Australia's Mental State

[Burgey]

Agreed with all except the bolded part. Cummins is an excellent example, he is the role model for Aussie cricketers to get back at their best.

Sure he seems a nice kid and all, but he's part of the losing side and has to pay.

 

[Kirkut]

Sure he seems a nice kid and all, but he's part of the losing side and has to pay.

Nice but tough. He has that old school Aussie toughness in him which I saw in someone like Matthew Hayden.

 

[stephen]

I think of all the players in either side, Cummins is the one who should cop least criticism for his performance.

I mean if he had any wicket taking support at all on day 5 in Brisbane we'd be talking about fortress Gabba being impregnable.

 

[OverratedSanity]

I think of all the players in either side, Cummins is the one who should cop least criticism for his performance.

I mean if he had any wicket taking support at all on day 5 in Brisbane we'd be talking about fortress Gabba being impregnable.

So you mean to say he should cop the most criticism?

 

[Pup Clarke]

Put plainly : there are players in the top six (and on the fringes) who don't have the aptitude for test match cricket. Head and Wade in particular just don't trust their defence, and you can see they are fidgety and restless at the crease when the bowlers can excerpt some pressure (i.e 2/3 maidens on the spin)
Head has some qualities and can fight it out even when he looks majorly out of form, but by in large top bowlers will be able to work him over pretty quickly (4th stump line, ring field)

 

[Heboric]

Me thinks all will be forgotten by the end of the year if Australia retiains The Asshes

 

[Kirkut]

Me thinks all will be forgotten by the end of the year if Australia retiains The Asshes

I see Starc picking up 25 wickets in the next series he's playing as a cathartic reaction.

 

[Daemon]

Labuschagne's shot after scoring his 100 had shades of Amir no balls in 2010. Unthinkable to play that.

Hmmm, interesting. Very interesting.

 

[Smudge49]

"Get ready for a broken ****ing arm."

"You just wait until Brisbane."

Superficially these two comments are similar but they reveal the root cause of the issues faced by this Australia team.

In the first instance you have a captain who is present, switched on and focused on the game in front of him. He achieved a lot with a much poorer side than this one.

In the second instance you have a captain who has mentally given up on the current game (Sydney) who is pinning his hopes on the next game. What's worse, the attitude was "we just have to show up in Brisbane and we'll win". It's the same thinking that said "it's ok to lose in 2018 because we don't have our two best batsmen", when in reality the side was consistently batting for less than a day on roads.

The attitude of the Australian leadership is why Australia now failed to dismiss a side on day 5 on a regular basis, despite having arguably the best bowler of Yorkers, three quicks who can bowl 140+, an off spinner who has nearly 400 wickets and a number of decent part time options.

I'm not sure if it's Langer or Paine, but the performance of this Australian side is way below par given the talent available. They continuously let the game slide, showing no urgency on days 1-4 in a must win match. They are satisfied with 370 on a batsman's paradise against a third string attack. The team is acting less than the sum of its parts.

Players like Wade and Head are getting starts but never converting, falling to lazy shots, the likes of which saw Martyn banished for years.

There is a lack of strategic test match thinking. Starc in particular is often mismanaged. He should only bowl around the wicket if he's bumping a batsman to get them out. For long periods in Brisbane he bowled around the wicket, but not bowling bouncers - bowling length. But doing so was pointless because it takes out the possibility for lbw, reduces the chances of bowled and caught behind and is generally unthreatening. In Sydney he tried bowling leg side bouncers for an entire spell and wasted every ball that spell. The problem is not the bowler's talent, it's his management.

The problem with the Australian side is its leadership, which is slow, unresponsive and is content with mediocrity. It must change or we will continue losing.

This is a top observation, unfortunately the issues persist right from the top.

Cricket Australia is a poorly managed entity for sometime now and the people running the show hate nothing more, than seeing guys with authority down the hierarchy questioning their management skills or demanding accountability from them.

Active players Khawaja and former players like Clarke raise these issues, but all it does is burn bridges of further opportunities for them.

As a result a culture of yesmanship is growing in Australian cricket, where Langer is CA's man and whatever he says flies. Without any real leadership, it becomes hard for individual players also to perform in any substantial manner, because opinion of the management is what seems to be deciding a player's fate rather than ability or performances.

 

[Son Of Coco]

This is a top observation, unfortunately the issues persist right from the top.

Cricket Australia is a poorly managed entity for sometime now and the people running the show hate nothing more, than seeing guys with authority down the hierarchy questioning their management skills or demanding accountability from them.

Active players Khawaja and former players like Clarke raise these issues, but all it does is burn bridges of further opportunities for them.

As a result a culture of yesmanship is growing in Australian cricket, where Langer is CA's man and whatever he says flies. Without any real leadership, it becomes hard for individual players also to perform in any substantial manner, because opinion of the management is what seems to be deciding a player's fate rather than ability or performances.

View attachment 26992

This sounds like a lot of Australian businesses to be honest. It certainly rings true of university management. Have also worked at an aviation training company that was run in a similar way.

 

[Smudge49]

This sounds like a lot of Australian businesses to be honest. It certainly rings true of university management. Have also worked at an aviation training company that was run in a similar way.

Unfortunately cricket can't be run like other businesses, if the team is no good, there aren't enough marque players worth the price of the ticket, subscriptions, sponsors or merchandise then the whole structure will eventually crumble.

 

[stephen]

This sounds like a lot of Australian businesses to be honest. It certainly rings true of university management. Have also worked at an aviation training company that was run in a similar way.

Don't even get me started about how bad university leadership is. It's woeful and cancerous and filled with a bunch of people who have no qualifications or skills in management at all.

There is someone I know in a clinical course where the head of discipline is not qualified to practice in the discipline and therefore can't teach into the course. The head of another discipline in the same school is not even doing anything related to that discipline but was appointed because they hold the rank of professor.

And that's not even getting started on the cancerous politics in the courses. People being given the plum jobs who are way under qualified because they are yes men, professors being forced to spend all of their time doing grunt work because they represent a threat to the head of school because they're competent, people being given coordination roles when they can't even write or read emails properly.

It's amazing how badly run universities are. They're more beaurocratic and inefficient than government.

I was involved in a church which was meeting in a lecture theatre at a university, which we paid for the use of. We met on a Sunday evening but eventually found somewhere else to meet because the university was forcing people to pay $20 to park for 2h when the only other cars on campus were university owned cars. Giant empty car parks but beaurocracy meant we couldn't use them without paying a fortune.

We found out later than another church was meeting in the building around the corner on the same campus and they didn't have to pay for their parking. Madness.

 

[Son Of Coco]

Unfortunately cricket can't be run like other businesses, if the team is no good, there aren't enough marque players worth the price of the ticket, subscriptions, sponsors or merchandise then the whole structure will eventually crumble.

I agree. My point was more that management in a number of areas is filled with useless *****.

 

[vicleggie]

I think there is far too much analysis of Australia's 'mental state'

This is not Dr Phil.

Bottom line, their players are not performing. Their batting lineup has no cohesion, and their bowling line up can look like less than the sum of it's parts sometimes.

Also, India coming to Australia more often is probably going to result in them not being as daunted by the away conditions.

 

[stephen]

I think there is far too much analysis of Australia's 'mental state'

This is not Dr Phil.

Bottom line, their players are not performing. Their batting lineup has no cohesion, and their bowling line up can look like less than the sum of it's parts sometimes.

Also, India coming to Australia more often is probably going to result in them not being as daunted by the away conditions.

It's not Dr Phil, it's professional sports. In a game where millimetres matter and the game is essentially about which side applies their talent better, the mental side of the game is usually the thing which separates victory and loss.

If you have bowlers who crank it up to 150+ kph and can't take wickets on day 5, that's down to the mental side of the game.

The folks who are downplaying this also can't explain why Australia underperformed so badly with the best batsman and bowler in the world and a number of other players in the top 10. This was honestly the worst Indian side on paper to tour in the last 20 years against an Australia, who on paper are probably the strongest they've been since McGrath retired.

It's the strategic and mental game and that's on the coach and captain.

 

[Son Of Coco]

Don't even get me started about how bad university leadership is. It's woeful and cancerous and filled with a bunch of people who have no qualifications or skills in management at all.

There is someone I know in a clinical course where the head of discipline is not qualified to practice in the discipline and therefore can't teach into the course. The head of another discipline in the same school is not even doing anything related to that discipline but was appointed because they hold the rank of professor.

And that's not even getting started on the cancerous politics in the courses. People being given the plum jobs who are way under qualified because they are yes men, professors being forced to spend all of their time doing grunt work because they represent a threat to the head of school because they're competent, people being given coordination roles when they can't even write or read emails properly.

It's amazing how badly run universities are. They're more beaurocratic and inefficient than government.

I was involved in a church which was meeting in a lecture theatre at a university, which we paid for the use of. We met on a Sunday evening but eventually found somewhere else to meet because the university was forcing people to pay $20 to park for 2h when the only other cars on campus were university owned cars. Giant empty car parks but beaurocracy meant we couldn't use them without paying a fortune.

We found out later than another church was meeting in the building around the corner on the same campus and they didn't have to pay for their parking. Madness.

Yeah, uni management is ****ing atrocious. You've got a heap of people who get paid shitloads of money to essentially drive the education system into the ground. Vice chancellors get around a million bucks a year on average in Australia. Maybe you need to be paid that much to ignore the drop in standards you're allowing by passing some students who don't bother studying because they are paying a premium and expect the piece of paper to be a byproduct of that outlay. Then make 80% of your staff casual and give them the directive that certain students can't fail. They'll be too scared to push back because, due to their perilous employment status, you can fire them yesterday. This is exactly what happens. I would hope that at faculty the prevalence of students just being passed is lower than it is in the feeder courses (like English language) because it's rife in any pathway course into faculty. But I have heard stories that make me wonder if it's that much lower.

The current system does a massive disservice to the tutors and lecturers delivering the course, anyone in management who actually cares about standards, and those students (both international and domestic) who bust their arses to do the best they can. It also creates divisions between staff members as those who care have to watch pathetic grovellers pretend nothing is happening.

 

[Son Of Coco]

I probably should have added that if financial metrics are your yardstick, they are doing quite well, or were before COVID. If educational standards are your yardstick, it's a battle to see who can ignore the most. Unfortunately, the whole industry is dictated to by who gives the biggest concessions as the battle is to attract students and, sadly, making it "too hard to pass" doesn't attract students. The unis aren't solely to blame - better government funding wouldn't leave them at the mercy of their 'customers'. As soon as students become 'customers' the whole thing is ****ed.

 

[stephen]

Covid has smashed many of the mid tier unis in the country. And that means the political operators become even more powerful unfortunately.

 

[Prince EWS]

Petition to change the name of the thread to Victoria.

 

[stephen]

Petition to change the name of the thread to Victoria.