ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2017

Australia in 2016/17 For the Australia Test side the 2016/17 and 2017 seasons were a period of some frustration, with more matches lost (six) than won (five) and some serious setbacks, particularly 2-1 defeats at the hands of South Africa (at home) and India (away). Reflecting a year of more downs than ups, Australia, having been third a year previously, found themselves in fifth place in the Test ratings by the end of the 2017 season. Australia had seemed to be making steady progress during the 2015/16 season, only to come unstuck when a visit to Sri Lanka in the ‘off’ season of 2016 had resulted in three heavy defeats as the home side’s spinners ran rampant. The home rubber against South Africa that opened the 2016/17 season would show whether the Sri Lanka experience was a mere passing setback or an indication of more serious weaknesses in the side. In the event, Australia’s concerns were confirmed rather than allayed. In the first Test, after an even first innings the contrasting styles of Dean Elgar and J.P.Duminy exposed the weaknesses in the Australian bowling. With the tail wagging, South Africa set an implausible victory target of 539 and eventually won by a hefty 177 runs, a fine victory perhaps best symbolized by Temba Bavuma’s inspired run-out of David Warner. Even worse for Australia was to follow in the second Test. On a grassy pitch under louring Hobart skies, with Vernon Philander (5-21) back to his best, Australia were dismissed for 85 after being put into bat. The innings defeat to which they eventually succumbed was their first at home to South Africa. As Australia’s selectors desperately rang the changes, choosing 19 men over the three Tests (five of them debutants), a winning combination finally emerged in the day/night third Test to put a slightly better complexion on the 2-1 defeat. Australia could take far more comfort from the second rubber of the home summer against a Pakistan side that, after briefly heading the Test rankings a few months earlier, seemed completely to have lost its way: except, that is, for a few glorious sessions at the end of the first Test as the side attacked an impossible victory target of 490 and finished, heroically, only 40 runs short. But the occasional glimmer of hope on the batting front was all Pakistan had to offer. Throughout the rubber, Australia’s batsmen did much as they pleased and the woes of the bowlers were best summed up by the figures of Yasir Shah, with a best of 3-207 and 8-672 in all; an astonishing fall from grace by a bowler who, a few months before, had celebrated attaining 100 wickets in only 17 Tests. But it is one thing to crush a faltering Pakistan side at home; quite another to travel to the subcontinent to take on a rampant India. The four Tests brought a chastening 2-1 defeat: perhaps not a surprising outcome, but a very disappointing one after a huge win in the first Test, inspired by a brilliant match return of 12-70 by the controversial left-arm spinner Steve O’Keefe. Truly, he had outdone the Indian spinners at their own game; but in the remaining three Tests he took 7-372 and India ran out 2-1 winners as fragility returned to the Australian batting. Australia’s final Test assignment in the year under review was a visit to Bangladesh in August and September in which the side underwent an experience markedly similar to that of England the previous October, and with the same result: the home team proved unexpectedly effective in its own conditions and the distinguished visitors did well to emerge with a 1-1 draw. A striking feature of Australia’s Test side was the outstanding excellence of David Warner and skipper Steve Smith, time and again shouldering the responsibility as the rest of the batting fired only intermittently. The bowling, too, on a good day appeared formidable; but on a bad day (of which there were several) pallid and unthreatening. In particular, the two rubbers in India and Bangladesh, following from the hammering received in Sri Lanka in 2016, suggested an inability 11