Barmy Army has Smith and Warner in its sights
What the Barmy Army did to Mitchell Johnson in 2015 will have nothing on what they have planned for Steve Smith and Dave Warner, writes MIKE COLMAN
Sport
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Steve Smith and Dave Warner should write out a list of essentials to make sure they are well prepared for the next four and a half months in England.
Helmet, pads, groin protector, bat … earplugs.
And that’s just for walking down the street.
No cricketers in the history of the game will cop more off-field abuse – disguised as good-natured banter – than the two Aussie trumps as they return to international competition after their Sandpapergate suspensions.
And no matter how prepared they are for it you can rest assured of one thing: the English supporters will be prepared even better.
It is said that when the Wallabies head over the ditch for a series against the All Blacks it isn’t just the 15 Kiwi players on the field that they will be up against. It is the entire nation.
That might well be true, but there’s only 4.7 million New Zealanders. There’s 55 million Poms.
True, they don’t all follow cricket, but enough of them do to make life very uncomfortable indeed for Warner and Smith.
Until you have experienced it first-hand it is difficult to comprehend the depth of interest the English have in their cricket rivalry with Australia.
When I spent the years 2014 and 2015 in the UK as News Corp European sport correspondent it became evident virtually from the moment I stepped foot on British soil.
I can’t remember if the customs officer at the Arrivals hall of Heathrow made some snide Ashes reference as my family and I presented our passports, but if he didn’t he was in the minority.
Whether at the dentist, the doctor, paying a gas bill or trying to get my son into a school, inevitably the conversation would turn to cricket and what Alastair Cook, Stuart Broad, Joe Root and co would do to the Aussies when they made the mistake of venturing to England in July, 2015.
They were right, of course, but my observation was that it wasn’t just Cook and his players who did the damage. The England supporters played a major role as well.
When Australia had won the Ashes on home soil in 2013-14 the chief destroyer had been Mitchell Johnson. The Barmy Army were determined that wasn’t going to happen again.
The relentless battering they gave Johnson from warm-up to stumps hour after hour, day after day, Test after Test went beyond good natured barracking. In my opinion it was bullying, and I said so in a column which, unfortunately for me, was picked up by English media.
The locals didn’t share my view, and they let me know it.
Not that it worried me. I had the option of not reading their comments, unlike Johnson who had no escape. By the end of the series he was a mental wreck and his bowling was, as the Barmy Army sang incessantly, “shite”.
I have only seen anything like it once before in my career, covering the 2011 Rugby World Cup when New Zealand fans, incensed that Kiwi-born Wallaby Quade Cooper had not shown All Black skipper Richie McCaw the deference they felt he deserved, labelled him Public Enemy Number One.
He was sledged from one end of the Shaky Isles to the other and by the time his tournament mercifully ended he was a shadow of the player who had electrified the Super Rugby-winning Reds only months earlier.
But nothing that Cooper or Johnson endured will come close to what Warner and Smith will cop during the World Cup and Ashes.
Warner is one tough rooster. Straight out abuse from the grandstand only serves to fire him up. The Barmy Army knows that, so the less principled among them may well take aim at his family instead.
They had a song which targeted his wife’s brief dalliance with footballer Sonny Bill Williams long before she met Warner written and ready to go for the 2017 series but decided against it at the last minute. Given the Sandpapergate scandal it is doubtful they will be so benevolent this time around.
As for Smith, the sight of the disgraced Australian captain with tears streaming down his cheeks as he delivered his mea culpa following the ball tampering scandal will be like blood in the water to the sharks in the England stands.
The songs have long been written. Rehearsals are well under way. The World Cup will be the entree, the Ashes the main course.
And they’ll be serving up Smith and Warner.
Originally published as Barmy Army has Smith and Warner in its sights
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