Truth about the end of an Aussie golden gen... and masterpiece that flipped ugly Test script
Truth about the end of an Aussie golden gen... and masterpiece that flipped ugly Test script
For the better part of three years, Australian cricket has appeared headed for a cliff.
Concerning results have come at regular intervals, from an upset loss to the West Indies to end a 27-year unbeaten run against them on home soil, to being summarily dispatched by India in the first Test of the 2024/25 summer and, most recently, a historic defeat to Bangladesh in August.
But from the mire at 6-124 on Day 1 of the first Test against South Africa, Pat Cummins’ team — led by a match for the ages from Matt Renshaw — first rallied, then routed the Proteas for one of their finest wins under his tenure.
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“The demolition in Durban is complete,” commentator Gerard Whateley proclaimed on SEN as Nathan Lyon took the final catch off fourth-innings destroyer Josh Hazlewood.
“A tactical and technical masterclass from Australia.
“They have been rampant, ruthless and dominant.”
The team’s South African home away from home – they are undefeated in their last four Tests in Durban – witnessed a display reminiscent of Australia in excelsis.
Concern about the team’s scratchy start, and of bold decisions at the selection table, now seem premature.
Pre-series injury scares that threatened to cause chaos were dealt with.
Cameron Green’s absence and likely replacement Josh Inglis’ unavailability opened the door for Renshaw’s return to the middle order, a bold selection move spectacularly vindicated with a match that has entered the cricket lexicon as the “Renshaw Test”.
The jury remains out on Nic Maddinson’s recall to open the batting, but the nightmare that was imminent after a 33-ball duck on Day 1 dissipated substantially after a counterattacking 48 in the second innings gave Australia the perfect start as they sought to put the game out of reach.
The latest of bold selection gambles by the Australian hierarchy earned itself, in all likelihood, another Maddinson Test for him to prove his worth, and grumbles have by and large given away to acceptance – or in some corners, defence.
“You want to be flexible. I don’t know why it’s looked at as a negative,” cricket reporter Bharat Sundaresan said on The Final Word podcast.
“I don’t know why it’s looked at as them being too clever for their own good, or them outsmarting themselves.
“It might not work out at times, we’ve seen that happen with this group.
“But every time they’ve thought on their feet – whether it’s playing Michael Neser at the Gabba, not picking a spinner in Sydney, and similarly here, not just with the selection but the batting order.
“When you look at the variance in conditions that they have coming up, why not? You need that to be successful, or to keep the opposition on their feet.”
Co-host Adam Collins added: “More often than not when they’ve had a bit of a flyer, it’s worked. And that’s pretty gutsy.”
That’s not to say backlash over Maddinson’s selection after a torrid Day 1 branded “cruel” by commentator Mark Nicholas wasn’t justified.
Or that selectors haven’t made their share of similarly bold calls which have backfired in recent years, the most glaring being Nathan McSweeney’s ill-fated introduction to Test cricket as an opener against the might of India two summers ago, or Travis Head’s shock omission from the team to face the same opposition in Nagpur in 2023.
Even Renshaw’s success at No. 5 raises questions – he is the sixth Australian to score a century in the spot, which boasts the highest average of any position in the team.
Barring another change to the line-up for the second Test, which begins in Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) in four days’ time, the glaring void at the top of the order will remain, while a newfound middle-order logjam could easily force a harsh call on Beau Webster, pending Green’s fitness after an abdominal injury ruled him out in Durban.
Cummins’ decision to bat first on a zippy Kingsmead pitch, weeks after a similar call backfired in Bangladesh’s stunning thrashing in Darwin, likewise came up trumps, with Renshaw’s sublime 190 and the captain’s own cameo allowing the tourists to dictate terms from the first innings onwards.
And years of resisting the urge to change up perhaps world cricket’s greatest ever four-man bowling attack continues to pay off, with Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Hazlewood and Lyon surging past 600 wickets as a Test combo, while Hazlewood hit new heights with a career-best six-wicket haul to seal victory.
“They were relentless, the Australian attack,” commentator Mark Howard said.
A proud Damien Martyn, posting on X, showed the win was even impressive enough to dazzle a member of the all-conquering Australian team of the early 2000s – and a man who produced several of his finest innings in South Africa.
Another Australian great in Simon Katich was similarly awed.
“This Australian team have done an absolute number on South Africa on their home patch,” he said on SEN.
“They’ve been completely dismantled, by Renshaw and the Australian attack.”
A victory of this magnitude has been the better part of 18 months in coming.
England’s summer capitulation, and the subsequent death of Bazball, allowed the hosts to retain the Ashes in a 4-1 romp without playing anywhere near their best, as the teams combined for twin two-day matches to disappoint many ticket holders.
Last year, the chance to extend their reign as World Test Champions was squandered at Lord’s, as two batting collapses allowed the Proteas the best of conditions and opened the door for an Aiden Markram masterclass in the fourth innings.
Not since a 3-1 comeback series win over a Jasprit Bumrah-inspired India in 2024/25 has the Australian team risen higher ... and claiming the series in Gqeberha or Cape Town with at least one more victory this tour would surely deserve a spot at the very top of a golden generation’s list of achievements.
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At the close, the method of victory stood out as much as the margin.
In a T20-dominated era of cricket where fast scoring has become not just commonplace, but expected, Renshaw’s knock across the first two days was a masterpiece of patience and discipline.
He left 28 per cent of the 397 balls he faced across an eight-hour vigil, while exactly 100 of his runs came in singles, twos and threes.
Barring their third-innings chase for quick runs, it was an approach Australia took throughout the match.
Howard’s “relentless” moniker is fitting: in the first innings, six Proteas reached 30, but none went on to pass 50, never mind a century that could have turned the tide.
Cummins’ team stuck to their plans, bowled with accuracy, and consistently created chances which were near-universally held by the best Australian fielding performance seen in many a year.
Every mistake was punished, be it reverse-sweeps from Temba Bavuma and Kyle Vereynne spectacularly caught by a diving Smith at slip, or Tristan Stubbs and Wiaan Mulder falling hook, line and sinker for a Cummins short-ball trap.
Incredibly, the Australians finished the Test with a 100 per cent catching rate, with 18 takes to zero drops – a stark contrast to their six misses against Bangladesh in Darwin.
It’s a new record across two decades of data, per cricket analytics company CricViz, of most catches taken in a match without dropping a single one.
Even on the final day, as Markram and Mulder withstood more than 25 overs to raise parallels to a similar South African rearguard against Australia in Adelaide in 2012, they stuck to their guns.
When the chance came, it perfectly symbolised their approach.
While Mulder was a touch unlucky to strangle a thin edge down the leg side off Hazlewood, Carey’s one-handed diving catch was emblematic of his side’s ability in spite of their advancing years; while the presence of a leg slip advised that this was no mere happenstance, but rather a strategy successfully deployed.
Katich, a master of the graft in his playing days, lauded the “composure of the Australians to play old-school Test cricket”.
“They fashioned partnerships against the grain of play,” he said on SEN.
“The way that Matt Renshaw played ... if that doesn’t give him a huge amount of confidence, and also a template for the rest of this batting group, which has been under fire for a little period of time.
“There’s some special players in this group, and this Test showed that they’re capable of much more when they apply themselves with good old-fashioned Test cricket principles.”
With versatility becoming a catchword in recent years, Renshaw’s bowling cameo to complete a dream match, taking a vital maiden Test wicket late on Day 4 after being boldly thrown the ball, then adding a second before lunch on the final day, would have delighted the team hierarchy no end.
Two key facts further add to the sweetness for Cummins, Andrew McDonald and their charges as they bask in victory while preparing for two further challenges on African shores in the coming days.
It came with an XI which, for the first time in Test history, contained not a single player under 30 only adds to the scale of the triumph.
Rahul Dravid’s famous description of he and fellow Indian greats Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman in their waning years as “creaking terminators” could easily apply to the likes of the bowling quartet – the youngest of whom is Cummins at 33 – as well as Steve Smith (37), Alex Carey (35) and even the recalled Maddinson (34).
Yet the bowlers’ feats defied their years, while Smith’s stunning catching masterclass on Day 3 and Carey’s lithe one-handed take off Hazlewood on the final day to earn Australia a crucial breakthrough after a wicketless first hour, spoke of plenty left in the tank.
Having seemed near the end when he missed the entire Ashes summer with injury, Hazlewood’s response when asked by SEN’s Adam Collins whether at 35 he still felt in his prime was telling.
“I’m a bit older than I used to be,” he said, “but everything’s feeling really good.”
Victory also came while withstanding constant attention from without on a first Test tour of South Africa since the Sandpapergate scandal, with distractions ranging from press conference questions to deflect to Usman Khawaja’s reveal on series eve that he would be delving into the story in his upcoming autobiography.
A dismal Durban crowd unbefitting of the occasion, reportedly caused by a combination of ugly riots across the city and crippling cost of living pressure, helped matters, as an anticipated hostile reception never eventuated.
As did the absence of antagonist-in-chief Kagiso Rabada, who lit the fuse on the 2018 series after controversially escaping suspension for his mid-pitch bump on Smith.
It’s a challenge that will have to be confronted again in Gqeherba – the venue where Proteas fans arrived en masse to taunt David Warner eight years ago – and the scene of the crime itself in Cape Town.
But Cummins’ men have earned the confidence of every Australian fan that these challenges can be navigated just as successfully as Durban’s.
Cricket journalist Dan Brettig, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, opined that the team’s “barbecue” of South Africa “should be cause for a reappraisal of Pat Cummins’ team”.
“Before this game, it had been the role of Matthew Hayden to launch a strident critique of Cummins and the selectors, for “promoting the greatest pile of mediocrity that we’ve seen in a generation of cricket”,” Brettig wrote.
“Hayden was once part of an ageing team that, reinforced by a few more senior players like Mike Hussey and Stuart Clark, went on a sunset tear from 2005 to 2007.
“On the evidence of Durban, Cummins and company are capable of something similar.”
There are still areas of improvement as Australia turn their sights to the rest of the series.
Marnus Labuschagne twice missed the chance to solidify his spot with an innings of note as Renshaw did, while Travis Head missed out twice and Webster’s spot is again in jeopardy.
Long-term, that cliff, while the team’s veterans continue to perform well enough to more than justify their continued selection, will need to be navigated carefully, lest Australian cricket suffer from a spate of retirements as befell the team in the mid-2000s.
That period saw Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Justin Langer bow out simultaneously in January 2007, with Martyn having narrowly preceded them.
Within two years, Hayden, Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds and Brett Lee had all played their final Tests as well.
Sheffield Shield talents capable of producing an over like Hazlewood’s in which he first dismissed Marco Jansen with a perfect nip-backer, then did for Simon Harmer with a venomous lifter, are non-existent.
At 36, Starc remains the nation’s fastest bowler consistently available for long-form cricket; while shallow seamer depth is epitomised by Scott Boland and Michael Neser, well into their 30s, remaining selectors’ first-choice back-ups.
Todd Murphy and Matt Kuhnemann, the latter in South Africa as part of the squad, have both been trialled in tandem with Lyon, but replacing him full-time looms as a challenge almost equal to that faced by Warne’s departure nearly 20 years ago.
For all of that, though, reports of a golden generation’s demise, it appears, have been greatly exaggerated.