DURING England’s second innings at the final Ashes Test at The Oval, Matt Prior’s drive first smacked into the pitch and then bounced onto Ricky Ponting’s left cheek. In what would have felt like a well connected right hook, Ponting was momentarily dazed, and would have been down for the count if it were a boxing ring. The Aussie captain, being the tough guy he is, did regain his composure and the fact that it was the stroke of lunch helped matters. But there was no such respite for the Australian team, which ignominiously has now lost two successive away Ashes series. Prior’s drive had inflicted its share of pain but its symbolic significance will rattle the most. By the time the dust settled on the Oval pitch (and there was loads of it on a track that crumbled unexpectedly), the Aussies were left to rue their decision of not selecting spinner Nathan Hauritz and despair over their fall to 4th place on the world test rankings, the first time they are not number one since 2003. And there you have it - the Aussie aura and era are over; the aura punctured by the exit of greats whose shoes are too big to fill in the short run and the era closed by teams which seem to have the right mix of spunk and experience to take over the mantle. It would be naïve to imagine no one saw this coming. Even a school kid will tell you that a team that loses players of the caliber and impact of McGrath, Warne, the Waugh brothers, Hayden and Gilchrist in about a half a decade span will have a lot of catching up to do. At different times Michael Clarke, Michael Hussey, Mitchell Johnson and even Brad Haddin have tried to plug the gaps but they could only gallantly delay the inevitable. Schadenfreude would be the order of the day as the cricketing world tries to make sense of the irony of the Ashes defeat – the Aussies were the statistically superior team all through and yet they came up short. It has been a trajectory similar to the West Indies’ decline, plateau and fall through the 90s after the legends like Viv Richards, Malcom Marshall, Desmond Haynes and Gordon Greenidge called it a day.
Australia’s first weakening was the exit of Steve and Mark Waugh, and then Glenn McGrath followed by Shane Warne. The final nail was the exit of Adam Gilchrist and of course, Mathew Hayden. In the meantime, the Aussies held their fort because the support system worked well for the key men left. Clarke and Hussey’s emergence in batting and Ponting’s own solidity masked the absence of a Glichrist or Hayden till the time the bowling was well marshaled and there was a Warne to call on. It was a similar story for the other dominant team, the West Indies, when their batting inadequacies, bar Brian Lara were shored up by the towering achievements of Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh operating in tandem. Once Warne left, and Johnson’s form became more erratic than the Indian monsoon, the weaknesses were exposed far too many times. Starting with the Waugh exits in 2002 (Mark) and 2004 (Steve), the fact that Australia were finally knocked off the pedestal of the No.1 Test team for the first time since then has an eerie foreboding to it.
It’s open season now for the top spot, though it is difficult to argue that the team sitting atop both the Test and ODI rankings is not the best in all forms of the game. South Africa have shown remarkable ability, even in the nascent T20 format and this could be the time to consolidate their gains at the top. The other contender is India, a team whose evolution to a world beater has coincided with Australia’s decline, quite a bit of which has been contributed by them in some of the most hard fought test series ever seen. The meeting of India and South Africa in India in February 2010, then, assumes immense significance. To use the oft abused phrase, the tipping point has arrived and whichever team makes the bold first move can occupy the top spot again. And yes, don’t quite count Australia out of list, just in case.
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