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I have played plenty of cricket and understand the appeal, and dare I say the value, of sledging, but this will be a critical missive.
I won’t address my concerns to the current Australian team in detail, suffice to say, I don’t like the vibe.
I got pretty badly bullied in school, and there were times in my cricketing life where batting has felt just the same. And just like when I got bullied, sometimes I did get my own back and give as good as I got – I wasn’t a pushover in the playground or with the willow – but this doesn’t mean the overall experience was healthy.
The following is hard to share, because it sounds melodramatic and weak, but it is true. It also goes to the heart of what bothers me about the more extreme kind of sledging. When I imagine myself facing up to the current Australian cricket team, something gets triggered in me that takes me back to my days getting bullied.
It felt similar, though much worse of course, when I saw that movie the Stanford Prison Experiment. I’m talking about a bunch of dudes with an unfeeling psychopathic glint in the eye hell bent on breaking my spirit for their own amusement, or whatever purpose supposedly justifies my psychological annihilation.
Batting is intimidating for a lot of reasons that are intrinsic to the game and all good stuff. You’re very alone. Your mates on the sideline, and even the other bloke with a bat at the other end of the pitch, seem impossibly far away.
In many ways, no matter how everyone behaves, there is a certain bullying aspect to having so many piling on the one. And when it comes to bullying with the game itself, e.g. head hunters etc, I am not concerned. That is the game. But I am contesting that intense sledging IS the game in that same manner.
If you’re up against a fast bowler, there is your personal safety to be concerned with (I never wore a helmet for macho values I can thank my father for instilling in me) if it’s a spinner, there’s just your dignity to worry about. Even if nobody were to say a thing to you, the vibe of the environment is very much against you.
This is of course a big part of why a triumphant performance, whether it be a single ball dispatched to the fence, or a long grafted innings where they just can’t get rid of you, is so damn satisfying. It’s you against a mob out to get you.
(AFP PHOTO/ANDREW YATES)
A focus on the glory of overcoming the bullies is of course a big part of why we tolerate this shit as we do. Certainly most of the advice I was given at the time was all about the need to fight back harder.
I am in my early thirties now, and I can tell you it took me until my late twenties not to wince every time I thought about those times I didn’t make a good show of myself fighting back. And I did fight back, but not every time. And it did kind of work, sometimes, but sometimes it made things worse.
Then there were the times where I was a bully myself.
So what kind of sledging is ok by me? It isn’t so much about the substance – although I suppose this does matter, especially when you know who it is you are dealing with, and can tailor sledges to find non-obvious gaps between the ribs – but volume is most critical.
When the sledging is relentless, when it just doesn’t stop, ball after ball, over after over; when it comes from someone right in your face, as opposed to the slips cordon. It’s certainly not about swearing, or crassness.
I suppose it sucks when it’s overly personal too e.g. calling the tubby guy “a fat piece of shit” (that I heard from teammate once directed against an opponent), but I would still go back to volume as being most important.
My focus on volume is no different to the playground either. Most kids take a turn at the copping the brunt of adolescent experiments with power and sadism, but it sucks when a particular kid cops it all the time. There’s always the kid that never gets a break.
So yeah, in practical terms you tell the guy he can’t bat, and let him get on with proving you wrong I say. But what’s another way of thinking about it? I have an idea.
How about “would this person still want to have a beer with me after the game?” This is of course would be different for different people, but in any case, would work as a guideline.
Is this too much to ask from sport, even the serious elite kind?
Are we so outcome oriented that we expect our team, whether the park or baggy greens, do everything possible to win no matter what?
Total war, so to speak? I say no.
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