Who wrote this?
Just about the most pleasing aspect from the Joburg Test was watching Straya starting to come to terms with playing hard-grind Test cricket, not millionaire cricket. That was always going to be the big challenge in the post-superstar years. Forget all this talk of "rebuilding", the big issue... ahem, going forward was always going to be learning how to play without Warne and McGrath. Even if we stumble in Durban and Cape Town, it is a relief to know that we seem to be heading in the right direction.
What. An. Idiot.
A meritorious Durban victory gave Australia a series win against expectations but fooled Australian cricket into thinking it was still a strong cricket team.
The subsequent dead rubber spanking in Cape Town kick-started, or rather kick-stopped Australian cricket.
(Bryce McGain's injury in India in 2008 is heavily underestimated. Had he played all through 2008/09 and the 2009 Ashes, we would have won all three series. Big statement? Well, you know me.)
Fucken' Cardiff, an Ashes loss in 2009, the bullshit rebuilding & transitioning, the 2009/10 summer of kidding ourselves, the spineless batting, the toothless bowling, the sloppy fielding and catching, Hilditch, the injuries, the revolving spinners (or non-revolving, if you get my drift; or lack of drift) and the muddle caused by the holding pattern intended to give Ponting, Hussey & friends a chance to atone for 2009 in the summer of 2010/11 has had Australian cricket since March 2009 heading in every other direction than right.
Thankfully all that is behind us.
Right?
RIGHT?!?
Or should we anticipate more technically inept batting, crucial catches grassed and a chronic inability to bowl sides out twice?
Starting today we get a taste of the future; all the while keeping in mind that the reason we beat Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka in 2004 was Shane Warne.