Australian cricket’s fearsome tradition of toughness may be coming to an end
This is not wise. In fact, it is madness. For me, as a former professional cricketer, it is a hostage to fortune. For England, with the Ashes fast approaching, it could be worse: I am tempting fate and inviting revenge. It would be risky to whisper it at dinner, let alone spell it out in print. The timing is abysmal and I am not even sure I am right. But the idea will not leave me alone. A sneaking question keeps coming into my head: are Australia losing their cricketing edge? And I don’t just mean the Ashes. I mean the whole legend of the Aussie battler that has been constructed over decades of flinty toughness.
Australia have lost their past four series. But it’s deeper than that. At home, they face accusations that they have softened. Australia has been told for decades that their cricketing culture is the envy of the world. Has glory made them lose their edge? Do England now have the opportunity to push them into decline?
I don’t want to gloat. I owe my love of cricket as much to Australians as to Englishmen. It was an Australian Test cricketer, John Inverarity, who gave me my first cricket bat. Aged five, I was taken to meet Don Bradman in Adelaide. Later, I learnt more from a drink or two with Rodney Marsh than I did from countless hours in the nets.
Australia has an astonishing sporting culture. Take their success at rugby union, despite last Saturday’s defeat. Start with a small population (20 million). Chip off the population of four of the six states (only New South Wales and Queensland excel at rugby). Eliminate females, fat men, children, cowards and the elderly. Then divide that number by two, because half prefer rugby league. How many active rugby union players are left? 30? So how on earth do they have half the world’s best backs and two World Cups in the closet? Incredible.
Cricket is different. Where Aussie rugby is intuitive and free-spirited (thanks to the influence of Aussie Rules), their cricketers are hard as nails. There is a great tradition — a bloodline — of hardened champions. These men did not play at cricket. They dealt in elimination, especially of Englishmen.
It began, of course, with Bradman. In recent decades, there has always been a keeper of the flame. Greg Chappell (7,110 Test runs) retired five years into Allan Border’s career; Border (11,174) retired nine years into Steve Waugh’s; and Waugh (10,927) retired nine years into the career of Ricky Ponting (12,250 and counting). But to whom will Ponting pass the mantle? Is the great tradition petering out?
Australian cricket has always been defined by toughness. About five years ago, I innocently walked round an Adelaide corner and found myself face to face with the great Aussie batsman Ian Chappell. His face conveyed the following message for my immediate understanding: ‘If I’m not mistaken, you’re a Pom. I can smell ’em. So give me one good reason why I shouldn’t punch you on the nose, before this goes any further.’ He turned out to be great company. But I never forgot that introductory expression.
As a young South Australian batsman, Chappell sliced off his finger shortly before a game. The doctor who sewed the finger back on told him he couldn’t play cricket for months because he’d lose the finger if he was hit on it. Chappell replied that he’d be playing that Saturday — it was a flat wicket, he said; no chance of him missing the ball with his bat.
Self-reliance was as central as toughness. Rod Marsh’s coaching advice was simple: ‘Sort it out for yourself.’ That spirit ran through the great tradition. Bradman taught himself to bat by hitting a golf ball against a wall with a stick. Learning to bat was another form of looking after yourself, like pitching a tent in the outback. That resilience was compounded by the sense that Australians had a point to prove, that the world too often underestimated them. Cricket was a means of getting even.
The feeling is growing that the next generation is different, that they aren’t driven by the same cussedness. Michael Clarke, Australia’s captain-in-waiting, can play off drives so elegant that they make you weep. But former captains — and there have only been 42 Australian captains in 130 years — are now questioning his durability and toughness. Clarke had to leave a tour to New Zealand due to personal problems in his relationship with the actress and model Lara Bingle. To a generation of cricketers who remember the births of their children by how many runs they got for their state that week, to abandon smashing the Kiwis for a sheila back in Sydney was a worrying sign.
Last year there was a much-reported spat between Clarke and Simon Katich. Australia had just won a Test and there was a disagreement about whether singing the team song should be brought forward to allow certain individuals to pop into the roped-off VIP area of a local nightclub. A what? For Australian fast bowlers of old, ropes came in two varieties: boundary ropes, and the rope or seam around the cricket ball, the purpose of which was to hit English batsmen on the nose.
The hard-bitten and brilliant Ricky Ponting has faced criticism over his captaincy. In truth, I suspect it isn’t Ponting that the keepers of the flame are worried about. It is transferred anxiety about what is likely to follow him. They recognise Ponting as one of their own. But they want him to resolve a shift in cricketing culture that runs far deeper than one captain.
I was brought up on the received wisdom that it was the Australian system that made them so tough — the strong club cricket, the fierce inter-state rivalries. Each has now declined, at least to some extent. And the culture that created those institutions has changed: Australia has grown used to success, in life as well as in cricket. Sydney is a capital of laid-back cool, and Australia is one of the most envied countries in the world.
England haven’t won down under for 24 years. But now they have the team, the coach, the form and the momentum to do so. It may be a very long time indeed — a full turn of the dynastic wheel — before Australia will again be able to boast such a record of dominance.
Ed Smith is a Times leader writer and former England cricketer.
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