These are not Aussies, these are sissies

“The Gen Y culture covered a lot of different areas of our lives as blokes became—how can I say it?—less blokey.”
—Matthew Hayden; ‘Standing My Ground’

Matt the bat, the son of a peanut farmer from Kingaroy (somewhere near Brisbane, but do not be surprised if you can’t Google-map it), who terrorized bowlers around the world, was part of an exceptional, and exceptionally Australian, dressing room till the late 2000s. Just about the time the less blokey blokes from ‘Gen Y’ were entering it.

That generation of players now forms the core of the side led by Michael Clarke. Optimistic pundits call it a ‘talented side in transition’. They may well be right, but most of us watching have a different view: this side may or may not be as talented as its recent predecessors, but it is definitely “less Australian”.

Less Australian, not by birth, but by the attitude the cricket world once learned to fear. And they’re currently getting spanked like schoolboys by an average(ish) Indian side for the lack of it. The failure of this Australian side has reasons far deeper than neglecting homework.

Michael Clarke, the one man of established pedigree and the only Australian in form on this tour, is the fulcrum of this side, so let us begin with him. Andrew Symonds, that mercurial, wayward all-rounder who added so much character and colour to the Australian side would tell Clarke: ‘Mate, worry less about your hair and whingeing, and more about the team, and you’ll be a better bloke for it’, writes Hayden.

Clarke’s performances in recent years suggest that he devoted least as much time to his game—and the team—as he did to his hair. It is no one’s case that he cannot play, but reading Hayden you would know this: a dressing room under Clarke would smell different.

The aromas of toe-jam, sweat and last night’s beer has now, from Hayden’s account, been replaced by the sweet perfume of scented candles. The man who introduced them to the dressing room, in the West Indies during the 2007 World Cup is Shane Watson. The guy Australian needed so desperately to fire—but not in the way it did.

Symonds clearly preferred the older smells, and told the manager at the time: “Have a go at this... Do I really want to play for Australia any more?” Watto, says Hayden, was devastated. And Symmo, as we all know, got the sack not very long afterwards.

Being ‘less-blokey’ comes down to many specifics: “Spirit-based drinks replaced old-fashioned beers. Conversation topics would include shoes, hair and clothes. I sensed it wasn’t quite my scene...” writes Hayden.

So while the likes of Watson got a stylist to groom him for an award function, the Symonds and Hayden-types went on hunting and fishing trips, occasionally coming close to getting killed.

Hayden was already in a dressing room that was divided into two distinct groups. The side Hayden was on, strangely enough, called themselves ‘Nerds’. A conventional nerd does usually not take three gigantic strides forward to hammer a ball coming at him at 150k over the bowler’s head, but in ‘Australian’, nerds are “traditional types who think gel is something you have with your mum’s custard”.

The other fellows are ‘Julios’: “flash types who put gel in their hair and something sharp through their ear or tongue.” Julio could well be Mitchell Johnson’s middle name.

Does it really matter what piercings or tattooes you have on improbably parts of your body; which stylist you use to do your hair; or who advises you on what shoes you buy? Does it really affect your game as a cricketer?

On the face of it, it doesn’t. The one genius of the modern game, Shane Warne, was at least part Julio in his playing days, and full-on Julio after. (A tongue-piercing, however, will probably depend on Liz’s comfort levels.)

The difference probably lies in how the cricketer perceives himself—and how he is perceived by the opposition. Hayden achieved moderate fame writing cook-books after he quit the game. When he was playing, he was a terrifying sight to bowlers: a man-mountain coming at them with an out-size spatula, which he would use with painful regularity to cook geese, so to speak.

It isn’t that the ‘laptop’ culture that the late Bob Woolmer brought into the game passed Australia, or its charmingly named ‘nerds’ by. John Buchanan, the coach through much of the giddy highs the team enjoyed, was a believer. He took them to boot camps: albatross rookeries and such. Warne had to drive the bus, which he did reluctantly, cigarette dangling from his mouth, till the point that he didn’t want to do it anymore and turned the damn thing around to go home.

Gross indiscipline? Trying sacking Warnie, mate. (Unless he does something very, very bad—like take banned drugs and stuff.)

Out of this Australian dressing room (the phrase suddenly takes on a different meaning) will come fewer and fewer stories of the kind that made the legend of Australia richer and more awesome. David Boon getting stitches on his hand without anesthesia so he wouldn’t be drowsy when he batted. Hayden pushing the equally large Merv Hughes around “like a tooth-pick”. (Merv was a man even his teammates dreaded for his very physical pranks.)

The lack of these stories will make this Australian team less Australian. And the funny thing about cricket is that it is one of few sports that still retains a huge ‘nationality’ component. The few countries that play it are represented, in ways well beyond sport. That is why we would hear so much about beef-eating Pakistan pacemen and ‘killer instinct’ when India seemed to have neither.

Cricket was built, in one sense, on the essentially conservative national character of the British, their sense of fair play, their respect for institutions. That is why cricket has laws (as if it was a country) rather than rules, like every other humble sport.

That is why the coaching manual—or the way WG Grace played the game became so sacrosanct. It is also why it took about a century for genuine innovations to come into the game: different formats, deliveries like the doosra, reverse swing, laps, switch-hits and Dil-scoops, are all products of the modern game. And each of them reflects the way talent from a particular country has taken to cricket.

The awe-inspiring West Indies side of the 80s came to be only when that team started to look at itself less as a circus act and more as winners. Colonial tradition had cast the West Indies in that role: the Harlem Globe Trotters of cricket; there to delight, not to win. The Globe Trotters were on their way down when Clive Lloyd took over. And it was about time too.

Kumar Sangakkara, possibly the most cerebral current cricketer, has talked about how cricket in Sri Lanka changed after Arjuna Ranatunga. The rotund, World Cup winner, taught Sri Lanka a crucial lesson: Lankans play cricket differently, and there was no shame in it. In fact, there were rewards.

Jayasuriya’s pinch-hitting, Murali’s unfathomable magic, Malinga’s slinging are all very, very Sri Lankan. It works for them. Perhaps there’s a lesson in this for this current Australian side: maybe they’ve got to be more Australian. And here is some homework: read Matty Hayden’s book.

Where are the real Aussies?
The aromas of toe-jam, sweat and last night’s beer has now, from Hayden’s account, been replaced by the sweet perfume of scented candles. The man who introduced them to the dressing room, in the West Indies during the 2007 World Cup is Shane Watson. The guy Australia needed so desperately to fire—but not in the way it did

The writer is an author, journalist and consultant editor with DNA