How Australia Can Overcome It’s Spin Demons

Saeed Ajmal’s domination of Australia in the recent ODI and T20 series’ between Pakistan and Australia in the United Arab Emirates has once again highlighted the fact that Australia’s batsmen, are generally susceptible to quality spin bowling.  If Australia are to once again climb the World Rankings, this is something that needs to change.

If Cricket Australia is serious about getting Australia back to the top of the World Rankings, some changes need to be made.  Changes that are outside the square of conventional thinking.

Australia’s greatest ever batsman, Sir Donald Bradman, spent hours in his youth honing his skills by practicing with a cricket stump and a golf ball against a corrugated water tank.  These hours of practice enabled him to develop his timing and reactions to such an elite level. 

It is this ideal of hard work, dedication and practice that is needed to overcome Australia’s deficiency against spin.  What better way to combat a weakness than by practicing against it.  The best way for Australia’s batsmen to improve against high quality spin bowling, is to gain more exposure to it.

In an already saturated cricket calendar, this would not be easily accomodated.  Squeezing additional series is unrealistic, and any benefit would likely be limited to the current crop of national representatives.  What is needed is a solution with long term benefits.

What I Cricket Australia needs to look at doing, is subsidising the State Cricket Associations to each employ a current or recently retired top class international spinner over the next few domestic summers.

By bringing the likes of Ajmal, Harbhajan Singh, Daniel Vettori, Graeme Swann, Muttiah Muralitharan and Shahid Afridi, among others, to play in Australia, our domestic players are gaining valuable experience playing against top class spinners. 

This exposure, if sustained for a few seasons, will have a twofold benefit.  Firstly, Australia’s young batsmen coming through the ranks will have had practice over a prolonged period, against world class spin bowling, meaning that it is unlikely to seem as mesmerising when it is faced on the international stage, and secondly, Australia’s young spin bowlers will be learning from these players as well.  How much could Nathan Lyon, Jon Holland, Xavier Doherty, Michael Beer or even Glenn Maxwell learn about their craft by playing and training alongside bowlers of this calibre?

It’s time for Cricket Australia to embrace some radical thinking to help Australia’s climb back to the top.