Four years ago, Ricky Ponting came to England with an Australian team of the talents, rich in runs, wickets and experience—and, of course, however briefly, turned the Ashes over. Whatever befalls the touring party retracing those steps, the scenario will not be the same. Ponting’s men have their best cricket in front of them; they do not have great futures behind them.
Mitchell Johnson, Peter Siddle, Phil Hughes, Nathan Hauritz … their names lack the ring of McGrath, Lee, Hayden, Warne. But there can be no complaint about the nature of their initiation, for they have survived turnover in Australian ranks not seen in decades. If Australia’s cricket empire is passing before our eyes, it is not for want of experimentation. Those who board the Emirates airliner on 27 May will be the survivors of a pretty rigorous attrition.
Johnson’s career has been led in dog years. Eighteen months ago he was still awaiting his baggy green; today he is closing fast on 200 international wickets, while his 694 Test runs include a maiden hundred. It will not be his first time in England, for he was here ten years ago as an under-19. But between times he almost forsook the game, demoralised by stress fractures in his back that cost him his state contract in 2003. He is a different cricketer. It was his speed that first excited onlookers; now it is his swing, especially the in-ducker he showed off in South Africa, for a few overs at least. Johnson lacks only a genuine presence. He goes about his work with an almost innocent air, a smile seldom far from his lips, like a shy boy in the kitchen at a party. But his career has quickly become substantial, his value enhanced by fast-improving batting. With little backlift, flourish or ostentation, he has hit almost as many sixes in twenty-one Tests (fifteen) as Michael Clarke in forty-seven (sixteen).
The bustling, broad-shouldered Siddle has attitude to burn—the sort of attitude, and willingness to work, that endears a cricketer to his captain. Thrown into a Test in Mohali last October, he bowled more overs than anyone else in a team being beaten out of sight on a pitch tailored for Sachin Tendulkar. His nickname Vicious is derived from a shortening of his surname to Sid, although he might have earned it with his Merv-like bounce and growl. Siddle has been stymied during his seven Tests, but never subdued, and is exhibiting a happy knack of breaking partnerships against the run of play and defeating well-set batsmen. Nor is shyness his problem; indeed, he impresses as the kind of companionable soul who at a party might coax his mate Mitch out of the kitchen.
For some of the last fifteen years and most of the last ten, the sight of Matthew Hayden taking guard, carving up the ground beneath him as though for trench warfare rather than cricket, has been a proclamation of Australian intent. However, as the exercise last summer became about Hayden digging a deeper and deeper hole for himself, the selectors had a host of replacement candidates: Phil Jaques, returning from injury after back-to-back centuries in his third and fourth Tests; Indian Premier League prodigy Shaun Marsh; perennial nearly man Brad Hodge. Then, through the pack, burst fully formed Phillip Hughes, just turned twenty but making very adult quantities of runs for New South Wales, and peaking at the precise moment a decision was needed.
Everything about Australia’s youngest new Test cap in a quarter of a century has shown a similar knack of timing. If he lacks Hayden’s Tarzan-like stature, the lithe left-hander already scores almost as quickly, and South Africa’s short, fast efforts to intimidate him at Kingsmead failed hopelessly. He has a country boy’s self-containment and a professional’s fastidiousness, his determination to master English conditions evinced by his decision to sample county cricket with Middlesex before the Tests.
The figure whose gap has been hardest to fill, for Australian cricket as well as the tabloid papers, is Shane Warne’s: it’s been like trying to cast a sequel to Hamlet with Bernardo as the chief protagonist. Since Warne’s exit, the slow-bowling mantle has been shared around the country, with Stuart MacGill and Beau Casson from New South Wales, Cameron White and Bryce McGain from Victoria and Jason Krejza from Tasmania all trying it on for size, and Andrew Symonds from Queensland and Marcus North from Western Australia filling stop-gap roles. At the end of the process, the man in possession was fresh-faced finger spinner Nathan Hauritz, toiling twelve overs to obtain each wicket, but giving away only 2.7 runs an over. Australia might yet elect to go without a specialist spinner in certain scenarios, using North’s faute de mieux right-arm slows in addition to his fluent left-handed strokes. But Hauritz may be lucky to have emerged just as Warne’s shadow receded; Stuart MacGill must wish he could be starting his career right now.
There is a faint historical echo to this Australian team. In 1972, selector Neil Harvey told skipper Ian Chappell that he might not have the greatest squad to lead, but it was a ‘team of goers’. So it proved: Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh, little heralded, helped Australia split the series, building the basis of a powerful dynasty. Australia’s selectors will fancy themselves at a similar historical hinge point now. The faces are so different, meanwhile, that a re-run of 2005 is now the remotest of possibilities—and that, of course, from Australia’s point of view, is a very good thing.