JUDGMENT Day has arrived for Australian cricket. It's perform or perish.
A stratospheric rise, or dramatic descent into darkness, hangs on the result of the Boxing Day Test. It is that serious.
The first delivery comes at 11am and Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland should be tolling a bell. Rarely has a more important Test match been played in this country.
Part of cricket will die in this country if the urn returns to England.
Cricket needs fans. Fans demand success.
Winners are embraced. Losers are given short shrift. Crowd numbers, TV ratings and relevance were evaporating before the revival in Perth.
Interest has surged for one reason. Australia won the third Test at the WACA to level the series and offer hope.
Five-year plans are just more excuses. Australians expect success, and a successful Test cricket team is our birthright.
We've got glorious beaches, cold beer, meat pies and a world-beating Test cricket team.
He will either be holding up an Ashes trophy in the most glorious moment of his playing days and Australian cricket will simultaneously go through the roof. Or Ponting be staring at the ground like he's at a funeral if England captain Andrew Strauss is doing the unthinkable and holding up the urn.
And if that does happen, Australia are likely to be looking for a new captain.
Allan Border got it right about The Clarke Conundrum.
We cannot know if Michael Clarke's a good Test captain until he's given a go.
The expectations on Hughes and Smith should be no different to those on Ponting and Clarke. They either succeed or fail just like everyone else.
This is a results-driven business and they're either up to it or they're not. For Hughes, Smith, Ponting, Clarke and the whole of Australian cricket, everything hangs in the balance.
No comments:
Post a Comment