Australian cricket has chance to acknowledge some tasteless errors
IT’S time for Cricket Australia to right a lot of wrongs, and come Monday, and it will be interesting to see whether officials are humble enough to acknowledge two pieces of regrettable mismanagement.
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MONDAY is Humble Pie Day in Australian cricket and it will be interesting to see whether officials are humble enough to acknowledge two pieces of regrettable mismanagement.
The first was the horrible four-fingered salute which was an “up yours’’ gesture at defeated England at this year’s Ashes finale in Sydney – one which said so much about the shallow, offensive swagger Australian cricket had at the time.
And the second, further back in time but even more significant, was the shoddy treatment of former coach Mickey Arthur, a victim of one of great cold-blooded sporting sackings two weeks before the 2013 Ashes.
Neither of these incidents are certain to be directly named in the two cultural reviews handed down in Melbourne on Monday but they both offer telling insights into an eroded culture.
First the salute. It was not good enough for Australia to win the Ashes last summer. It had to rub England’s noses in it.
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At the Ashes presentation in Sydney, Australia erected a giant hand, draped in an Australian flag, with four fingers in the air celebrating the 4-0 win.
England, of course, were mocked with a clenched fist with no fingers in the air because they won nothing.
None of it was the players fault but Cricket Australia marketing men enjoyed it because it meant that the presentation images will stand forever as a salute to Australia and a slap in the face for England.
Others loathed it for the same reasons.
When I asked a senior Australian official what he thought of the presentation, he said: “I couldn’t watch that crap. What do you reckon Richie Benaud would have made of it?
“Ever seen the All Blacks carry on like that? Do you reckon England would have done the same to us?’’
That’s the point. They didn’t.
If ever a team had a reason to mock a rival in victory it was the 2005 English Ashes team who broke free from almost two decades of torment.
Yet the enduring image of that series was Andrew Flintoff comforting Brett Lee after England’s last gasp win at Edgbaston.
As for Arthur, he has done a brilliant job to revive a Pakistan cricket team who are paid about one-eighth as much as their Australian rivals.
There was no two-fingered salute from Arthur after his side smashed Australia in the recent Test in Abu Dhabi but the sense of satisfaction must have been acute.
Arthur was basically sacked with his tracksuit on and was initially offered just a four-month payout for the 14 months left on his contract before he took legal action and the matter was settled.
Arthur fell out of favour after axing four players in India for not doing their team homework but there are board members who agreed with his sacking at the time, who now believe he was ahead of the game rather than behind it.
“I really felt that the team needed to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck,’’ Arthur said a year after being sacked.
“I’ll never forget Cricket Australia telling me I was too soft and I’d been too soft with the team. I kind of didn’t know what they wanted.’’
Neither did they, but they do now.
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Originally published as Australian cricket has chance to acknowledge some tasteless errors