Time for an Australian charm offensive

Mike Coward writes in the Australian that Ricky Ponting’s men are on notice: they must reconnect with the Australian public this summer. Coward believes the corporatisation of the game has left fans cold.

A former executive of a company with strong and traditional ties to Cricket Australia this year took to calling CA the "Jolimont juggernaut". (CA is headquartered at Jolimont in Melbourne's inner-east.) It is most apt.

As a consequence of the corporatisation of the game, CA has become something of a behemoth with the attendant party machinery, personalities and politics. And woe betide those who deviate from the doctrine.

One suspects Ponting abided by an unspoken, unwritten, unacknowledged understanding when he surrendered Australia's chance of holding on to the Border-Gavaskar Trophy on the fourth day of the final Test at Nagpur. It still beggars belief that he can't see his mistake, own up to it and get on with a job that generally he does most capably.

In the Age, Peter Roebuck argues that it is time Australia the nation gets the cricket team it deserves.