Graeme Smith’s new era
Graeme Smith, in his Courier-Mail column, tells of South Africa’s long-term plan to beat Australia.
Peter English
25-Feb-2013
Graeme Smith, in his Courier-Mail column, tells of South Africa’s long-term plan to beat Australia.
It's fair to say we started talking about this tour almost as soon as we arrived home three years ago. It has always been in the back of our minds, even through this year when we had tours to India and England. If I was still in the habit of sticking notes on my fridge door, I would have stuck one there three years ago and it would simply have said: "Win in Australia next time."
The challenge now, as it was with my captaincy, is not to treat the achievement as "mission accomplished" but to use it as the start of a brand new journey, a new era.
The post-mortems of Australia’s series defeat continue with Greg Baum writing in the Age about the change in the team’s fortunes.
In the aftermath, fingers of blame have been pointed in all directions: the selectors, the captain, Cricket Australia, Matthew Hayden, Andrew Symonds. Intrinsically, each accusation has some merit. Collectively, they amount to an outpouring of bad grace, for they seem to presume that Australia's dominance is its divine right, and that it was forfeited only because of some sort of neglect. Neither is unconditionally true.
Calls for Andrew Hilditch, the chairman of selectors, to resign have started, the Courier-Mail’s Robert Craddock reports.
In the Australian Malcolm Conn writes about how the age of Australian first-class players is rising.
Peter English is former Australasia editor of ESPNcricinfo