Steve Waugh ruined cricket. Sledging is the real cheating

Mental disintegration. The act of sledging a player until he crumbles. A win at all costs mentality.

The start of the downward trend in Australian cricket’s approach to sportsmanship. A disgrace. A pre-cursor to two decades of Aussies playing like they were above gentlemanly conduct on the field. The reason David Warner now behaves like a ‘prat’ and thinks he is entitled to get away with it.

I can draw a line from this policy to the disarray that Australian cricket is in today. I find it ironic that this week Steve Waugh, the master-mind of the ‘mental disintegration’ policy, has dared to speak up about the ‘spirit of cricket’.

So when were we playing within the ethos of the ‘sprit of cricket’. The last time was in the mid to late nineties when the class act that was Mark Taylor was our skipper. This was a captain that had established a good but not great Test career off the back of being a genuinely good person and a student of the game.

He was a player not loved by the masses because he wasn’t the prototypical ‘Aussie bloke’, whatever that is, that we seem to so revere. But he was our last great gentleman captain and this was the last time Australian cricket was actually something to be proud of.

I’m not saying this time was perfection. There were times when Mark Waugh and Shane Warne brought the game into disrepute, but it was nothing in comparison to how we are viewed around the world today.

(AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

We weren’t considered the sore losers, the intolerable winners, nor the general unsportsmanlike lot that I guarantee we are considered by most people around the word today. We were not the laughing stock of the world.

Since Taylor’s retirement we have had many successes but it has come at a huge cost. Steve Waugh may have taken the Test side to a new level in terms of winning but he sent Australian cricket down an unrighteous path. Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke and now Steve Smith have simply continued his legacy of winning at all costs and caring little about dragging the game through proverbial mud.

It’s the last name that surprises me. Steve Smith is a genuine nice guy but he has simply been corrupted by this culture. He watched Michael Clarke threaten opposition with broken bones.

Clarke learnt from Ponting to lead by this aggression whom had learned it from Steve Waugh. Sledging and on-field aggression is the real problem with Australian cricket. We don’t respect the opposition and we don’t play in the spirit of the game. We cheat, we sledge, we win at all costs.

Before I go on, let’s not confuse sledging with banter. Banter is a much gentler and tolerable beast. It, not sledging, has been around for as long as the game has been played no doubt. But sledging is a new evil that should not have been tolerated by the Australian cricketing public.

Steve Waugh. He was tough, abrasive, and patriotic. These are the attributes of a captain I here many say. These attributes are fools gold. They manifest themselves into a win at all costs attitude.

This manifests into sledging which manifests into cheating. That’s not leadership, that’s belligerence.

I remember a day when Australian sportsmanship was revered around the world. It wasn’t about playing tough and fair. They are a contradiction in terms.

No we were once simply revered for fair play. Forget tough. To play the game tough is not fair. It’s why players think we should sledge.

It’s why on most Saturdays at club cricket somebody spends the day questioning why they give up their time to be bombarded by negative, disrespectful and un-necessary remarks from the opposition.

I was one of them. I remember growing up being sledged from an early age. It was what we saw on TV and it was just part of the game. Then one Saturday afternoon, after copping a tirade of abuse from a slip caudron of players that were probably only half as good as they thought they were, I decided it simply wasn’t worth it.

Does that make me soft or less of a man? I think it makes me human. I didn’t want to play anymore because in my mind they were cheating me of the right to enjoy the game.

(AAP Image/Dave Hunt)

At the end of that season I gave up a game that in its purest sense I loved. I still love it but now I coach and umpire my son’s side because I believe they need guidance on they way to play the game. I refuse to accept sledging is part of that.

I believe ‘sledging’ is embedded in the psyche so much that it has led to the likes of Cameron Bancroft, Warner and Smith to have thought it okay to cheat. It’s okay to get any advantage over the opposition you see.

Yes they cheated by sandpapering a ball. But we’ve been cheating the game and our reputation for two decades by way of our on-field behaviour.

The public has played their part. We all need to change.

We can start by thinking carefully about who is going to lead us out of this rut. Justin Langer and Ponting will be names that are branded about to coach the side. Tough, abrasive and patriotic. Ring a bell?

If Langer or Ponting coach the side we will be right back where we started in a couple of years.

A case in point was the sad loss of Phil Hughes. Many thought this would be the catalyst for changing the nature of our play. It’s just a game after all. A couple of years later we were right back to the ugly Australian style of play. Thisw as because the wrong leaders were in charge.

We need to look to names like Michael Hussey or Adam Gilchrist. These are the types of people we need to take over as our national coach. Personalities in the Mark Taylor mold. We need to move away from incarnations of Steve Waugh.

(AAP Image/Dean Lewins)

As for who takes over as captain I do hope we see the light and give Pat Cummins the gig as caretaker skipper. Of all the Australian players he seems to have the attributes that Australian cricket needs.

Unlike Tim Paine, his selection in the team will never be in doubt. He bats, he bowls, he is a decent human being and most importantly he seems to enjoy himself out there. He is playing the game for the game’s sake. Results will look after themselves. That’s what we need.

We need to stop thinking that the only one that can captain a side has to be a tough abrasive batsman. Steve Waugh, the perfect example of this, only ruined Australian cricket.