By IANS
Sydney : If Steve Waugh could be induced to come out of retirement at 42 and lead a team of Australian players who’ve departed the Test scene in recent times, whether voluntarily or not, he might well find himself with a team capable of beating any in the world.
Consider the line-up. Justin Langer, Damien Martyn and Darren Lehmann would be sure selections with Waugh as batsmen with Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne as bowlers, and Adam Gilchrist as the keeper.
These seven would be the strength of the team. For the other four places you could turn to ex-Test players still in the game – maybe Matthew Elliott, Jason Gillespie, Michael Kasprowicz and Stuart Law, the last of whom will be 40 in October but is still scoring heavily for Lancashire, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald.
How would such a combination go against the Australian Test side? In any conditions, you’d have to think they’d be competitive. On a pitch that suited Warne’s leg spin, they might well have an edge.
All of which is an indication of how much talent has exited the Australian side in the four years since Waugh retired. Here’s another indication: of the 11 Australians who played in the first Test of the 2005 Ashes series in England, only five took the field against India in this summer’s Tests – and one of these, Gilchrist, has gone now.
Nothing wrong with that. On the contrary: a regular turnover of personnel is desirable, since it creates vacancies for the game’s young rising stars. Indeed, the lack of such vacancies has been a cause of some concern ever since it became standard practice for Test cricketers to keep playing well into their 30s, presumably because they can earn more as cricketers than as ex-cricketers.
As a result, it is no longer a surprise if a player makes his Test debut at 30, an age when previous generations of cricketers would start to think of retiring. Chris Rogers was 30 when he played his first Test last month. Brad Haddin will be 30 when, if all goes well, he takes over from Gilchrist.
Some observers, like former Australian captain Greg Chappell, have argued that this itself is a bad thing – that, particularly in the case of batsmen, players gifted enough to play Test cricket ought to be blooded in the Test side in their early 20s.
Chappell has three reasons for thinking so. One, batsmen are best able to meet the challenge of Test cricket from 19 to 23 because they are then fearless and feel they can play forever. Two, at this age they are also young and exuberant enough to withstand the knocks that inevitably come along early in a Test career, and they are malleable enough to adjust their game to suit the Test environment. Three, they are still free of the self-doubts that always set in later.
In Chappell’s experience, cricketers start to hear the clock ticking from their mid-20s onwards. They are conscious of the fact their time at the top is limited, which tends to make them lower their sights and play more conservatively. They are also more set in their ways and unable to make the changes to technique that new situations require.
Chappell cited England’s Graeme Hick as an example of a player who suffered from having to wait. Zimbabwean-born Hick made it to England’s Test side at 25 after spending seven years in county cricket waiting to qualify. Chappell had no doubt this prevented him from fulfilling his potential.
All this makes sense, but it does raise the question: if Chappell himself were to reappear today as a 22-year-old, the age he made the Test side, wouldn’t he still be snapped up by the selectors? You would have to think he would. As would other Australian batting greats, nearly all of whom made the Test side by their early 20s – Ricky Ponting (20), Steve Waugh (20), Allan Border (23), Doug Walters (19), Norm O’Neill (21), Bob Simpson (21) and Neil Harvey (19), to name just a few.
So maybe the real problem is not that Test veterans are keeping the rising stars out, but that there are not any rising stars.
Former Test player Keith Stackpole certainly believes this is the case. He has no doubt that if an exceptionally gifted young batsman appeared tomorrow he would be picked. But no such batsman is in sight.
“If you’re good enough and you impress people enough, the opportunity is still there. Take Michael Clarke. He’s not a great player – he’s a good, solid player – but when he came on a few years ago everyone talked about him. You’d hear people saying there was this young kid with plenty of talent. I ask you: name me one young batsman around the various states today that you could put even into Clarke’s category?” Stackpole asked.
Point taken.