It’s a sad state of affairs when Michael Clarke is the voice of reason in Australian cricket.
Australia’s least revered former captain since Graham Yallop said what many cricket fans were thinking on Monday on Sydney radio when he ripped into Cricket Australia for rolling out a B-grade team which copped a flogging in Sunday’s series decider against Pakistan in Perth.
“You can’t expect the fans to want to come and watch one-day cricket. I feel like we obviously don’t care about losing that series,” he bemoaned. “If you’re not going to care, we’re not going to care.”
Pat Cummins, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Marnus Labuschagne were given the third match of the series off to rest up before the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series with the captain choosing a Coldplay concert over watching the match from his loungeroom.
Chris Martin hasn’t been mentioned this much in Australian cricket circles since the Black Caps seamer took a five-for in Perth 20 years ago.
Clarke’s appraisal of the matter is right in the fact that Cricket Australia places little value on the pair of Pakistan white-ball series that are the entree to the summer of Test cricket.
Truth be told, the CA execs haven’t cared much about one-day internationals on home soil much at all since hosting the 2015 World Cup.
It’s a dying format only being kept on life support because the global matches involving India are a sacred cash cow for the ICC and its member nations.
Outside of the World Cup, it is increasingly irrelevant, particularly the bilateral series which are crammed into the already crowded calendar for no reasons other than financial ones.
And even though the ICC is trying to revive the Champions Trophy to give the 50-over format added significance, it is barely a blip on the radar when it comes to the titles that truly matter in cricket’s overflowing cabinet of silverware up for grabs.
It used to be that if the Australian ODI team lost a couple of matches in a row, serious questions were asked.
Nowadays the only questions asked by many cricket fans after a pair of pummellings from Pakistan is “was there a series on?”
Haris Rauf celebrates the wicket of Aaron Hardie. (Photo by Mark Brake/Getty Images)
Steve Waugh lost the captaincy and his spot in the team in 2002 after the Aussies failed to qualify for the final of a home triangular series with South Africa and New Zealand.
Cummins gives the impression that he only captains the one-day side as a part-time hobby anyway.
Since international cricket resumed post-pandemic at the end of 2021, Cummins has played a grand total of eight ODIs that weren’t World Cup matches or pre-tournament warm-up fixtures.
Australia went very close to holding all three men’s world trophies, on top of the two women’s ones, before they bombed out at the T20 World Cup in the Caribbean earlier this year.
It is virtually impossible to be the top dogs in all three formats so why bother? Double down on the current trend of favouring Tests and T20s and make the ODI squad all specialists like rugby does with its national sevens sides.
Pick players who aren’t quite good enough for the Test or T20 teams and use it as a breeding ground for players with potential who could one day make the grade.
Throw in a few 50-over specialists and whenever there’s an ODI series in the calendar or a not-that-important ICC event like the Champions Trophy, let them shoulder the load.
For the World Cup every four years, CA could potentially then bring in a few big guns like a Cummins or a Glenn Maxwell (the pre-2024 version) to boost the team’s firepower.
There are many state players who are limited-overs guns who have either never got a look-in for the ODI arena or struggle to adapt because they get a few fill-in matches here and there without ever getting the chance to establish themselves when the Test stars are available.
The likes of Daniel Hughes, Josh Philippe, Sam Whiteman, Ashton Turner, Jimmy Peirson, Wes Agar, Ben Dwarshuis, Chris Tremain, Ben McDermott and Jason Behrendorff are players from recent years who are cut from this cloth.
It’s hard to see them ever being more than bit-part players at Test or T20 level for the national team so why not build an ODI team around players who could develop into its own tight-knit group.
Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins of Australia celebrate victory. (Photo by Morgan Hancock – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)
Give them their own coach too as a way of lessening the burden on Andrew McDonald.
The broadcasters might need some convincing that a specialists only strategy for the ODI side is the way to go but judging by the interest in the first two games of the current series when Cummins and the big names suited up, there’s not much to lose on that front.
They could become like the Australia A side from the cherished golden summer of 1994-95 – a team of up-and-comers and unfashionable underdogs who captivated the cricketing public so much that the green and gold faithful started booing their own national side featuring Shane Warne, the Waugh twins and Glenn McGrath.
