In the aftermath of the 2015 Cricket World Cup, and Australia becoming world champions for a record fifth time after defeating New Zealand in the final, there has been a thought in my mind that keeps on coming back to me.
That thought is that: Australia is the spirit of cricket!
This thought is something that many people reading this article will probably not believe, and it is a thought that anyone working at the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) certainly won’t want to believe.
However, I believe it is true.
There are many views over many years about what is actually the spirit of cricket. Many people say it is about being respectful, kind, working hard, playing hard, but keeping a respectable distance away from your opponents in the interests of fair play.
This is all well and good. However, I take a different view about what is actually the spirit of cricket.
My view on the spirit of cricket is that it is playing the game in the way it was intended at that given moment, and at that given time in history. In years gone by, cricket was played hard, but it was played in a rather respectful, gentlemen-like manner in the most part.
However, the spirit of cricket today is embodied by just about everyone that is involved with Cricket Australia and the Australian cricket team. It is about playing a brand of cricket that is uncompromising for the opposition team. This is an attacking and aggressive brand of cricket which makes the opposition feel like that they are suffocating.
It is a brand of cricket that always places you right on top of the opposition, and it doesn’t allow you to take a backward step, a key ingredient for success in almost any profession, including sport.
This view of the spirit of cricket gives any talented player in Australia who embraces and embodies the key features of this interpretation of the spirit of cricket a chance of playing cricket one day for Australia, regardless of age and background. Take Adam Voges and Fawad Ahmed as examples of this fact, as they have managed to overcome different factors in their careers and lives to finally get selected for the Australian side.
This version of the spirit of cricket also allows for innovation, and players who play in an unorthodox way, which Glenn Maxwell and to a lesser extent Steven Smith have shown. If you show a degree of patience with these type of players they will reward you and your team with great success.
However, this version of the spirit of cricket also allows for a great deal of compassion when things get tough, or when a tragic event occurs. This was exhibited perfectly by the Australian cricketing community and family after the tragic and shocking death of Phillip Hughes. They looked after all parties involved directly and indirectly with the incident, including his family, with Cricket Australia paying for the entire funeral, making sure that the Hughes family was looked after and is continued to be looked after long into the future.
This is what cricket is about today. This is the true spirit of cricket. Australia is the spirit of cricket, and the other nations must learn to play cricket, and exhibit cricket in this way.
England are learning this the hard way, if they are even learning at all. The ECB must wake up and smell the coffee, and realise that they must change with the times, and change the way they play their cricket immediately. Kevin Pietersen is one of the few English cricketers playing today that embodies this version of the spirit of cricket, and it is this type of cricketer that England should be promoting to play for their country.
Whether the ECB want to select Pietersen or not, depending on whether he has tarnished their names to the point where it has damaged their egos, is not the main point anymore. It is about creating a new culture that embodies the spirit of cricket today. They cannot live in denial anymore.
England may have invented the game, the West Indies may have been the entertainers in the game, but Australia will always be the true spirit of cricket.
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