Summer's Footsteps

SP on cricket's October hype machine, the AFL Trade Window v Shield Window, and picking the kid

Jasmine first flowers in the spring, and our interest in the cricket slowly blooms with it. That freshly mown grass is starting to hit different, as does the sunscreen and sunhat for those who get to grounds.   

Though club cricket has returned at all levels, wall-to-wall public interest in the Summer of Cricket™ hasn’t quite roared to life. But you can hear its footsteps. We’re currently at the level of “earnest Shield chat” and bat-offs, about which there’s something comforting. There’s also David Warner’s volunteering to return to the Australian setup, gracefully dunked on by skipper Pat Cummins via our chat with him on The Grade Cricketer yesterday. Much will be thunderously written and said about the subsequent lifting of his leadership ban – and rightly so – but it is nice to know CA waited for Cummins’ confirmation that he’ll be nowhere near the Test team before lifting it.

These past few weeks I’ve had the fortune (or desperation) to interlope with journalists, coaches, commentators and players at state cricket played in suburbia. More than once someone’s said that “it’s good people are talking about the Shield.” That’s true. It’s better than eyeing a snippet of Ben Dunk hitting a six in a league somewhere – with the deepest of respect for Ben – or a brief mention about Saudi interest in the IPL. Right now, the Shield makes for a welcome decompression from the noise and cultural drawbridge of footyland in the winter. It's slow and meditative and still, it’s a chance to breathe before the sunshine completely takes hold.

However, despite the excitement of some, its ratings, reach or sentiment is hardly going toe-to-toe with the major footy codes, whose season proper finished nearly a month ago. Unless Trade season is the real season for you, that is. Following record-breaking growth in key media metrics, SEN boss Craig Hutchison recently opined on LinkedIn (maybe that should be “took” to LinkedIn), saying, “The fan appetite for the possibility of player movement, club dealmaking and strategy drives insane digital consumption. Our Trade Radio proudly plays its part as the biggest engine driving the conversation.” It’s fair to say that in October, Trade Window is King. The Shield Window can only dream of such frenzy. Us connoisseurs – desperates? – might be into it, but as Australia showed during its hosting of the T20 World Cup in 2022, interest in the cricket through October and early November is lukewarm at best, if we’re honest.

However, like the vaunted Trade Window, the Shield does share the promise of possibility. There are short-and-long term selection permutations everywhere, but cricket’s summer hype machine has so-far boiled down to the question of whether or not they’ll pick the kid.

To that end, we should be thankful for the emergence of Sam Konstas. His entrance into the conversation invites punters to show their own selectorial wares. Do you invest in his selection at the ground floor, demonstrating your unappreciated eye for talent, permitting the tantalising prospect of appearing someone who just “gets cricket”? Or do you go the other way, issuing caution so as to underscore your wisdom and patience?

Nobody has explicitly said it, but the nation clearly zests for the scent of fresh blood. Sure, Pat Cummins has presided over a period of admirable continuity and harmony, but fashion runs in cycles: we need something new to look at, and it doesn’t get purer and more virginal than a teenage NSW prodigy who arrives on the back of whispers from his home state that he might be the one. Those whispers have now almost risen to a din, as coaches are hunted down then quoted, describing Konstas as an outlier gluttonous for runs, before a chorus of elder Bluebagger statesmen, from Brad Haddin to Brett Lee, cue up to place Konstas in the realm of the divine. They mention him in the same breath as Ponting, Clarke, Smith, Warner, and Hughes. Other states tut-tut under their breath, but maybe there’s a certain safety to a touted NSW product. It’s been a while since we’ve seen the puffed chest of NSW exceptionalism. For this New South Welshperson, it feels nostalgically good. However, for Konstas’ sake, fingers crossed they’re not overreaching to compensate for a near-decade of scarcity.

In the broader dramatic arc of Australian Men’s cricket, this is all very seductive grist for the mill, if indeed you enjoy being seduced by grist in mills. Cummins is running an aging team at a time when we receive story after story of Indian prodigies on the production line. Most recently, 13-year-old Vaibhav Suryavanshi decimated Australia’s Under 19’s team with a tonne from 60-odd balls. We of course quietly and ungenerously cup our hands and sidemouth that “he’s not 13”, but the point is that they’ve got kids queuing up and ready. Who do we have? Mahli Beardman was a start. Konstas a progression.

Until this summer, what Australia has had are three candidates in Cameron Bancroft, Marcus Harris and Matt Renshaw who have been bruised, scarred and hopefully hardened by their experiences in cricket. Speaking with us on The Grade Cricketer Podcast yesterday evening, Cummins said that he’s interested in “winning now” – and as Chris Rogers noted yesterday, the question should be about who can come in and make that telling contribution. Each of Bancroft, Harris and Renshaw’s scars diminish their narrative sizzle in the public eye, but wisened cricket heads understand that those same scars better ready them for a series expected to be decided on who can survive fast bowling on grassed up wickets best.

But as Pete Lalor reported in Cricket et al yesterday, the birds seem to be chirping for Nathan McSweeney, who would seem to satisfy simultaneously the craving for something new, something transitory, but at least red-ball hardened for a couple of years.

So Australia has options. But the team still creaks. Green’s injury hurts him (and us). It’s not unreasonable to wonder how much capital Smith has expended in hunting the ideal conditions to rediscover his touch. It may be he has lifetime capital. But if we zoom out, a sizeable enough portion of the culture war proponents – whether the old guard, India incels online, or Maurice Newman types – will have knives sharpened at the first hint of Australian struggles. While Cummins’ side are broadly accepted as the best iteration since the Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting’s golden generation, their cricket hasn’t looked fluent since they won that World Cup in Ahmedabad 12 months ago. They are ageing, and they are squabbling. There is an argument that failure to win here, and to subsequently miss the World Test Championship Final, will confirm the question marks the aforementioned group craves. Moreover, if this group of players then retire, ushering in a period of rebuilding gloom, they may be remembered for that too.

It makes it all the more enthralling. Cummins has weathered these things before. In fact, it’s usually when the team plays their best. It’s all very seductive grist for the mill.