The Ashes 2013: Winning - the habit that destroyed Australian cricket

Everybody wants to win. Kings wanted to win wars, politicians want to win elections and teams want to win championships. The thirst of winning is so much that “experts” write books and give lectures about “How to win!”

Winning is good, in fact very good. It’s the best habit that one can get into, but once you slip, it hurls you down an extremely slippery slope. Just like all great schemes come along with an almost invisible asterisk, winning too brings along the baggage of arrogance and ignorance that leads to incompetence.

Remember that floppy hat, green sunglasses clad, evil grin faced Mark Taylor? If you have been following cricket from the 90s, and your team faced his troops, you must hate that man. Standing with his arms folded in the slip cordon, Mark Taylor built a team that had incredible potential.

He then passed on his group of would be greats to an even more dangerous man, Steve Waugh. Under him, they hunted like a pack of wolves and became the worst bullies in cricket – they didn’t only win, but demolished oppositions. He himself thrived under pressure situations and forged his team into a winning machine that refused to stop bludgeoning the opponents.

Then came the Punter and the hate reached its zenith. The would bes attained greatness and Ricky Ponting galvanized a great team into an invincible one. They became far superior than others and made winning look easy. The more they won, the more arrogant they became.

However, the air of superiority often blinds the best. The flipside of arrogance is negativity. It breeds a negative-minded culture, hostility and poor decision making that makes one ignorant towards the developing chinks in the armour.

And that’s where Cricket Australia went rogue. If a decision-making process is flawed, decisions go awry and ACB’s (as it was called then) ill-informed decisions have left Australian cricket in shambles.

One can keep tagging this Australian side as “not good enough” and Clarke as a failed leader. But is that the complete truth?

After every game, Michael Clarke faces the fury of hostile questions from the media and the abuse and criticisms of the nation but in reality, he has very slim control over the management of the organization that runs the game.