Clarke and Co ignore free advice to their cost

Richard Hinds

January 22, 2011

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Geelong teenager gives Pup some tips

Daniel Brew demonstrates Michael Clarke's technique, followed by the correct technique. Photo: Peter Mathew

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BRADMAN bless you, Daniel Brew, the teenager who snuck into a press conference and offered Michael Clarke some not unreasonable batting tips. You might not have dragged Clarke out of a rut deeper than Shaquille O'Neal's spa bath, but you helped alleviate the aching frustration of all Australian cricket fans.
Who at some stage this summer has not felt like storming into the Australian sheds and yelling, ''No, no, no Marcus! You hold it with the skinny bit at the top with the rubber grip.'' Or, ''Correct me if I'm wrong Hughesy, but I'm pretty sure you can't be given out for letting one go through to the keeper.''
Of course, such is the nature of the Australian cricket team - and Australian cricket in general - such useful advice would be greeted with the same world-weary expression with which the understandably bemused Clarke fixed his adviser. All sorts of words have been used to describe Australia's calamitous performance - bumbling, incompetent, disorganised, naive and just bloody useless. And that was just by the players' wives.

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Illustration: Edd Aragon

However, the word I would choose to encapsulate the malaise is ''entitled''. This is the mindset that has led everyone from the highest office bearer to the bloke who knocks in the stumps at training to believe that, on no other basis than they are members of the (once) all-conquering Australian cricket machine, they are immune from the reasonable analyses that an appalling recent Test record - five defeats in seven games - brings.
As incidental as it might seem in a summer that provided multiple examples, the mindset of the Australian team was revealed in an interview with the injured bowler Ryan Harris on Fox Sports' Inside Cricket. Rather than acknowledge the substandard performance of a team that had suffered another ignominious defeat, Harris instead bemoaned the negativity of the media before the series had started. As if it was the gloomy (and accurate) forecasts of the ink-stained wretches that was their undoing. Equally revealing were the reactions of the Australian players whose poor performance brought their positions under scrutiny. Ricky Ponting ummed and ahhed about his future as captain, as if the decision was his to make. And, after the (C) again appeared next to the name of the injured and out-of-form skipper in the World Cup squad, perhaps it is.
After all, who else in Australian cricket would make the seemingly obvious call to remove a captain who has presided over a record-equalling third straight Ashes defeat? It was telling that in a summer when strong leadership from the top seemed necessary, few Australians could name the chairman of Cricket Australia (Jack Clarke, apparently) - much less imagine he and his board members might force significant change.
The Cricket Australia chief executive? James Sutherland seems highly competent in his main role - attracting the massive rights contracts and other commercial deals that provide the team's mostly misfiring superstars their seven-figure deals. However, as a players' man, it was not until the very tail end of the summer that Sutherland voiced even a lukewarm discontent with the team's performance. And then, we got the buck-passing political solution - a ''full-scale review''.
Sutherland administers a contract system that automatically rewards a mediocre team on the same extravagant lines as its storied predecessor. This system, built to cater for a generation of now mostly retired superstars, also fosters entitlement. The imperative now is to become an Australian cricketer with the huge pay cheque and the fried chicken commercials, not necessarily to perform like one.
In this comfortable environment, the players cannot be blamed for feeling they are beyond reproach. Brad Haddin was horrified when left out of Australia's Twenty20 team for Tim Paine, even if the replacement of a 33-year-old warrior with a promising 26-year-old with leadership potential seems blindingly obvious.
But, alas, this would also assume that other Australian selections were based on something approaching logic - and everyone other than the serially deluded chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch understands that is not the case. (Exhibit A: Steve Smith is selected as a No.6 batsman and fails miserably. Yet, rather than being replaced, he is instead demoted to No.7 - presumably to preserve his valuable declaration bowling.)
Haddin and Paine's confusion are then compounded when both are chosen in the World Cup squad, meaning Australia will be taking an emergency wicketkeeper to a one-day tournament at the expense of a specialist batsman when they now often don't choose one for a two-month Test tour.
Yes, this is the age of entitlement. Which is why, like Brew, we should all feel perfectly entitled to tell them what they are doing wrong.