GEORGIE PARKER: Pat Cummins’ team ranks alongside great teams like those led by Steve Waugh and Ricky PontingGeorgie ParkerThe NightlyMon, 15 December 2025 12:13PMCommentsComments
Nostalgia is a powerful thing. It can convince you the rural town you holidayed in as a kid was perfect, that the Bubble O’Bill is the greatest ice cream of all time, and that the sporting era you grew up watching was better than anything that came after it.
Sometimes it’s right, but other times nostalgia only preserves the highlights and quietly discards the rest from your mind.
So, the question must be asked: is nostalgia clouding our judgment when it comes to the current Australian men’s cricket team?
Is that pre-social media haze stopping us from fully appreciating what’s right in front of us?
Because this team isn’t just a good cricket team. It’s a great one.
And yet, it feels like we’re waiting for them to finish playing before we’re willing to say so.
What more do they need to do? They’ve won World Cups in both ODI and T20 formats.
They’ve won and retained the Ashes. They’ve won the World Test Championship.
These are not isolated achievements or a lucky run, it’s sustained success across every format of the game. Albeit not as long as the golden era — the late 1990s and early 2000s dominated by Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne, Brett Lee and Jason Gillespie — but it is still a hugely successful team.
We often hear that cricket used to be harder. Tours were longer and tougher. Bowlers were faster. There’s probably some truth in that. But comparing eras is dangerous.
Let’s start with the bowling, because that’s where this side stands shoulder to shoulder with any Australian team.
Lee himself said on Sunday he believed Cummins’ men had surpassed the team he starred in.
Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon have all passed 300 Test wickets.
Josh Hazlewood sits on 295 and will surely join them when fully fit.
Behind them is Scott Boland who you can liken to the fifth fastest Jamaican in the Usain Bolt era, unlucky enough to compete at the same time as four insane athletes and would be in any other country’s relay team.
Boland is among the top 10 bowlers in the world, and his 69 wickets at 18.17 give him the best Test bowling average of any bowler in the past 90 years.
You can make a similar case for Michael Neser and Jhye Richardson — excellent bowlers, just unfortunately have the world’s best in front of them. That is not a “nice problem to have” — it’s historic depth.
With the bat, there is a generational talent in Steve Smith, who will finish his career with an average that belongs in the same conversation as Ricky Ponting’s.
Travis Head has repeatedly won games off his own bat on the biggest stages, and Alex Carey has now shown his best can be as good as any wicketkeeper before him so maybe we’ll start watching him through a different lens.
We often hear that cricket used to be harder. Tours were longer and tougher. Bowlers were faster. There’s probably some truth in that. But comparing eras is dangerous.
A wicket is still a wicket. A win is still a win. A trophy is still a trophy. Who gets to decide that this World Cup matters less than that one, or that this five wicket haul doesn’t count as much as that one? You can’t be a sport that uniquely use numbers to define greatness, then decide when they apply, or when they don’t.
And whether we like it or not, the current generation has had to match the standards of the so called golden era while also navigating an entirely new format.
Test and ODI excellence is no longer enough, there’s also the relentless T20 calendar. Yes, players don’t have to play it, but let’s be honest: is there any world where Warne or Ricky Ponting turns down the IPL every year? And would we be happy if we as a country weren’t competitive at the T20 World Cup?
I once was told by one of our great former Test batters he never felt much pressure with the bat, because even if he made a duck, he knew Warne and McGrath would take care of the rest. I’d like to think the current players feel the same way now.
Is this bowling attack enough on its own to eventually eclipse the golden era? Maybe not. But greatness doesn’t have to mean “better than everything that came before it”. And this Australian team of the 2020s deserves more respect than it gets and not just in hindsight when a light-bulb moment hits.
HOW THE ATTACKS STACK UP
Golden era
Glenn McGrath: 563 wickets at 21.64
Brett Lee: 310 at 30.81
Jason Gillespie: 259 at 26.13
Shane Warne: 708 at 25.41
Total: 1842 at 25.24
Current era
Pat Cummins: 309 wickets at 22.10
Mitchell Starc: 420 at 26.46
Josh Hazlewood: 295 at 24.21
Nathan Lyon: 562 at 30.16
Total: 1586 at 26.51
Get the latest news from thewest.com.au in your inbox.
Sign up for our emails
Read more on The West Australian
