Australia Cricket Legends

Australia Cricket Legend 

Loved a near-certain run-out for our team, but their umpire at square leg disagreed, and our point fielder took a stump and charged at him with it. I played in a game with two brothers, one on each side, where they sledged each other so viciously that they finally swung punches. In a grand final of low-level club cricket, one team decided it would be their last season together and they went nuclear with their sledging. Boisterous, they said they would get one if they talked back. They said that they were going to "f*** up" their cars, which in Australia seemed to be the point at many people's estimation was too far. That violent, sociopathic team triumphed, and then most of them got banned for pretty much the next season. One for life. But it didn't matter, because they'd won.

The Good Bloke: coming soon to a superhero movie near youThe Good Bloke: coming soon to a superhero movie near you © Getty Images

It may only be club cricket, but that is not how it feels. My father played for his team until he needed two knee replacements because of his frequent 30-over days. While my uncle would toss his bat when he was out and use his knowledge of the laws to push the limits of cricket. I remember once, when I was 13 and my finger was snapped at slip, I went off the field, someone got some electrical tape and taped my fingers together and sent me back out. That was what you did. It was your club, your mates; it meant something, so you put in. You put your body on the line, or you sledge your way to a lifetime ban. It was all about winning, regardless of cost. Forget academies, development squads, school cricket or underage competitions. Australia thinks that club cricket makes them great: throwing boys in among men. Amateur cricket with a professional work ethic. The baggy green's only the last thing you give yourself to. David Warner was fielding close-in during the Cape Town Test in 2014. You didn't need to see him there; you could hear him. He was on the howl. In the first innings, when Faf du Plessis had assumed the ball was dead, he'd picked it up, and the Australians abused him for it. They didn't appeal, though du Plessis had grabbed it before it was dead, and without consent from them. At the press conference after play, du Plessis said, "They run like a pack of dogs around you when you get close to that ball."Hence the howling. It lasted for almost all of du Plessis' second innings. He made 47 off 109 balls in 157 minutes, and the Australians howled through most of it. They turned up the sound off the mics on both TV and radio, often when Nathan Lyon or Steve Smith were bowling, and there were men around the bat. But you could see it even with the fast men, the fielders coming in and acting like cartoon dogs barking at the moon. There are various styles of Australian nicknames: descriptive, your name but shorter, random, and ironic. Warner became known as the Bull — a comment on his physicality and personality. But his nickname evolved; he became the Reverend. It happened after he got married, became a father, stopped drinking, and took his fitness seriously. Warner no longer wanted to be the attack dog; he had matured was not that guy anymore as he was when young. This bloke, who had smashed Dale Steyn back into the Southern Stand and taken a swing at Joe Root in a bar, was now the best runner between the wickets in the world and a family man. The Australian team did not always need for him to be that wild dog; it had others. And Brad Haddin was around. It was Haddin who had a dig at New Zealand for being too nice when people suggested that perhaps the Australian team should be a bit like them. This was the same Haddin who did not alert the umpire that it was he who knocked the bails off when Neil Broom was "bowled". As well as failing to report that he'd broken the bails, he celebrated a wicket as bowled when he had to have felt his gloves break the stumps. Peter Nevill replaced Haddin. Nevill is no one's idea of an angry man, but when the team failed, Steve Smith said he wanted Nevill to be more vocal. While he didn't want Nevill to be an attack dog - he'd be little more than a stern-looking Mexican hairless - it's apparent Australia had decided they needed one.

Haddin: not nice, and proud of itHaddin: not nice, and proud of it © Getty Images

So then, when Nevill became a liability with the bat as well and he started to pay the price for a couple of uncharacteristic mistakes with the gloves, in came Matthew Wade. There was scant discussion, either, on the fact that Nevill had accrued more Test runs than Wade had in Shield cricket up to that juncture in the season. Atop of that, their first-class records were akin to each other. But Wade could be vocal. Wade is known as one of the harder guys in Australian cricket, and he's always in the ear of batsmen: it can be with the catchphrase "Noice, Garry" or sledging. Wade is often up at the stumps, arms folded, glove just across his lips, giving the batsman his advice. And Wade would do anything he had to do for a win, including when he did a Baryshnikov twirl on the wicket during a game for Victoria which earned him a suspension for pitch doctoring. While Wade was loud, in his recall he averaged 20, two less than Nevill. So he was dropped, and rather than go back to the quiet Nevill, they went to the equally nice Paine - who can talk, but even his sledges end up as friendly memes. It wasn't the "noise" or aggression they were looking for when they rehired Wade. So the Bull was put back on the shelf, and the reverend collar went back in the costume-hire shop before the 2017-18 Ashes. Warner told everyone he was going to "be vocal". By the end of the series, England had been irritated twice over by him. First it was by ball-tampering, which they presumed he was doing with his finger bandages. They even commissioned journalists to look out for it. Also his sledging of Jonny Bairstow, which started to be about Bairstow headbutting Cameron Bancroft, and then spilled over into other abuse. England have suggested privately that it was something unbelievably personal and hurtful.After the Ashes and before the disastrous tour of South Africa, David Warner spent an hour in Adam Collins and Geoff Lemon's company on their Final World podcast.  "You are always going to say something in the media," he said. "That's what I love doing. [being] the pantomime villain. If you want to be that person you want to be. And that's me." Pantomime villain. That's how he referred to the role, because it's not serious to them. It is make-believe, nothing more. And, ideally, you even accept that being a supposed baddie to certain other countries or evoking the odd furious opinion piece about yourself is all part of it. It's about the team, the cap, your mates. You do what you have to do.When Warner was caught in his off-field altercation with de Kock, Adam Gilchrist said on radio, "the Reverend's gone, Bull's back".When Bancroft gave an interview about his role in the ball-tampering scandal, much of what he said was him trying to play his role as the victim. Aside from that he said one thing that showed the way Australian cricket is. "I've asked myself this question a lot. If I had said 'no', what would that have meant? If I actually said 'no', and I went to bed that night, I had the exact same problem. I had the problem that I had using the sandpaper on the cricket ball. And the problem was that I would have gone to bed and I would have felt like I let everybody down. I would have felt like I would have hurt our chances to win the game of cricket."An Australian player messaged me when the first Al Jazeera documentary on match-fixing was released last year. "Do you know anything about this Al Jazeera thing? Can't believe any Aussie cricketers would be involved?" Since then, a few other Australian players have taken some stock. They seem to think that as if by birthright and a devotion to the baggy green, they won't do anything wrong.

In the '70s, men were men and Australian men doubly soIn the '70s, men were men and Australian men doubly so © Getty Images

Australian cricketers have gone to jail, are involved in dodgy housing schemes, and have hit their wives. They do the things that cricketers in every other society do. They're flawed and they seem not to recognize it. And when Australians do something wrong there's always a twist. Like when Shane Warne took a banned substance, which was a masking agent, just before a Cricket World Cup. But an Australian cricketer wouldn't take drugs, would they? Except that bloke, sorry, and this one. But Warne was just vain and naive, not someone who was potentially hiding another drug. It was like when Warne and Mark Waugh took bribes from a bookie for pitch information and the Australian board hid it from the public because the team was on the way to the West Indies for the series that would make them the world's No. 1 Test team. They didn't do a deal, they merely took money from a bookmaker. I assume on both occasions the players were on the right side of the line.People do break the law in Australia; not just the immigrants who cop much of the blame but born-and-bred Aussies as well. We've committed serial murder, and the place has a huge problem with domestic violence. The government of Australia detains refugees, including children, on Manus and Nauru islands. For most of our history, there has been systemic mistreatment of indigenous people. Australia is liable to the same issues as most modern Western countries. It lets believe it's not a country of immigrants, sends troops into battle on trumped-up claims, condemns the earth to devastation, and charges our most senior Catholic, Archbishop George Pell, with child sexual assault. Although we may fancy we are some sort of supper being, we are prey to the same issues as everyone. It's that self-deception that provides a 12-month suspension for an act that no one else has even drawn a suspension for. Exposed as a collective to the act of cheating, the reaction of Australia to the ball-tampering was not so much considering the merits of the tampering itself, but more about the players being found guilty in breaking the spell. Walking was never a word where I played. If there was ever a conversation about it, it was usually about respecting the umpire's decision. "You are there to play cricket, their job is to umpire".But I also remember the first time it became an issue for me. I was playing senior cricket as a 15-year-old, and I opened the batting and had eight overs to get to stumps. From the moment I took guard, the fielding side took an immediate dislike to me. For eight overs I didn't get a ball in my half. From one, I went to hook. There was a mighty noise as the ball flew through to the keeper. They appealed, the umpire said not out, they abused him for that. When that did no good they turned on me for not walking. A few minutes later it was stumps, and they were still abusing me as we left the ground.

Yo, Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi: Jimmy Barnes and Cold Chisel at a concert ahead of the NRL Grand Final in 2015Yo, Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi: Jimmy Barnes and Cold Chisel at a concert ahead of the NRL Grand Final in 2015 © Getty Images

Next day's play was the following Saturday, and as soon as I took guard the sledging started again. They called me a cheat for half an hour or so, and then started to threaten violence. The longer I was there, the worse it got. Then one of them worked out my mother was there and they suggested they were going to have sex with her, with or without her consent. Even to my 15-year-old brain it was clear that they weren't serious about it. They were just trying to get a rise out of me so I'd play a rash shot. But it was so intense being surrounded by grown men screaming and threatening. I just couldn't shake it: these are grown men, real people with real jobs and wives or girlfriends, who pay taxes, who run the BBQ at club events, who are trying to destroy me—and they're meant to treat me like an adult if I'm playing senior level while still young. Apparently it's that intense working-over that sorts out the real players. You come through, you're stronger. But you come through, you're also indoctrinated. To this day I'm as sure as I can be (which as modern technology has told us, isn't much) that I didn't nick it. But that play and miss changed me. I stayed in as they abused; we won the match, and after that game I never walked. Having survived that, I figured I was tough enough to survive club cricket, and I'd play to the umpire's call, and give as good as I got. They didn't get me to walk, but they turned me to their way. Somewhere along the road, Australian fans changed from cricket fans, well turned out, polite clapping, the odd cheeky word, to more abusive and violent. Sure there were always types like Yabba, the loudmouth Australian barracker. But you see the old photos of crowds at the MCG or SCG - everyone wearing hats; they could have been on their way to church. The country itself was a weird mix of England, Ireland and Scotland, with the indigenous rarely mentioned. Publicly we often looked and acted English. Privately we're more Irish and Scottish. Errol Flynn was an Australian, period, though he had the advantage of precisely three years of education in England, and he spoke the Queen's. Compare the way he sounded with Mel Gibson, who only lived in Australia from the age of 12 and sounded Aussie as. Somewhere between Flynn's swashbuckling and Gibson's Mad-Maxing the change was, like this. Music and cricket showed it best. After the effort of the 1970s and the breakout of the more pub rock of Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, the Angels, AC/DC, and Cold Chisel, by the early 1980s - sweatier, more bare-chested, and rawer than the 1970s -, you had the images of Lobby Loyde playing guitar, the butt of the cigarette hangin' from his lips, Jimmy Barnes screaming not singing, the Young brothers' staccato guitar, and piss-taking lyrics. It couldn't have come from anywhere else, even if not all those musicians were born there. At the same time in cricket you had Ian Chappell's fieriness, Jeff Thomson's pace, Dennis Lillee's aura, and Rod Marsh's hostility. These weren't cricketers, they were Australian cricketers. Chappelli wore his shirt undone because Richie Benaud did. But it wasn't the same. When Benaud did it, he looked like a Gap model; when Chappelli did it, he made it look like war. Richie was Errol Flynn; Chappelli was Mel Gibson. They looked angry, played hard, and gave no shits. The slips cordon looked like a bunch of blokes turning up from a pub. The fast bowlers were liked hired goons. There was facial hair, chest hair, and long hair, all of it sweaty. It was a real visceral XI - you smelt it.

Why should football fans have a monopoly on in-stadium argy bargy with security staff? A spectator is ejected during the 2012 MCG TestWhy should football fans have a monopoly on in-stadium argy bargy with security staff? A spectator is ejected during the 2012 MCG Test

It is rather tempting to suggest that they had changed the culture, but they were only the face for the outside world. Lillee's long hair and Loyde's ciggie were only the outward manifestations of what was happening in backyards and pubs across the nation. They had drinkers in the bar, and they had drinkers out in the yard. The blokes on the ground looked the same as those in the outer, who'd turn up with a foam esky full of longnecks and drink all day. The first sign that the crowd had massively turned was probably back when John Snow, the English fast bowler, hit Terry Jenner on the head. Jenner was a tailender, and the umpire had already warned Snow for intimidatory bowling. Snow stormed off to the boundary as the SCG crowd booed him. When he got to the boundary, some tried to shake his hand, but one fan grabbed at Snow and wouldn't let go, pulling him into the picket fence, while other fans threw pies and beer cans at him. That was in 1971: the MCG was the worst. It may have been the crowds, the hot weather, and the Christmas holidays, but everything seemed to bring out the worst in the fans. My first memory from a Test was of a member of the crowd hitting a Pakistan player as he tried to retrieve a ball. Melbourne fans threw bottles and golf balls at Mark Ealham, and a New Zealand player was also almost once hit. You could have as much fun in Bay 13 (the area made infamous by the Merv Hughes stretching) counting how many got thrown out as watching the game. You also had to beware the story that people would piss in empty beer cups and throw them in the air during the Mexican wave. Maybe the wasn't true but that story of him telling it, passed the smell test more than once. In 2002, Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland told the Age, "It's pretty clear from the ICC's point of view that the MCG is in the worst three grounds in the world for crowd behaviour, based on the record in the last few years."Cricket crowds are not like that anymore in Australia. The MCG and other grounds have made it almost impossible to get a full-strength beer. But still Australian cricket crowds are able to be rancid. In more recent times, New Zealand bowler Iain O'Brien was called a faggot by the Gabba crowd. The crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground had to make its presence felt somehow, and with the last Boxing Day Test on its testiest ground of all, the target was Mitchell Marsh. Jonathan Trott had to listen to the crowd— including a policeman.—chant "Trott, Trott, your mum's got vagina rot". The MCG booed Marsh, ejecting fans for chanting "Show us your visa" at the Indian players and fans. Crowd behaviour may have changed from the violent and weird '70s, '80s, and '90s, but one item on the list of things you can still say is that Australian crowds are not like cricket watchers in the rest of the world. They are the closest thing cricket has to football fans.Which arm should we start with - underarm or broken f****n arm? There was the sledging of Glenn Turner. And also Lillee and Javed Miandad fighting. Not to mention the invention of the term "mental disintegration". Do I really have to state all the incidents where Australian cricketers have behaved shockingly? The internet might run out of space if I do.

Samuels v Warne: unseemly or a marketing man's dream?Samuels v Warne: unseemly or a marketing man's dream? © Getty Images

Sharda Ugra listed more than a few here; you can find another few from Osman Samiuddin here. And if you read any piece on Sandpapergate, you'll have found a few more. Australian cricket has always been synonymous with bad behaviour. It's a brand, or even a badge of honour. I was in a coffee shop a couple of years ago with an Australian coach when one of the women's team players came by to talk about her next match. They were talking about one player who had played for them but had now moved over to the opposition. He had worked with the cricketer who had moved, so he gave advice about all her weaknesses. Not one of them was technical or about how she played; they were all about her personality and perceived psychological tender spots. It was a perfect illustration of what Ugra described as "premeditated toxic confrontation, a drama scripted between balls". And it's so deep in the very fibre of cricket day to day in Australia, that it runs from the bottom to the top. When India captain Anil Kumble spoke of how only one team was playing in the spirit of the game in the aftermath of the Sydney Test of 2008, Sutherland responded with: "Test cricket is what is being played here. It's not tiddlywinks."A few years later came the Big Bash stoush between Marlon Samuels and Shane Warne, where Warne walked down the wicket abusing Samuels and pulled at his shirt, after claiming that Samuels had interfered with a Stars batsman trying to run by pulling his shirt. A couple of balls later he appeared from two metres to be trying to throw the ball at Samuels. Samuels responded by flopping his bat over Warne's head - like he wanted to throw it at him and at the last minute thought better of it.Samuels was wrong to impede a Stars batsman, Warne was wrong to grab Samuels, Warne was wrong to throw the ball at Samuels, and Samuels was wrong to throw the bat. It was ugly and stupid and both players should have looked set for long suspensions. Warne was suspended for one game, Samuels none, and Sutherland said, "To be honest I thought it looked like two teams playing in front of a very big crowd in a highly charged environment with a lot at stake. Players are entertainers, they're putting on a show, but first and foremost they're also sportsmen who are competing for big prizes, and I think whilst we can stand here and say we don't condone anything that happened last night, this sort of thing is probably something that only inspires a greater rivalry between the Renegades and the Stars and creates greater interest for the Big Bash League."You know the problem is deep when the CEO of the board essentially says, "Hey kids, grab a bloke on the field, throw a ball at him, toss your bat dangerously. It just creates more interest. It's not tiddlywinks, you big silly."And this is the body whose job is to police and organise Australian cricket. Instead, they've tended to justify stupid and offensive actions. This is the same body that once effectively covered up the fact that Warne and Mark Waugh had accepted bribes from a bookie, that was so quick to jump on board with the Big Three, and that once banned three players over what was really a systemic issue in Australian cricket. As Michael Holding famously said, "The players are the kids, and the board are the parents." CA may be the grown-ups in the room, but they too are the kids who were brought up here.

 John Snow being manhandled by fans on the boundary was an early milestone in Australian crowds turning aggressiveJohn Snow being manhandled by fans on the boundary was an early milestone in Australian crowds turning aggressive © Getty Images

And thus may want to now cleanse the Australian cricket culture of the very things that make that tough to market to families. And with Sandpapergate, they'll take a moment to try and be good, as they did in the aftermath of Phil Hughes' death. But they remain believers in sledging, they remain wanting to play hard, aggressive cricket. They still want to win. Many Australians believe that such behavior makes them win the game. ''I think there's no doubt the team's performance has been affected. Hard, aggressive cricket is in the Australian team's DNA, and, unfortunately, the players started second-guessing their natural instincts in the heat of battle for fear of reprisal from Cricket Australia, or public backlash from the vocal minority. It was a weakness. " I am absolutely certain so many opposition teams had as their priority to try and pressurise what they now believed was a soft underbelly of the Australian team.'' That was Paul Marsh', son of Rod, and then CEO of the Australian Cricketers' Association, speaking in 2010-11 "If you keep toning us down, toning us down, you'll make us the same as everybody else." That was Ricky Ponting, now former captain and commentator extraordinaire, speaking after Australia had, fleetingly, gone back to the top of the ICC rankings, early 2014. Has it really been Thus Always Australia? I mean, they're the baddies, the aggressors, the mouthy ones, the ones who bend the laws of the game, 'cause that's what we can recall. In fact, it was Australia - first on the planet to spew loose a two-man pace attack capable of hurting people - who complained about Bodyline. And they weren't complaining just because they were losing - they could have picked a team of quicks themselves. They did it because they thought it was against the spirit of the game.Part of the early Ashes rivalry was based on Australia feeling aggrieved at things WG Grace did. Like when he "kidnapped" Billy Midwinter* from the Australian dressing room before a match. Or perhaps the most famous one where he ran out Sammy Jones while allrounder was off down the pitch, gardening. Australians were the nice guys. Vic Trumper was a beacon for all that was great; Bill Ponsford stood high in the esteem of the game, and coming later in time, Benaud would emerge as the voice and the conscience of the game. And certainly, there was Warwick Armstrong - probably ground zero for how Australian cricket came to be known. It's not true to say that Australia was always like that, though. The thing is: Australia were still great, even in this nice-guy era. They won 46% of their Tests until 1970; the next two best were England, on 38%, and West Indies, 33%. Australia developed the game's greatest player and dominated the Ashes without all this talk of mental disintegration. The word "sledge" barely existed, no one tried to break anyone's f****n arm, and yet they were still easily the best Test nation. Since 1970, Australia have won 47% of their Tests; only South Africa are higher, at 49%. Pakistan are way back in third place, on 35%. And even though South Africa have emerged victorious in a fraction more percentage of Tests, they haven't held a reign as dominant as Australia's for fractions not even at granted periods of time, nor have they won a singular ICC event. Australia has five World Cups. Clearly, the greatest cricket nation and have been for a very, very long time.

The way we were: spectators at a Test during the 1954-55 AshesThe way we were: spectators at a Test during the 1954-55 Ashes © Getty Images

 They were not always the most hated cricket nation. That has built up over time, perhaps because of all the winning, perhaps because they bought into their own bullshit. "The fundamental lie comes in those Paul Marsh and Ricky Ponting statements that have been repeated by so many Australian cricketers and fans over the years. They believe the sledging brought success, when it was the success that brought the sledging.". Australian cricketers are not better because they sledge; they sledge because they're better. This is partly because Australia is such a good sporting nation. They have battered men's and women's tennis, a few No. 1s in golf, actually invented a new stroke just to kill at swimming, and always ranked among the first few countries with gold medals per capita at the Olympics. They've won world titles in netball, hockey, both forms of rugby, and despite having virtually no snow, have also won Winter Olympic golds. Melbourne has had two NBA No. 1 draft picks, Albury a WNBA MVP, Queensland has won for its nation 26 Olympic gold medals for swimming, and Canberra has provided a Formula One-winning driver. Mount Isa, a place in the middle of Queensland that the overwhelming majority of Australians will never visit, has produced a British Masters winner in golf and US Open winner in tennis. Most countries with a population of just under 20 million aren't really well known, let alone well known for dominating a sport. So superior Australia has sat atop. There's a book called The Lucky Country by Donald Horne, of whose closing words are: "Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck." The phrase "the lucky country" is quoted quite often these days, although not in the original negative sense Horne intended; more that of: aren't we lucky to be from here? Australia are lucky too, then. If you envisaged an ideal nation for sport, Australia would be near perfect. There have been no major wars at home, most of the country is well above the poverty line, there is space for facilities, and the weather is incredible. Then you look at how sport grew. Starting as much to take down the English as for anything else, sport became part of Australia's national identity. 'At a local level, communities formed around playing and watching sport. Australia is a tough country; colonising it took hard work. You had to take your chances, back yourself, and help your mates, just to survive. There will still be people, from every team from the F grade on matting right through to the baggy green, who will put in for the side like they were playing for something bigger; the flag, their community, their mates, it does not matter. Australian athletes quite often play like they have a big cause to win for. When you play them, you aren't taking on another team of athletes, you're taking on zealots. Years ago, during a marathon, an Australian TV commentator observed that the top three runners were an Australian and two world-class Kenyans. He added that the two Kenyans had far better recent and personal bests. Then he added, "But what they don't have is an Australian heart".

Bay 13 at the MCG shows off its wit and wisdom during a 2005 gameBay 13 at the MCG shows off its wit and wisdom during a 2005 game © Getty Images They might be more talented, but we'll fight harder and longer. We forget all the other edges that Australians have for sport, and just concentrate on the way we play it, and our giant Australian-made hearts. This is of course neither here nor there—that this is all trash—was the fact that Kenyans, too, had hearts and would have loved to have grown up in a lucky sports country. It matters that Australian athletes believe in this notion of the cause, and that they try to live up to it. It is all these reasons that make Australia a remarkable sporting nation that plays sport its own way. But working out what the Australian way is in cricket is quite tough. A few years ago Russell Jackson took a look at Jack Pollard's book Cricket - The Australian Way. It talks a lot about how Australians play cricket and essentially boils it down to a slogan: play aggressive, positive cricket. Darren Lehmann had his own lecture series, "The Australian Way", back in 2014. Sam Perry wrote about it: "A glimpse at a presentation delivered by national coach Darren Lehmann in 2014 to invite-only coaches is instructive […] It outlined how Australia needed to play its cricket. It encouraged attendees to implement Lehmann's philosophy throughout the country. Understandably, it skewed to aggression. A slide headlined 'Batting - Key Points' saw Lehmann note the importance of being 'aggressive in everything you do!', that '[our] first thought is to score', and that 'team philosophy is going to be aggression and freedom going forward'. The first point of his opening slide simply said 'WTBC' (translation: 'Watch the ball, c***'), going to show that even the most elementary aspect of Australian batting now requires aggression." So how did Australian cricket get from "aggressive, positive cricket" to "hard, aggressive cricket" and "watch the ball, c***"? Society changed. And Australia won a lot. They won everything. They beat England into oblivion, finally took down West Indies, collected World Cups, and then fought back against India's obvious challenge to their rightful No. 1 spot.Did they do this with positive, aggressive cricket? Yes, but they also did it by creating the first truly professional cricket environment. The players could access state-of-the-art facilities, the best coaches, the latest sports science, dieticians, and psychologists, among other benefits. Most importantly, they found players who are considered some of the most naturally gifted the game has ever seen. But it was also about the way their less than all-time great players, from the battlers to the incredibly gifted, were kept in the machine of Australian cricket.It would seem that in the modern era, for Australia to be great it takes a lot more than positive, hard, aggressive cricket or watching the ball.In his column for Players Voice after Sandpapergate, former Australia coach Mickey Arthur wrote about the team:"The behaviour has been boorish and arrogant. The way they've gone about their business hasn't been good, and it hasn't been good for a while. I know what my Pakistani players were confronted with in Australia two summers ago. I heard some things said to the English players during the Ashes. It was scandalous. And I have seen many incidents like Nathan Lyon throwing the ball at AB de Villiers in this series."[…] "There has been no need for the Australians to play this way. They are wonderful cricketers. They haven't needed to stoop to the depths they have to get results."That seems like positive, aggressive feedback.***CRAIGIEBURN, Melbourne. 1995. There were a lot of balls hit me on the chest, hard. It was a semi-final of our under-16 team. We hadn't played well, but we'd scraped our way through to the final. We were playing the best side, Craigieburn. They were a decent team, with one outstanding player. In fact, they call him Killer—something to do with his surname.

To any opponent he was 10ft tall and as big through as anyone I played against in our company

The name could not fit better. Australians are past masters at needling you till you blow up, and then playing the victimAustralians are past masters at needling you till you blow up, and then playing the victim Quinn Rooney / © Getty Images "We had to bat first and I opened the order since no one else wanted to. Killer bowled downwind on a synthetic wicket: even slow-medium bowlers get a bit of bounce. He was a fair bit quicker than that, and every ball came up at my body. With a bunch of slips, a short leg and a leg gully, I wouldn't last long. So I let the ball hit me in the chest.". I had never been hit by a proper fast bowler before, so the first one really stung. I was winded for a moment as Killer laughed. But from then on in, as long as they didn't hit a vital organ or bone, I could take them. After a few hits, I was turning my back and ducking when he bowled short. The ball would just come thudding into my back. Each time Killer hit me, he became more and more pissed. He began with glares, turned into general abuse, said he was going to retire me, and suggested items about my sexuality and gender along the way. His anger would take over him when he would become tired. By the time he was near his tenth over, I already could barely feel the ball hitting my back. And could hardly yell at me what an awful player I was. After his last ball he stood mid-pitch, winded, clapping at me. The next over this terrible bowler delivered a half-tracker and I skied it straight up in the air to be caught. Our best fell apart - even without Killer - from the batting side, and we ended up with only 130 to defend. Killer, one of those under-16 superstars, opened the innings and the bowling. A few weeks earlier we'd played him, and he'd driven a ball over the fence, past a 30-metre park area, across a road and into a tennis court. I knew that in an hour batting he'd score most of the 130 on his own. So I sledged him. He was a big bloke who was known for bowling fast and hitting hard. I called him an ox. I only reasoned - rightly as it turned out - that he'd been called versions of that his whole life. For every time I called him an ox, he took a swing as hard as he could. He whacked a six, and I told him that he was too simple to play a real shot. He played and missed one, and I suggested that his ox brain couldn't handle a complex delivery. He mishit into a gap, and I asked him if he wanted us to dumb the bowling down for him. Each ball he tried to hit further. A few disappeared; mostly they were clunked or missed. I commentated each one, and he swung each time like the ball was my head. His final delivery, he swung so hard that it was incredible his shoulders didn't dislocate. The ball took the top edge, and the keeper completed a steepling catch. When it was taken, Killer dropped his head and trudged off with his quick 30-odd. I followed a few paces before shouting after his back: "Bye-bye, Oxy, baby." It seemed graceless and pointless. Equally unhealthy, Killer pursued me with his bat raised high a few meters until one of our players intervened and ordered him off the field. At the time I thought it was a masterstroke. But looking back, had we dotted him up, put pressure on him other ways—and we had the bowlers to get him out conventionally, perhaps for less than 30—the new ball wouldn't have had a chunk of leather taken out from slamming onto a footpath. Anyway, we lost the game. I'd like to tell you that my embarrassment at being this big an idiot--not to mention the potential injury I could have received--meant that I never did something that stupid again. Sure I was. The next time we desperately needed to win a game, I was that idiotic. Over the next ten years, I did plenty of similarly stupid things to rile the opposition. I have done things: feigning a catch I knew was half a foot above the ground, flirtations with ersatz mental disintegration, turning a blind eye as teammates tampered with the ball. And, in that period, from the child who learned it, I turned to the adult who taught it. I thought I was playing hard, aggressive cricket, the Australian way. Now it feels different; I was playing the game the way I had been taught, and because I didn't stand up to that, I was just another ugly Australian.*April 26, 2019, 7.05 GMT: The kidnapped player was incorrectly identified as Billy Murdoch.

This has been changedJarrod Kimber is a writer for ESPNcricinfo.

 

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