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The bully boys are back

8th August, 2009
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8th August, 2009
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The differences between English and Australian cricketers are never so evident as when either side is winning. The victorious English cricketer trots around the park happily enough, but one can sense his mind thinking: is this it? Is this victory? Gosh, it’s all rather dull.

The victorious Australian cricketer is a different beast entirely. One can sense his mind thinking: I knew it. We bloody well are the best. Let’s trample these impudent bastards into the turf.

It’s a fascinating contrast, and it doesn‘t take many brain cells to conclude which will be the more successful approach in sport. But there is one regrettable aspect to the Australian mindset, and that is the bully boy mentality that comes with it.

An Australian team in the ascendancy is a shocking sight: pitiless, ruthless, almost barbaric in its feverish desire to slake the opposition in as humiliating a fashion as possible. Thus today we witnessed a pack of Baggy Greens descending upon Paul Collingwood like starving hyenas spotting the carcass of a giraffe in the African savannah.

The unspoken message: “You fancy yourself as a tough character, mate. Well, let’s see how tough you are now”. Brad Haddin’s vile abuse of the phlegmatic Stuart Broad, clearly over-heard on the stump microphone, presumably sprang from the same atavistic desire to dominate.

The irony, as those of you listening to the English commentary team might have detected, is that the English rather enjoy being bullied.

Perhaps it goes back to long dormant public school urges, but to be pushed around by a gum-chewing Antipodean in a tattered cap can be quite thrilling.

There was a palpable sense of disappointment in England when Cricket Australia banned its chaps from sledging. Indeed, the only thing more pleasurable to an Englishman than being treated sadistically is to enjoy a sense of moral superiority over others. Hence the noisy disapproval – most of it entirely confected – directed towards the Barmy Army for the terrible crime of booing Ricky Ponting.

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It all makes the earlier chatter that England are great front-runners – instigated by Shane Watson and continued by the Aussie press – seem comically ill-informed. In truth, the English are terrible front-runners, as Duncan Fletcher has observed countless times.

Put an Englishman on a beach with six German Panzer divisions bearing down on him, and all is well in his world. Put him 1-0 up in a series with the opposition captain teetering on the precipice, and he’ll complain how frightfully rude it is to boo the poor chap.

The English cricket community this summer has been like an errant schoolboy who by some miracle has found the cane in his hands and the schoolmaster at his mercy. Horrified that the natural order of things has been over-turned, he promptly returns the cane to his tutor with a deferential bow, spins on his heel, and bends over.

Ricky Ponting will duly administer the punishment at The Oval and, like any true Australian cricketer, shall no feel no remorse whatsoever.

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