His words to me suggest there could be a splitting into halves in the dressing room. According to Adam Gilchrist, a former Australian wicketkeeper-batter, Josh Hazlewood’s comments post-dismal day-three play for hosts in the first Test against India suggests to him that there is perhaps room for division in the dressing room. He was then asked in the post-day press conference, following the end of day three, on how Australia would prepare for the fourth day: “You probably have to ask one of the batters that question. I’m sort of relaxing and trying to get a bit of physio and a bit of treatment, and I’m probably looking mostly towards the next Test and what plans we can do against these batters.”
“I guess they are just going to keep doing what they do with their preparation. They’ll have a hit in the morning and talk around plans from what happened in the first innings, how they can negate that and move forward and improve on that.”
Speaking on Fox Sports that day about the play on that very fourth day of the Perth Test, Gilchrist said: ‘That to me tells me there is potentially a divided change room. I don’t know if there is. I might be reading too much into that.’
He later asked the former opener David Warner whether there was indeed further reading to be done in Hazlewood’s comments. Warner replied: “I think as senior player you have a duty of care when you represent the team to have some message from the batters that, all the batters are thinking, going out and batting.”
“But there’s not many runs in that change room at present, but to have the support from a senior bowler, those comments probably weren’t warranted. I don’t think there’s a divide in there, you probably see in great teams as well you could come off after a long day and start pointing fingers, but I don’t think there’s a divide.”
However, the former England captain Michael Vaughan was shocked by the comments made by Hazlewood. “Publicly, I’ve never heard an Australian come out and divide the camp into batters and bowlers. There’s 11 batters, that will never change, every player has to bat. There’s two days to go in the Test match, it’s a long shot for Australia to get anything out of this game.”
“But to publicly see a player say basically I’m thinking about the next game before this game is finished, I’ve been in many teams and I get it. You do get the batters and you do get the bowlers… but you can see there’s a bit of grumpiness there, but to publicly come out and say that, I have never seen that from an Australian.”
“Any player around the globe, but particularly an Australian… I always look at the small details in every team… togetherness and the lack of spirit in the outfield, you don’t say that often about Australia.”
The former India player and head coach, Ravi Shastri said the comments made by Hazlewood about “mental cracks” that has formed within the Australia camp after the visitors pushed the hosts on the backfoot in the ongoing match at Perth Stadium.
“I don’t think there’s a divide in there, you probably see in great teams as well you could come off after a long day and start pointing fingers, but I don’t think there’s a divide What the Indian dressing room will be thinking when they hear something like that is we know there are some cracks on the pitch.”
“But there are also cracks in the opposition. This time after coming to Australia for around 30-40 years, I think first time Indian team might feel as if,’you know what, we’re better than the opposition in their own backyard’. I don’t think any Indian team ever thought that way. Though quietly they will be thinking ‘we have to lose it here’.”
So sometimes team politics, sometimes it’s just mental. But this time it almost looks like there…
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