The Day Australia’s Greatest Team Fell Apart

Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Justin Langer finished their Test careers on the same morning at the Sydney Cricket Ground, as Australia completed a 5-0 Ashes whitewash of England in January 2007. This documentary asks why the best team in the world, still winning every match it played and with all three farewells announced in advance, could not replace them. The film starts with the 2005 Ashes defeat in England, which gave some of Australia's oldest players a reason to stay for one more series. It follows the 2006-07 summer from Damien Martyn's sudden retirement after Adelaide to Warne's 700th Test wicket on Boxing Day, then traces the second wave of departures, as Adam Gilchrist, Stuart MacGill and Matthew Hayden left in the two years that followed. Key points covered: The farewell Test: McGrath's wicket with the last ball he bowled in Tests, Warne's 708th and final wicket, and Langer asking Hayden for "a six and a one to finish it". The men asked to follow them: Stuart Clark, Michael Hussey and Brad Haddin all made their Test debuts at 30, ten specialist spinners were tried between Warne and Nathan Lyon, and a 20-year-old Phillip Hughes made twin centuries at Durban. The first home defeats: India ending a 16-Test winning streak at Perth in 2008, Australia's first home series loss in sixteen years to South Africa, and 98 all out at the MCG on the way to England's 3-1 Ashes win in 2010-11. The answer comes from Ricky Ponting, who captained Australia on that farewell morning, speaking at the same ground on the day he resigned as captain in 2011. Cricket Untold makes long-form documentaries about the people, decisions and institutions behind the game.