Australian cricket and their downfallment !

Gone were those days when touring Australia was considered a nightmare for a lot of cricket team in the '90s and early 2000. There were some incredible players in that era, that lights of Hodge and Macgill keep waiting for their chances in playing X1. Even if any player was injured or retired, there was another already waiting to take his place. There was so much competition in that Australian team that if any new player got an opportunity to play in the team, he has to be at his best as others were waiting to take his place.

There were lights of Hayden, langer, Martyn, pointing, Symonds, Gilchrist, McGrath, warne and the list keep going. One thing was they had the team and second was how positively they had played the game. Even in test cricket, they had made a habit of scoring at a run rate of 4 plus or when the wickets were down they never bog down rather they keep playing their aggressive cricket and counter-attacking the opposition. The competition was so much that player like mike Hussey got his opportunity so late in his career, which shows the depth in Australian team squad. 

In that era, if any team used to tour Australia it was considered to be the toughest series to play down under against Australia.Even when Australia were 5 down in test cricket, adam Gilchrist will come to bat with such positive intent and counter-attack opposition and put pressure back on them. Australia used to dominate their opposition and always prefer to play a very aggressive brand of cricket.

As a young enthusiast cricket fan growing up in this era, we always love watching Australia brand of cricket and if any team was able to beat them it was considered as a miracle. There was saying in big tournaments if you can beat Australia than the cup is your's as they had dominated that era of cricket.

But what had changed in the last few year's that Australia is not the same team, why they don't play that aggressive brand of cricket and counter-attack teams as they use to do earlier.  The answers are simple, Australia doesn't have that quality player's as they had earlier neither their first-class tournament is producing quality player's as it was doing during that era. Australia management needs to give more emphasis on the quality of domestic first-class tournament which has fallen considerably as it does not yield commercial value so the focus is more towards t20 league tournament to produce young talents since it is r approach as it also gives good commercial value to the administrator.

The other main reason is that other teams have made considerable improvement in their cricket structure. The gap between international and domestic cricket is narrowing as young players are playing in big pressure tournament like IPL or even the number of A cricket matches has gone up. There is frequent India A tour of Australia,  South-Africa, England etc. so the young player's are already familiar in playing in those pitches and condition. So young players are learning how to handle pressure and how to approach their game in different conditions before making their international debut, so the gap between international and domestic cricket had considerably gone down.