Controversy? What controversy?

Rogers won’t last forever, Clarke’s back won’t go away, and there are still question marks over Watson, Smith and Bailey, though Smith may have done enough to be relatively safe.

That’s what I said, or rather wrote yesterday.

Actually I’ve been saying it for a while, and announcements over the last twenty-four hours have clarified matters slightly.

The big one in that department is the Test squad for South Africa, which removes a question mark, with the Alan Border Medal and announcement of the T20 side clarifying matters around the fringes.

I didn’t find the Test squad surprising, and when it came to the top gong at the AB Medal it was always a question of which way the votes have gone.

Personally, I would have tipped Haddin, but when asked for a selection yesterday over the dinner table I hedged my bets by nominating Haddin as my choice, Clarke as most likely and Johnson as a big show. Johnson comes as no surprise given the voting side of things.

Neither, for that matter, does Jordan Silk taking out the Young Player or Emerging Talent award. I took note of the name when he came on as a substitute in the Hobart Test last season. Kerry O’Keefe was commentating and rated him as the best fielder in the country, which was a rather big call for a fringe player in the Tasmanian Shield squad, but he got a guernsey shortly thereafter and scored runs in the Shield final.

So maybe it wasn't just O’Keefe’s Bluebag bias operating at the time. He’s just outside the top ten run scorers in the Shield this year (421 at an average of 35.08 and a strike rate of 44.12) and opens the batting.

You might care to pencil in the name beside the current Test squad with a question mark after possible replacement for Rogers.

Shield Player of the Year went to Cameron White, which might bring cries of why isn’t he in the Test side from the other side of the Murray. He was probably glanced at, but very briefly.

Four reasons why:

Age, Role, Vacancy and Best Suited As.

You might look at other players on the circuit around the same age (30, but I thought he was older than that) who are being touted as some chance and wonder why that’s a factor, but then we come to Role and Vacancy.

Middle order bat. Four, Five or Six? Clarke at Four, Smith at Five, Question mark at Six. He has been known to bowl occasional leg spin. As a matter of fact, that’s where I reckoned his future lay. Middle order bat who bowls the occasional leggie. We’ve got one of those in Smith. Do we need a second?

And then there’s Best Suited As, which seems to be where he is at the moment. Senior player for Victoria, batting Four or Five, getting a bowl when Fawad Ahmed’s not in the side. He’s the sort of bloke you want around on the edges to sort out the up and coming bowlers, but you never know, a vacancy might emerge.

And, somewhere down the track there may be a vacancy for Bailey, whose Limited Overs Player of the Year came the same day as his axing from the Test squad.

In his case Best Suited as looks to be captaining the T20 side and playing ODIs and captaining when Clarke gets a rest. He’s got a T20 World Cup coming up, there was a question mark over his spot in the Test lineup, he hadn’t done very well against England, and, actually, he might be better off not going to South Africa to deal with Philander, Steyn and Morkel.

Detailed scrutiny there could have consigned him to the also rans for good.

As it is, he’s got the World T20, the possibility that Clarke may not be there for the next ODI World Cup, and the chance to make a case with a mountain of Shield runs while others are, quite possibly, being tried and failing.

But he’ll need big runs and a vacancy.

Which, of course, brings us to the Test squad, where eleven out of fourteen were certainties.

Since the only question marks were Three and Six, and Watson was always going to be on the plane. Marsh and Doolan offer a couple of options.

First, we assume that Watson is fit and playing. He can bat Three, with Doolan at Six. Ideal spot to blood a new player and move him up the order a little further down the track if he survives.

Alternatively, Marsh (or Doolan, but probably Marsh) at Three, Watson at Six.

If he’s not fit, Marsh at Three, and Doolan at Six with just the four bowlers (three quicks and Lyon, with part timers rolling the arm over a bit more than they would have).

Alternatively Marsh or Doolan at Three, Haddin at Six, Faulkner at Seven. On that basis, it’s probably Marsh at Three.

As far as the bowling is concerned, you look at the Watto factors as above, go in with Johnson, Harris and Siddle if fit, with Lyon to clean up South African bats who probably don’t rate him after the draw in Adelaide.

No Watto or non-bowling Watto at Three opens the possibility of using Faulkner at Seven as the extra bowler.

The only possible controversy as far as I can see comes with Pattinson and Bird ahead of the rest of the pack for the spare bowler spots, remembering that Coulter-Nile lives in Perth, just across the Indian Ocean with regular flights in that direction. There are other potential replacements (if needed) who aren’t that much further away.

Pattinson and Bird are both coming back off injury. Their progress can be monitored, and if there’s remedial or strengthening work required as part of their recovery that can be watched as well.

They’re probably not going to be doing that much bowling unless one of the other three break down.

Meanwhile, without having to bowl to a handy South African order  the other contenders have a chance to advance their case when the Shield resumes, knowing that two of their potential rivals are probably spending the couple of Tests sitting on the sidelines.

So, really, not very controversial at all.

Resuming the Commentary

While I was always confident we’d be retrieving The Ashes from foreign interests by the end of this series I didn't expect to be sitting down two days out from Boxing Day contemplating a five-nil whitewash.

The Inquisitive Reader may have been wondering at the lengthy silence following the win at The Gabba, something that stemmed from the fact that Hughesy wasn’t in the country. We were still part way through the English half of the two part series when I heard about a run of four Elvis Costello Spinning Songbook concerts in Japan. That looked like a reasonable excuse to head across to ride around on bullet trains.

The Interested Reader will find details of those shows over on The LHoC Music blog, or the LHoC web site but in between concerts and shinkansen excursions I was actually following the scores. Things would have been better if the feed from the Cricket Australia app on the iPad wasn’t geoblocked, but you can’t have everything.

And even with the prospect of a whitewash there’s no room for complacency because from what I’ve read it looks like we’re still only operating around 95%.

The important thing to remember before we get down to gloating is that this is a side that has been assembled to complete a task, and while we’re well on the way to doing that, a couple of issues will need to be dealt with on the way to reclaiming that #1 Test ranking, which is what we’re after.

Look at the current side and we’ve got Rogers, Haddin and the pace bowling trio that's the heart of what may well be the best attack going around at the moment (Australia's attack 'best in the world' - McDermott) all needing to replaced in the medium term, and we also need to build up the spin bowling department for future tours to spin-friendly environments on the subcontinent.

We’ve also got the prospect of a three Test Series in South Africa in the New Year, and one notes recent developments that suggest we’ll need to be firing on all cylinders if we’re going to win that one. We’re still ranked #5 on 101 with South Africa well ahead of the pack on 131 (India 119, England 116, Pakistan 102). They’ve got de Villiers, Amla and Smith at 1, 2 and 9 in the batting rankings (Clarke 5) and Philander and Steyn at 1 and 2 in the bowling (Harris and Siddle 5 and 6).

And while it’s rather pleasant to watch the wheels start to fall off the much vaunted England line up one notes suggestions of burnout as a significant factor. They’ve kept a fairly tight core of players together through a lot of cricket, and the strain is going to show eventually. We don't want to end up in the same pickle.

On our part,  we’re looking for a long term replacement for Rogers as The Steady Opener, cover for Watson as The All Rounder (or, if you prefer, The Batsman Who Bowls), Haddin behind the stumps and depth and variation in the spin bowling department (Backup Offie, as well as a leftie and a left arm orthodox). Throw in another top order bat and someone who can bat in the middle and you’d have the makings of a decent medium to long term prospect.

Those players need to be identified and brought on, with a degree of rotation involved when we play the likes of Zimbabwe, Bangla Desh, the West Indies and New Zealand.

The fast bowling department looks reasonably good, with plenty of depth coming through, but there are two questions over that way. The first, of course, is getting them on to the park, something that we haven’t quite managed to do consistently. If you’re not convinced of that, take a squiz at the injury list.

Then, assuming you’ve got the resources fit and ready to fire, it’s a question of getting the right mix. In many ways,  this current attack reminds me of the bowling group that got us home against the West Indies back in 1995. That attack went into a Test series having just lost McDermott to injury, and while it included Warne and an emerging McGrath the other two quicks (Reiffel and Julian) aren’t going to end up being ranked along Australia’s all-time greats.

That lineup, however, offered a blend of talents that gave options to attack the West Indies batting order, and, just as importantly, weren’t afraid to ruffle the West Indian tailenders who were used to monstering the opposition without getting a great deal of retaliation when they batted.

One notes some of the same thing happening here where Messrs Anderson and Broad are concerned.

So when it comes to replacing Johnson, Harris and Siddle it might not be a case of a straight like for like swap. Johnson may be The Leftie With the Terror Factor, but that doesn’t mean he can be replaced by, say, Starc, who may be The Leftie, but mightn’t fit into the Terrifying Pace side of things.

No, it’s a matter of getting the right combination, and that’s not necessarily going to be a matter of selecting the three most obvious choices.

The other matter that needs to be commented on is, of course, the rapid depletion of English resources in this series, and I’d direct The Argumentative Reader’s attention in that direction if he or she thinks I’m getting a little over the top in the comments above.

The first point to be made here is that we’ve turned on the aggression and the verbals, and one notes a report in this morning’s ABC News digest where Graeme Swann’s granny is blaming unwelcoming Australians for the lad’s decision to retire.

There are two telling comments in that report.

"I do not think they have been (made) very welcome, the team. He is not easily upset, there is something nasty happened.”

Well, you don’t (or shouldn’t) expect to be welcomed with open arms when you’re looking towards a four-series drubbing of your hosts. One doesn’t get the impression there are open arms when our blokes step onto the paddock over there. The words Barmy and Army spring to mind here.

She’s also reported as saying "When the team went down to Australia and that young lad [Jonathan Trott] came back, there was something going wrong then,” which moves the debate over the verbals into a whole new ball game.

Now, you might think that what I’m about to say is heartless, and you may be right, but both Trott and Swann came into this series with their own issues.

With Trott the psychological issues were, to some extent, known, and how much the Australian side knew about his actual mental state doesn’t matter. He was known to be a stickler for routine, fussy about his preparation for each ball he faced and that makes him liable to a little hurry up.

If I’d been on the field when he was batting I’d have been making fairly pointed comments about time wasting, particularly if it was the morning of Day One and I was looking to get through thirty overs before lunch.

As far as any damage inflicted is concerned, in this context I’m reminded of a sequence of photos I saw somewhere years ago.

Taken at what may have been a County match they showed a batsman, possibly Colin Cowdrey, lying on the ground after being struck by an Andy Roberts bouncer. There were a number of concerned individuals clustered around the figure on the ground, but Roberts wasn’t one of them.

Roberts was standing at the top of his run, ready to steam in for the next delivery.

Apparently, questioned about what might be interpreted as a heartless attitude, Roberts said something like “It’s my job to bowl it. It’s his job to deal with it.”

Go down the track and take a look at the damage you’ve done and you may lose some of your effectiveness. Using the short ball to get a batsman moving onto the back foot, then spearing in the yorker to clean him up is a fairly standard strategy. If the batsman’s technique of dealing with the short stuff has him swaying back and being hit by a ball that follows him, it isn’t the bowler’s fault.

No, if he’s batting Three he has to expect pressure, and it’s the opposition’s job to deliver it.

In Swann’s case, elbow surgery had already reduced his effectiveness, and Lehmann is on record as saying the plan was to attack him in an endeavour to force Cook to bring back the quicks (and, more than likely, bowl them to the point where they’re increasingly susceptible to injury).

What is interesting, at least from where I’m sitting, is that Swann opted to come on tour knowing he wasn’t going to be able to deliver the lengthy spells he had been used to, and then, faced with the prospect of a five-nil drubbing with a major question mark over whether Broad will take the field and turn out to be fully effective, chose to make an early departure from a side that had already been considerably weakened.

But, for all that, now I’m in a position to resume watching, roll on Boxing Day…

Perth 2012: Day Four

And, in the end, it was as comprehensively clinical as the most pessimistic observers might have feared.

But at least it didn't happen the same way in Brisbane and Adelaide, which would have run towards nightmare territory. That, of course, raises the question of whether the Proteas were happy to accept the draws in the first two Tests because they fancied their chances in Perth but we don't really want to go down that road, do we?

What Perth 2012 does underline, however, is the gap between the current #1 side and everyone else, and between the top three and just about everyone else. The pecking order is, it seems, largely unchanged.

South Africa are opening up a break from the rest of the field and look like maintaining that ranking because it's difficult to see how anyone's going to manage to knock them over at home, and unless they're served up a diet of subcontinental raging turners it's hard to see a comprehensive defeat when they're touring.

Look at the batting lineup and with the emergence of duPlessis and Duminy to come back they've got someone to cover for Kallis when he goes. They still need a top ranked spinner, but in a setting where Steyn, Philander and Morkel are operating, with or without Kallis, Peterson is always going to have a chance since he's the bloke the batsmen are likely to go after.

As I remarked to Jimbo in the walk this morning Clarke and Hussey might have been looking to hit him out of the attack to force Smith to turn to someone else, but if you were in Smith's shoes why would you?

Defending more than 600 over two days it doesn't matter if the spinner goes at a run a ball provided the bats are having a go at him. It'll establish whether the bowler can handle a serious assault, and while the bats are chancing their arm the bowler's always got a chance.

Looking at our batting on the day there wasn't a whole lot to be cheerful about apart from the Starc/Lyon cameo at the end.

Warner went early, and was probably always in danger having to start up twice.

Watson got a pretty thorough working over before getting caught at slip without answering any of the questions about his suitability at Three, which won't come as a surprise to anyone who has watched his progress (or lack thereof) over the years.

I first saw him as a ten-year-old and it was obvious he was expected to develop into something special. He's shown glimpses of that since, but hasn't managed to deliver consistently. Whether he ever will is going to depend on factors that still need to be sorted out. I don't think he's opener material unless he's going to limit the bowling, and he's obviously seen as an important part of the attack, so that's unlikely.

Technically he's probably good enough to slot into Three, but has failed to deliver when he's there, which means he's probably not happy and would prefer to bat somewhere else. That's a problem because, as the captain of my 92 NQ Schoolboys' side remarked, Watto tends to get what he wants.

Actually, what I think he needs is an obvious rival for the all-rounder slot so that he has to knuckle down to hold his place rather than being assured of slotting straight back in as soon as he's over his latest injury.

Much was made of the Protea guard of honour as Ponting walked to the crease but, seriously, you're going to do that, aren't you? The ABC commentary team were referring back to Bradman's last Test appearance, where the English team gave him three cheers and he was bowled second ball, allegedly unable to focus on the ball because he was a bit teary.

I'm not sure about the teary bit, but all the great batsmen have their own ways of setting themselves before the start of their innings, and if there's something you can do to disrupt that you're going to try it, aren't you?

Cowan fell to a fairly obvious trap, playing on instinct and hooking the short one from around the wicket, caught in the deep off Steyn. He'd done his job and should have been looking to go on, but there you go.

Clarke got himself stumped seemingly trying to hit the spinner out of the attack, which is all very well in theory, but in this situation it doesn't seem to have been the smartest option. Here, it didn't matter if Peterson went for 300 because he was always likely to pick up a couple of wickets.

Hussey drove, nicked and got caught behind off Steyn, Wade got caught at short midwicket off Peterson, Johnson caught behind off Philander and Hastings slammed a few off Peterson before getting caught at slip off Morkel.

The Starc/Lyon cameo got itself underway whileI went down the street to follow up on some missing cat sightings, but was never going to do anything more than provide a little bit of light relief at the end of a comprehensive trouncing.

From here, looking towards the Sri Lanka series the big questions involve Ponting's replacement at Four, where Watto fits, how long for Hussey and who, apart from Siddle (and possibly Starc) is going to join Lyon in the four man bowling attack.

My team, pending the Chairman's XI game:

Cowan, Warner, Khawaja, Clarke, Watson, Hussey, Wade, Siddle, Starc, Hilfenhaus, Lyon, Johnston. Hilfie or Johnston for drinks waiter duties...

Adelaide 2012: Day Three

Going into Day Four it seems we're back to two possible results with the prospect of a genuine nail-biter lurking just on the other side of the horizon.

Of course, as is so often the way with these things, having said that we'll probably see things very close to wrapped up today with a comprehensive victory to one side or t'other early on Day Five, but that's the nature of the beast, isn't it?

A 273 run lead with five wickets in hand means an Australian victory is going to depend on how many runs Clarke, Hussey and Wade can chip in with, and how well Siddle, Hilfenhaus and Lyon can bowl. From the South African side of the fence it'll come down to the size of the run chase and how well their top order fares against a depleted bowling attack that's minus one of the key strike weapons.

Take that Protea formula and scrutinise it closely and it'll come down to how quickly they can get rid of those three bats and how well those three bowlers are allowed to bowl. Smith and Amla are class players, Petersen and Du Plessis look like they've got potential and Kallis and de Villiers might have question marks over the fitness level but they've got class on their side and plenty of time if the leg and the back can hold themselves together.

Oh, an Rudolph can bat a bit as well.

Looking back on Day Three, you can see the turning points pretty clearly. Rudolph and Smith went early, de Villiers, Steyn and Kleinveldt didn't stick around, Kallis and Du Plessis added the runs that took the Proteas out of follow on territory (not that it was ever going to be enforced) and then, once the initial breakthrough had been made Steyn, Morkel and Kleinveldt lived up to the pace attack pecking order and made the Australian supporter rather glad Philander and Kallis weren't part of the equation.

Looking forward, everything's going to come down to the amount of pressure that can be exerted in the first session. That, I think, will determine the result and dictate how long it's likely to take. If two out of those three bats are still there at lunch with the lead around 350 you can probably rule the South African victory out of calculations, though a quick run through the tail after the resumption would make things interesting.

Chasing around 400 in four and a bit sessions in circumstances where Clarke, Hussey, Warner and Quiney are going to be doing their share of the bowling would appear quite doable when you've got Smith, Amla and Kallis likely to spend a lengthy spell at the batting crease.

The key factor, from what I can see, is going to be the old DRS, which is going to figure increasingly in the calculations as things get tighter and tighter. That's an interesting one, because regardless of the intention when it was introduced it's now a significant factor in determining the outcome of a particular match. Sure, it might have been meant to eliminate the howlers, but nowadays it seems equally important as a second chance to knock over a batsman, or for a batsman to avoid being knocked over.

You used to rely on the umpire's competence, eyesight and judgement, working on the principle that mistakes will eventually even themselves out. Everyone on the field has hid own take on the merits or otherwise of a particular decision, and I'd like a dollar for every time I've seen an inconsistent response to what could be seen as an umpiring mistake.

There were a couple of times when I signalled Byes in a kids game, only to be informed that the batsman had hit the ball. Fine, was my standard reply, if the keeper had caught it I would've given it Not Out. That usually seemed to remove the grievance.

Equally interesting was the response from a notoriously temperamental senior cricketer in Bowen who had never, ever, been dismissed LBW. In a situation where the batting side provided the decision maker you couldn't help feeling there was a bit of bias entering into the equation and I always suspected that when this bloke got rapped on the pads the benefit of the doubt might have gone to the bowler, even though the decision usually came from one of his team mates.

If that seems strange, I was sitting beside the rest of his side when the finger went up on one occasion and noted the hilarity with which the decision was greeted, though I also noted the group scattered as he made his way back to the side line.

When he was bowling, of course, anything that went anywhere near the pads was Out by definition, and a decision to the contrary was usually followed by a remark about large amounts of money influencing the decision.

Things are likely to get rather tense in Adelaide over the next twenty-four hours, and it'll be interesting to see what happens when Smith, in particular, gets a verdict he doesn't agree with. He obviously wasn't happy with the referral that cost him his wicket being turned down, and in a situation where a clear head will help the decision making process it's easy to be distracted by issues that you can't, in the long run, do very much about.

The outcome of the next two days will have a lot to do with focus and careful management of resources, and no one will be wanting to get distracted.

Adelaide 2012: Day One

It seems something strange happens when a cricket team hits the top of the ICC World Rankings. Maybe not quite a Well here we are, chaps, let's sit back and enjoy the view, but one has to suspect there's a bit of relaxation when it comes to the aspirational drive that landed you there.

In recent times we've had four sides hit that #1 Ranking in the Test table, and all of them are currently engaged in a series with one of their erstwhile rivals.,

Here are the rankings from 3 September this year (grabbed from here)

                        Matches     Points     Rating
South Africa 25 3002 120
England        36 4195 117
Australia        34 3952 116
Pakistan        29 3148 109
India        32 3394 106
Sri Lanka        29 2834 98

Astute readers will noteIndia, recently #1 has slipped to #5, though they've just finished a nine wicket demolition of England, ho appear to experience a double digit degree of difficulty (add a decimal place and it'd be three) in anything approaching subcontinental conditions.

Which brings us, of course, to the rather remarkable events at Adelaide Oval yesterday. I don't recall ever seeing a day's play in a Test match that was quite like that one.

I've been out checking the neighbourhood for a missing cat, and I've got an hour-long walk coming up, so I haven't had a look at the morning media, but I've got a fair idea what would be in there. I've also missed the entirety of the Gabba Test apart from the odd score update while I was in Japan, so when it comes to revealed form out of there it's a case of not seeing, cannot say apart from a remark that Australia seemed to have managed to dig ourselves out of a rather nasty hole, and we seem to have done it again this time.

So, the batting. Day One of a Test, and you're always likely to lose an opener in the first session, so Cowan's dismissal doesn't come as a great cause for concern. The delivery in question wasn't a jaffa, but they don't all need to be, and while the mode of dismissal was, um, different (what with the possibility of LBW thrown in with the caught and bowled) it can probably go down as one of those things that do happen.

In any case Cowan and Warner had negotiated the first ten overs. It's the sort of situation that calls for your best bat to come in at Three, hopefully to negotiate his way through to lunch. Somehow, I don't think Quiney is the right man for that slot just yet, but someone has to do it.

That someone probably isn't Ricky Ponting either. I don't think I've seen a top ranked bat done over as comprehensively as Punter was by the one that took out the stumps. The mode of dismissal suggests someone in the South African camp may have done their homework. It could have been a complete accident, of course, but when you're looking for a descriptor you'd have to go for comprehensive.

So there we were at lunch, 3/102 off 25 overs, Warner 67, Clarke 18, with a fair bit of rebuilding to be done. The fifty partnership came up shortly after the resumption, though you'd probably have missed that little milestone in the rush of runs. 76 balls for the fifty, by the way, which wasn't too shabby at all, but consider the stats torrent that followed (looking at the Day 1 Match Notes).

The Australian total flew past the 150 off the first ball of the thirty-first, Warner reached his ton off 93, 76 of them coming from balls that crossed the boundary, the century partnership arrived a mere thirty deliveries after the fifty, Clarke's half century came off 57 and the total passed 200 half way through the thirty-fifth.

Drinks came when Warner departed, 108 runs having come in 12.2 overs.

One could continue to reel off the stats, but I think that's enough for the moment because, regardless of how well Warner and Clarke batted, there was definitely something amiss in the South African attack, and it was something beyond the injury to Kallis.

On paper this South African attack has to be the best going around at the moment. The bowling rankings have Steyn at #1, Philander at 2 and Morkel at 9. By contrast we've got Hilfenhaus and Siddle at 6 and 8 respectively, with the other five spots in the top ten going to a Pakistani, a Sri Lankan, an Indian, an Englishman and a West Indian.

Add in Jacques Kallis as a fourth quick and you've got what should be a very handy outfit, even on a reasonably flat Adelaide track.

Then, of course, things start to go wrong. Take Philander out of the mix and you're drawing on your reserves. Based on yesterday's performance there's a significant gap between Kleinveldt and Morkel, who wasn't that impressive on the day anyway.

Have Kallis break down on you as well, and have Steyn getting twinges that may or may not merit cotton wool treatment and things start to go drastically wrong.

But that still doesn't explain a day when 380 runs were scored in four and a half hours after lunch for the loss of two wickets. Yes, the bowling attack was reduced. Kleinveldt doesn't look like muscling any of the other three aside on form, and Imran Tahir might be able to draw on considerable experience but doesn't look like a threat at the moment.

But batsmen and bowlers perform, by and large, as well as they're allowed to and the South African performance suggests a side that came into the game significantly underdone, which  brings me back to where I started.

With eight days between Brisbane and Adelaide why would you break up the side for a couple of days and then expect things to fall back neatly together when you reassemble at the next venue? And why, once the team has reassembled, do you have two full practice sessions that coach Gary Kirsten did not attend because he was flying back to Australia?

The presence of the coach would, one suspects, be a key element in getting things to fit neatly back together.

The days of the traditional tour, where the visitors played a couple of state games before the first Test, and then took a fortnight between successive Test matches, usually with a state game on the intervening weekend and a midweek country game or two as well kept a sixteen or seventeen man touring party together in an environment where cricket wasn't always the direct focus, but was definitely on the horizon somewhere.

Those days are long gone, but you'd have thought it'd be possible to fit in a game somewhere. Possibly, given a crowded Australian summer, not against a state side, but maybe the ACT?

I'd point out, at this stage, that the longest running #1 side, that great West Indian outfit that ran through the late seventies, the whole of the eighties and well into the nineties dominating almost every side they ran up against, had a couple of strange little habits.

One of them was that when they travelled, they travelled as a team, right down to the maroon blazer. I sighted them in a Brisbane departure lounge the morning after a day-nighter. Seventeen of 'em, no one out of uniform, travelling as a group.

By contrast, the Australian side were scattered across the horizon, some of them hiding behind newspapers in an attempt to maintain anonymity. A bunch of highly excited Aitkenvale Swimming Club kids on their way back from the State Championships put paid to that, to the point where Greg Chappell, standing in the middle of the concourse, asked some underling whether there was a private lounge available because this (i.e. kids with improvised autograph books) is giving me the shits.

By contrast, the Windies were over there, closed ranks, not exactly hostile, but not encouraging autograph hunters to queue up either.

Those days, of course, are long gone, and one shudders to think what the response would be if you started to insist on group travel in uniform.

One also shudders to think of the likely response if the coach announced that, while there might be a fairly comfortable window of time before the next game there were a few issues with the fielding (or whatever) that needed attention, so that's the agenda for the next couple of days rather than giving the boys a break to take in the sights.

Bob Simpson did something like that in the '87 World Cup when a couple of Australian players suggested a side trip to have a squiz at the Taj Mahal.

No, team unity is a very fragile thing. When you break it up it's not always easy to put the pieces back together, and that's BEFORE you start looking at injuries and other issues. It's one of the reasons most of the successful school-kids' Rep coaches I ran across insisted the team sit together as a group while batting, rather than dispersing across the countryside to spend quality time with parents, rellies or billets.

But more than anything else, I suspect that once you hit the top you tend to become complacent and relax. Listening to (I think) Neil Manthorp on the ABC Radio commentary talking about Kallis, it seems to be a case of Jacques doing as much (or as little) work as he feels like. Well, after all he is thirty-seven and you can't expect him to go on forever. Point taken.

But there is, I think, a tendency to ease back when you've reached the summit. A degree of we know what we're doing so we can take it easy because we'll be all right on the day. We know how to prepare. Trust us.

That was, at least from where I was sitting, a significant element in losing the Ashes in 2005, and looking at the Cricinfo window behind the one where I'm typing this there are three video headlines:

Clarke: Counter-attacking has always been my .. (that's what it reads, the Astute Reader can probably fill in the rest);

Warner: Facing lots of balls in the nets helped, and

Kirsten: Bowlers didn't apply pressure consistently.

How little training is too little for South Africa? is the headline here in a story that says it better than I can.

After all, when you think about it in the to and fro of international competition you know there's going to be attack and counter-attack, and you need to have contingency plans in place to allow for the ebb and flow of advantage. From where I'm sitting, it definitely looks like South Africa have come up short in the planning department, though you probably wouldn't be anticipating injury taking out half of your preferred four prong pace battery.

At 5/482 with Clarke to resume on 224, Wade to come and a tail that has been known to chip in with handy runs you'd figure on somewhere around 600 by lunch, with 700 within the bounds of possibility by tea. A session to bowl at the end of Day Two with the follow on margin set at 500 would suggest two possible results, neither of which would be a South African victory.

Of course, there's many a slip between the cup and the lip...