Tim Blair: Cricket officials tangle themselves inside their own woke language

Cricket’s success is based on the patriotism of fans who want to see Australia win, but the sport now turns its back against those fans and Australia Day, writes Tim Blair.

The most offensive thing about Cricket Australia’s rejection of Australia Day isn’t the rejection itself.

Rather, it’s the patronising, evasive and smothering woke-talk from its anti-Australia Day administrators.

Compared to this mob, even the eternally scowly and disapproving Guardian comes off as an unconstrained, anything goes, free-speeching language bacchanal.

Cricket Australia’s Diversity and Inclusion manager (seriously) Adam Cassidy opened proceedings with last week’s announcement that inclusion now meant excluding any mentions of Australia Day from promotions for ­tomorrow’s three Big Bash games.

The son of former long-time ABC presenter Barrie Cassidy is working for Cricket Australia. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

“As a stretch reconciliation ­action plan organisation,” Cassidy — son of ABC barnacle Barrie — said, “we know we have a higher level of accountability to be leaders in this space.”

OK. Your eyes are bleeding right now, so please take a moment to recover before we try to determine what the hell Cassidy is on about.

At a guess, a “stretch reconciliation action plan organisation” is something that stretches the limits of what the public will accept from pretentious Cricket Australia admin.

A “higher level of accountability” refers to an imagined moral authority held by people whose real job is running an adult version of children’s backyard games.

And “in this space” are just three words you can add to the end of a sentence for no obvious purpose.

Cassidy continued: “It’s really the cohort of people who aren’t comfortable with the day that we hope we’ve made enough tweaks to make it a safe enough environment.”

Big Bash matches held on Tuesday will not have any mention of Australia Day. Picture: Mark Brake/Getty Images

Erasing Australia Day is some tweak. Police officer: “The vehicle is broken in two, its engine is in that lady’s living room and the interior is still on fire. What on earth did you do?”

P-plater Billy: “Um … I tweaked it.”

Cassidy is big on safety, saying of Australia Day: “It’s a day when a large number of members of our community actually do feel unsafe … what we don’t want to do is create a divisive environment where First Nations people are going to feel unsafe regardless of our stance.”

You know, Aboriginal Australians have survived on this fantastically dangerous continent for many thousands of years. An annual day of national celebration really isn’t much of a threat to people who’d deal with ­vicious crocodiles by eating them.

“Even if we had a strong stance in favour of changing the date,” Cassidy went on, “that could actually create an environment that is not safe.”

Cricket Australia has decided to strip Australia Day from marketing for matches on 26 January. Artwork: Terry Pontikos

Has this character ever seen a cricket match? The game itself is an unsafe environment. That’s part of the attraction.

Those helmets and pads aren’t decorative. They’re to stop players being injured or killed, and even then they don’t always work.

The greatest danger to kids, ­Indigenous or otherwise, at Big Bash matches on Tuesday won’t be a few rogue Australian flags or anyone’s sequential use of the forbidden words “Australia” and “day”.

It’ll be getting taken out by 160 grams of rock-hard leather, cork and string belted into the crowd at 100-plus km/h by a bloke armed with a three-foot long wooden club.

Cricket fans blindsided by news of Australia Day’s disappearance were subsequently surprised to learn this followed extensive “discussions” and “conversations” among Cricket Australia’s inclusivity enforcers.

It’s just that fans were excluded from those negotiations until after the decision was handed down.

Mel Jones is part of Cricket Australia’s First Nations Advisory Committee. Picture: Jason McCawley/Getty Images

“We understand that it’s a hard conversation to have with some people and Cricket Australia certainly does not shield away from having tough conversations on a number of matters,” Mel Jones, co-chair of Cricket Australia’s First Nations ­advisory committee, explained.

Except for tough conversations about Australia Day. Those are ­private.

“The really encouraging thing is that we are respectful of everyone and their opinions,” Jones added.

“We’re just hoping that this will cause a lot of emotive reactions from a lot of people.”

As an alert Daily Telegraph reader noted, with this Jones unintentionally met a definition of trolling.

Jones, a Cricket Australia board member of 15 months’ standing who was born in the UK to English and West Indian parents, said Cricket Australia was “happy to talk” about the Australia Day call, just so long as it’s done “in a really respectful way”.

And why wouldn’t they be happy? The call’s already been made. Talk about it as much as you like, plebs.

Members of the Indian team celebrate victory after day five of the fourth Test against Australia at The Gabba. Picture: Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images

“It’s always a tricky one in some ways having these kinds of conversations,” Jones mused. They’re a lot trickier, though, if they might have some bearing on the outcome.

At certain points, Jones even ­rivalled Cassidy for linguistic murkiness: “The decision-making process has been a long one and it’s a process that also has been tried and tested over a number of things.”

As Cassidy tells it, the Australia Day decision was made following a meeting of the First Nations advisory committee just last month. The process wasn’t long at all.

“You’ve got to be very open to the fact that with a lot of social change these days, people are on a different path,” Jones concluded.

Cricket Australia will fix that.

“You can’t expect everyone to jump on board with exactly how you’re thinking.”

Most people are thinking: why is Cricket Australia involved in Australia Day shunning when its Test team can’t beat Indian batsmen nobody’s heard of and low-ranked net bowlers?

Have a great Australia Day, everybody. Enjoy it while you still can.