Posted by David Gower has said in an interview in the Radio Times that Australia has no culture and that their cricketers have ‘an animal mentality’. He’s partly right, but probably for the wrong reasons.
Culture
This one’s lazy and wrong. Australia has plenty of culture. Arguably too much.
Plenty of websites will be making jokes about Neighbours and Home and Away, but not this one because those jibes don’t really make sense any more. Australia isn’t a primitive country where people have nothing to do but down tinnies at the end of the day. It’s actually a sated land of leisure where the people are soft and mollycoddled.
This is part of the problem with the current cricket team. The players struggle to cope when they can’t get coffee that meets their exacting requirements or when they can’t find the particular type of Asian fusion cuisine which they have grown accustomed to. They don’t grab a lager at the end of the day, they reach for a grenache or a pinot noir (although, to be fair, this probably has as much to do with the quality of their beer as it does with the quality of their wine).
Animal mentality
This one’s bang-on. Like many animals, Aussie cricketers are preening creatures for whom grooming is the overriding concern. Sport comes way down their list of priorities after waxing, coiffing, posing and gym work (the last of those for aesthetic reasons only).
Truly, the Aussie cricketer is a beast. He is some sort of unthreatening herd animal with a tendency to make shrill noises and put on attention-seeking colourful visual displays.
No, I’m Spartacus
Lord Gower hobbles away
Noooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Please, no hubris.
Not this close to the Ashes.
No-one should harp on about a mere warm up game that isn’t even proper cricket, just because India scored 300+ and those feeble Aussies only managed 65.
Not the same game. And anyway, please no hubris.
I mean it.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc-champions-trophy-2013/engine/current/match/634966.html
Oh, please. Just a bit of hubris. Just a snifter. I promise I’ll put the bottle back in the cabinet. I just want to smell it.
George Bailey (in the after match interview as transcribed on Cricinfo:
“…This was not the result we were after…”
Really? I thought that was precisely the result you were after, George. Thanks for clarifying.
Basically, they are peacocks?
You’re half right.
Too much?
too much? good lord no… pile it on… they certainly don’t hold back, do they?
…just let’s not get carried away. maybe once the ashes are underway and the aussies are falling apart, THEN we can all get carried away 🙂
We meant with the ‘half right’ crack about Australians being peacocks. It was a bit low, but hard to resist.
Never explain your jokes, KC.
They are peas?
no, i got it… still not too much 😉
Cock a doodle doo.
From Wikipedia:
“a rooster can and will crow at any time of the day. Some roosters are especially vociferous, crowing almost constantly, while others only crow a few times a day. These differences are dependent both upon the rooster’s breed and individual personality. He has several other calls as well, and can cluck, similar to the hen”
You may have been closer to the truth than you intended, KC
The Lions today scored more (rugby) points than Australia did (cricket) runs yesterday.
Did England get bowled out for diddly-squat today?
Is England humbled,cowed and dejected, in a similar manner to, for example, Australia yesterday.
I am particularly interested to compare England’s warm up experience with that of Australia, as England play Australia in the Champions Trophy on Saturday. And then later in the summer for the Ashes.
I was busy dealing with other matters, so please tell.
Ged – they stumbled along until the man with not enough letters in his first name and too many in his last name went berserk.
Then the man who is slapping back took some wickets and England won and nobody quite knew what to make of it all.
http://www.theage.com.au/sport/cricket/ahmed-set-for-ashes-after-changes-to-law-20130605-2nqnf.html
It’s incredible what an outgoing government will do in an election year to soften their impending loss.
What’s incredible is the utter desperation this demonstrates. They clearly think Ahmed is their only hope of winning, and that’s only on the off chance he turns out to be a world class leg spinner straight from the box.
They’re probably right, though.
It’s not just about Ahmed, this change opens the way for us to import some South Africans too.
I have no problem with the general principle of the Australian Government relaxing its immigration laws. I am a great believer in economic migration and enjoy living in a great multi-cultural city – London.
The specific cricketing motivation around Ahmed fascinates me. He only played a handful of first class games in Pakistan – OK – perhaps he was subject to difficulties there.
But he has only played three matches for Victoria. 16 wickets at 28+ is not a monster haul; nor is the Shield a hotbed of phenomenal batting talent just now. If it were, then the national Aussie team’s batting would be better, no?
In this match he took six of those 16 – in a losing cause against Tasmania:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/576109.html
You can find links to the other two on Cricinfo.
His main claim to an Ashes place is that Cameron White says that he’s the best leggy he’s seen since Shane Warne.
Of course, he might turn out to be that unexpected trump card that turns one or both of the forthcoming series…
…but I’ll be well surprised if it pans out that way. Indeed, the words “flash” and “pan” spring to mind as the core of the more likely epithet.
Please also note in that Tassy/Vic game that the Australians are going much further than immigration laws in their fiendish attempt to undermine us.
On debut for Victoria that match was Ryan Sidebottom, opening bowler.
I’m sorry, but I cannot condone cloning for cricketing purposes. In Brockian Ultra Cricket, naturally:
http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Brockian_Ultra-Cricket
But not cricket.
The reason he has generated such excitement here is that he rips the ball hard enough to generate drift, unlike most of our first class spinners. The other interesting thing is this drift isn’t always conventional (think how Warnie would get the ball to dip to leg before turning to off).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FoxGTC-J6Q
Not the best example but thankfully footage of him is limited. It should give him a couple of ‘free’ games before the assistant coaches of other teams come up with a strategy to nullify him.
Thanks.
Reminds me a little of Imran Tahir, watching that clip, wolf.
Or (cruelly) the sort of spells Chris Schofield mustered when young, leading to his fast-tracking by a desperate England at that time and then cruel abandonment soon after. Handled better, Schofield could and should have been a contender.