“When I first started playing first-class cricket, and I’m up to my 16th year now, the wickets were better, 100% the wickets were flatter. Easier to bat on,” he said. “The balls were probably the biggest difference. Those Kookaburra balls had a single layer of lacquer on them, now they have a double lacquer, and the writing just doesn’t go off them at all. And they have these new, raised seams, which I think is the biggest change in Australian cricket for a long time.
“That’s why wobble seam is so prevalent now. Everyone wants to bowl wobble seam, not swinging them, because if there’s massive seams on them you just put them down and they go boing, boing, boing, boing. That wasn’t around back in the day, the old Kookaburra Turf seams were so small, you didn’t get as much nip, you had to try and swing it and then when it didn’t you had to try to reverse it.
“And I’m genuine, I 100% believe I’m a better player now than I was when I first started playing first-class cricket. But I found first-class cricket when I started playing easier than what I do now. The wickets are greener, these balls are tougher, the game has 100% changed. And I say to the boys, ‘don’t worry about the old boys, don’t compare yourself to the old boys, compare yourself to now’ because 1000 runs was the elite level of Shield cricket when I started, it’s more like 800 runs now.”
But how slim are the pickings compared to how other teams are going and more historically?
Australia’s batters treading water in 2024
Put alongside other teams, it is clear Australia have struggled with the bat this year. For teams to have played at least six Tests, only Bangladesh and West Indies are below them for the returns of Nos. 1 to 7.
One of the notable aspects for Australia this year is the lack of hundreds with just two so far: Green’s against New Zealand and Head’s against West Indies in Adelaide. Comparing just the number of centuries between teams doesn’t give a fair picture due to the different number of Tests, but an innings-per-hundred ratio (for Nos. 1-7) paints a picture: again, only West Indies and Bangladesh are below Australia in 2024.
But it’s a tough year
“… Added to that is the psychological shift, post the prevalence of short-form cricket, of a wicket losing its value. The shorter the game, the fewer the consequences for getting out, and batsmen play more freely in all formats as a result than before. I’m not arguing for a return to the blockathons of the past, by the way – although I’d certainly argue that a more nuanced, less one-size-fits-all approach can work – merely trying to explain how the present player thinks differently, and the occasional consequences of that.”
Where does this year rank for Australia?
Also, since January 2023, of the current top seven excluding Nathan McSweeney with just a single Test to his name, Marsh, who returned to the side midway through that year, is the only batter to have improved his Test average in that period. Khawaja’s reduction, though, is very small while Smith’s is down from a very high base. Marnus Labuschagne’s is the most stark.
To go back to Khawaja’s point about the challenges now facing batters in Australia, last season’s Sheffield Shield average was the lowest of the last 20 seasons. This summer, with half the matches played, the average is up from 27.21 to 32.81. Can Australian batting rise again?
Shiva Jayaraman contributed to this piece
Andrew McGlashan is a deputy editor at ESPNcricinfo
