Hoggy's age-old dilemma

A month out from the T20 World Cup, there’s a bizarre battle brewing within the Australian camp.

Competition for places among squad members is par for the course in any professional sporting team, but this showdown comes with a unique twist.

A 43-year-old versus a 20-year-old.

Gen-X versus Gen-Z.

Brad Hogg versus James Muirhead.

Hogg was at the National Cricket Centre (NCC) this week, alongside another relative baby in NSW speedster Pat Cummins, honing their respective crafts.

“And we also had Mitchell Starc, Dan Christian, Brad Hodge  and James Faulkner up here,” Hogg told cricket.com.au.

“We’ve been working pretty hard, and it’s been good because we’ve been concentrating just on the T20 skills, and a couple of the boys have been pulled out of the Shield competition specifically for the tournament.”

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Australia’s tournament begins on March 23 against Pakistan in Mirpur. For Hogg personally, success could mean a unique place in Australian cricket history; depending on the fitness of Shane Watson, Hogg could potentially become the only man to appear in the first Aussie teams to win both the ICC Champions Trophy (2006) and the T20 World Cup.

Of course, that’s a long way down the road just yet.

First, he needs to be selected.

And that’s where Muirhead comes in. The young Victorian leg-spinner was impressive in the recent T20 series against England, and Hogg knows he has his work cut out.

“We all want to play for Australia, there’s no two ways about it,” he said. “And I hope Muirhead goes in with that attitude, because it’ll better him as a player, and it’s healthy competition within the group.

“But I’ll be pushing him to stand up and deliver, because it’s for Australian cricket moving forward. I’m 43 years old, it’s not going to last forever, but I want to hang around and play as much as I can in the T20s.

“I played for Australia two years ago, people thought I wouldn’t be playing now at the age of 43, and if I can stay fit, I’ll still have those ambitions for two years down the track. I’m not going to die wondering.”

Second, Australia needs to win the thing. The fact that they are yet to break its tournament duck seems to be the driving force behind this campaign.

“It’s something we really want to win – we’ve had our opportunities and we had a decent crack at it last time in Sri Lanka, but we want to go all the way this time,” Hogg said.

“The skills of Muirhead, myself and (Glenn) Maxwell in the spin-bowling department are going to be tested to the highest level, and that’s what you play cricket for.

“There’s no better place to be tested than on the Subcontinent against players from those countries to really see how much your skills have improved.

“You go (to the Subcontinent) thinking it does suit spin, but you still have to be on your game. You have to adapt – you can’t just think, ‘Conditions are going to suit me, I’m going to do well’.

“You’re playing against Asian teams – we’ve got Pakistan and India in our group – and they’re fantastic players of spin.

“I think that’s probably the biggest thing for me to get out of it – apart from trying to win it – is just to see how much I’ve improved over the last 15, 20 years with my bowling.”

Hogg also goes into the competition riding a wave of confidence, owing to a pair of hugely successful BBL tournaments for the left-arm Chinaman bowler, which was of course crowned with the Scorchers maiden title.

“They’ve been coming out really well,” he said of his hard-to-pick tweakers. “There’s been patches in the last year where I wouldn’t have bowled any better in my life.

“That’s what I’m talking about with maturity and experience. The more you play, the more you expect to deliver, and that’s what I want to bring to the Australian team in Bangladesh.”

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The NCC was an eye-opener for Hogg, who was exposed to the facilities available to his young contemporaries.

“I’ll tell you what, I wish I was 20 years younger,” he laughed. “Players these days are really lucky with the facilities that are provided to them.

“The technology they have to analyse your skills is unbelievable, and they’re still looking to make it even better.

“It’s been a fantastic learning curve for me. I’ve got a lot out of the last three days, from analysing myself in terms of revs per minute, my accuracy, drift and drop.

“There’s a lot there to help players improve and work out where they’re at. It’s an amazing thing.

“And Muirhead’s the leader of the revolution at the moment – his best is 300 (revs) more than mine, and a little bit ahead of me and Stuart MacGill.

“So Stuart and I are hurting at the moment, because we hate being beaten.”

And so the rivalry continues.