Australia's spin struggles: it's a cultural thing

Day three in Galle: a Dilruwan Perera delivery stays quite low; Mitch Marsh, new to the crease, digs it out and offers a wry smile. It's a smile that masks bemusement. You can forgive him, because for the Australian No. 6, everything happening is truly foreign. Even so, the reaction reveals more about his team's attitude to these conditions than it does about Asian wickets.

Has any Test match batting line-up looked as inept as Australia's in Sri Lanka? Despite well-meaning programmes, interventions, manifestos, reports and investigations into the problem of "Australia in the subcontinent", these measures, by definition of their performances, have not worked, and don't look like working. Australia are actually getting worse over there.

If we're discussing solutions (which, it seems, we are), then Australia's cultural, grass-roots attitudes to spin bowling may be worth exploring. At all levels of serious amateur cricket in Australia - from school cricket through to first grade - spinners barely bowl. A crass generalisation, possibly, but broadly true.

At grade level, spin bowling is an art to be tolerated rather than curated. The administrative boffins already understand that this approach hampers efforts to find the next great batch of representative spinners, but Pallekele and Galle have made clear an even bigger problem: this approach does a huge disservice to our batsmen too.

As ever in Australia, when we have a cricketing problem to solve we skew to over-simplification. In this case, much of the hand-wringing over the latest capitulation has merely thrown up tired motherhood statements about batting to spinners. "Just use your feet", "rotate the strike", "unsettle them by going over the top".

Solutions like these betray an ignorance ultimately rooted in arrogance, and they insult Test cricketers. The batsmen will be aware that foot movement and run-scoring are ends to aspire to. The problem is that they fundamentally cannot read the cricket ball. Nobody holds or wields a bat in Australia better than these guys, yet in Sri Lanka their ineptitude is so staggeringly total that it demands introspection deeper than "just rotate the strike, mate". Only the most one-eyed supporters would dare envisage a challenge to India next year, let alone a victory in Colombo.

With such an obvious and systemic problem, we may as well throw in another one: we clearly have no idea.

Efforts to stem the embarrassment are rightly underway. Increased Asian exposure for junior teams and the alteration of home wickets have either been implemented or are on the table. They are good ideas. It has also been suggested that Australia employ a horses-for-courses selection policy for their batsmen. It's an idea that grates against the very fibre of Australia's conservative spirit, but an air of experimentation would at least demonstrate some humility that recognises we may have been wrong about this all along.

But the above are short- to mid-term solutions that will surely only offer marginal gains at best. Australian cricket cannot select its way out of this problem. Nor can it seriously believe that a biennial Asian bridging-course for their best batsmen will sufficiently educate them for the hardest cricket they are likely to encounter - a Test match in an Indian, Sri Lankan or Pakistani dustbowl. Because that's what we're going to get for the next ten years, at least.

But how do you mobilise a whole nation in the fight against spin? Because throughout, from grade cricket through to national level, the truth is that we really don't "rate" spinners. This wholesale attitude courses like boosted blood through the veins of the Australian cricketing body, where the advice to simply use your feet, get to them on the full and hit them out of the attack is consistent from club to club.

It's similar for those bowling or captaining spin, where the almost fundamentalist commitment to building pressure by "dotting them up" produces an unceasing queue of slow-to-medium-pace bowlers who can "tie up an end" and "keep things tight".

Grade captains nationwide will opt for the grizzled late-20s medium-pacer over the young, raw spinner in almost every match situation when the game is on the line. And why wouldn't they? Try telling a third grade captain to bowl his 17-year-old spinner when the opposition are 187 for 2 in 35-degree heat out west. "Why don't I just give them the six points now?" would be a common, and reasonable, response. Cunning grade captains don't make tactical decisions in the national interest; they make decisions to beat the opposition - whom they usually hate.

A quota of spin bowling per innings has been suggested before, and it really does have merit. Of course, in the deeply dog-eat-dog world of grade cricket, spinners selected by necessity would be further ostracised, but it would be the same for both sides. Having spinners bowl a percentage of overs would not only increase the chances of Australia developing better spinners, it would ensure our batsmen are raised on a balanced diet of bowling from an early age. We could call it the "Pallekele Rule".

It may be that the changes needed to win in the subcontinent will hamper the efforts to win at home, and we should simply accept our weakness. Perhaps we're Roger Federer and Asia is our clay; maybe you just can't win everywhere. Death, taxes and struggling in India.

Whatever the case, if Australia do not take care to cultivate quality spin bowling, their batsmen will continue to fail against quality spin bowling. Or are they just bad decks? We'll probably find out in ten years or so.