The show moves on and the Australian team will see it as an opportunity to save face and get the public back on side.
Success will get everyone salivating over next year’s domestic T20 tournament, called the KFC Big Bash and featuring eight city-based teams. That is the theory anyway.
In fact T20 is the source of Australia’s problems. For a start the two most potent bowlers in Australia, Shaun Tait and Dirk Nannes, only play T20 cricket having declared themselves unavailable for Test cricket. In Tait’s case he has cited injury problems as his reason.
Either would have given England’s batsmen something completely different to think about in the Ashes, but they are content to earn their corn from a couple of two-over spells on a balmy evening in front of packed stand of revellers eating fast food.
That is their prerogative and, as a former bowler, I can sympathise to some extent. But I do query whether that approach is ultimately satisfying.
Perhaps worse than that though is the influence of T20 cricket on Australia’s batsmen. There are technical flaws in several of their players, preyed on by England’s highly disciplined bowlers, which stem from the shortest form of the game.
Top-order Test match batting requires patience and precision and adaptable footwork. Ideally, the front foot should go towards the line of the ball if it is fullish.
By definition T20 demands that batsmen be freer, and to that end they tend to clear their front leg out of the way to make room to hit straight deliveries.
Shane Watson, Phillip Hughes and even Michael Clarke have got into the habit of planting their front leg down the line of leg stump.
This is fine if the ball is straight, and Watson, in particular, is adept at driving past the bowler or through mid-on. Problems occur if the ball is a few inches outside off stump.
Their weight is moving in the wrong direction and they end up reaching for it slightly. If the ball moves at all they are done for. England knew this and concentrated on exploiting it. All three batsmen have been consistently caught behind the wicket.
There is more. Coaches around Australia are becoming increasingly exasperated at the approach of young players, who seem interested only in evolving their unorthodox hitting methods for T20 rather than developing a proper technique.
Whatever his mindset might be, Steve Smith’s technique is not suited to Test cricket. Great eye. Walking wicket if there’s anything happening off the pitch.
There is an increasing dearth of young batsmen who just want to stay in. It explains why Hughes and Watson are the current Test openers despite neither being ideally equipped for the job.
It is probably significant that some of the best batsmen looking for longevity in the Test format – Ponting, Tendulkar, Strauss and now Clarke among others – opt out of T20 internationals.
The KFC Big Bash will undoubtedly be good fun and augment Cricket Australia’s coffer’s, like this week’s internationals, but it won’t get the Ashes back, and that’s what the Australian public really care about.
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