Ankit Banerjee gives a preview of what possibly lies ahead for Steve Smith.
Australian cricket is staring at a huge hole following the retirement of Michael Clarke and the likely clean-up operation by the selectors following the Ashes loss. Spare a thought for young Steve Smith when he glances up in the dressing room in his first Test post the eminently forgettable 2015 Ashes. There are high chances that at least half the Australian team that played in the fifth and final Test a few days ago against England won’t be there to play the next Test. [Also Read: Steve Smith’s technical nightmare is real, but he will bounce back like Virat Kohli]
Michael Clarke, Ryan Harris, Brad Haddin, Chris Rogers and Shane Watson all seems to have played their final Test. Adam Voges and Mitchell Marsh also cannot be sure of holding on to their places. Peter Siddle may have just saved his spot by grabbing the opportunity he got in the final Test. Australian cricket will thus be facing a rebuilding phase.
Very few teams manage to make a really good transition. Australia suffered their biggest erosion of talent in one single blow when Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh hung up their boots on January 6, 1984. It gave the selectors almost zilch time to plan a smooth transition. They tasted the worst Test cycles before their re-emergence in 1989.
Why is rebuilding so difficult? The basic pang is replacing that exact blend of talent and personalities that feature in the dressing room. Talent is the easier bit as fine tuning personal equations, maintaining harmony and creating an environment for cricket to prosper, is the tougher bit. But switching the never-say-die spirit that a certain Brad Haddin ejected into the current crop, or the striking blue-collar work rituals of a dogged Chris Rogers is much more difficult.
One of the best transitions that comes to mind is when Team India were pummelled in the 2007 World Cup, a team that boasted of Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Anil Kumble and Zaheer Khan. But the team made a quick and successful transition in the next two months. Mahendra Singh Dhoni was given the task to shepherd the troops in the inaugural T20 World Cup, and emerged successful by emerging supreme.
A new Australian team under Smith could stutter and stumble. In the longer run you see, the defeats and struggles will help unite the team and build eventually forge into a strong unit. Cricket’s uniqueness is that the captain has a disproportionate take on the team’s mental strata, as compared to most other team sports. One of the more protracted rebuilding efforts in sport happened in the late 90s, when Michael Jordan announced his retirement after his sixth title with the Chicago Bulls. The management had the option of either carrying on as a mediocre competent second-rung unit, or to go for the ‘full monty’.
The Chicago Bulls went for the latter, doing away with greats like Dennis Rodman, Scottie Pipen and others, to inject young blood and give the team a new look. Sadly, other than a couple of semi-decent seasons in 2004-05, the Bulls wandered in the wilderness up until 2010, when Derrick Rose’s injection and his rise finally heralded the start of a new Bulls history.
Cricket is a different sport, but Smith can surely take a leaf or two from this piece for the welfare of Australian cricket.
(A cricket geek to the tee, Ankit Banerjee smokes and snorts it all day long. The romance with the sport incepted since the 1996 World Cup semi-final. He is a winner of the 2011 edition of the All-India college cricket quiz.)
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