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A week ago I wrote an article revelling in the glorious unpredictability of modern cricket, about the bipolar nature of recent Ashes series. Today I am writing about hurt and pride.
There comes a time when every cricket lover from Australia, no matter how unbiased we profess to be, no matter how much we assert our love for the game and the intrinsic beauty of contest, can’t help but be honest with themselves and admit that a performance that bad hurts, and hurts deeply.
At some point the awe of a that great fast bowling spell, those brilliant catches, pure skill in batting in seem/swing friendly conditions, falls away: becomes barren in the face of sheer humiliation; when appreciation gives way disbelief and disappointment. When eventually (after approximately 18 Start Broad balls and a world record 5-for) humility transforms into patriotism…
Patriotism… That word – tinged as it has been in our past with beer-swilling, yobo, boorish (dominantly sexist male) behaviour. Tinged in our sporting past with crowd abuse, Queenslanders chucking full XXXX cans, bay 13 at the M.C.G., streakers and (yes, in light of the behaviour of some to Adam Goodes it has to mentioned one more time) not a small dose of racist and derogatory abuse of the opposition.
But this is not the type of patriotism I’m talking about, because patriotism at its best reflects the best, not the worst, collective attributes of a nation.
Patriotism begins in this case with hurt. The kind of hurt that comes when you replace all the modern scientific understanding of sport, professionalism, analytical and psychological breakdown with the raw emotion of defeat in something which you treasure a national birthright and a deeply ingrained sense of your national heritage.
Because like it, loath it, or be nonplussed by it, a large sense of Australia’s identity, our sense of being and self-worth arrives to us through sporting achievement.
And the origins of this, and still a mainstay of it, lies in the pride of watching those men and woman who wear the baggy green. Patriotism and Pride do not come from denigrating and questioning the intelligence or arrogance of the cricketers who wear the baggy green either.
So this is not an article that’s about to abuse and reflect on the sporting qualities of who are the best cricketers representing our nation.
To the contrary – it’s an article in sympathy with them. But it’s also a call to arms, without the abusive jingoism and over-the-top aggression. It’s a call to the best of our qualities as revealed in sporting performance.
To capture the quintessence of this ethos best is to recall a single anecdote, written somewhere by Shane Warne in one of his first Tests, before he was a superstar.
Coming in to bat near to last in a Test match in Sri Lanka Australia were in danger of losing; coming to bat with Allan Border to save a Test match. Maybe not a particularly significant moment in our sporting history, certainly Tests against Sri Lankan were not then given much of a though. Warne, walking to the wicket, saying to himself, “AB will look after me, he’ll save me.”
The response: “this is a Test match, you’re playing for Australia, don’t get f*%ing out.”
AB was the epitome of toughness. The cricketer who took all the lessons of the bad times and after years of toil and turmoil, of effort and sweat, turn his team into an image of himself and to the edge of being a great side.
But I could bring any one of innumerable examples: Steve Waugh’s two centuries on a pitch every bit the green-top the current on is at Old Trafford when Australia were 1 down in the third Test of the 1997 Ashes. The fifth day at Adelaide in 2006-2007 when the match was headed for a dull draw.
Langer and Gilchrist in Hobart with Australia on a Day 5 wicket chasing 360. All the way to Spofforth in 1882 and the immortal words before Australia went out to defend next to nothing: “this thing can be done.”
Equally I could cite many, many examples where Australia didn’t win, where they, in fact, they lost: Lee et al. Lord’s 2005, Australia versus Botham and Willis in 1981, Laxman and Harbhajan in 2001… It wasn’t the losing that mattered (not once they lost anyway) it was the manner in which they played and lost.
They did it the same way they played and won on all those other (the more frequent) occasions: they did because they were exhibiting the best – the very best – of our national qualities as exemplified in the sporting contest.
Because they were channelling the qualities exemplified by Spofforth on that famous wet English summer’s day in 1882, channelling the have-a-go, never-say-die, confident, brash, happy-go-lucky and powerful way Australian’s are taught to approach the contest from the earliest Saturday morning under-age cricket to the last bowling green or golf green of retirement.
We all who have played competitive sport know it. The 11 cricketers currently representing us at Trent-bridge know it also.
We hurt not because our sporting patriotism is represented by the worst of vitriolic articles abusing and sledging our national sports persons after a poor (very poor) performance, no more than the boorish, unseemly and often abusive behaviour of yester-year represented our best qualities then.
We hurt because when Australia play like they did in the first innings at Trent Bridge that they are not representing our best qualities: not the winning or losing per se, but the ability to say ‘we are Australian. We play to our utmost, with grit, toughness, and bravado – we make our opposition do something extraordinary to beat us. We never beat ourselves.
So, this is not a criticism of the Australian men’s cricket team – it’s a call to look within themselves what has made them our finest cricketers, which (I still believe) now, as many time before makes them better than most. And this attitude comes from ourselves, it comes from the teammates either side of us.
We know that everyone will give their all, so you can rely on them, your mates, you know – ‘cause that’s what mates do for each other.
We know these cricketers can play with these best of our national qualities because they’ve done so before: witness Clarke’s 150 in South Africa last year, Johnson’s come back in 2013-14, Steve Smith turning himself from a leg-spinning middle-order wacker into the world’s best batsman – Nathan Lyon positively oozes the character of the teak-hard cricket who has by force-of-will turn turned himself into a quality Test offspinner.
It’s good that we eschew the worst darker angels of our national character in the sporting arena . But this should never come at the expense of the best ones. So all I want those eleven male cricketers who represent us to do, as I’m sure all Australian cricket supporters want, is too look each other in the eye and say to their mates: ‘I will play my hardest, my best, my most confident – I will play the Australian way.’
And if they do that, win or lose, then we’ll cheer for them (as we have many times before) and maybe, just maybe, they might wipe the gloating smiles off a few English faces.
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