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Opinion
In 1989, Australia won the Ashes, 4-0, against an England side that had been supremely confident of a third straight series win over an Australian outfit widely considered historically weak. There were many reasons for the victory, but Australian captain Allan Border believed one important one was his decision to adopt a “no more Mr Nice Guy” persona on the tour.
Border had apparently been a nice guy previously. On the 1985 tour he’d been friendly with the English, particularly their captain David Gower, leading Ian Chappell – a man who has always prided himself on never being nice to anyone – berating him, “AB, these blokes are belting the hell out of you, but you’re out there being their best mate, for Christ’s sake.”
So it was that Border stepped onto English soil in 1989 with the conviction that every Englishman was his enemy, and would be treated as such. He scowled. He snarled. When his old friend David Gower walked out to toss before the first Test, Border refused to speak to him. When Robin Smith asked if he could have a glass of water while batting at Trent Bridge, Border snapped, “No you f—ing can’t, what do you think this is, a f—ing tea party?”
At one point in the series, bowling to Border, England’s Neil Foster lost control of a delivery that ended up bouncing three times. The Aussie captain, granted a free hit at the ball, swung and missed. The English players laughed. Border just glowered and fumed. Under no circumstances was he going to have a laugh with the enemy: every Englishman needed to get the message that the Australians were here purely to crush them.
You can’t deny that it worked: even the mighty teams of Taylor and Waugh never humiliated England as comprehensively as Border’s pioneers of ’89 did. So it’s no surprise that Border, appalled at Australia’s meek submission in the first Test in India last week, would call for the Australians to “harden up”.
After all, it was “hardening up” that brought about the turning point of his own captaincy career. And it was “hardening up”, so the gospel of Australian cricket goes, that made the teams that followed Border’s so great. The teams that scowled and snarled and sledged and swore and generally tried to make their company on the field as unpleasant as possible.
(Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
Not that it’s entirely clear what Border meant when he demanded Australia “harden up”. All we really know is that he didn’t like it when Steve Smith gave a thumbs-up to the bowler after being beaten. Never would’ve happened in his day. But whether he wants the Australians to give India the silent treatment, or up the chatter from behind the stumps, or go the full “it’s not a f—ing tea party” on them, who knows?
That’s the beauty of “hardening up”: it’s whatever you want it to mean. But one thing is clear: just as Chappell hated seeing Border act friendly to the English, Border hates Pat Cummins’s men acting friendly to the Indians. But if a humble non-Test-legend may offer a counterpoint, I see a few issues here:
First, Steve Smith is not Allan Border, and neither is anyone else in the current Australian team. They are their own men with their own personalities and, most crucially, their own histories. None of the present lineup lived through the depressing early days of Border’s captaincy, so assuming that what they need is an attitude adjustment to shake off the abjectness of the past could be misguided.
It is entirely possible that in 1989, Allan Border really needed to adopt that harder edge to make a fresh start and get the best out of himself as captain. But just as the fact that Dennis Lillee and Merv Hughes gained strength from their Big Bad Wolf act doesn’t mean Cummins needs to copy them to bowl well, there’s no reason to think that what worked for Border is the only thing that will work for anyone.
Second, 2023 is not 1989. These days, due to the overstuffed ICC calendar and the IPL, players spend a hell of a lot more time with their international opponents, playing against them and with them in T20 franchises. To expect them to treat each other in exactly the same way as their forebears did in the 1980s is just silly. Every player must make up their own mind exactly what approach to take on field, but the atmosphere in which they make that decision is light years away from that of three or four decades ago.
Third, how much weight are we seriously going to give the whole proposition that cricket teams live or die by their willingness to present a mean face? Not to doubt Border’s proposition that dropping the Nice Guy act made a crucial difference, but if he’d had a pleasant chat to Gower at the toss, would that have made Taylor or Waugh or Jones bat worse in that series? Would Terry Alderman have started spraying the ball all over the place if Robin Smith had had a glass of water? If AB had had a chuckle at missing the triple-bouncer, would his team have begun dropping catches? Attitude isn’t totally irrelevant, but if you place “hardening up” above actual cricketing skills, you may be getting things backward. Or to put it another way: I’d want Steve Smith to devote more of his time to figuring out how to hit the ball than to how he’s going to react if he misses it.
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But lastly, and maybe this doesn’t matter to many people, but…isn’t it actually nice to be nice? I hate to see Australia lose as much as anyone, and more than most, but it doesn’t soften the blow for me if the players treat the game like war. I know that it hurts a Test match cricketer to be thrashed – I don’t need them to glare down the wicket when the ball passes the outside edge for them to prove it to me.
If the Australian team are friendly with their opponents, if they share a joke on the field or acknowledge a good ball or a good shot, or sling an arm around each other’s shoulders when they go off at the end of the day…well, I just think that’s nice. Playing Test cricket in India is hard, exhausting and frustrating. I don’t particularly want the team I follow to immiserate themselves any further by putting on a tough guy act that they don’t really believe in, and I won’t gain any joy from players on either side refusing to be friends with the other.
Maybe I’m wrong about what Allan Border meant. Maybe by “harden up”, he meant “work really hard at addressing technical flaws and come up with better plans to combat the combination of opposition and conditions that are uniquely challenging to our team”. In which case, right on, AB! But, you know…that’s not what he meant at all. Pity.