Chapter 1: What are Matthew Hayden's thoughts on Australia's T20 World Cup exit?
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Very delighted to say that we've got on Test Mat Special here for the first time in this tournament. legendary Australian opener and broadcaster who's here with the world feed, Matthew Hayden, alongside Atif Nawaz. And we just want to talk about Australia and their woes in the T20 format at the moment.
It's stunning, the world of cricket at the moment, that Australia have had such a poor tournament. But perhaps, Hayden, it hasn't surprised you.
The hope lies in Ireland. Would you have ever heard an Australian talking about that as well? Yeah, there's been some woes. I mean, the reactions back home, the mood, if you like, of the nation has been rather heavy because I think we've been sold down the stream a little bit in terms of our selection and how we've gone about preparing for this World Cup.
It actually sort of smacks, to be fair, a little closer to home, a little shot across the bows closer to home. It sort of smacks of England and their question in the Ashes preparation. This kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that kind of we're OK and things are... No, don't worry. It's a... A healthy mix of denial and maybe even just mismanagement.
So if you go right back to a selection case, it's not like these World Cups aren't scheduled ahead of time. Australia have obviously been a little bit... Gesumpt by these late injuries. Cummins, obviously, an enormous loss. And also Hazelwood that you'd have to say is right up there in the top five Premier Fast Bowlers across T20 format.
In fact, I'd go as far as to say ever since he was managed by Dhoni at CSK, he's had a real uplift of the way that he's approached T20 cricket. But look, every nation has got these problems and Australia, it's not like their cupboard of talent is bare.
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Chapter 2: How has Australia's team selection impacted their performance?
There's a certain playing ecosystem, if you like, that allows, for example, a Harry Brook to smash a ball out of the park and the last ball before lunch in Perth and you're just on a wing and a prayer. So it's almost like a stubbornness or a... The word's not bully because I think that could be well taken out of context, but there's a plan A. And that plan A is called power.
And it's a day and age of power. And that's really been the key, you know, when you look at sides that dominate this World Cup. In India, that's certainly the case. These conditions, though, are different. They're not such pure batting surfaces. And that requires methodology.
That, if you like, almost requires kind of a bit more of an old school approach and way of thinking about the game that allows you to stay in the contest. Because if you're three and four, wickets down in the power play. You're not in the context of the game. You've wasted, as what we're calling in this T20 World Cup, all your consolidation phase. You set back then in your acceleration phase.
And then in your finish, goodness me, I mean, we saw, you know, what was a magnificent finish from Thich Nhat Hanh. last night in the face of Paderana not being there and just having a shutdown of play with Chimera. Those final two overs, they were just icing on the cake to what had been an unbelievable last ten overs of that match for Sri Lanka.
So, you know, lots of things went, you know, really right for Australia in the first ten overs and then everything went wrong from that point.
Well, this is what... It's one of the things I want to touch on because it was completely baffling watching Australia's selection and planning process. Matt Renshaw, when I saw that he was in the squad, I thought, this is an intriguing selection.
I'd seen him doing well in the Big Bash, you know, he's in decent form, but he's not necessarily someone that you think of as going to be like a key batter for them. But actually, he's top scored. Previous game, he got 60-odd. In the conditions yesterday, he could have been absolutely crucial because having got 104 in 8.3 overs and then to lose 10 wickets for 77.
And you've got Cam Green, who just doesn't look in great nick with the bat. But Tim David... He doesn't look in any nick with the bat.
I think you've been way too kind there. I mean, he has just looked awful with the bat. He looks woody. He looks tinny. He looks like he's just a man with no confidence, and I'd be very surprised if actually that's not exactly the case. Matt Renshaw has come with no baggage to this tournament. He actually had a really good series back home in Australia in the ODIs.
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Chapter 3: What injuries have affected Australia's T20 World Cup campaign?
I mean, we've got Lyme, we've got Warne. Swan was magnificent, wasn't he, when he came out to Australia on the first tour? And these decisions, they're very much based on... The eternal roles that players over time play. And a spin bowling unit is something that's so critical to this format of the game. Adam Zampa had an off night.
It's only been an off tournament, hasn't it? It's just not quite happened for him. We saw quite a few drag downs from his first ball of overs, that sort of thing.
Well, that was in particular, right? His first over, I think who was on strike, was Kusar Mendes. And he dragged his first ball down, disappeared out through mid-wicket region. tried to come back in the over, did so okay, and then dragged his last ball down. So he's gone. Our key weapon... has gone for eight or more off his first over.
That can happen. I mean, Adil Rashid's had quite a torrid tournament, and he's definitely England's sort of gun leg spinner. But are there spinners in Australia that should be there instead? I mean, Coonerman's in the squad, but I'm not sure that I really see the depth of Aussie spinning, much like there's no depth in English spinning at all.
I think that our spinning depth is not too bad. I think it's always going to be hard. You imagine... anyone that came behind Shane Warne, you're going to get compared immediately to those sort of numbers and that sort of pressure. I think Todd Murphy's got a big role to play without any question as well. And Matt Kernan can also play a role across the formats as well.
And he has actually got a few opportunities and just hasn't quite got the longevity in selection or the trust maybe in selection. So, you know, to me, that's not really the issue. The issue in this tournament was that We just picked way too many part-time all-rounders.
And so what that meant is that Ellis and Zampa, our more front-line and consistent bowlers in our attack, just didn't have the support. I mean, these guys, they have such good match-up thinking. So even when I look at, for example, the Sri Lankan bowling line-up last night, The match-ups are obvious. I mean, you get through Hamata, Walagi and... Tikshana. Tikshana.
And suddenly you've got Dustin Chanaka that's going to have to bowl his overs and he's going to get pounded. You know, so those match-ups can be the difference. In 2020 cricket, what we know is that the margins are really small. You know, so if you've got a 10-run shift... Just because your matchups are in a position that line up according to the game, it's game over.
You know, it's not too many times that you see, you know, really compelling victories in... this format of the game. It's often, you know, margins... Yeah, 10, 15, 20 tops.
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Chapter 4: What role does player confidence play in cricket performance?
But everyone will remember Mitch Stark in the next 100 years.
He'll be known as one of the... It's a leading left-arm fast bowler in test cricket.
And look, is that something that a modern player desires? Because... To me, you can have another boat, you can have another house, you can have another wellness resort that is coming up in the next couple of days. There's a bit of a side story, sorry folks, on that one, which we won't go into right now.
You can have all this stuff, but the reality is, and this is what I love about the game, it's heart that matters. When I think of the great players of all time, And you just mentioned one right there, you know, in Wazzy Akram. He's got a great big heart, you know. He was a wonderful athlete. He had incredible skills, which he acquired over time.
And he'd play across formats and utilize those formats to develop all of his game. And with the T20 game now, it's the hands and the ruck in many ways because the skill set's required to be competitive in T20 cricket. they are not as definite as what you need in the middle format, the ODI cricket, and they're also nowhere near what you need in test cricket.
And it's almost to your point before, it's almost like you need to go... If you're a young cricketer and anyone listening right now to me, I'm telling you, if you can be a long-format cricketer, you'll be an amazing short-format cricketer as well because the transference of skills... and the transference of technique involved in the short formats.
And I'm going straight away to a guy like Virat Kohli, you know, who still amasses extraordinary numbers of runs in T20 cricket. But he is an amazing test cricketer. And there are hundreds of cases like that, in my opinion, across all nations. You could just reel them off. Maybe even the universe boss is another great example, right? Chris Gale, you know, he's a 300 club.
He lets us all know about it by the hats he wears. But the reality is, you know, due respect, he is an all-format game. But he's also a very good test cricketer.
so youngsters get out there in the nets and learn and listen about technique in the game because it will not do you any harm you will develop power as you grow you will amass this great body position that's required if you want to be a short format cricketer and that's going to take time and unfortunately i think our kids our fans and
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Chapter 5: How does Australia's approach to T20 cricket differ from other formats?
Our audience will work out what my point is very quickly. Look, cricket is a warfare. You can fraternise with the enemy as much as you like, but at the end of the day, your resources need to be... you know, enclosed behind enemy lines. And the reality is we have a damn lot of resources in the Australian cricket team and the set-up.
I mean, it was the apple of the eye for three or four decades and yet we are bleeding that intellectual property because it's just allowing us the opportunity to not... engaged within, you know, great minds. I mentioned a few before in Ricky Ponting, Justin Langer came and he was seen off, you know, because allegedly he was a little grumpy and a bit too hard on the players.
Yeah, I mean, the thing is, learning's not easy. In fact, learning's damn hard. And so too has change, you know, so there's very... You know, it mounts a compelling case that I think that it's just trying to just harness our resources a little bit, you know, within nations like England and Australia that have, you know, such enormously proud cricket cultures and traditions.
You know, we've seen one of them come and go underwhelmingly this summer. You know, the Ashes was as big a build-up as what we saw the Pakistan and Indian game the other night and it was equally as dissatisfying. Because the quality and the standard of the game is just not allowing us to really enjoy the benefits, the fruits of our labour as cricketing communities.
There might have been a slightly different thing at work there. Because England have got themselves a bunch of players... that are committed to test cricket. You look at someone like Jamie Smith, and I've seen a lot of him in county cricket, and he's exactly the kind of guy who could have ended up certainly not being a test wicketkeeper. He didn't wicketkeep in domestic cricket hardly at all.
I mean, he has done it, but that's not his primary focus. He could easily have been a Jake Fraser McGurk and go out and be a gun for hire. They've actually got sort of settled test team, the likes of Duckett Crawley, It's the manner in which they've chosen to play.
And that seems to have come from coaching and selection at the top and saying, right, this is how we're going to beat Australia in Test cricket. But for the most part, ECB has managed to hold on to a core of its players that it wants to play in these formats.
To me, the criticism of the way the England team has been going at the moment might be the planning and the execution of what it is that they're trying to do. Because the personnel... I don't think too many people... Look, in England, there'll be a perennial argument about Zach Crawley.
Of course there will, because the guy has averaged 31.5 for his entire life, averages below Adil Rashid with the bat. He's only got two more first-class hundreds than Adil Rashid. Sorry, am I getting something off my chest? But generally speaking, that is a choice that has been made, and those players have been held together. The problem that...
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