It was from this unsteady base that a young Steve Smith inherited the captaincy from Clarke,and struggled to manage the team amid bouts of poor on-field behaviour (many of them from Warner during his “attack dog” phase) and inconsistent performance. It all culminated atNewlands in 2018, the event for which Johnson suggests in his column that Warner should still be getting punished.
One of the most telling lines in Johnson’s column was how,when he asked some recently retired former teammates about how they handled their exits,he was commonly told that they were privately thinking and planning for the event for about a year prior.
Infamously,Mike Hussey kept his intention to retire a secret through his final summer – duly leaving a batting hole that had not been planned for by then coach Mickey Arthur. A pair of heavy series defeats duly followed in India and England.
Warner,Bailey and Australia’s current captain Cummins all lived through the era that defined Johnson,and are fiercely resolved to do things differently.
Warner’s public statement that he intended to finish playing Test matches after the Pakistan series that begins next week –if selected – is consistent with a more open and less factional era than those that came before.
“I think the points around the stats and his position in the team and him getting a bit of extra time were probably ruined a bit by the personal nature of it and bringing sandpaper back into it,” former skipper Tim Paine said on SEN. “Saying David was a person who used his leadership position for power and stuff like that,I played with David and he certainly didn’t do that.”
Similarly,Bailey’s choice to work more closely with the team as a selector,often helping out at training sessions while keeping up a constant flow of communication with the players,is indeed a big contrast to the distant figures Johnson knew selectors to be when he played.
As Bailey put it on Sunday:“If someone can show me how being distant and unaware of what players are going through and what the plans are with the team and with the coaching staff – how that’s more beneficial – I’d be all ears.”
Mitchell Johnson and David Warner in happier times.Credit:Reuters
One of the unfortunate hallmarks of the 2007-15 period was how the Australian team’s chances of success were often reduced by the fact that individuals within it were often thinking more of their own survival or progress than how the national side could best function collectively.
The new leaf turned over by Bailey,Cummins and the head coach Andrew McDonald has the Australian team winning consistently,behaving sensibly and thinking collaboratively.
It is a long way removed from Johnson’s own roller-coaster experience,which was reflected in the harsh tone of a column that posed as many questions about the left-armer’s personal playing career as it did about the team he was so ardently critiquing.
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