If you’re the sort of Australian cricket observer who only notices the home summer, you might be thinking that the lead-up to this Test season feels strangely low-key. A late start well into December, Western Australian cricket officials publicly nervous about crowds, and coverage fixated on retired fast bowler Mitchell Johnson taking a few potshots at former teammates – none of it reflects anticipation of the series against Pakistan.
If you’re someone who has followed the team’s exploits away from home, you might be almost as exhausted as the players. The year about to end has been an epic. Four Tests in India, six in England, returning the Ashes and yielding a World Test Championship trophy. Then headlong into near on two months of a fifty-over World Cup, winning that too with much the same group of players.
