Paul Kent: Ethical approach to sledging won’t deliver The Solution
AUSTRALIAN cricket’s problems are as simple as determining the difference between the tough guy and the wannabe tough guy. Cricket’s problem, writes PAUL KENT, is it no longer knows that difference.
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AUSTRALIAN cricket’s problems are as simple as determining the difference between the tough guy and the wannabe tough guy.
More of one, less of the other.
After that the rest is as easy as shelling peas.
Cricket’s problem, though, is it no longer knows that difference.
So its solution is the solution for the confused: more committees.
Administrate by committee, decide by vote ... and remove all personal accountability.
It is the virus infecting modern Australian sport.
In Cricket Australia’s case it is an ethics committee, part of which includes players signing a pledge to say they will no longer sledge on the pitch.
Apparently, this creates better people.
It is another example of a theory without proof.
It gives no thought to moral fibre or the development of character or what true leadership is.
There is a very legitimate reason for sledging, although often misunderstood.
Steve Waugh put it best when he described it as “mental disintegration”.
So when Waugh told Herschelle Gibbs “You just dropped the World Cup” after a dropped catch in the 1999 he was not simply being a bully, as now might be determined.
Waugh’s dig was designed to create a distraction in Gibbs’ mind.
He wanted him mulling over the dropped catch and its consequences instead of concentrating on the moment.
When Merv Hughes thrust out his hand and said “tickets please” moments after taking Javed Miandad’s wicket it was celebrated as a moment of small comedy.
The story has been retold so often many now begin nodding in acknowledgment before the punchline.
It came moments after Miandad called Hughes a “fat bus driver”, a sledge designed to make Hughes question his ability as a fast bowler.
Nowadays Miandad would be outed for fat-shaming. The sob-sisters demanding action, Hughes offered counselling.
All this politically correct crap is nauseating. It is not unnoticed that the same championing it are the same people, on a slow news week, complaining about the lack of characters in sport.
It is hard to know what they want.
When sports become sterile they die. In the modern world, boring is fatal. Look at rugby.
You can’t have heroes without villains.
This week the investigations into Australian cricket allowed the narrative to be hijacked into this all-encompassing idea that sledging is bullying.
No doubt this was the way of the modern Australian cricketer.
They compensated for the lack of gravel in their guts by talking the big game, convincing themselves they were upholding the reputation of tough Australian cricket.
Now Australians are being asked to sign a pledge to say they won’t sledge.
To be like New Zealand, who have the mental edge of jellyfish.
There is no doubt the Australians lost their way.
This recent Australian team was a fraud. Wannabe tough guys.
Their tough reputation was inherited, not earned, so carried no respect in what they said towards opponents. It’s easy to see why; they had no idea of the cost.
The review exposed that.
It identified David Warner as a major problem.
And Cricket Australia is arrogant. Has been for a long time.
The players, collectively, are pampered and spoiled. Too much poor behaviour was allowed to go unquestioned.
But the report landed in two stages, what was wrong and how to fix it.
Unidentified, so far, is the problem with adopting the review’s recommendations as The Solution.
It was written by Simon Longstaff, a professor of ethics.
It is only natural Longstaff’s solution was going to land on the ethics side of problem.
And this is a problem for Cricket Australia and its demonstrated inability to read the play.
Longstaff’s bias towards ethics is such that players are being asked to sign boy scout pledges saying they won’t say nasty things anymore, as if that will fix things.
It is fair to assume that if anybody else was writing the report The Solution would be different.
Allan Border, for instance, might have delivered a different set of recommendations. He said as much on Fox Sports this week.
“Yes, how you win is very, very important,” he said, “but it is about winning.”
Border does not forget it is Test cricket.
“I don’t think we’re going to tolerate 11 great blokes out on the field and not winning any games, though.”
Border has form in his corner. Longstaff does not. It was Border who turned around Australian cricket’s fortunes, who has shown before that his way can be successful.
The question is whether winning and sledging can be exclusive to each other.
Of course they can’t.
Sledging has been a part of sport since sport was first played.
Babe Ruth gestured towards the outfield fence to indicate he was about to hit a home run. A country celebrated.
Nobody got concerned about the pitcher’s hurt feelings.
Muhammad Ali never shut up in George Foreman’s ear during the Rumble In The Jungle.
“That all you got, George?” he’d say.
Foreman got enraged. He determined to hit Ali even harder and knock him out.
He hit Ali so hard and so often he punched himself out.
“That all you got, George?”
Without it, Ali could never have employed his rope-a-dope. Now one of sport’s great stories.
Michael Jordan was being guarded by Orlando’s Nick Anderson one night and knew how to get dominance.
“I’m coming down, I’m going to dribble it between my legs twice,” Jordan told Anderson.
“I’m going to pump fake and then I’m going to shoot a jumper. And then I’m going to look at you.”
“And that’s exactly what he did,” said Anderson’s teammate Shaquille O’Neal.
By predicting and then delivering, Jordan made Anderson question how he could ever cover him. He forever had the mental edge.
Jordan saw such benefit in it he trash-talked his teammates.
Earlier this week Shane Warne showed his tremendous timing when he revealed some of his best sledges over his career and then, near the end, how it all came about.
Warne described his first captain Border as his “mentor of sledging”.
But there was a science behind the art.
“He told me that if you can’t find any rhythm with your bowling, you can’t get into the contest and you’re struggling a little, just pick a fight with someone,” Warne said.
“Not a physical fight, but if someone was walking past, let’s say it was Kevin Pietersen, I’d say something like ‘what are you looking at KP?’
“And he’d turn around and go ‘What? What are you looking at?’
“Suddenly it became a contest between you and him and it switched you on and gave you a bit more rhythm and got you into the contest.”
The current crop of Australians never quite got that.
It doesn’t make it wrong, though. It makes them wrong.
The trick is to identify the difference. Always has been.
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Originally published as Paul Kent: Ethical approach to sledging won’t deliver The Solution
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