Secret Cricketer: The Australian dressing room will be the darkest of places after Ashes defeat

The Secret Cricketer has played cricket at the highest level of the game.

That Australia dressing room is a very, very dark place right now. Don’t think it’s any different because it’s international cricket. People were surprised when Matt Prior, accidently, broke a window at Lord’s with his bat (or a very bad throw of a batting glove from the doorway, more likely). They shouldn’t have been. The changing room can be the best and the worst place and when it is a horrible place, I can promise you, it’s at it’s worst at the very top level.

Imagine the scramble to find pads, gloves etc as Australia were being dismantled on Thursday. It’s supposed to a sanctuary, the place where you can escape the action and the efforts of the middle. Take a break. To hide, to regroup, to cry; and seeing a senior player, cry into his cap while I was padding up, preparing to bat was a memory I’ll never forget. He knew his time was up. He’d been found out, and left wanting at the international level. A guy I rated as a legend, crying. All away from the public and the cameras.

Bowlers all huddle together and start discussing “those f***ing batsmen”. Batsmen, the dismissed ones, try to not catch the eyes of the bowlers and talk about how much it is swinging and seaming. Two groups, them and us. Us and them. “the f**k are you looking at…” it all kicks off. Frustrations vented.

Friends argue, about stupid things, Batsmen vs bowlers. Grumpy and dumb bowlers and brittle and soft batsmen. Cliques and snarky comments. It’s can be a real hostile place, that sanctuary. The annihilation of the Australians on the first day at Trent Bridge would have meant the changing room is the last place you want to be. It’s hollow. It’s scary. Everybody is on edge; you’d rather be diving with sharks, without a cage.

I’ve seen batsmen smash their bats to bits. Come in and sit down all calm, then stand up, pick up their bat and hack it against chairs, poles, anything in reach until it’s good for nothing, and then stomp on it just to make sure it’s dead. Bowlers take their boots off, spit into to them, contemplative, and then explode and throw them against a wall across the other side of the changing room.

This is the side of the dressing room that the team, the management, the PR and press officers will try desperately to hide from the public and from the cameras (it was a bat that fell and caused the window to break – the line regarding Prior’s bat at Lord’s). This is the side of the dressing room you don’t see during or after what happened on Saturday but this is also the side of that dressing room that also sees a team in disarray shot out for 60.

Shane Watson, is his career over? Brad Haddin? Shaun Marsh? We now know Michael Clarke’s is as this column predicted last week. So many names from this tour group who might be feeling like this would be their last time. And it will be, for at least 3 of that 4, surely.

Put all that into the current mix of where the Australia team is right now - this might be the biggest crisis they’ve faced in four decades since Allan Border rebuilt the shambles that was the mid-80’s.

From what I hear, the dressing room had already moved on from Clarke. That was always going to happen for him - the end was always likely to be quick. There have been denials that he’s not an unpopular captain and that there’s no problem with his teammates, but when times get tough then things like this move very quickly and Darren Lehmann and the selectors have a big call to make with one match to go of the series.

From what I could see, they didn’t have a choice - Clarke had to go. He’s gone. And with his retirement, he should walk away now and not play the last Test at The Oval. His body and mind shot. The issue is that the air apparent Steve Smith has not been anywhere near his best. In a lot of the players minds, Smith was already the next captain and handing him the captaincy for The Oval might just be the thing to help him find his form again.