Forget the hype, Australia just aren't any good anymore

When one thinks of Australian cricket, you instantly summon images of Glenn McGrath, Steve Waugh, Shane Warne and Adam Gilchrist... to name a few. These players have inflicted a battering on England on many occasions. However, these players no longer play for Australia, and the Telegraph’s Steve James insists England need to remember that...

A confession to start with: I’ve never been to Australia. Yes, that’s right. Never been to Australia, as player or journalist. I wasn’t brave enough to spend my off seasons playing grade cricket. Or I wasn’t asked. I can’t remember which.

So instead I sought winter sun in Zimbabwe, idling time drinking soapies (a wonderfully deceptive mixture of cane, lemon barley and soda water) and training with Grant Flower. Both left me feeling sick. But at least I got to meet his brother Andrew. They tell me he has gone on to do rather well for himself.

And there was also one winter period spent in Cape Town, playing for a club side called Primrose. Our experienced all-rounder was a delightful chap called Haroon Lorgat. I believe he is still involved in cricket: being chief executive of the International Cricket Council can just about be regarded as such.

So I will travel to Australia very soon in a rare state of excitement. But I will also travel in a state of some bewilderment. I’ll admit it: I just don’t get all the fuss. Hype and history are producing a cocktail that I’m not willing to stomach.

I’m led to believe that I’m travelling to another planet where visiting bowlers regularly disappear, sucked into some Kookaburra vortex, where batsmen become quivering wrecks on pitches simply too fast and bouncy for them, surrounded by fielders with PhDs in sledging and crowds so frightening that they all had parts in the film Psycho. Pah. I’m with Flower (A) on this: “I don’t think there’s anything to be afraid of in Australia,” he said before departure.

Of course, there used to be. Not so long ago Australia possessed a great team. And that is not to use that adjective blithely. They were great, mainly because in Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath they had two of the greatest bowlers ever to draw breath. Two in the same side! That makes some difference, even to the noise levels. Matthew Hayden never said a word until established in that team. Even I – shy, retiring me – used to chirp a bit when Waqar Younis was steaming in for Glamorgan.

Last week I asked Alastair Cook what the Australians had said to him when he was a young pup making a double hundred against them for Essex back in 2005. “There wasn’t much they could say,’’ he said, “We [Will Jefferson was his opening partner before Ravi Bopara joined him in a partnership of 270] had about 60 off the first 10 overs.” Exactly. Struggling teams go quiet. Chirping for England used to be a futile business.

And most of the sledging stories are apocryphal. I played against Warne and McGrath. Mostly they just swore and abused. “You could not call it sledging because it was so foul-mouthed as to be a disgrace to the game,” wrote Duncan Fletcher of them in the 2006/07 Ashes whitewash in his autobiography Behind the Shades.

The truth is that somebody needs to say it: Australia are simply not very good anymore. They are losing for fun at the moment. They are the new England. Even grade cricket is said to be going soft. Just like we used to in the Eighties and Nineties, they now seem to pick players out of a hat. Last Sunday they played a T20 international with players from only two states. They lost. In the past two years 45 players have represented Australia in Tests, one-day internationals and T20s. And they’ve only got six domestic teams! No wonder they’ve just sacked Merv Hughes as a selector.

Call it heresy, but the Ashes just weren’t the biggest thing in this cricket-mad youngster’s life. There was a reason: Australia were simply not very good then either. Neither were England, but that’s changed. Instead I grew up in awe of the West Indies. They were the team. Going to the Caribbean to face four snarling quicks was the ultimate examination.

But will this be England’s toughest tour? No chance. It will, though, be good preparation. India, the world’s No. 1 team, are coming next summer.