trophy-cabinet: the Ashes, the Border-Gavaskar, the World Cup. The national team has, by consent, almost sat to one side: an important but self-contained and self-regulating unit, on whose hatch Todd Greenberg knocks every so often. ‘Everything OK in there?’ he asks. ‘All good,’ replies a muffled voice from within. ‘Just working out the carry percentages!’

In lots of ways, that is a state devoutly to be wished. It is vastly preferable to England’s lurching between fads and personalities, or a system bedevilled by politicians treating the national team as an extension of foreign policy like our guests. But it was telling that chairman Mike Baird was too busy getting his feet under the desk at NRMA to join us in the top end, while Greenberg FIFO’d in to dilate on….checks notes…..Big Bash League contracts and bilateral ODIs? And you do wonder how exactly this Darwin defeat might register at the next Cricket Australia board meeting. ‘Item 7.4.8 (b): On-Field Non-Success. Recommendations: rebrand defeat as “strategic repositioning relative to victory”; phase in supplementary run reserve. Actioned.’ Then, back to that juicy private investment….