Michael Jeh

With the Gabba Test just a day away, it's traditionally the time when Australian cricket fans turn their minds away from their winter football passions and begin a summer of cricket analysis, dissecting the fortunes of the national cricket team at backyard bbq's. What I've been hearing recently is a genuine 'identity crisis' in some senses. What does the baggy green stand for? Is it a highly prized reward for the best 11 cricketers in the land? Is it a national institution? Does the right to wear the cap belong to a great player or has the Australian Way always been about the team superseding the individual, regardless of his 'greatness'?

As much as I love cricket, I can't bring myself to sift through the entire contents of the Argus report. I'll take the soft option and look to someone else to do the hard yards and provide a synopsis of the most important bits. From what I've read, it sounds like some Australia cricketers stand accused of doing just that at times during these last few years. There's a lot of talk about 'team culture' etc. and I must confess that I'm genuinely unsure as to where I sit on this sort of management-speak jargon. I've heard the term bandied about increasingly, a hand-me-down from the corporate world no doubt but how relevant is it to this conversation about Australian cricket?

The old-fashioned cynic in me leans towards dismissing any serious analysis of the whole team culture thing. In some respects, it's an easy excuse for covering up the most basic cricketing fact of all - the team that scores the most runs and takes the most wickets generally wins. If you look back to the so-called strong team culture that pervaded the Mark Taylor/Steve Waugh/Ricky Ponting era from the mid 1990s through to about 2009, they had some fabulous cricketers. With players with those egos inhabiting the same dressing room, you could be forgiven for wondering if that was a fertile ground for a negative team culture. Yet, reading the autobiographies and listening to interviews from that era of Australian cricketer, the universal theme that comes through is one of a strong team ethic and a powerful culture that bound these strong, proud, sometimes arrogant men together. So what's changed? Winning! Well, not winning.

Irony. One of the most underrated pleasures. Best savoured slowly and with none of the joy and exhilaration that comes with winning or triumphalism. It's almost bitter-sweet in flavour because it brings with it no great sense of personal achievement or patriotic fervour; just a wry smile and a shake of the head.

Irony is spread thick on British toast this Sunday morning. In a week which Andrew Strauss described as not being one of England's finest hours (with reference to the riots), the much-maligned English cricket system of the last 20 years finally brought the throne back to the birthplace of the game. On one hand we have a staid, traditional, somewhat old-fashioned country (in the nicest possible way I might add) showing off an ugly modern face that looked so incongruous among the iconic tourist sights of London. Barely a few days later we saw a slick, ruthless and thoroughly modern cricket team, even down to the style of clothing they now wear on the field, polish off a tired but formidable (on paper) Indian batting team that boasts many of the modern greats.

There is nothing old-fashioned or traditional about this England team, even down to the Irishman in the middle order and the various other players whose heritage can be traced back to the four corners of the globe but who are now as proudly British as you like. No sense of disenfranchised youths among this lot! And all of this in an old British city (Birmingham) that is now as famous for its Indian balti restaurants as anything else. Ironic indeed.