Making sense of the Australian Cricket Calamity

From the scene of the disaster, where first-hand accounts are being taken of the Australian Cricket Calamity.

Monday snap judgments will take the national temperature before we brace ourselves for Day 4 here in Perth.

At Friday’s close of business on the east coast Australia had bowled India out for 150 to open the Test summer and lay an early marker against the tourists.

As markets open this morning, Australia’s stocks have collapsed, bound for heavy and humiliating defeat.

Performances like this reverberate.

Think Sunday Bloody Sunday, Boxing Day 2010… Ricky Ponting’s Australia is bowled out for 98 on cricket’s showpiece occasion triggering innings defeats in Melbourne and Sydney.

That Ashes drubbing prompted the Argus Review.

Yesterday was the worst day on home soil since the national batting crisis of Hobart 2016.

It prompted rare blood-letting at selection and the ill-judged intrusion by administrators into the dressing room setting up the chain reaction that ultimately led to the sandpaper disgrace.

When this happens at home it’s not an isolated event.

Australia was embarrassed by India under the blazing Perth sun.

The home side batted into oblivion like rarely before.

Left to resort to half-cocked plans and banal tactics as the helplessness took hold.

Then, as Australia has done to so many broken opponents, the batters were marched to the gallows at dusk and brutally sawn off.

The symbolism was everywhere you looked.

India had both the chosen one and the reigning deity stand in blazing triumph.

Yashasvi Jaiswal batted as if he were fulfilling a prophecy.

Virat Kohli showed he was not one to hand over torches. Not for now at least.

They revelled in each other’s dominance and their opponents quaked at their might.

Australia employed Manus Labuschagne as its enforcer – the absurdity of which had to be seen to be believed.

By the end Kohli treated the idea with the disdain it was begging for.

While a first-gamer pummelled the local hero mercilessly.

To close a day that will live in Indian folklore the fast bowling captain crafted a cruel phase to inflict maximum damage.

Australia pushed its debutant opener out to face the first volley.

Jasprit Bumrah and the devil in the pitch saw Nathan McSweeney last only four balls.

Having sacrificed a lamb, the captain strode forth.

This image I liked.

Captains go down with sinking ships.

Pat Cummins has never been a nightwatchman, but if souls were to be lost the leader was prepared to face the reckoning.

He didn’t last, and punched his blade as he fell.

That left the wretchedly jittery and chronically uncertain Marnus Labuschagne exposed.

Presumably the indignity of a second layer of tail end protection was too undignified to contemplate.

Where once we basked in the summer of Marnus… he is currently the lost boy.

So contorted is his mind he determined to leave a ball that was cannoning into middle and off.

And then he reviewed the decision to relive in the forensic detail the horror of his misjudgment.

At which point the umpires called the fight, the only small mercy of the day.

The grim-faced carried a sense of shell-shock through the Christmas Festival in the parkland surrounding the stadium.

The band on stage cheerily asked 'who’d been at the cricket?'

Few were in a mood to admit to such a shame.

As the sun rises over Optus Stadium, Australia is staring at complete and abject defeat.

The cause is lost.

But the manner in which Australia meets its fate matters profoundly.

There has to be some fight in the batting.

And it shouldn’t just be pride on the line, but the right to play the next Test.

The prevailing question is: 'what represents a proportional response?'

To abandon all plans after one Test would be reactionary.

Inaction though would be unforgivable, an abdication of responsibility.

In any sport change is demanded after such a performance.

We’ve noted for a long time this team values support and stability as its cornerstone.

But it has to be met with performance and accountability.

That equation is now out of balance.

The signs were there throughout last summer… this isn’t about two days of cricket.

There’s been a tendency to rationalise diminished returns out of existence rather than acknowledge the warning signs.

We noted during the mediocre Australian Bat-Off that the search for the new opener would be largely academic if the established players didn’t churn out industrial-sized runs.

We were told you can’t make industrial-sized runs in Australia anymore.

I saw a notionally undermanned and theoretically struggling Indian lineup do just that through commitment, discipline, skill and, most of all, hunger.

It’s time to demand elite performance with consequences at the end of it.

It’s time for integrity, not coddling, in selection.

The Labuschagne question has answered itself.

It’s not forever but it is for now. Labuschagne needs to go back to the next Shield game and bat like his career is on the line.

Any further decisions revolve around how today unfolds and who are the alternatives.

Just as happened when India beat Australia at the Gabba to win the last series with a cast of understudies and seat-fillers. There’s a shuddering realisation of the chasm in depth… as stark as the gap between population.

India will win here with five notional first-choice players missing or left on the shelf.

They’ll do it with seven players in their 20s and five who brought a total of 10 Tests in experience to these shores.

By contrast Australia doesn’t know who the next man up is.

Our amateur national selection committee would likely throw the whole lot out this morning… but that’s not terribly helpful either.

Proportional change will be essential.

There are players in form despite the pretense that no one is knocking the door down.

Every question is on the table after a calamity like this.

This team wasn’t ready for the ferocity of India’s attack.

When last the first-choice team played it was pathetic in an ODI in Adelaide.

They seemed to be there under obligation and then took leave to prioritise the Test series.

But here they have been shoddy.

No balls, wides and byes.

Misfields, missed chances and missed run outs.

Clueless with the bat and, by the end, impotent with the ball.

If there was any though that the Test players would head home to rest ahead of Adelaide that’s the first thing to change.

All leave is cancelled.

Get into camp and get to work.

Australia chose fresh rather than match-hardened.

And they have the bloodied nose and soon a one-nil deficit for that misjudgment.