There was a moment during the English first innings in the Perth test when, just before the batting collapse, Andrew Strauss responded to a full ball by one of Australia’s four quicks by undertaking a casual pull shot. With a mere flick of the wrist, Strauss guided the ball down to the boundary – one bounce over the rope.
The Channel 9 camera gave us a close up of Ricky Ponting, who seemed surprised that such a thing could happen. After briefly consulting his bowler, Ponting reacted by removing one of his in-close fieldsmen and placing him down to the onside boundary.
The next three balls where delivered wide of the off-stump – leaving Strauss, the moved fieldsman and the rest of us wondering what exactly the captain and the bowler had discussed.
It was a moment that seemed to define Ponting’s tenure as the Australian captain: it was reactionary, lacked vision and communication, and produced very little.
We can contrast this to the methodological approach taken by Steve Waugh, Mark Taylor and Alan Border: each seemed to take pleasure in slowly strangling their opponents. In fact, even when Australia won a test in three or four days, it always felt like it was the continuation of a previous beating.
Ponting lacks this instinct, vision and longer-term planning. In fact, if Ponting was a politician, he would be a classic poll-driven reactionary - designing policy on the run depending on what the backroom boys and girls would tell him the polls say.
Strauss’s shot and Ponting’s reaction seem all but forgotten following the victory in the third Test. We beat the Poms so convincingly that we can all breath easy - Australian cricket is back! I mean, we smashed them – confirming our dominance in the Ashes and that little urn is on its way back to where it rightfully belongs. Right?
The question is, however, whether the test result on the bouncy Perth wicket is an aberration, or was it the poor showing in Brisbane and Adelaide that should guide our understanding of the Australian cricket team?
Before reflecting on this question, I want to go back to Ponting’s look of disbelief - it mirrored the look of another Australian leader, our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. In fact, every time something seems to go wrong, Gillard looks astounded – like a roo in headlights – astounded that this could happen.
And when things happen that do not go according to plan, Gillard, like Ponting, reacts by moving her fieldsmen. She seems to briefly consult her ministers (the equivalent of Ponting’s bowlers), who then seem to go off and do their own thing anyway – and the rest of us are left wondering where the longer-term plan is.
From the moment that Rudd was rolled as Prime Minister, the Gillard Government seems to have been responding to every difficult predicament and crisis by moving into a defensive position. This approach has defined Gillard’s term as Prime Minister, and while it was forgotten when she was won the election late this year, it is back.
In fact, if Gillard was the Australian cricket captain, she would most likely have most of her field standing around the boundary defending their slim lead.
We can see this defensive position from her response to the ongoing arrival of refugee boats, to the way she is dealing with the mining tax: it is all about reaction, not about vision.
The recent Christmas Island tragedy, for example, saw Gillard offering us a cross-bench committee to respond. The truth is that we elected the ALP ahead of the Coalition because her party, in part, promised us a more human approach to refugees. This requires her to make a decision on Australia’s approach to refugees that reflects a longer-term vision.
So, let us return to the all-important fourth and fifth Tests: do we feel confident that Australia will continue its dominance? The truth is that the Perth wicket suited a pace attack that likes jamming the ball into the pitch – this intimidates the batters even if the bowlers lack any real variation.
It is such a pitch that suited Mitchell Johnson – and likely to suit him again – but we should not get carried away with his performance.
In fact, if the Melbourne and Sydney wickets play like they usually do, the swing bowling of James Anderson and the spin of Graeme Swann will wreak havoc. In response, I find it hard to believe that the Australian bowlers will be able to counter the solid English batting.
Whether Ponting plays or not, the chances are the urn is safe in England and is unlikely to make its way here anytime soon.
And what of Gillard?
Gillard’s opposition is a man who told us he would carry a phone around and personally decide if refugee boats should be turned around. Like Caesar at the Roman Coliseum (or Russell Crowe at a Rabbits home game), Abbott could stand in the middle of Parliament House in a toga and give any boat the thumbs up or down in reaction to the latest polls.
In light of Gillard’s obfuscation, this is a man who may well be Prime Minister sooner rather than later.
Gillard needs to set an aggressive field and go for the jugular. This should be based on the reasons her government was elected: to respond to climate change and provide Australia with energy security, re-structure the Australian economy beyond an over-reliance on mining, develop a humane approach to refugees that reflect global events, rebuild an infrastructure that was starved of funds for almost two decades and work towards a cohesive Australia rather than taking pot-shots at minority groups for political gain.
The Australian public deserves better than what we are currently getting from both Ricky Ponting’s cricket team and Julia Gillard’s government: they are both experiencing form slumps that must be addressed.
One will cost us the Ashes, the other will cost us a lot more.
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