ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2018

Australia in 2017/18 It all started so well for the Australian Test team. By Christmas they had recovered the Ashes with a comprehensive series win against a disappointing England side, moving from fifth to third in the ICC rankings in the process. A series in South Africa in March and April against the second-placed team began well too, with a win at Durban. But everything changed on 24 March, when for the second time in little over three years, Australia found themselves faced with an existential crisis that threatened their very way of playing the game. In the Ashes series, Steve Smith added to his ‘world’s best’ credentials by scoring 687 runs at 137.40, while David Warner and Shaun Marsh both passed 440 runs. Their successes with the bat were matched by the ultra-consistent performances of the bowling attack. For once, Australia had something like a full hand of fit fast bowlers to choose from; and what an impact they made. Uniquely, only the four front-line bowlers – quick bowlers Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and spinner Nathan Lyon – took any wickets at all in the series, and they shared them out evenly: each of the four took between 21 and 23 wickets, all at an average of under 30. The pattern was set, as ever, at Brisbane, when Warner and debutant Cameron Bancroft knocked off their fourth-innings target of 170 without being separated. At Adelaide, Shaun Marsh’s 126* proved to be the difference between the teams, while in the last-ever Ashes Test at the WACA in Perth his brother Mitchell (181) and skipper Smith (239) made light of England’s first innings of 403, and an innings victory followed. The fourth Test was that rare event, a rain-affected draw at Melbourne; while the game at Sydney was a repeat of Perth – once again a sizable England first-innings total was comfortably overtaken, and another, inevitable, innings win was chalked up. At least all five games went into the fifth day, a rarity nowadays. Between 1989 and 2002/03, Australia won eight consecutive Ashes series. In the eight series since 2002/03, the urn has changed hands no fewer than six times, with only England’s win in Australia in 2010/11 interrupting the sequence of home series wins. After the 2017/18 series, Australia’s hopes were naturally high for another break in the sequence in England in 2019. Three months later, their mood after the series in South Africa could not have been more different. The same four bowlers took 62 of the 68 South African wickets to fall, but there the similarities end. The Australian batsmen who had scored nine centuries in five matches against England could not muster even one in the four matches in South Africa, whose bowling attack – led by the outstanding Kagiso Rabada – provided far more of a challenge than had England’s. But it was not the side’s disappointing performances with bat and ball that changed the mood. After a win apiece at Durban and Port Elizabeth, the series was nicely poised as the caravan moved on to Cape Town. However, interest in the actual cricket rapidly waned when, on the third day of the match, TV cameras spotted Bancroft apparently applying some ‘external substance’ to the ball – initially claimed to be tape, later established as sandpaper. At the end of the day, Steve Smith admitted that this was a pre-planned tactic aimed at changing the condition of the ball; and all hell broke loose. It took a while before the players recognized the seriousness with which the allegation of cheating was being taken back in Australia, and this only compounded the feeling that severe penalties were needed, along with a shift away from the Australians’ typically confrontational attitude to Test cricket. In due course captain Smith, vice-captain Warner and perpetrator Bancroft were all sent home ahead of the final Test, and later were subjected to lengthy bans, while the more conciliatory Tim Paine unexpectedly found himself as the new team captain. 65