Acknowledge The Bleeding Obvious: Australia Was Great

The Sunday Age

Sunday January 7, 2007

GREG BAUM

AS THE Australians celebrated at the SCG on Friday evening, a senior player looked up to where the gentlemen and women of the fourth estate were putting the finishing touches to their Ashes appreciations and said: "They've missed the elephant in the living room, haven't they?"

Asked by his puzzled interlocutor to elaborate, he said: "We've played some pretty good cricket this summer."

He had a point. "Winning needs no explanation," says an old proverb. "Losing has no alibi." As Australia grew from strength to strength in this series, few explanations were made.

As England became progressively more feeble, all eyes and ears turned in its direction for excuses. They still are.

The Australian team did play exceptionally well in this series. Shane Warne emphasised it repeatedly in his many media briefings. Invited to pour scorn on England, Warne did not.

He said the English had played reasonable cricket at times in the series, but the Australian team had excelled in all disciplines. Ricky Ponting made the same point at series end.

Both chose their words carefully. Neither said this was, man for man, the best Australian XI he had played in, but that it was the team.

The team led by Steve Waugh soon after the turn of the century, which included both Waughs, Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath in their pomp and Adam Gilchrist at his peak, was more talented. But the feats of Ponting's team this summer have been more comprehensive.

As for its standing in history, the dust must settle first. We are all hostages of our own times. I cannot imagine a more formidable cricket team than the West Indies in 1980s. It swept England in successive series, winning 10 Anglo-Caribbean Tests in a row.

Michael Holding, who played in that West Indies team and is here as a commentator for Channel Nine, has a gracious perspective.

Australia's feat was mightier, he said, because the Ashes meant more, to Australia and to England.

What is clear now is that as joyful as victory in 2005 was for England, it was also a poke in the eye for Australia. England sowed the breeze, and now has reaped the whirlwind.

The defining characteristic of this Ashes series was the way Australia wrenched matches away from England.

In the fourth Test in Melbourne, England led morally at lunch on the second day, but was beaten inside three days.

In the fifth Test in Sydney, England led on the third morning, and was thoroughly beaten on the fourth morning. Thus Australia stamped itself as a great team.

Gratifyingly for authorities, interest in the series did not diminish even as the margin between the teams grew. Channel Nine attracted record ratings for the last two Tests, and in Sydney, nearly 40,000 came on the last day, although it was obvious from the fall of Kevin Pietersen's wicket in the first over that the match would not last beyond lunch.

The sense at the finish was of last day of term. Not only were Warne, McGrath and Justin Langer farewelled, so was England.

It didn't seem to occur to anyone that there was still a one-day series to be played, featuring mostly the same players.

It doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone yet.

The decline in interest in one-day cricket is an elephant in the game's living room, and soon we must all see it.