The Shorter Wisden 2013 (74 page)

Group B was thrown wide open by the inconsistency of West Indies and New Zealand. West Indies imploded in a rain-affected game against the hosts Sri Lanka, but bounced back with their first win
over New Zealand in a competitive match. The quartet eliminated at the group stage went into play-off matches to qualify for the 2014 tournament in Bangladesh. India beat Sri Lanka to avoid the
ignominy of having to go to Ireland for the qualifying competition; South Africa also secured their place, with victory over Pakistan off the penultimate ball.

Before the tournament, a media furore had erupted when the scale of the pay gap between the genders became apparent. The ICC granted women players a daily allowance of $60, compared to $100 for
the men; the women had flown economy class, the men in business; most glaringly of all, prize money of $60,000 for the victorious Australian women was dwarfed by the $1m picked up by Darren
Sammy’s West Indians. Despite all that, and a smaller overall budget for the women’s game, an ICC spokesman said it was aiming for “equal everything”.

Women’s cricket falls under the development arm of the ICC, so staging international events is not a profit-making venture, and it may never reach economic parity with the men’s
game. But the ICC must ensure the cricket remains attractive. The standards displayed by Australia and England need to be more frequently matched by the countries behind them. Quicker pitches would
help too.

FINAL

AUSTRALIA v ENGLAND

At Colombo (RPS), October 7, 2012. Australia won by four runs. Toss: England.

Australia’s women defended their World Twenty20 title. Although England took the match down to the last ball, they were always playing catch-up after their successful formula – bowl
first, suffocate the batsmen with spin – was thrown off course by Australia’s aggressive openers, Meg Lanning and Alyssa Healy. They harnessed the pace of the ball, and any deviation
from the required line and length by Katherine Brunt seemed to result in a boundary. Jess Cameron rattled up 45 off 34 deliveries, including a six over midwicket off Anya Shrubsole in an over that
cost 17 as she insisted on bowling full. After that, Charlotte Edwards wisely kept her spinners on until the end. Australia bowled with greater discipline, and England immediately fell behind the
rate. But Australian nerves began to fray: four catches went down in the second half of the innings, and Jenny Gunn diluted the equation to 16 from the last over. When Erin Osborne delivered a
beamer second ball, England had a sniff. Danielle Hazell needed to hit Osborne’s last ball for six, but she mistimed it to midwicket, and Australian celebrations began.

Player of the Match:
J. E. Cameron.
Player of the Tournament:
C. M. Edwards.

Umpires: B. F. Bowden and M. Erasmus. Third umpire: A. L. Hill.

Referee: G. F. Labrooy.

AUSTRALIAN CRICKET, 2012

D
ANIEL
B
RETTIG

Michael Clarke and James Pattinson, captain and fast bowler. Their fortunes during the Sydney Test against India in the first week of January 2012 were at once contrasting and
for Australia, defining. Clarke epitomised all that was strong about his side, erecting a monumental unbeaten 329 and going on to deliver the most prolific year of all by an Australian batsman. He
also led his men with intelligence and aggression, guiding them to three Test series victories out of four. But Pattinson personified all that was uncertain: the transition and tribulation of a
team that wrestled with the husbanding of resources and the loss of Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey. Though he removed four of India’s top five on the first day, Pattinson ended the match with
a foot stress fracture, having been selected against the advice of medical staff who held data suggesting his workload had entered a zone of high risk. The rest of his year was a tale of recovery,
inconsistency, further injury, frustration and back-room battles over his availability, as Cricket Australia tried to implement a rotation and management policy that had yet to produce the
hoped-for fruit.

If 2011 had been the year of introspection, recrimination and change, 2012 was a time for Australian cricket to bed down, and possibly mark time. The Argus Review was largely reinforced but
occasionally undermined, while the conclusions of a governance review pushed the CA board into a new structure that was both slimmer and better rounded. The AGM witnessed the appointment of the
first three independent directors, including the first woman, Jacquie Hey. Elsewhere, the team-performance and commercial arms of CA haggled over players who were expected to build towards
sustained success in the international game on the one hand, and act as billboards for the Big Bash League on the other. It was not an easy balance to strike.

Overall, a sense pervaded that much of the sparring on and off the field was a primer for the confrontations of 2013 – from the Test team’s tilt at returning the Ashes, to the
board’s pursuit of a better broadcast-rights deal, which for the first time since World Series Cricket was genuinely open to offers beyond those of Channel Nine. CA had been reinforced for
this task, but the team was weakened by retirements. Ponting’s exit was hastened by the pained concession he could no longer bat the way he and the team desired; Hussey’s departure
arrived at a moment when he was arguably more valuable than ever. The selectors were thus forced into a hurried reassessment of the modest batting at their disposal, and players into a rapid
assumption of greater seniority.

Such uncertainty seemed distant when India were being coshed every which way, but there were hints of difficulty when the team ventured to the Caribbean in March. Clarke did not go with the
limited-overs party as he recovered from a hamstring strain, and in his absence Shane Watson found the going difficult, as West Indies shared both the one-day and Twenty20 series on pitches that
were often slow and low. Sunil Narine’s variations were a source of puzzlement, and there was as much relief at his exit to the IPL as there was at Clarke’s arrival for the Tests.

West Indies were beaten by performances more artisan than artful, though the conclusion to the Barbados Test was genuinely rousing. The most telling contribution of the series belonged to
Matthew Wade, who replaced Brad Haddin as wicketkeeper after Haddin had rushed home to be with his 17-month-old daughter Mia, who was gravely ill with cancer. Wade showed a compelling ability to
learn from early tremors during the one-day internationals, and punched Australia’s only century of the series, in Dominica, to ensure they took the series 2–0. It meant Australia
retained the Frank Worrell Trophy they had held since 1994-95.

Less comfortable was a visit to the British Isles for one-day cricket. A rained-off fixture at Edgbaston was the only thing that separated Australia from a 5–0 defeat by England. Hussey
absented himself from the trip for family reasons and, as rainy days and injuries to Watson, Pat Cummins and Brett Lee compounded the sting of results, others were forgiven for wishing they had
joined him. Lee retired from international cricket after the tour, and only Clint McKay and George Bailey improved their reputations. The coach Mickey Arthur surmised after a hiding at
Chester-le-Street: “We’ve allowed ourselves to be bullied, and we’re better than that.”

Unified by a training camp in Darwin, a more cohesive team performed creditably in the UAE against Pakistan, winning the one-day series and losing the Twenty20s narrowly. In a Twenty20 against
India in February, Bailey had made history as Australia’s first captain since the very first Test in 1876-77 to be appointed without having played an international match; later in the year he
led Australia to the semi-finals of the World Twenty20, when Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard and Ravi Rampaul ended the campaign. Shortly before the tournament, Australia had been ranked tenth in the
Twenty20 world rankings – below Bangladesh and Ireland – but that was more a reflection of the ICC’s criteria than any slump. Another long separation from his family during the
competition had Hussey resolving privately to quit at the end of the summer.

Clarke prepared for the home Test season by captaining New South Wales in the earliest start to a domestic season, shoved into September by the dual disruptions of the World Twenty20 and the
Champions League. Sydney Sixers added that tournament to their inaugural Big Bash title, but at some cost: Watson lacked a first-class prelude to the Test summer, and promptly suffered another calf
strain, while Cummins complained of back soreness, which was later revealed to be a stress fracture, to the horror of the CA team-performance manager Pat Howard and the selectors. Later, Howard
noted ruefully that “no one owns the players now”.

The arrival of South Africa coincided with a quirk in the ICC’s Test rankings: by vanquishing England in their previous series, Graeme Smith’s team offered Clarke’s the chance
to pinch No. 1 with a win. Led by another duo of landmark innings by Clarke, double-centuries in Brisbane and Adelaide, Australia came within two wickets of taking the lead. Injury and fatigue were
to bite at the most pivotal moments, however. Debutant Faf du Plessis defied Australia’s bowlers in the Second Test, helped by the loss of Pattinson to a side injury in the first innings.

South Africa’s final-day exertions meant neither Peter Siddle nor Ben Hilfenhaus could be considered for the last Test, at Perth. The selectors’ response was to pick a bowling attack
hopeful on paper but unbalanced in practice, leaving Smith and Hashim Amla to carry off the match and the series with two hours of breathless batting after Clarke, for once, failed to make a
significant score.

Amid rumblings his place was no longer secure, Ponting made the Third Test his last, moving Clarke to tears before the match. South Africa afforded Ponting a guard of honour for his final
innings that befitted a king. The reality was less regal: he was pouched at slip off Robin Peterson after an insubstantial stay. It was definitely time to go.

Chastened by their only Test defeat of the year, albeit in the match more pivotal than any other, they collected a 3–0 sweep of Sri Lanka in the showpiece weeks of the season, which had
been spurned by South Africa due to their board’s preference for a home Twenty20 on Boxing Day. Overlooked when Australia’s attack was at their thinnest at Perth, Jackson Bird was
called up for the Second Test against Sri Lanka when Hilfenhaus fell injured, and showed himself to be an accomplished seamer in the mould of Stuart Clark. Phillip Hughes returned in
Ponting’s stead, and David Warner played with a consistency that could make his brazen batting a genuine threat.

Clarke shrugged off a hamstring strain to make his fifth century of the year, but his deputy Watson hobbled to 83, then informed Arthur he no longer wished to be considered an all-rounder. As he
processed that revelation, Arthur was doubly shocked to be tapped on the shoulder by Hussey, who told him and Clarke he would be saying goodbye to Test cricket at Sydney. Another XI somewhat odd in
composition slogged their way to victory in a manner far less comprehensive than against India 12 months before. Hussey was in the middle when the winning runs were scored, a fitting conclusion to
a career that was truly selfless until, perhaps, the moment he chose to end it.

Hussey was deemed surplus to the one-day series that followed the Tests, and found himself donning a Perth Scorchers shirt as the second edition of the BBL limped to Christmas, then found better
returns in January. A leaked CA report revealed that $A10m was expected to be lost over the first two seasons in an effort to make the BBL look attractive for broadcasters as well as spectators.
That kind of money was also being distributed among the players under a new Memorandum of Understanding that contained performance-based weighting as per the dictates of Argus. Given the battles
ahead on the pitch and in the negotiation-room, remuneration may yet fluctuate wildly.

BANGLADESH CRICKET, 2012

U
TPAL
S
HUVRO

During his time as the No. 1-ranked all-rounder in Test cricket, Shakib Al Hasan would smile ruefully: “I don’t know how long I will be there. When I watch Test
matches featuring other countries on TV, the thought often comes to my mind, when will I get the chance to play in whites again?” The man Shakib had dethroned, Jacques Kallis, emphatically
regained the position in November. Shakib could not mount a fresh challenge, but that was not his fault. Bangladesh played only two Tests in 2012, the fewest in a year since they were handed Test
status in 2000, and just nine one-day internationals, the fewest since 2001. Only Zimbabwe played less often.

When Bangladesh took the field against West Indies at Mirpur in November, it was nearly 11 months since they had last played a Test – and Chris Gayle duly hit the first ball for six.
Bangladesh did well to take a first-innings lead, with their highest Test score, 556, but they failed to chase 245 in almost two and a half sessions, then barely put up a fight in the Second Test
at Khulna.