An Australian cricketer was daunted, a few years ago, by a coming program of more Test and one-day tours than he could count. "I don't know how I'm going to make it," he said. He didn't have to worry: he was dropped after the first series and spent the next three years not travelling the world but fighting to get back on the plane.
Similarly, a current player recently rattled through the supersized bloc starting with this week's tour to Zimbabwe. With barely a break, Australia will go to the Middle East to play Pakistan, host South Africa in a one-day series, India for four Tests, India and England in a tri-series and the 2015 ICC World Cup, then tour England for five (more) Ashes Tests and host New Zealand, the West Indies and India in 2015-16. I'm sure I missed something in there; he was talking so fast. At the end he said something like, "I hope they know what they're doing."
"They" are the administrators at the dashboard of the international cricket machine. Australia and England, as has been well documented, have fallen in with India's coup d'etat of world cricket, by which the "Big Three" have created a top tier for themselves, guaranteeing a continual round-robin of money-spinning series while other nations fossick for leftovers. India achieved this result by threatening to secede from the International Cricket Council. Pragmatically, or cravenly, Australia and England followed Homer Simpson's advice when confronted by bullies: "Make friends with them and hope they bully someone else."
Australia is touring Zimbabwe again after a decade's break that has been partly Zimbabwe's fault and partly a residue of the famous imperial comment by a long-gone Australian administrator that "We approve of Zimbabwe's inclusion, just not in a playing sense." But just as this tour is an air-kiss rather than a full embrace of Zimbabwe, the draft program for the next eight years provides only surface reassurance that the Indian ascension preserves the primacy of Test cricket. Superficially, the program reflects the Big Three's stated aim to "nurture Test cricket as the primary format". An Australian cricketer who makes his debut next year could play his 100th Test match by 2023. What took Allan Border 11 years and Michael Clarke nearly 10 (and would have taken Don Bradman 40), will take this future cricketer between seven and eight.
Whatever assurance this gives about Test cricket is undercut by the volume of one-day and Twenty20 matches sketched in over the same period. By the time he plays his hundredth Test match, the hypothetical cricketer will be playing close to his thousandth game in all three formats. This is telling, because of course such a player will not exist: the schedule will make the all-formats international cricketer a thing of the past, and the separation between long and short forms will be complete. This is a key faultline in the program, because until now the best players have been able to choose all three. The sheer weight of future scheduling will reduce that choice to two or perhaps one, and it can only be supposed that the prudent superstar will opt for the richest format, whether he likes it or not. Thus the heavy scheduling of Test cricket, which may be intended to guarantee its place at the pinnacle, could well have the unintended consequence of ensuring the opposite.
But still players trust organisations to know what they're doing, because the role of a professional sportsman is increasingly infantilised. He or she delegates all decisions to others in order to clear the head to prepare for and play the game. Trust is everything. We see the outcome of that this week, where Cronulla Sharks players have been asked to trust their lawyers on the plea deal with the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority. Not illogically, the players have flinched. After all, wasn't it trusting others – their coaching staff – what got them into trouble in the first place? In saying he is "100 per cent positive" that he took nothing on the banned list, isn't Paul Gallen continuing to place his trust in someone providing him with that information? Trust was abused in the Sharks' case, and there is no little irony in their now being asked to trust again. Who's more trustworthy? A team doctor or a lawyer?
In all matters, professional sportsmen are asked to surrender more of their autonomy. It is incongruous, if not downright weird, when you stand back from it, that, in a profession where seizing control of events and creating history personally is the mark of greatness, all professional sportspeople can share the same helpless motto: "I hope they know what they're doing."
This has nothing to do with the above, but because he seemed swallowed by events too little was said in tribute to the retiring Sydney Swan Lewis Roberts-Thompson. Somehow, this unnatural-looking, coltish former rugby player embodied the values of the Swans club. LRT never looked like AFL, and was plonked with L-plates on the halfback flank, where he couldn't do too much damage. But not only did LRT, or Lew Bob-Tom, play in three grand finals and win two, but he was a star in all of them. He galloped into contests, his yellow mop shagging about, and even if every mark he took seemed a miracle, he still made them or spoilt them for others. His ungainly bull-in-a-china-shop presence had something to do with allowing Leo Barry to take that mark in 2005. And late in his career, this most unfashionable AFL footballer was given the most fashionable role, that of the defensive forward, where he menaced opponents with great effect in 2012. He didn't say much in public, but became a cult figure at the SCG: the lovable, gangling everyman. LRT was what they call a role player, and his role is to be a footnote in the Swans' magnificent recent history. But all those footnotes and supporting roles add up to a great team and, unique in the best possible way, LRT will be long remembered.
