A common cry is that professionalism has turned our cricketers into mere automata, similar in many more respects than they are different. Cricket Australia’s compendious media guide provides some empirical support for the complaint, having surveyed each of the country’s first-class players of their heroes, philosophies, recreations, and favourite dishes. If it wasn’t for barbecues, it soon emerges, many Australian cricketers would surely starve.
Yet perhaps the most revelatory dimension of the questionaire involves bad habits, where Australian cricketers reveal themselves as almost abjectly inoffensive. Some are lazy. Some are messy. Justin Langer may leave wet towels on the bathroom floor. His wife tells him he does; he apparently remains unconvinced. Political correctness has made inroads. Metrosexual South Australian rookie Lachlan Oswald-Jacobs chides himself for failing to lift the toilet seat; cerebral New South Welshman Greg Mail confesses to ‘studying maths’. Doesn’t anyone smoke, or drink, or shag any more? Shane Jurgensen owns up to ‘annoying my wife’; the alternative of annoying other people’s wives would surely be far more interesting. While on the subject of wives, Shane Warne’s worst habit is ‘losing things’.
Runaway bestseller among bad habits, and the choice of champions, is nail biting, conceded by the following: Ricky Ponting, Shane Watson, Mitchell Johnson, Michael Bevan, Brad Haddin, Moises Henriques, Tim Lang, Aaron O’Brien, Grant Roden, Craig Philipson, Dan Marsh, Damien Wright, George Bailey, Tim Paine, Michael Klinger, Adam Crosthwaite, Dirk Nannes, Peter Siddle, Jon Holland, Alex Doolan, Grant Baldwin, Matthew Gale, Murray Bragg. Maybe they taught it at the Academy. You could cut the tension in the Victorian dressing room with a knife: it contains no fewer than seven cricketers hard at work gnawing their cuticles. It must be an atmospheric place, too, what with Jason Arnberger’s ‘foot odour’, Matthew Harrison’s ‘flatulence’ and Brad Hodge ‘wiping underarms with towelettes in public places’.
Gnawing at nails may ease butterflies, but it isn’t exactly going to sweep the nation. In Australia, there is a nostalgic hankering for cricketers cut from a coarser cloth – thus the strange post-career celebrity of David Boon, always bemoaning the constant harking back to his beer drinking record en route to England, yet cheerfully and lucratively the poster boy for a brewer. Drinking 50 Gatorades on the way to England somehow doesn’t cut the mustard. Perhaps the problem is that we now know too much about too little. If Australian cricketers can’t develop some diverting habits, it’s arguable they should give up answering questionaires.
original & provocative writing. most excellent and most hard to find. cheers gideon!
Posted by: The Big Ship on 11/28/2006
Smoking and drinking? I'm sure they do - particularly drinking. But.. can you imagine the uproar of pics of the Aus XI hoovering up a pack of Winfield Blue - as a superior number of park cricketers do every day? I have fond memories of Wally Lewis having a smoke on the sidelines during a State of Origin during the mid 80s. Not because I condone smoking (although I do), but because it made him more of a "real" person for me. If Wally can smoke and play for Qld, the, bugger it, so can I. Thats why we love Warnie, Bill Clinton and Doug Walters.
Posted by: David Stewart on 11/28/2006
Gideon,
I always enjoy your writing, and recently finished the book about your own club side - which had me laughing out loud at times.
Away back, when we were both younger - and had better eyes - we dined together, I think in Adelaide, via Bristol Dave of Johnnie Miller fame (I won the competition they ran for a trip to the 1994 Ashes, which I ended up funding myself !).
I've long since lost touch with Dave, but am now a fairly regular acquaintance of Steve James with whom you probaly shared a few Guardian press box slots last year; and who's work I enjoy).
I am coming out for the last 3 Tests. It would be nice to hook up again, if your schedule permits. Does Trumper like Kippers? I could pick up a vacuum pack at Heathrow.....).
Regards, David Stewart.
Posted by: Venu on 11/28/2006
I must disagree with you on this particular post. Too often we are forced to believe that heroes and successful people are perfect. Think of the super models who are often criticized for presenting an impractical image of how a woman should be. Similarly, providing the fans of cricket with a look into the lighter side of things will bring them closer to us. These cricketers are human beings and as regimented as they maybe on the Cricket field, one can't help but think that sometimes all they want to do is sit on a couch and watch TV. After all, how many of us can claim to have the prowess of Shane Warne on and off the field.
Posted by: Chris on 11/28/2006
If warney only listed a few of the aforementioned habits on his questionnaire one must consider the validity of the responses.
A longer darker look by a suitably darker investigative entity needs to be employed to raise the hackles of the public and provide BOONIE like proportions to the current athletic alumni.
Posted by: Sundhar Ram on 11/28/2006
Tim, you have made a very valid point. There is no madness in the Aussie method. They are too clinical. They are doing to cricket what Schumi did to F1. Well, I mean I am ok with them winning always, but at least let them give a chance to the opposition.
And the p.r. guys must take us for fools. Well, Warne's bad habit gives me the laugh!
Posted by: Glenn on 11/28/2006
What about Darren Lehmann? Boof surely must have some bad habits like drinking and smoking?? What about eating pie floaters? Or Cosgrove I'm sure that his bad habit would be eating too much
Posted by: Aravind on 11/29/2006
Nice post Gideon...but obviously, any questionnaire asnwered by the players will focus on frivolous habits rather than any serious ones! This is exemplified by Warney's answer...he is hardly likely to put down "playing with rubber dolls" is he? But professionalism is certainly reducing the "characters" of the game - I cannot imagine someone like Merv or Boonie playing the game now! Perhaps that is why Mark Cosgrove is struggling to break through despite possessing such obvious talent?
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Gideon Haigh has written sixteen books and edited six more, mainly concerned with sport and business, in twenty-three years as a journalist. He now writes mainly for the Australian current affairs magazine The Monthly. He lives in Melbourne with a cat, Trumper, and is taking time off from his cricket club, the Yarras, to cover the 2006-7 Ashes for The Guardian.
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