Cape Town, Birmingham, Nottingham, Galle, and now Hobart. Like falling cities in a losing war, the scenes of Australia's cricket disasters have come to our doorstep. The geography of decline presents a case that cannot be denied.
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Not since generations ago, before the decision was made to protect batsmen by covering cricket pitches against the elements, has the Australian Test team suffered as frequent batting collapses as in the past five years.
In Hobart on Saturday, they were all out for 85 against South Africa, the lowest Australian score on home soil since they were the whipping boys for the formidable West Indian teams of the 1980s.
Coming into the match after a poor batting performance in the first Test in Perth, the Australian captain, Steve Smith, was saying all the right words about commitment, concentration and resilience.
On Saturday morning, it seemed that Smith was the only one who had been listening. He alone resisted the tide of failure, remaining unbeaten on 48 runs while his teammates fell around him.
Smith leads an Australian team in transition, but while the origin of this journey is well known and garlanded with praise, its destination is not clearly mapped. Its most recent debutants are Adam Voges and Callum Ferguson, two seasoned professionals in their thirties who were among Saturday's failures.
By the afternoon, as South Africa's first innings also fell away, the contagion had spread and it appeared to be a crisis not simply of Australia's batting, but of Test cricket batting.
![Steve Smith walks off the ground at the end Australia's first innings during day one of the Second Test match between ...](/web/20161115232908im_/http://www.watoday.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/n/y/9/4/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsnxt2.png/1478937964449.jpg)
Is this one of those significant milestones in the history of cricket, when we understand that hardy, stoic Test cricket batting under challenging conditions is a thing of the past?
Has the development of the game in batsmen's favour – through easy-paced pitches, the technology of cricket bats and the incursions of limited-overs formats – so corrupted batting techniques that even the best are unable to cope with good bowling in cool, humid weather?
![South Africa's Vernon Philander crashed to the ground after a collision with Australian skipper Steve Smith during a ...](/web/20161115232908im_/http://www.watoday.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/n/u/7/p/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsnxt2.png/1478937964449.jpg)
In Australia's case, the team failures have become frequent enough to suggest that the decline is irreversible.
Still, there is an upside. Cricket, when dominated by bowlers, makes for non-stop entertainment.
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