There is little point arguing with opinion or memories when sport is involved. Favourite players and teams are objective, people attracted to different styles or bestowed responsibility of support by elders. Favourite players, eras and games are a controversial topic. For reasons contradicted by statistics and longevity, people often rate inferior players above those more worthy. Their explanations are often unworthy, simply opinion, worth a debate but not worth an argument.
Talking about sport is a wonderful exchange of words and facts, often more enjoyable than discussing anything else. Men look forward to discussing sport. Differing opinions enrich the banter, Clarke shouldn’t be captain, Ponting must retire, allowing fans to provide proof, character or form, why their opinion is just. People either agree or not.
Millions of Australian’s profess their love for cricket. Such is its captivating nature, many fans enjoy talking about the game as much or more than watching or listening. Cricket provides ample topics to discuss, the repartee proving allegiances and the vast differences. Inevitably, each summer, people will discuss the virtues of cricket’s different formats.
Plenty could watch every ball of a Test match yet shun the one-day game and Twenty20. Others believe Tests are too long and boring, ignoring the glorious subtleties Tests can provide for the fast food delivery of shorter formats.
One-day cricket polarises opinion. Traditionalists frown contemptuously. Others espouse all sorts of cricket, Tests, ODI or Twenty20, it matters not the format but the game. It’s a handy disposition, however rare.
The merit of one-day cricket is often questioned, particularly since the mid-nineties, but no one should rightly question its place in the game. Once as loved as adrenalin, one-day cricket almost had it all. It doesn’t, of course, but most Australian kids growing up in the seventies or eighties were seduced by one-day cricket. I can remember watching World Series Cricket, unaware and uncaring of the divide Kerry Packer created. All I cared about was cricket, and though I loved the Tests, the one-day game seemed more exciting.
In 1981 my opinion began to waver. Australia defeated the West Indies at the MCG in one of the best Tests I’d watched and listened to. As Channel 9 once did, coverage in the host city didn’t start until the last session of the Test. For the duration of the Test I carried a radio for description then perched in front of the television for the last session’s pictures. On the first day Kim Hughes hit an unbeaten hundred. Dennis Lillee bowled Viv Richards off the last ball of the first day, leaving the West Indies 4-26 in reply to Australia’s first innings of 198.
Set 219 to win, the Windies were bowled out for 161 on the final morning, Lillee taking three wickets, Bruce Yardley four. Of all the Tests I’d seen up until that point of my life, this was the best.
A year later, coming back from Horsham in northern Victoria, the car radio broadcast the final morning of the Boxing Day Test between Australia and England. Across four days, no batsman scored a hundred, Chris Tavare top-scoring with 89 in England’s first innings total of 284.
Australia was bowled out for 287, Kim Hughes the best with 66. The pitch didn’t get easier to bat on in the second innings. Runs could be made, evident by Graeme Fowler’s 65 and Ian Botham’s 46 as England scored 294, setting Australia 291 runs to win.
Late on day four, Allan Border and Jeff Thompson came together for the last wicket, 63 runs adrift of victory. Victory was unlikely, but by close of play Australia needed 37 runs to win. On the final day, the MCG gates were unmanned, free entry. An estimated 5000 watched Border and Thompson draw closer to the target, causing tension in the car, squirming in the heat, an occasional come on breaking the silence as their partnership grew to 60. A family of six was otherwise quiet.
Thompson, after facing 62 balls for 21 runs, was caught at slip off Ian Botham, leaving Australia three runs short. Botham’s innocuous delivery, short and wide, would’ve been a boundary had Thompson swiped at it. Instead, it ended the most exciting Test I’d ever listened to, just surpassing the 1981 MCG Test against the West Indies.
Seething on the drive home, exhilaration snatched by a catch, the might of Test cricket made a sudden impact. I began paying attention to Test statistics, bowling and batting averages, cutting up the sports pages and pasting newspaper into scrap books.
None of those scrap books exist anymore, I only did it for a few months and threw them away a decade later, but I found millions of stories in history and by delving into stats. Paying attention to the commentary, television and radio, was an education, field placings, shots and bowling techniques. Though I still loved one-day cricket, Tests became my favourite format, an opinion still the same.
Armed with a ten-dollar voucher, in 1983, I sat on the floor in a Melbourne book store, the sport section, pawing over two hard-cover books, both retelling the 1981-82 season. One focused on Tests, the other on one-day games. Aged 12, I let go the one-day book and presented the Test book for lay-bye. Months later, upon receipt of a letter, my father Bill paid the balance and bought home my first cricket book. I fawned over the stats for months.
When I was a kid, long after bedtime I fought sleep while listening to the cricket on a clock radio, the sound barely audible so not to rouse my siblings. If Australia lost sleep wasn’t easy, how can we lose to a bunch of medium pacers from New Zealand, but victory meant sleep was easy and peaceful. Growing up, I still feasted on one-day cricket, particularly when the West Indies toured, but the game remained secondary to Tests.
When Australia won the 1987 World Cup in India, I didn’t watch a ball, barely following the tournament. It was football season. North Melbourne was in the top five. If the World Cup games were on television it was late. The final, though, was televised. My mate Russ recorded it on BETA video. It was compelling viewing. He almost forced me to watch it, and I’m thankful for that.
Later that year, Dean Jones hit consecutive hundreds in Perth against England and Pakistan. I was at Point Lonsdale with Russ and his family, a caravan vacation, a tiny television and radio. Russ’s dad Bob grew tired of our oohs and ahs as Jones neared his hundreds.
A party at Acacia Ridge on 14 January 1989 became a homage to one-day cricket, about forty people, teenage girls and boys, crammed into a lounge to watch Australia defeat the West Indies in the first final by two runs, 204 to 202.
The Windies levelled the series two days later, victory by 92 runs. In the decider on 18 January, Jones, at the urging of his coach Bob Simpson, charged Curtly Ambrose in a rain interrupted match, getting hit on the hand and breaking a finger. Jones hit singles by necessity, finishing on 93 not-out, his busted finger ruining any chance of a hundred.
Australia scored 226 from 38 overs. Rain reduced the West Indies target to 108 from 16 overs. They won the series easily by eight wickets in the eleventh over. The loss left me walking the house at Elimbah, drinking a beer and cursing the West Indies to hell.
In 1991, Australia toured the West Indies, winning the one-day series 4-1 but losing the Tests 2-1. Living in Rockhampton, Channel 9 televised the series. Waking up to cricket was great. Victory, though, in the one-day series seemed incidental to the devastation of Test defeat, hardly rating a mention following the Caribbean tour. Former Australian captain Allan Border was desperate to defeat the West Indies in a Test series and never did. There is no doubt Border would’ve forgone the one-day series to prevail in the Tests.
Six years later, Mark Taylor was Australian captain. The 1997 Ashes tour of England had started badly, Australia routed 3-0 in the one-day series. Taylor’s response was blunt. ‘We’re here to win the Tests,’ he said. ‘Not the one-day series.’ Taylor’s side, after losing the first Test, recovered to regain the Ashes.
When Steve Waugh took over as captain he wanted to win everything, a ruthless attitude where no game was meaningless. Waugh was never satisfied until the opposition had disintegrated, physically and mentally. Where Taylor lost the 1996 World Cup, Waugh led Australia to victory in 1999. Ricky Ponting had the same attitude as Waugh. Under Ponting, Australia won the 2003 and 2007 World Cups.
Michael Clarke, without the grunt, is trying to adopt a similar attitude as Waugh and Ponting.
It’s been years since I deliberately sat down to watch a one-day game. The last series I paid avid attention to was the 2007 World Cup, where I recorded games to watch in the aftermath. Nowadays the game gets passing interest, if there’s nothing else on I’ll watch it. If a radio is nearby, I’ll listen to it.
I don’t dislike one-day cricket, I just prefer Tests. Part of my bias is based on the pitches, flat wickets giving batsmen the advantage. I like a green top, swing and movement, where the subtleties of bowling outweigh flaws in batting technique that don’t bear scrutiny in the one-day game. I also appreciate the fact that the players rate Test cricket higher.
Many great moments in one-day history have been missed, a price paid willingly, but scant regard doesn’t mean all the great moments were missed. I’ve rarely missed a final series, it’s the lead up games that don’t seem to matter, and I know who had the aptitude for the one-day game and those whose skills didn’t allow it.
One-day cricket has all the fundamentals of Test cricket. The team with the most runs or the team who takes the most wickets will win. Games can’t be drawn but they can be tied. Individual performances, runs, wickets or catches, will win matches. Despite the fundamentals, the gap between the two formats is vast.
Bowlers are limited to ten overs. There are strict fielding restrictions. Teams must have two catches close to the wicket for 15 overs. Only five fieldsmen can be placed outside the circle once the fielding restrictions are eased. Batsmen can play relaxed. Edges that would be caught in Tests go to the boundary. Improvisation is expected, not ridiculed. To the watcher, it seems easier to score runs in one-day cricket than in Tests, and harder for bowlers to restrict the scoring. Averages tell a different story.
Critics of one-day cricket have long labelled it the pyjama game, a term the Ramble has often used. The format is also derided as hit and giggle, or cricket for those with short attention spans. Ridicule matters little, because those same people who take pleasure in denouncing one-day cricket continue to watch or listen when Australia plays at home or abroad.
The game, unless washed out, is immediate, and it has endured by evolving and captivating fans around the world. It remains the most commercially viable format, though it may soon lose its mantle to Twenty20. Fault can’t be found with cricket boards who embrace the bounty. Fans vote with their bums, on seats in stadiums, at home through television rights and the game prospers with legal betting partners.
Cricket is an industry. Any format that preserves its fan base and makes money should not be dismissed.
The players, though, when truth is analysed, may not embrace the one-day game as the fans do. Rod Marsh was forthright in condemning one-day cricket. Men like Dean Jones and Michael Bevan longed to be regarded as great Test players. The truth is otherwise, they’re remembered as great one-day players, a difference that might seem slight, they still represented Australia with aplomb, but their longing isn’t satiated by lust.
Great players adapt to all formats, others don’t, but they’re still great players if they’re great in the one-day game.
One-day cricket, with segregated teams, may be rated as inferior to Test matches by some fans, but administrators think otherwise. Cricket Australia, for decades, has used the one-day game to groom players for higher duties. Adam Gilchrist and Mark Waugh played one-day cricket three years before making their Test debuts. There is merit in one-day cricket. It provides a glimpse to the future, proof of who to advance and those to discard.
Australia’s selection policy doesn’t allow meaningless one-day games. Our team is in constant motion, and the one-day game has contributed to Australia’s unprecedented success. It’s why one-day cricket is so important. It breeds fans and future Test players. The same could be said about Twenty20, given Dave Warner’s recent transition to Test cricket.
My best Australian one-day side contains a few surprises, but the beauty of objective opinion makes my team exactly that, mine. You don’t have to agree with it. Plenty of great players have represented Australia in the past 40 years, and while most of the selections seemed automatic, it wasn’t that easy.
I’ll post my team soon.
where’s ya bloody one day side
