Australian cricket is losing the plot
The Ashes provokes soul-searching as no other cricket event does, writes Gideon Haigh in the Australian , and after the loss to England in Melbourne, Australian cricket has failed its prime directive.
Akhila Ranganna
25-Feb-2013
The Ashes provokes soul-searching as no other cricket event does, writes Gideon Haigh in the Australian, and after the loss to England in Melbourne, Australian cricket has failed its prime directive.
This raises disturbing questions about the effectiveness of the Centre of Excellence, the Australian cricket incubator in operation since January 2004 at Allan Border Field in Brisbane, and of Tim Nielsen, who ran it in its first three years before succeeding John Buchanan as national coach, not to mention the judgment of those at Cricket Australia who before the Ashes extended Nielsen's contract for three years.
When Australia's captain was ushered towards the exit on Thursday, he was not just an unsuccessful Australian captain but an anachronism: a tough, brave, single-minded, self-motivated, record-breaking Test batsman with no time for T20 and its artificialities.
Scyld Berry echoes a similar view in the Telegraph on Sunday writing that Australia are paying the price for a domestic game focussed on Twenty20
Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Malcolm Knox says that despite Ricky Ponting's many successes, history shows the Ashes losses will loom large in the Australian captain's legacy.
Ponting is the undisputed boss of this Australian team, as evidenced by Michael Clarke's statement that he cannot imagine leading a team in which Ponting is one of the subordinate players. As the undisputed leader, Ponting has accepted both credit and blame for what happens under him. In how he has defined his role, Ponting is a ''strong'' captain. But captaincy is analogous to batting and bowling, and a strong grip is not always the most effective.
Despite what critics might be saying, the loss of Ricky Ponting for the final Ashes Test match is a massive blow for Australia, says Justin Langer in BBC Sport.
This series has shown that he is not a run-machine, but rather a man who has the same frailties as the rest of us and I am certain that he will be stronger and wiser for the tough experience he has just lived through.
Akhila Ranganna is assistant editor (Audio) at ESPNcricinfo