From Ashes to dust

Australia’s decline seems inevitable. No team can afford loss of giants like Warne, McGrath and Gilchrist.

There used to be only three certainties in life: death, taxes and Australia winning the Ashes. Sure, England had won two of the last three Ashes series, but the Aussies could maintain that they had only lost those nail-biting series away from home, while mauling the Poms 5-0 at home. Now that England have regained the Ashes on foreign soil with two comprehensive innings wins, that justification no longer holds any weight. For the first time in 24 years, England will be leaving Australia with the urn safely secured and the cricket world order overturned.

In retrospect, Australia’s decline seems inevitable. No team can afford the loss of giants like Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Adam Gilchrist in such a short period. With a bowling attack that lacked variety and batsmen who weren’t prepared to slog it out, accompanied by selection blunders that cried of desperation and panic, Australia knew they were second-best and they certainly played like it. Australia has been humbled. Humility and introspection will have to follow. Captain Ricky Ponting, for so long one of the best batsmen in the world, now looks like a shell of a man, unable to find his fluency. He is likely the first victim of Australia’s inability to regain the Ashes.

There is a bright light in England’s Ashes tour for Pakistan too. This series has demonstrated the cyclical nature of cricket. Yesterday’s world-beaters are today’s whipping boys. We saw this with the West Indian team of the 1980s, which could seemingly never lose, and then suffered a rapid decline. England’s renaissance has been a hard-earned one that was accompanied by great professionalism and an ace coaching staff. Even that would not have been enough were it not for the talent they had at their disposal. It may take us as long as it took the English to become world-beaters. But as this series has shown us, the only constant in cricket is change.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 30^th, 2010.