A thankful farewell
January 18th 2007 23:38
There are many out there who are sad to see the dismantling of the great Australian side of the 1990's and early noughties. I am not one of them. I'm quite happy to see them all go. In fact if anyone asked me I would have been quite happy to have pushed their wheelchairs into the nursing home. I'm sure that the rest of the cricketing world breathed a collective sigh of relief. It reminded me of when reggae singer and former Wailer Peter Tosh heard that Bob Marley had died. He is reported to have said "Maybe somebody else can sell some (insert offensive word here) records now!" I'm sure at least one cricket board somewhere around the world felt the same way about the a trophy that has been out of their grasp since this team decided to be greedy and stack their cabinet with every available trophy they can get their hands on. And they say cricket's for gentlemen!
What surprised me though was the talk that the loss of mssrs Warne, McGrath and Langer was being compared to the loss of Chappell, Marsh and Liillee in the 1980's and how it left a major hole in the team and thats why the team was weak for so many years. Thats not how I remember things. I would have thought there was the depth to cover the loss of those players as great as they were.
Now I could be wrong but I think what did more damage to Australian cricket was the rebel tour of South Africa which gutted Australia of 17 quality players who decided that money was more important than playing for Australia. It left the team with an inexperienced unwilling captain backed by an even more inexperienced team. Since there is no need for a rebel tour these days so whats the problem?
The only player that would be that hard to replace would be ol' "Warnie" Warne because he was such a character (and cricket needs characters) McGrath has a clone in Stuart Clarke and Langer will either be replaced by Jaques or Vogues. I actually hope that the Australian team will be somewhat weaker because not only does cricket need characters it also needs real competition. The Australians don't provide that at the moment (competition not characters. Plenty of characters in Australia). Not the way they roll over other teams anyway. It wouldn't surprise me that by the time next summer rolls around and India are here that it will be the same old story.
What surprised me though was the talk that the loss of mssrs Warne, McGrath and Langer was being compared to the loss of Chappell, Marsh and Liillee in the 1980's and how it left a major hole in the team and thats why the team was weak for so many years. Thats not how I remember things. I would have thought there was the depth to cover the loss of those players as great as they were.
Now I could be wrong but I think what did more damage to Australian cricket was the rebel tour of South Africa which gutted Australia of 17 quality players who decided that money was more important than playing for Australia. It left the team with an inexperienced unwilling captain backed by an even more inexperienced team. Since there is no need for a rebel tour these days so whats the problem?
The only player that would be that hard to replace would be ol' "Warnie" Warne because he was such a character (and cricket needs characters) McGrath has a clone in Stuart Clarke and Langer will either be replaced by Jaques or Vogues. I actually hope that the Australian team will be somewhat weaker because not only does cricket need characters it also needs real competition. The Australians don't provide that at the moment (competition not characters. Plenty of characters in Australia). Not the way they roll over other teams anyway. It wouldn't surprise me that by the time next summer rolls around and India are here that it will be the same old story.
| 35 |
| Vote |
Subscribe to this blog
