Blood, sweat and cheers: Did we fall in love with cricket again at the Boxing Day Test

The late Warne was Starc's biggest critic. "He has to change his body language, it needs to be strong. He looks a bit soft," Warne said one year, then doubled down most summers after that.

It wasn't just a Warne-Starc thing. It was a perception problem for the post-golden-generation Australian cricket team, where every player was compared to the legends before them.

Who was going to fight like Justin Langer? Who was going to battle like Steve Waugh? Ruffle feathers like Glenn McGrath? Mentally disintegrate the opposition like Warnie?

Sure, this current Australian team is full of winners. But are they really that good and do we love them?

The Australian side finished the Boxing Day Test in second gear, cruising to a win by an innings and 182 runs against the No. 2 ranked side in the world. It's the sort of result we expected from sides led by Waugh and Ricky Ponting.

But this win did more than any recent effort. It made cricket fans reconsider how they view this Australian team.

Starc bowled with blood dripping from his finger, Cameron Green - the new $3.15 million man - came back out to bat with his own fractured finger and blood-soaked gloves, and David Warner batted until his body wouldn't let him bat any more.

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Throw in the new cult hero - Scotty Boland, the unassuming bowler who takes wickets for fun - and the Australian team has transformed from smug losers to gritty winners in the space of a few months.

Cricket is a funny game. One day you're "soft" and you start the summer "a bit on the nose" with the cricket-loving public, but a broken finger or two later and everything's all rosy.

It's easy to reminisce about the halcyon days, especially when we hear their voices on television and radio commentary so often.

The risk of always looking back is not appreciating what's here and now. Steve Smith and David Warner are in Australia's top-eight run-scorers of all time, Nathan Lyon is third on the wicket-taking list, Starc is seventh (and will soon be sixth), and Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood are in the top 20.

Still, crowds were hard to attract to the Twenty20 World Cup at the start of the summer and the first Test against the West Indies in Perth. It sparked plenty of questions about the revered Australian cricket team. Had the public fallen out of love with the national sport?

Glenn Maxwell's post T20 World Cup comments didn't help. "It doesn't mean anything," Maxwell said. "You can't dwell on it, I think you move on pretty quickly."

Move on quickly from a World Cup debacle? No way, that was supposed to hurt. How can cricket fans buy into something that cricket players don't care about?

Maybe the saturated cricket market played a part - Big Bash, T20s, fading one-dayers and Tests making cricket a year-round event and on television every other day between October and March.

Maybe the fans didn't feel a connection with modern Australian players, especially after the bitter fallout with former coach Langer, who lobbed a grenade into the camp when he labelled the players "cowards" after he was sacked.

Sure, the players were delivering results. A dominating Ashes win at home last summer, demolishing the West Indies and now making light work of the No. 2 ranked South Africans.

No one underestimated their talent, but maybe they underrated their desire to bleed for their country. So when IPL millionaire Green walked back out to bat despite Australia boasting a healthy lead, people sat up.

When Starc wiped blood on his pants after every ball and continued to charge in, people saw some grit. All of a sudden, they had the one thing their public persona was missing - guts.

Even Warner - the most divisive player in decades - made people think twice when he dug in to score a double century and put so much into it he was effectively carried off the field.

"Hopefully we did a lot of Aussies proud," Cummins said after beating South Africa at the MCG.

And if Warnie was still here? Maybe something cheeky that only the spin king could get away with. "I always knew Starcy had it in him." Cricket's a funny game.

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