One of the (happy) outcomes of recession hitting Australian cricket recession hitting Australian cricket is that we are seeing a more subdued, less cocky Aussie cricketer, who is also thankfully less of a motor mouth than Aussies cricketers traditionally are. This editorial tries to analyze if we are seeing the demise of the arrogant, swaggering, and cock sure garrulous Australian cricketer. We do a special review of a change that is slowly but perceptibly coming over the no-longer-number-one team.

Certainly Ricky Ponting is trying his best to carry on the mantle of the confident Aussie going into the Proteas upcoming series and is trying out the usual mind games that his team has been so famous for. The cricket coverage of his statements prior to the team leaving have all the ingredients of usual Aussie cricket rhetoric: ‘the pressure is on them’, ‘I am ultra excited about the series’ etc. However he now seems to be the lone upholder of a dying tradition. This present team comes across shockingly, as Polite!

Now that is not a word you would have associated with the motor mouth Aussie of old!
In the past we have had many instances of pre-match mind games from the Aussie quarter: Glenn McGrath tried intimidating England prior to a series, mockingly predicting a white wash. Then there was heckler Shane Warne who caused a stir by hinting to the South Africans that he had a mystery ball. Matthew Hayden of course famously called Harbhajan Singh an obnoxious weed. And when Jason Gillespie was directed by the ICC not to criticize the Mumbai pitch he archly said, tongue firmly in cheek that a mate rang and said it (the pitch) was a shocker.

Recall for an instant the fact that the term ‘sledging’ was coined in Australia and which the Aussies have gleefully and unapologetically made their own. They developed it into an art form thanks to the likes of Merv Hughes, the archetypal irrepressible Aussie. In a hilarious on field incident the inimitable Javed Miandad had heckled the even more inimitable Merv Hughes saying he looked like a ‘fat bus conductor’. Hughes bowled out Miandad on the very next delivery, yelling ‘Tickets please’.

Steve Waugh described the sledging that the Aussies indulged in as ‘mental disintegration’ which is really not to be seen as much of recently. Even the Aussie body language is different of late, that arrogance is a little less in evidence, the self belief is not so apparent, the swagger not as much on display.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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