Australia’s first-ever defeat to Bangladesh has drawn a fevered response down under, one that may reveal more about the post-pay war climate than the actual merits or otherwise of the team’s performance
Daniel Brettig31-Aug-20174:20
Chappell: Loss confirms Aus dependence on Warner, Smith
“I suppose I can gain some consolation from the fact my name will be permanently in the record books.” With these words Malcolm Nash made sense of being on the receiving end of Garry Sobers smiting him for six sixes in an over at Swansea in 1968, the first time the feat had ever been achieved.Australia’s first Test defeats
England in Melbourne, 1877
South Africa in Adelaide, 1911
West Indies in Sydney, 1931
Pakistan in Karachi, 1956
India in Kanpur, 1959
New Zealand in Christchurch, 1974
Sri Lanka in Kandy, 1999
Bangladesh in Mirpur, 2017
At the moment Josh Hazlewood fell lbw on day four in Mirpur, Australia’s Test team begrudgingly assumed their own place in history as the first baggy green XI to lose to Bangladesh in the game’s longest form. The result added to similar drought-breakers over England and Sri Lanka in the past 12 months, all evidence that Bangladesh are most definitely a team on the rise, particularly at home.But most of the Antipodean reaction to Australia’s 20-run loss, which can be traced back to a series of poor decisions by the batsmen on the first evening and second morning that left Steven Smith’s men 33 for 4, has verged on the hysterical. A team that battled doggedly to limit the Bangladesh lead, then gained a chance to pull off the chase via one of David Warner’s very finest Test innings, has been hammered with the same venom that a free-swinging Sobers saved for Nash’s slow left-armers.”A pack of overpaid prima donnas” screams the in reference to the recent pay war. “Dhaka disaster a new low” harrumphs , while also comparing the divergent pay packets of the two teams. Across the News Corp/Fairfax divide at , Australia’s competitive showing in India earlier in the year is termed a “false dawn”. Undoubtedly there were moments of the match that reflected poorly on the team – Usman Khawaja can scarcely have had a worse match in his life, calling into question the decision to recall him for Bangladesh when he had been deemed unsuitable for similar conditions in India.Likewise Matthew Wade’s credit balance with the selectors must be close to maxed out, after a difficult match for anyone to keep wicket was not augmented by meaningful runs at a time when they were desperately needed. There is much, too, for Smith to consider after facing a concerted angle of attack from around the stumps that reaped his wicket in the first innings, then severely restricted his usually free-scoring ways in the second. Certainly there is some disquiet within the Australian camp about how some of the team responded – or failed to respond – to the pressure they were placed under.Ashton Agar and Nathan Lyon stood up for Australia in Mirpur•Getty ImagesNevertheless, the attacks on the team have lacked perspective, and at the same time revealed two fault-lines in sore need of address. The first is that the residual damage from the pay war still lingers in the minds of Australian cricket followers. Cricket Australia’s decision to publicly criticise its players and seek to stop them from sharing a fixed percentage of the game’s revenue opened up an avenue for criticism that was never going to be neatly sealed off with the announcement that an MoU agreement had been struck.All of the game draws on the financial returns gained by a well-regarded and high performing Australian team. The tarnishing of the players’ image by accusations of greed are bound to go on for quite some time, with the ultimate consequence of reducing the amount of money flowing into Australian cricket. Winning Test matches helps, of course, but it was haughty in the extreme to expect a young team to simply turn up and prevail in Mirpur without even a single warm-up match to speak of – rain having nixed the only scheduled practice fixture.That’s where the other fault-line comes into view. The place of this tour and the format in which it was to be played remained in some doubt for much of the year, even without the uncertainty created by the pay war. Plenty of members of CA’s team performance wing would have preferred the two Tests to be commuted to a series of ODIs, as had been the case in 2011, to better suit a physical and technical build-up to the Ashes. That this change did not take place appeared to have as much with doing everything possible to ensure Bangladesh voted with the majority – rather than with India – to change the ICC constitution at the governing body’s annual conference, as it did with fulfilling obligations to a nation that clearly merits more matches than it has been granted.Largely due to financial concerns over the profitability of such series, Australia have for many years played excessively against “bankers” like England, India and South Africa while minimising commitments against other nations. At the time of his retirement in 2015, Michael Clarke had played 115 Tests, with no fewer than 57 against England and India, and a measly two against Bangladesh. If the governing body does not deem an opponent worthy of regular cricket contact, then it is a bit much to expect that nation’s supporters to view that team with any more respect. Hence the fevered reaction to a defeat that made much more sense than a lot of the headlines would make it seem.Will Australia turn to the all-round skills of Hilton Cartwright in Chittagong?•Robert Cianflone/Getty ImagesWith the benefit of a few days to clear their minds, Australia’s players, coaches and selectors should be able to glean a few less fevered observations. One that the team improved notably over the course of the match, with Nathan Lyon a fair barometer, and ultimately ran Bangladesh far closer than the first innings gave them a right to – a marked contrast to three abject defeats against Sri Lanka by the same time last year. Two, several of the most promising displays came from the team’s most youthful members, not least Pat Cummins and Ashton Agar. And three, Matt Renshaw and Peter Handscomb have both shown more than enough aptitude to make runs in Asian climes, and need only find ways to concentrate for longer periods to make their methods truly count with hundreds.That brings the tourists to their next assignment in Chittagong, where they have been curiously reinforced by Steve O’Keefe despite the fact he is still under suspension from New South Wales for behaving offensively towards a female Australian cricketer – seemingly an inversion of CA’s much-touted “One Team” philosophy. The lessons of Mirpur should mean a rejigged XI, possibly including Hilton Cartwright’s all-round skills to allow for the inclusion of a third spin bowler, and a batting approach that follows the best of Warner’s second innings rather than the worst of Khawaja’s first.A share in the series is now the best Australia can hope for, ahead of a home Ashes series full of unknowns. Victory in Chittagong would reap a fair result for a young team still finding its way in Asia. Defeat, though, would warrant the Sobers treatment.
