According to sporting folklore it was NSW, as the most populous state, which provided the leadership and quality players for the national team. Think Steve Waugh, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee as NSW contributions.

Well, if it is good enough for cricket it is good enough for coal which, in a curious way, is what Sydney Mining Club chairman Julian Malnic, was trying to say the other day in a story he wrote for the Australian Financial Review newspaper.

“Africa-grade corruption has permeated the once Premier State”, was one of Malnic’s memorable lines in a critique of what has happened to the NSW mining industry, especially its all-important coal sector.

While he did not use the cricket comparison preferred by The Hog, Malnic’s core argument is that the concentration of people in big urban areas such as Sydney has dulled an awareness of mining and the contribution it makes to the NSW economy.

Without mining, especially of coal and that important derivative, CSG, NSW would be a much poorer place, and might become just that if anti-mining protestors have their way and “shut the gate” on mining.

As with the declining performance of the Australian cricket the decline of mining in NSW can be traced back to poor preparation.

In cricket that means encouraging juniors and putting in “net time” to practice what’s required at the pitch.

In coal, it means encouraging exploration and ensuring that participants do not break the rules.

NSW cricket is a shadow of what it once was. So is mining. Why this is so can be traced to a lack of encouragement for young cricketers, and in coal to a collapse in Australia’s share of the global exploration expenditure, which Malnic notes, dropped from 21% of the worldwide budget in 1996 to 12% today.

Then there is corruption, which in cricket seems to be largely confined to the Indian Premier League, and which in coal seems to be a NSW speciality if the findings of Commissioner David Ipp of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption are a guide.

What Ipp found in the case against former NSW Mines Minister Ian Macdonald and Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid has rocked the foundation of government in that state, and compounded the poor image of mining there too.

Or, as Malnic wrote: “Corruption and landowners who want to save the future by locking the gate have trashed the reputation of NSW as a trustworthy place to explore for minerals.

“The state that gave the world the one-third of a trillion-dollar Broken Hill deposit, a string of great mining houses such as Rio Tinto and BHP, and the most prolific coal-exporting port in the world, has now debased its proud history and achieved a status equal to the more flea-bitten African states.”

If you think that’s strong stuff from Malnic, it gets stronger, as he notes the views of people working in the NSW mining industry: “They are frustrated by green and red tape, oppressed by farmers, cash-starved by the end of the mining boom, and annoyed by administrative stupidity.

“The ICAC inquiry’s exposure of the circus around mining tenements is the last straw.”

It probably isn’t the last straw because the minerals and energy wanted by a commodity-constrained world are still in the ground and they will eventually find their way to customers.

The real problem is that opportunities to create wealth (and jobs) by developing those minerals are being missed because of the lousy reputation NSW has developed over the past 20 years.

More importantly, the collapse of mining’s image in Australia’s most populous state has flowed out across the country because NSW is also home of Australia’s media industry.

Just as Cricket Australia needs to start fixing the game in NSW for the good of the national team so too does mining need to fix its reputation in NSW if it is to get a better hearing at a national level.

The biggest mining states today are Queensland and WA but given time and the bad publicity flowing out of NSW there is a risk the rot in Sydney will permeate across borders if not at a government level then certainly at a voter level.

If an outflow of NSW rottenness does not seem important then you are not familiar with the way Australian works, or how its cricket team relies on a strong NSW.