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“Don’t give it if you can’t take it.” The current Australian cricket team are the custodians of Australian cricket’s rich culture of extraordinary, courageous, fiercely competitive but fair on-field play and poise, and class off the field.
But this team, like several in the current era, have been exposed as lacking the class of their forebears.
The Australian team are bullies and the worst sort: they can dish it out but they can’t take it. This mix of behaviour is a clear indication that they are not strong and inwardly lacking confident in themselves individually and as a team.
It is this inner strength that all great players and teams have. Langer and Gilchrist had it when they scored a match winning partnership against Pakistan and the odds, in Hobart years ago.
Bradman and his ‘Invincibles’ had it.
Just last week, we saw graphic vision of a younger, smaller child bullying, harassing and assaulting an older, bigger child to the point where the older child reacted, picked the bully up, and threw him to the ground like a rag doll.
The Australian cricket team has gone from feared bully to bashed up, rattled and exposed bully.
Brett Lee is normally so intimidating with both the speed and intent of the ball and the inner confidence that allows him, in the heat of battle, to produce his trademark wry smile at the batsman when one has missed the outside edge. But even he has become overly demonstrative on the fall of a Pakistani wicket in the most recent CWC game.
The Australian underbelly has been exposed. Expect all quarter finalists to have noted this and be preparing how to twist the knife more in the upcoming battles.
I suggest that the Australian cricketers should reacquaint themselves with their national heritage by revisiting their own cricket forebears, watching “The Man from Snowy River” or observing the quiet but steely courage that Australians have shown in adversity throughout the history of this wide brown land.
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