Australian Dominance in Cricket. Good or Bad?

It’s being highly debated in the media that “whether Australia’s dominance in modern day cricket is good for the game or not?” I’ve seen many press articles and TV talk shows debating this topic, and I’ve seen so many former players insisting on, it’s bad for the game. Most of these people are in the opinion that “Australia should come down, so that the other countries will have a fair chance of catching them”.

I think this is rubbish. What Australia has achieved in cricket today, is the result of careful planning of their system for years. I believe their planning started on the day they failed to make it to the semi finals of a world cup held at home (1992). That day, they’ve realized there’s something seriously to think about Australian cricket. And, through their prestigious cricket academy, and the highly competitive domestic tournament they started planning to dominate the cricketing world in the next decade. The results started to come during the later part of the 90’s, especially towards 1999. Ever since then, they haven’t looked back. When a one class player get retired, they have 3 players to replace him!. Ricky Ponting, started his career as the “replacement” for David Boon. But today, Ponting has surpassed the fellow Tasmanian by a huge margin. So, what could we expect from the replacement of McGrath or Warne? Definitely not anything in lower quality than them.

So, if the rest of the world remain complaining about “invincibility” of the Australians, and do nothing other than expecting Aussies to come down, that won’t definitely be in the favor of this game. What the rest of the world should do is try to work hard, to get closer to Aussies. Not to expect them to come down.

Business of Cricket

Some one has mentioned in one of my posts, “Aussies take cricket as a business; not as a game”. I 100% agree with this. For Aussies, the game of cricket is not a “game” anymore. It’s a business operation for them. They have adopt all the business management principles into this game. Business management Concepts like “Zero defects” and “Systems Approach” are clearly visible in the Aussies game plan. Each player of the team are like executives. They’ve been assigned a “job to do” (Do they have cubicles too?) and they have to work hard to do the job better every day. There should be “zero defects” in the final product. Extensive usage of technology, and video footages make them perfect “business executives”. It’s said, that Matt Hayden was watching a video footage of Murali, even on his flight to Grenada for the Super 8 match against Sri Lanka. That’s ho the Aussies make them “perfect”.

The rest of the world have to catch up. Soon.

But the unfortunate thing about these recent developments is, it will degrade the natural spirit of this age old game. Some people are trying to compare the current Australian team with the Clive Lloyd’s great West Indian team in the 70’s. I’m totally against that comparison. Windies in 70’s dominated the game with their natural ability, and their innovative approach of playing the game. The rule of “Ball is there to be hit” was the greatest innovation by the Windies those days. And that revolutionized the game of cricket, and inspired such great cricketers like Dulip Mendis, Javed Miandad, Aravinda De Silva, Sachin Tendulkar, Inzamam Ul Haq and Sanath Jayasuriya in the sub continent. These are the players who took the “west Indian style of cricket” to rest of the world, and broke the west Indian monopoly in cricket. The current “Australian Style” is no way near the natural spirit of cricket, like that “West Indian style”. The Australian style is a complete mechanism of programming human beings to deliver “results”. Id Clive Llyod’s 70’s Windies team had the facilities that are given to the current Australian team, the result would be incredible.

What ever said and done, the fact remains “Australia is driving the game of cricket at the moment”. The rest of the world will have to catch them soon.

If you look at last 4 world cups, it was Australia who played the India Subcontinent in the finals. Australia secured their place in the finals with their highly professional approach to the game, and India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka reached the finals in these 4 world cups with their natural ability and raw talents, and based on the form at the time the world cup being played. (Especially Sri Lanka and Pakistan. India too, take a “business approach” to the game some times) So what about the other countries? What do them lacking? Natural ability or the professional approach?

ICC have to take a serious look into this, and make sure the countries like Kenya, Ireland and Canada will stay in the game with the hope of winning a World Cup soon.

If the young players in these countries start to think that “No matter how good we play, it’s always going to be Australia and Subcontinent in the final, and Australia winning in the end”, then its not going to be good for the game of cricket anymore. ICC and the national governing bodies of the game, should take serious actions to upgrade the quality of the game in all these countries (Including England and West Indies), and make them competitive against Australia. At the same time, they should make sure that the game is not getting “too much mechanical” as well.