Often, records are something players and teams like. They wear them like a crown when they are playing and probably look lovingly at them, like a war veteran would at his medals, when they are done. But over time you accumulate others, the thorns in the roses that you would like to hide but cannot ignore. Brian Lara knows all about this. For all his incandescence, nobody has lost more Test matches than he has and when his grandchildren sit on his lap, the thought, like a bad cavity, will remind him of its existence. Now Australia have one too. In the last fifteen months they have failed to defend 320 plus scores four times (including that 434!) and on two other occasions have been saved by the skin of their teeth. The opposition now know that irrespective of the score Australia put up, they can be chased down, and that knowledge is critical. Australia’s biggest strength over the years has been the aura around them, the awe they have generated in the opposition ranks. That wins more matches than any bowler or batsman can. But when a team says “hey, hang on, maybe we can” it takes the first step towards winning and now the world has taken that step. Their biggest weapon lies on the floor, disabled. It’s a long time since an Australian captain has said he was “demoralised”. That is music to the opposition, because they now know that a new, hitherto unknown, word has been added to the Aussie vocabulary. When India played, and beat, the West Indies in a one-day International at Berbice in Guyana (like Tunbridge Wells, Berbice is one of the shrines in our cricket mythology!), they surprised themselves and the cricketing world. It was like Columbus had found a new land, astronomers had discovered a new planet, like the Pythagoras theorem had been disproved. Then in the crucial first game at the World Cup of 1983, India did it again, not just because they suddenly became better players, but because they thought they could win. Now Australia have been forced to react. Players have been pulled out of the Pura Cup final, Brett Lee’s scan has been postponed, they might well do it in the departure lounge with Stuart Clark waiting in his cab with his blazer in hand, and with Hayden and Symonds already there they will resemble an army returning from war rather than one embarking on a mission. Surely they must now ask Adam Gilchrist whether he is a family man first or an Australian cricketer. It is a cruel question to ask, but in times of strife the general must be with the troops, especially since Australia haven’t been the best side fighting back from a crisis. They are brilliant when they are frontrunners where, like Roger Federer and Tiger Woods, they seem to drain hope out of the opposition. But coming back? The evidence in recent times, especially at the Ashes, isn’t encouraging. But teams become champions because they learn faster than anybody else. And that is why, in spite of the evidence above, I am willing to take a contrarian stance. If Australia had to stumble, this was the best time. If this had happened to them midway through the World Cup, they might have found it difficult to rally back, as they discovered during the World Cup of 1992 where they were tired and jaded. But now they know exactly where they stand three weeks before their first match. And while they will be hoping the doctors give them good news with Lee, Hayden and Symonds, they have time to introspect. Australia have been a great side not just because they were the best but because they were also the toughest. The second of those qualities will now be tested. It will be folly to put them out of even your smallest short-list, for the opposition to assume that the wounds are too deep. In India, meanwhile, far too many people are agonising over Irfan Pathan and I do not see why. Maybe there is too much space to fill or too much time to consume unless there is something we do not know. The only thing at stake is whether or not Pathan is fit, not whether or not he is good enough. That decision has already been taken. Now he has to be fit, and indeed match fit, before India’s first game which is still three weeks away. Some fractures heal in that much time. And so I do not know why three selectors have to come to see him play. One of the reasons Pathan is in this side is that we do not have anyone that offers the package he can. If we did, that man would be in the side already.
