2010 ashes roundup

As the rain came down on the 5th day of the sydney test, delaying the inevitable, it occurred to me that my most enduring memories of the 2010 ashes series would be these three images: one of doug bolinger bowling to a guy without a bat, shane watson teeing off against someone's grandma and mitchell johnson telling me how much sports drink he consumes. This to me sums up australia's campaign. That these ads would somehow give the players a heightened sense of invincibility in the eyes of the public just goes to show how misguided our cricketers and the people who run the game have become about what the public wants to see from those few that play our most revered sport at the elite level.

Sure, sport is business and the sponsors want their pound of flesh. I understand this. But can any of us really imagine AB agreeing to do an ad that demonstrated how far he could hit the ball against an old woman? I mean please. (For that matter, I wonder what AB would have said if a player walked into his dressing room wearing a wig!)

So what's my point here? We want our cricketers to be tough. That's what makes aussie cricket unique...and I think, in the past, successful. In india they want their cricketers to be stars. They are treated the way we treat rock'n'rollers. The west indians want their cricketers to be cool. The poms want their cricketers to be good guys. That's all fine...I'm not going to pass judgement, not on this post anyway. But we don't expect, nor want, any of these traits in our cricketers. We want our guys to be tough. Play tough.

So that's my point. I don't think the problem with the aussie team is talent...it's toughness. That's it...pure and simple. For me, the ads sum it up. If you're willing to let yourself be perceived like that for money, then I think that toughness on the cricket field can only be a secondary consideration. I know the players will argue otherwise. That one thing has nothing to do with the other. But the problem is that toughness is an all encompassing attitude. Now I'm not claiming to be tough. Far from it in fact...I'd go as far as to call myself soft! But people look at me and that's exactly what they think. But let's just look at the tough group for a second. AB, lillee, tugger, warne, gilly, hussey...our perception of them as tough cricketers is based on a combination of their persona off the field and their uncompromising attitude on it. Now let's look at the "not so tough" side. Pup, watto, bollinger, johnson...think about what you know about these guys and I don't think you'd summarise them as tough. Good cricketers, certainly. Even excellent...but not tough. Now these guys may think this is a good thing. They may not have any desire to present a tough image of themselves. But I don't think they have a choice. If they don't want to, then they have a monumental task ahead of them. Not only will they need to find a way of rebuilding aussie cricket, but they will need to reinvent it in the process..and that's not something I believe our current generation of cricketers have the toughness to do.

Now to the english team. Didn't they play well? It's all been said so I'm not going to repeat it here. But what I will say is this. Strauss, cook, collingwood, kp, bell, anderson...were all part of the english side beaten 5-0 on 06/07. Good players, well beaten, in whom faith was shown. They learnt, trained hard, got better, came back and conquered. A lesson in that for us perhaps...

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5