With 10 days between the early end of the Perth Test and the start of Adelaide, this is the Australian cricket supporter witching hour. They can cope with a close loss to an opponent doing something special: nobody was burning effigies in the streets of Greenslopes earlier this year when Shamar Joseph on one foot bowled West Indies to a sizzling Gabba win. But it’s very different after a beating like the one that India just handed out, when an Australian team that was storming the field after two sessions failed to fire a shot for the next seven.
Now, those supporters are angry. They’re swarming talkback lines, writing to papers, voicing disdain in pubs. They can’t stand a team looking incompetent, they want to know what will be done to avoid that happening again. And they have a lot of time on their hands, with no Test player due to face or bowl a ball at any other level in the interim, while a Sheffield Shield round plays out with plenty of potential replacements on display.
