Confidence gives way to discipline
A clearing up of the poor management in Australian cricket has given the players the confidence that they will be rewarded for playing for their team, Patrick Smith says in the Australian
Dustin Silgardo
25-Feb-2013
A clearing up of the poor management in Australian cricket has given the players the confidence that they will be rewarded for playing for their team, Patrick Smith says in the Australian. As a result, the team are playing some of the most disciplined cricket they have in years in Sri Lanka, he writes.
Yet before the Argus report was tabled with its evisceration of Australia's cricket management, coaching protocols and aimless selection theories, it might be that Australian players were not confident enough to play cricket in the previous disciplined manner that was the tattoo of the great teams of the 1990s and early 2000s. If 12 wickets on debut guaranteed you just 49 more overs, if two hundreds in a Test was a pre-cursor to demotion as it was with Phil Hughes, then unity of purpose within any team can evaporate with each and every incomprehensible management decision.
Dustin Silgardo is a former sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo