Take it away, Michael Clarke, giving your view on the Australian cricket team putting in such a poor performance in the T20 World Cup, knocked out in the group stage or somesuch, I think?
“I think Australians in general,” he said, “on the biggest stage under the most amount of pressure, always put it on the line and have a crack. We’re not scared to lose. Yet we picked an aggressive 11 in this World Cup squad yet played so defensively. Very un-Australian.”
My eyes, as yours, are drawn to that final phrase, “Very un-Australian”.
And of course it’s easy to jeer at the very idea that there is an “un-Australian” way to play, that there is any such thing as Australian exceptionalism, but I like it. And I particularly like the concept in reverse.
Look, just what is Australian in sport is not easy to define but, like the US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who in 1964 said: “I don’t know how to define obscenity, but I know it when I see it,” I’ve always fancied I know Australianness when I see it. And when it comes to cricket, the examples are myriad.
The obvious starting point is Yabba, an actual Redfern rabbitoh who made his fame at the game as the great barracker on the SCG Hill in the 1920s and 30s, and was the one who gave Australianness its most famous cry: “’ave a go, ya Mug!”
A monument to heckling: “Yabba” at the SCG.Credit:Dallas Kilponen
Not for us the tightly calibrated defensive techniques. Not for us eking out a couple of careful runs an over. What is the point? No, we want to see our people open their shoulders and have a go!
What else?
At our best, we play in the spirit of the game. During the Bodyline series, in the summer of 1932/33, the Poms turned up in Australia and aimed an unending series of bouncers to the batsman’s body, while stacking the leg side with fielders. Australia’s Captain Bill Woodfull put his finger on it: “There are two teams out there, one is playing cricket.” It was Woodfull’s version of “It’s just not cricket,” an instant shorthand for, ‘it might be within the rules, but it still stinks’.
We’re not big on artifice, and structure. One of the most famous anecdotes about the great Keith Miller – the towering figure of post-war Australian cricket, well into the 1950s – concerned the time he was captaining NSW and arrived still wearing black tie and tails from a ball the night before. He set the field with one word, “Scatter,” before personally taking 7-12, bowling out South Australia for 27 – and presumably having a good lie-down in the dressing room.
Merv Hughes juggles in the SCG nets in 1989.Credit:Brendan Read
At our best, we have humour and characters.
Why was Merv Hughes so loved? Because with him we got two for the price of one. In fact, when I think of it, Merv’s persona embodied all of the aforementioned values. You will recall the famous story from when Australia was playing Pakistan in a 1990 Test and Javed Miandad sledged the moustachioed one, saying, “Merv you are a big, fat bus conductor”. When Merv scattered Miandad’s stumps two overs later, he ran up to him with his hand out yelling “Tickets please!”
If in doubt, we back ourselves. And so to my favourite story of the genre, which illustrates the point. See, the shadows were very long at the SCG on January 3, 2003, when, facing the final ball of the day the Australian captain, Steve Waugh is on 98 runs. Kerry O’Keeffe, up in the ABC commentary box, alongside England’s Jonathan Agnew. Their words are being beamed right around Australia and the United Kingdom.
Steve Waugh celebrates his Perfect Day’ century in 2003 at the SCG.Credit:Fairfax Archive
Agnew: “Well, what high drama we have here, Kerry. What will he do?”
O’Keeffe: “He’ll go for it.”
Agnew: “But he could come back tomorrow and wait for a trundler down the leg side …”
O’Keeffe: “Stuff tomorrow, Aggers. Tomorrow is for silver medallists. We’re Australians. Poms come back tomorrow. Australians only want the gold and we want it now … He’ll go for it.”
And before their very eyes, moments later, the English offie Richard Dawson prances and dances his way in to the bowler’s crease, flights his spinning orb towards Waugh … pitching just outside the off-stump … while the crowd hangs in suspended animation … as it lands and snarls up … as Waugh moves … on to his back foot … and CRACKS it … straightintothefence!
Afghanistan players celebrate the wicket of Steve Smith last week.Credit:Getty
And the crowd roars. Very Australian!
Does the current Australian team embody all these values? You’d have to ask someone who can bear watching T20. But I think we can go with Clarke.
The short answer is, probably not. And maybe that’s why it all seems so very dull right now?
Twitter: @Peter_Fitz
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