Australia Cricket / Andrew Hughes / 03 November 2008 / Leave a comment

It's been a while since Shane Warne retired from Test cricket but the current India Series has highlighted the void the great man has left more than any other. Australia aren't exactly blessed with successors to Warne in the spin department, says Andrew Hughes.

It was Test cricket as Greco-Roman wrestling. Two titans of the cricket turf locked in mutual struggle. First India had the Aussies in a head lock, then the tables were turned before an exhausting stalemate was declared on the final day. Drama, tension, harsh words and an occasional elbow, but no falls and definitely no submission.

Certainly those who expected Australia to crumble against Kumble did Ponting's men a disservice. Confronted with a gargantuan Indian total, they pulled their baggy greens down more tightly, gripped their bats more firmly and clung on; Anzacs defending the last trench. As ever, merely beating the Aussies is not enough; if you want to claim victory, you have to make them understand that they're beaten.

But sheer fighting spirit alone will not be enough. Having recovered the lost urn, Australia will be desperate not to lose their three year unbeaten crown in the dust of the final frontier. But the tour is on its last lap and they are heading for an entirely predictable series defeat, for an entirely foreseeable reason.

Specifically, there ain't no spin in this team. They do have spinners, at least men who might be authorised to use the word on their work permits. But with all due respect to Messrs White and Clarke (and without mentioning the 'W' word); there are spinners and there are spinners.

Of course, it doesn't help that Brett Lee is running on empty. Life has poured cold water on his fire and no matter how hard he huffs and puffs, for the time being, flames do not issue from his nostrils and the missiles he flings are merely fast medium tepid.

But to embark on a trek around India without a decent spinner is as futile an expedition as attempting to cross the Sahara without a water bottle. In an effort to get the job done, Ponting has used an assortment of White, Katich and Clarke, like a man trying to find the right bit for his drill. The stats are ugly. In a series where Mishra, Harbhajan and even Sehwag have taken their wickets at less than thirty-five runs apiece, White and Katich's handful of victims have each cost over sixty and Clarke's bowling average has topped one hundred.

The problem is not one of quantity. Indeed, in the last two years they've gone through more googly merchants and finger twirlers than they did in the previous twenty.

Trouble is, everyone they've looked at has been too green or too old. Having waited too long for their chance, old-timers MacGill and Hogg promptly retired. The youngsters Daniel Cullen and Cullen Bailey (whose suspiciously similar names led to some to suspect there was a spin bowler cloning factory somewhere in the outback) disappeared without trace.

By the time they came to the current tour, they were down to the seventh or eighth string. Then the venerable Bryce McGain picked up an injury and young Jason Krejza got such a hammering in a Hyderabd warm-up, they decided to keep him under wraps and called up Cameron White.

Now McDonald's don't make spinners, but if they did, they'd probably look like White. He's the kind of bland, generic, non-spinning spinner who'd have been a hero last week in the Caribbean but who is powder puff in the hard world of Test cricket.

For Thursday's Fourth Test, they may throw caution to the wind and chuck Krejza in. They could even send for Beau Casson, the left-arm wrist spinner given a brief and unsuccessful run in the West Indies earlier this year. Of course, neither of them can compare to the man whose retirement precipitated the crisis.

Mind you, even in retirement, Warne refuses to get off the stage. Last month he suggested that, if required, he'd come back for the Ashes. There must have been times during the last three weeks when Ponting longed to be able to chuck the ball to the chubby blonde with the earrings. But a Warne comeback would be a media feeding frenzy and a temporary sticking plaster. It isn't going to happen, even if the search for his replacement continues to be a long and painful one.