Comparable sides

WATCHING Australia’s utter domination over England in the ultra-hyped Ashes series that ended with their 5-0 whitewash in Sydney on Friday was to replay similar humiliations inflicted by the West Indies on all opponents in the mid-1980s.

It also mirrored those endured by the West Indies in more recent times, and, as was the case two decades ago, emphasized the enormous gap between the top dogs of the moment and the rest of the pack.

What is striking about the most powerful teams of the modern era – and, arguably, any era – is that their strengths have been all embracing and comparable.

Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer equate to Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes as an opening pair.

Statistically, there is little to choose between them.

The main difference is that the Aussies are left-handed, the West Indians right.

If the power and the glory of Vivian Richards gives the West Indies middle-order of an earlier time the edge it is not by much.

In their different but equally effective ways, Adam Gilchrist and Jeffrey Dujon are quality wicket-keepers capable of dazzling displays with the bat at No.7.

And the last four in the order repeatedly frustrated opponents on the rare occasions when the opposition made significant inroads into the main batting.

Where the disparity lies is in the bowling but only in composition.

The earlier West Indies teams relied on the most lethal amalgamation of fast bowlers the game has known. The Australian spearheads have been Glenn McGrath, whose metronomic accuracy has driven the best batsmen of the day to distraction, and Shane Warne, a wizard who perfected and enhanced the intricate art of leg-spin bowling.

While Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Colin Croft and Malcolm Marshall undermined batsmen with their clinical execution of swing and seam and the constant threat of physical harm, McGrath and Warne have been no less intimidatory by preying on batsmen’s minds.

All of that combined with the overall fitness of Olympic athletes, sharp catching and ground fielding and a strong team spirit under captains who understood their men, made the West Indies under Clive Lloyd, and Australia, at present under Ricky Ponting, so all-conquering.

Yet one essential element common to all great sporting teams stood out above all others in the recent five Ashes Tests, as it did for Lloyd’s team in the early 1980s.

It was pride in performance, collective and individual.

In 1983, the West Indies were stung by their loss to India in the third World Cup final.

Complacency denied them a hat-trick of championships. Lloyd was so distraught by the rare and prominent failure, that he immediately resigned as captain.

Thankfully, he was lured back by an insistent Allan Rae, then president of the West Indies board, and at once dedicated his team to vengeance.

They did not have to wait long. On their tour of India later that year, they won the Test series 3-0, two matches by an innings, and all six of the one-day internationals. Order had been restored.

They backed it up, in 1984, with 11 consecutive Test victories, over Australia home and away and England away, a record only surpassed by Australia’s 16 in a row five years ago and now by the 12 following the latest demolition by this team.

As with the West Indies and their World Cup defeat, Australia’s honour was deeply damaged by the loss of the Ashes in England in 2005.

They seethed at the triumphalism of their oldest and fiercest enemy; at the wild celebrations in Trafalgar Square; at the accolades awarded to all the players by their monarch; at the taunts of the Barmy Army and other gloating fans who had suffered at Australia’s hands for almost 20 years.

Back home, Ponting was pilloried for his lack of leadership and his team was widely dismissed as aging and tired. Australians do not take setbacks in any sport lightly, least of all their national sport.

It was all the catalyst for what occurred over the past six weeks.

From the moment the last ball was bowled at the Oval on September 12, 2005, the Australians planned for retribution.

An emphatic victory over a disjointed and unprepared World Eleven team in the ill-conceived so-called SuperTest in Sydney a month later, set them on their way.

Victory in 10 of their previous 11 Tests (the other was drawn with South Africa batting through the last day) should have sounded warning bells when England returned with their team and their hordes of expectant supporters to defend the mysterious little urn.

Nor was this the England team that had secured it in the first place.

Michael Vaughan, the decisive captain, and Simon Jones, linchpin of the four-pronged fast attack of 2005, had been eliminated by injury. Marcus

Trescothick, the established opening batsman, was once more so overcome by the pressure of incessant competition, he withdrew from the tour, as he had done earlier in India.

Vaughan was replaced as captain by Andrew Flintoff, the most influential figure of the 2005 victory, “Freddie” to the adoring English public, was already a folk hero, a dynamic all-rounder spoken of the new Ian Botham.

Botham’s failure in the role over 20 years earlier should have been enough notice that the captaincy is a burden too far for such free spirits. Well before the final rites of the series were written on Friday, Flintoff looked a broken man.

None of this was of concern to the Australians. England could have resurrected W.G.Grace, Douglas Jardine and Freddie Trueman, they were ready.

While England lost key players in the interim, Australia added a couple who were absent in England but had become integral components in the team.

Mike Hussey, a left-hander with an insatiable appetite for runs, was a late starter in Test cricket, a rarity for an Australian, but already averaged over 60 at the start of the series. He was to have a significant role in the recent campaign.

Stuart Clark was another whose worth had been confined to state cricket. A tall, McGrath-type fast bowler, he was finally chosen for Australia, aged 30, and was immediately Player-of-the-Series on debut in South Africa last March and April with 20 wickets in the three Tests. Once again, he claimed more wickets than either McGrath or Warne, 26 at 17 apiece.

With such added strength and with their intensity, Australia achieved their objective, if not their ultimate intention, within three Tests.

The Ashes had been retained but the decisions by Warne, McGrath and, later, Langer that it would be their last Test series gave added poignancy to Australia’s mission to complete the first 5-0 whipping of their oldest opponents in 86 years.

Their public, as convinced as the players themselves that the aberration of 2005 would be erased, filled the grounds every day to see them do it.

As they secured an amazing win in the second Test in Adelaide, settled the series in Perth, marked Warne’s 700th Test wicket in Melbourne and, finally, said farwell to the three retirees in Sydney, the emotions and the revelry were every bit as extravagant as England’s.

Their next assignment is the defence of the World Cup in the Caribbean in March and April. After that, they face a future without McGrath and Warne, a daunting prospect.

They themselves, when Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh, all played their last Test together in 1983, and the West Indies of the 1980s, when the greats of that time all made their exits, know the potential effects of such disruption.

Australia are now far better prepared to deal with it than they or the West Indies were in earlier times. For the moment, they are relishing the recapture of the game’s oldest and, to them, most cherished prize, symbolic as it might be.