Duminy Day!

Any system that still has Australia ranked as the number one test nation in the world is a flawed system.

What I witnessed today was a side devoid of weapons with the capability to concern a decent batting side and a complete absence of any creative thinking or attacking strategy to change things up a bit. They started Day 3 at the MCG looking at taking a lead well in excess of 150 into their second innings, and wound up 60 runs behind!

Once things didn't simply fall into place, Ricky Ponting had nothing! He was just waiting for the South Africans to get themselves out, and waiting, and waiting. By lunch, the attitude in the crowd around me in the Ponsford stand was "well, we were supposed to be batting now...", by tea it was like..."well this is ridiculous! By the drinks break in the last session it had turned to complete annoyance. Disgraceful was the word that kept coming to mind...but why!

Losing Brett Lee of course put a whole in the attack from the outset - but that's not an excuse. Lee has taken 1 for about 1000 recently anyway and I don't believe he would've made that much difference. As it was, Hussey took the only wicket of the first two sessions and he probably wouldn't have bowled if Lee was on!

The rebuilding of Australian cricket has to go beyond trying a few spinners and hoping one will turn into a Shane Warne. It aint going to happen. We need the next phase to start, and start quickly. Build a team and get it to click quickly, around and agressive and creative captain, and I don't think that's Ricky Ponting. We need his batting, we need a better captain. From there we need a leader that can bring this side together in a special way. If not, the Ashes are going back to England again, just as quickly as we regained them a couple of years ago.