Australia’s comeback kids

I have never met an Aussie I didn’t like, but, crikey, their sporting indefatigability is exhausting. Don’t they ever give up? In the past few days, they have pulled one out of the bag against the Springboks in the southern hemisphere Rugby Championship when they looked buried; trailing 20—17 with time up, they turned down a penalty kick and went for the win with an 82nd-minute try. Their Davis Cup tennis boys came from 2—0 down to beat Kazakhstan, with Lleyton Hewitt hauling his weary muscles through the motions once more. Afterwards Hewitt said, ‘I love the back-against-the-wall situation. This is what dreams are made of.’ Now they face Britain, that is the Murrays, not least Judy, in the semis. At the Open, three of their golfers were right there at the end, and one, Marc Leishman, who had been a shot away from missing the cut, was in a three-way play-off for the claret jug.

Is there any nation you can rely on less to let their heads drop when things go badly? What is it that gives them that damnable never-ever-say-die quality? Maybe it’s the convict DNA, the fact that the early settlers had to be tough to survive in such an inhospitable place. Or are they just the hardest bastards on earth?

Oh and then there’s the cricket. There’s been a vast of noise about the balls (Dukes — in England — or Kookaburra — down under: ‘Nobody can make the Dukes ball swing like Jimmy,’ it was said. Hmm, not sure about that) and the pitches. Well, it’s just a strip of earth and, win or lose, the Australian captain Michael Clarke has been consistently sniffy if there’s too much burbling about the pitch.