So, who are the lippy ones now? No sooner had the hubbub died down after Indian opener Virender Sehwag last week accused the Australians of cheating in January’s Sydney Test, then up pops left-armer Zaheer Khan to claim the Australians have got a pop-gun attack. And that Ponto’s boys played too defensively in the opening Test in Bangalore. And that he has put the old snake-charmer’s hex on Matthew Hayden.
Strewth, I thought it was the job of the Aussie boys to dish out the verbal stuff: Glenn McGrath routinely nominating his bunny before the start of every series; Shane Warne slamming Graeme Smith, Pat Symcox, Daryll Cullinan (bit of a South African theme developing here), Paul Collingwood, Ian Bell, Arjuna Ranantunga or (fill in any one of a multitude of names here); and Hayden himself puffing his chest out and sounding off about something or other.
So what’s going on here? The Indians, like the teetotaller whose been dragged to the pub and got a couple of strong shandies under his belt, have come out all Dutch courage and swinging.
But, I hate to say this, Zaheer may have a point. It is awfully hard to see how the Australians can bowl out India twice. Taking 10 wickets on those roads that pass for Indian pitches is hard enough. Taking 20 will require not just the guile of Warne but the patience of Gandhi.
Before the series started, I thought Lee, Johnson, Clark and Watson, with Bryce McGain as a handy but inexperienced back-up, might have been able to emulate the team’s feats in 2004 when they won the last series in India.
But Clark was clearly injured and below his best in the first Test and, given the state of his elbow, may not even play in the next one, starting Friday. And McGain’s replacement, Cameron White, is a heck of a good cricketer but a frontline Test spinner he aint. Neither is Michael Clarke. The Indian batsmen can play both with a toothpick.
So after the shine comes off the new ball, where’s the penetration? Where’s the deviation? Where are those unplayable deliveries? And where, in Vishnu’s name, will the 20 wickets come from? Answers on the back of a postcard, please.
3 Comments
So true, Charlie. On that last day of the first test, Warne would have been all over the Indians, oohing and ahhing with every ball, even if it was wide of the off stump and left well alone by the batsmen.
Question on the rancorous nature of your modern player. Do you think the ideal of gentlemen cricketer of can now be consigned to history? Is the pressure and competitiveness of professional cricket in 2008 just too much to allow for such niceties?
A valid question, Thos, and one we’re glad you’ve raised. The notion of the gentleman cricketer – whatever it or he looks like – belongs in Madame Tussaud’s or perhaps the Lord’s Museum where it could sit in a glass case alongside the cherished urn. What I mean is, the ideal has long been tarnished. Consigned to history, as you rightly say. Even old WG and, later, The Don were so egotistical and hyper-competitive that, in their pursuit of personal glory, they occasionally trampled on the notion of the play-up-and-play-the-game lilywhite.
When, in 3000AD, the boffins carbon-date the game and try to pinpoint the moment when the gentleman cricketer truly became the ill-mannered bogan, they will surely zero in on the early 1970s. That was when Ian Chappell, as Australian captain, made boorishness an art form. So bad was the Australian team’s behaviour that Paul Sheahan, at 27 and in the prime of his Test career, turned his back on the game in the mid-70s and became a schoolteacher instead.
The rogue’s gallery is long, and densely populated with Australians: Jeff Thomson, Dennis Lillee, Merv Hughes, Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne, Matthew Hayden and Andrew Symonds among them. But it is hardly the exclusive domain of the Oi, Oi, Oi brigade. Other august names in the gallery include Colin Croft, Andre Nel, Sreesanth and Harbhajan Singh, and that’s just off the top of my head.
Gilchrist, Tendulkar, Flintoff, Kumble and one or two others have kept the flame burning for the good guys – and even they have had their moments. But the truth is cricket, like much modern professional sport, is awash with so much money that inevitably players – in trying to establish lucrative and long-standing careers for themselves – give sportsmanship the Warwick Todd treatment and tonk it out of the park.
Now, pass me my pipe and slippers, Thos, old boy, I want to settle down with a copy of The Times. Then I’ll have a mug of Horlicks, fill the hot water bottle and be off to bed.
Well, that’s sorta how I feel: it’s an outdated idea that has stuck around, maybe, because cricket is such a quaint sport. And any pretense to gentlemanliness on the part of players, administrators or commentators is exactly that — a pretense.
I guess bad behaviour stands out on a cricket field more than other sports. In footy, at least you can whack someone or tackle them with a bit of extra oomph, which releases the pressure and gives the crowd something to cheer about. Ridiculously, most of the confrontational spice in modern cricket seems to happen in press conferences!