venuszone.....
It is wrong-headed to
suggest that Australia's resting and rotation of players should be
scrapped after their awful performance in Brisbane
As each wicket fell at the Gabba, as Australia edged closer to what
nearly became their lowest-ever ODI total, the critics of the team's
rotation policy found full voice. Commentators wondered if the side had
been destabilised by all the changes, a question Channel 9's Mark
Nicholas asked
Michael Clarke
after the loss. Twitter lit up with suggestions that after Lance
Armstrong's display of faux contrition, John Inverarity would be the
next to grace Oprah's couch and admit fault.
It was a pithy line but one that missed the point. And the point was
that Australia's batsmen were undone by the most wonderful display of
swing bowling from Nuwan Kulasekara and, later, Lasith Malinga. The
three men returning from a break, Clarke,
David Warner and
Matthew Wade,
were beaten by the quality bowling. But so were George Bailey, David
Hussey and Phillip Hughes, all of whom had played both the first two
matches, in Melbourne and Adelaide.
Certainly Australia's batsmen could have been more circumspect, but it's
hard to think of many batsmen around the world who would have handled
Kulasekara with ease on a day like this. He was hooping the ball so far
from outside off to the stumps, it wouldn't have been surprising to find
an industrial fan positioned at short cover. James Anderson will
struggle to move the ball that much during the Ashes this year, even in
the helpful English conditions.
That is not to say that Australia's batsmen will counter quality swing
bowlers comfortably in their Test challenges. Time and again in the past
few years the moving ball has been their undoing, as it was in their 47
all-out in Cape Town 14 months ago, and their 88 on the first day
against Pakistan at Headingley in 2010. But with the exception of
Hughes, who was squared up and caught at slip, few of the batsmen at the
Gabba played the kind of strokes they would have in a Test.
And Test cricket is where Australia will be judged in 2013. Not in a
five-match one-day international series against Sri Lanka that will be
forgotten within a month. Without wishing to disrespect Sri Lanka, one
look at Australia's hectic cricketing calendar makes it clear that this
series and the upcoming one-dayers against West Indies are the best
times to rest key men this year. And as much as some former players
resent the idea, today's international cricketers need the occasional
break.
Take Warner, for example. Until he was rested for the first two matches
of this ODI series, he had not missed a single game for Australia, in
any format, since his Test debut in the first week of December 2011. For
the sake of neatness, let's consider his workload in the 2012 calendar
year alone. He played 49 of a possible 49 games for Australia in that
time, along with IPL and Champions League commitments.
Last January, Warner played Tests in Sydney, Perth and Adelaide. Then he
had T20s and one-dayers in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Sydney,
Brisbane, Hobart, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. Eight days
after the last of those games, he was in St Vincent in the Caribbean,
about as far from Adelaide as is possible. He played limited-overs games
in St Vincent, St Lucia and Barbados, and then Tests in Barbados,
Trinidad and Dominica.
Less than two weeks later, he was in India for the IPL, playing in
Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, Dharmasala, Gahunje and Chennai. After
the IPL he had the luxury of a fortnight at home before flying to
England to play a warm-up game in Leicester, an ODI across the Irish Sea
in Belfast, then back to England for a game in Chelmsford, and
one-dayers in London, Durham and Manchester. Another short spell at home
followed.
After that he had games against Afghanistan and Pakistan in Sharjah, Abu
Dhabi, Sharjah (again) and Dubai, then it was straight to Sri Lanka for
the World Twenty20. His six games there were all in Colombo. It was
about the longest he spent in any one city for the whole year.
Then there was the Champions League in South Africa, which he was
contractually obliged to play in, and which took him to Centurion,
Durban, Cape Town, back to Centurion and back to Durban again. One week
later he was back in Australia to play a Sheffield Shield game in
Brisbane before Test matches in Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart,
Melbourne and Sydney.
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The selection panel saw an opportunity to give Warner a rest over the
past week, during what frankly is one of the less important battles of
the year, and they gave it to him. Likewise Clarke, likewise Wade |
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If that was exhausting to read, imagine what it was like to live
through. At a rough estimate, Warner would have boarded a plane at least
70 times during the year. There are commercial airline pilots who will
have flown less than he did during 2012. But that's the job, you say?
That's why he gets the big dollars. True. But money doesn't make him any
less susceptible to fatigue.
Inverarity and his selection panel saw an opportunity to give Warner a
rest over the past week, during what, frankly, is one of the less
important battles of the year, and they gave it to him. Likewise Michael
Clarke, who in any case had carried a hamstring niggle through the past
three Tests and must surely have benefited from such a break. Likewise
Matthew Wade, who in 2012 played 46 of a possible 49 games for
Australia.
It is worth noting how close Warner and Wade were to the
record number of international matches
ever played by an Australian in a calendar year. That figure is 51, set
by Michael Hussey in 2009. In the pre-T20 era, the only men at such a
level were Shane Warne and Mark Waugh, who each played 50 games in 1999,
a year that featured a World Cup, Test tours of West Indies, Sri Lanka
and Zimbabwe, and the usual home summer ODI tri-series.
But bear in mind that in the following year, 2000, Australia's schedule
was pruned significantly and they played only 31 games and had four
months off in the winter. There is no such luxury for Warner and Wade in
2013. If Australia reach the final of the Champions Trophy in England
in the middle of the year, the team will play at least 47 international
matches in the calendar year 2013, plus individual commitments such as
the IPL and Champions League. The reality of cricket in this era is that
those tournaments must be factored in.
Between the ongoing one-dayers, a Test tour of India, the IPL, the
Champions Trophy, the Ashes, ODIs in England, ODIs in India, and another
Ashes series at home, the gaps on the calendar this year are even
harder to identify than they were in 2012.
Did Australia lose one-day momentum by resting Warner, Clarke and Wade?
Perhaps. But that is vastly preferable to such men being mentally and
physically exhausted when they set off on next month's four-Test tour of
India. It should be noted they will need to fly to India within a week
of the end of the limited-overs series against West Indies.
When the cricket calendar is that packed, players could be forgiven for
forgetting their addresses. Giving them a week at home at this time of
year is not much to ask.
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