Spineless performances leave Australia in despairing hole

Seeing an emotional Steve Smith look so crestfallen in the press conference after the second Test was a jarring sight for Australian cricket fans. After another humiliating defeat, Australians are waking to the dreaded reality that their beloved national team has hit rock bottom. In fact, it is in the sewers, so bad is the stench hovering around them.

Upbeat and energetic folks, Australians are innately proud of their cricket team, whose tenacious spirit and unyielding culture has so long served as a mirror to its populace. However, right now, after continual spineless performances, the beleaguered Australian cricket team has become a national travesty.

Australian cricket is in full blown crisis and the damage control from the top brass has started with cricket chiefs James Sutherland and Pat Howard making a beeline to Hobart in a desperate bid to come to grips with the nightmarish performance. Sutherland even bravely fronted a media press conference on the morning after the second Test finished, but it did little to alleviate the thickening black clouds around Australian cricket.

Australians have some pathos when their team isn't particularly good or when they lose in difficult terrain in far-flung locales, but being eviscerated on home terrain is unforgivable. For an entire generation, those aged under 40, have never seen Australia so publicly shamed on home soil.

Not since the dark days of the mid-1980s, when Kim Hughes tearfully resigned as captain, has Australian cricket felt in a worst state. During their prolonged successful reign since, only in 2010-11 - where they lost three Ashes Tests by an innings - have Australia been so humiliated at home.

Even in the aftermath of that embarrassment to their old nemesis, the calamity felt like an outlier. Ricky Ponting, the then captain, had been skipper for an eternity and the team felt stale. There was hope that a change in leadership to the vivacious Michael Clarke could rejuvenate the team.

Even so, there was discontent over losing so overwhelmingly a home Ashes series and a review into Australian cricket was commissioned through the Argus Report. More than five years later, the knives are sharpening and there are fresh calls for a new review into a system deemed "broken" by influential figures such as Ian Chappell.

Several initiatives implemented after the 2011 review have been criticised, including most notably the role of Howard, Cricket Australia's high performance boss, whose contract runs out next year. In a press conference on day two of the second Test in Hobart, Howard was coy about his future but whispers persist that he is unlikely to continue in the role. Whether he leaves willingly or is pushed, remains the great unknown.

Howard, who is from a rugby background, has been met with resistance from the cricket establishment since his appointment and his keenness to promote sports science - including to manage fast bowlers - has been met with howls of derision from a section of pundits.

Howard isn't the only one in the hot seat, with Sutherland, coach Darren Lehmann and Australia's selectors all facing increasing pressure. Lehmann has the security blanket of being contracted until 2019 but his tenure could be in jeopardy if results don't significantly improve. Some may take former captain Michael Clarke's recent controversial autobiography with a grain of salt but beneath the muckraking there were some revealing insights into how the team was led.

Clarke, who insisted he had no personal issue with Lehmann, wrote that he disagreed with his leadership responsibilities being scaled back during that period. In his book, Clarke accused Lehmann of wanting the "power to shake things up and run the team his way".

In a contradiction to the Argus Report, a recommendation to make the captain a selector was abandoned when Lehmann signed on as coach in 2013. It clearly frustrated Clarke and you feel it is starting to aggravate Smith. At his press conference after the Test, Smith, was coy whether he was satisfied with the selection of the team but, reading between the lines, his deflection of the response was revealing in itself.

You have to feel for Smith. In many ways it feels very much like the mid-1980s, none more so than Smith becoming a one-man batting band much like Allan Border often was during that glum period. Australian chiefs prefer to select a more mature captain, around the 30-years-old mark, but Smith was really the only viable candidate when he was made skipper after Clarke's retirement.

Due to his youthfulness and the shambolic nature above him, Smith is likely to escape much of the wrath. Right now, with Australian cricket in a despairing hole and his fledgling captaincy taking a mighty hit, it is high time to entrust Smith with more control over his team. You sense Smith hasn't had an assertive enough voice while he's been learning the ropes but a recalibration is required to get Australian cricket out of this mess. Of course, these decisions are out of his hand.

It feels Sutherland, who has been chief executive for 15 years, is getting long in the tooth and the board could be forced to make a difficult decision on his future. With chief selector Rod Marsh announcing his decision to step down in the wake of Australia's disastrous performance, an authoritative and revered figure, such as former captain Steve Waugh or Ricky Ponting, might be the ideal person to steer Australia into a renewal it clearly desperately needs.

During this ugly stretch, there has been continual talk of Australia's on-field woes, particularly their sordid state of batting, but you sense harder decisions will firstly need to be made on the men in suits running Australian cricket.