Sports

Australia wants to play nice but India series will show if it’s working

With two new TV networks broadcasting cricket this summer there will be the customary array of updated technological gadgetry.

The latest successors to the long forsaken "player comfort level" and Tony Greig's all-knowing car key will include a battery of quasi-analytical tools intended to enhance your viewing experience and, as importantly, fill the gaps on a slow day in the commentary box.

Most optimistically, Fox Sports' armoury includes an algorithmic device with the supposed ability to answer that most infuriating question posed by those TV room interlopers, who mistake Test cricket for a 100-metre sprint: "Who's winning?"

But if you were to provide another electronic toy for those broadcasting the impending Australia versus India Test series, surely it would be the "aggression detector", the "likeability index" or perhaps even the "brokenf***ingarmometer".

Something to measure the grins, grimaces and twitches of the Australian players more accurately than the many commentators, ex-players and couch critics who will become instant body language experts this summer.

A device that can determine an issue that will be scrutinised more closely than the batting and bowling averages: Are the Australians playing nice?

Steve Smith directs fieldsman, as David Warner gestures to the pavilion at Coogee Oval.

For Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft, the price of Sandpapergate was a season banished from the field.

For the rest of the team, South African tourists and long distance observers alike, the cost is to play under the harshest of spotlights as their every move is examined for signs of overt-aggression and unsportsmanlike conduct — or, conversely, the lack thereof.

Expectations of Australia create division

Even before the first Test, the "damned if they do, damned if they don't" expectations of this Australian team have caused a deep divide in cricket viewing ranks.

When Michael Clarke suggested during a radio interview that "Australian cricket, I think, needs to stop worrying about being liked and start worrying about being respected", he spoke for those who believe Australia will wear a behavioural straightjacket this summer against a talented and aggressive opponent.

Composite image of Gerard Whateley and Michael Clarke.

The tone of those who supported Clarke's assertion across the airwaves and social media was that the behavioural expectations of the Australian team post-South Africa are a form of political correctness gone mad and nanny-state overreaction.

"You can't even chat up a pretty girl at the office Christmas party, kids aren't allowed on the monkey bars without helmets, you can't smoke inside and now you can't even threaten to break Virat Kohli's f***ing arm!"

External Link: Michael Clarke tweet: GerardWhately 1116sen

At the other end of the behavioural spectrum was former Offsiders host and now SEN radio personality Gerard Whateley, who — in response to Clarke's "respected not liked" thesis — plotted the former Australian skipper's place on the timeline leading to the Cape Town humiliation.

"That (Clarke) would continue to rely on the line — the fiction his and subsequent teams used to excuse all manner of boorish behaviour — might be the single greatest piece of nonsense over the past nine months," Whateley said.

Clarke's tit to Whateley's tat?

A textbook piece of Alpha male cricket-shed "champing", which included the seemingly deliberate misspelling of Whateley's name (Gerald Wheatley), an intemperate insult ("headline-chasing coward") and that old jock standby "you never played the game!".

All of which tended to undermine any of Clarke's more rational points.

But regardless of whose side you are on, Clarke and Whateley's to and fro provided a mildly amusing lead-up to the Test series and a platform for the very different outlooks on the expectations of the Australians.

Who knows, a few days of revived relevance might even put some wind in the sails of Clarke's becalmed TV commentary career.

Australia's friendlier ethos will be challenged

But amid the poisonous punditry, spare a thought for the Australian players who must walk a difficult line this summer between these vastly differing behavioural expectations.

Cast an angry glance at a batsman who plays and misses or throw a ball at the stumps after he strays from his ground and the Australians will, to their most extreme critics, be perpetuating their supposed image as line-crossing villains.

Applaud a rousing Kohli century or smile in the field as the Indians pile on the runs and they will scorned for their supposed lack of aggression by some past players — even those whose selective memories have erased their own roles in Australia's gradual descent to sandpaper.

From both sides the Australians will be urged to play hard but fair. But the widening gap in perceptions about what such "hardness" entails has reduced the sensible common ground to a narrow precipice.

No doubt, the Indians will do their very best to tip Australia over the edge.

Kohli's presence is a wonderful occasion. A brilliant player and captain at the peak of his powers attempting to lead his emboldened team to a first series victory in Australia before vast crowds of ebullient ex-pat Indian supporters makes for superb theatre.

India's captain Virat Kohli gestures as the team poses with the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

But for the Australians tiptoeing that line between necessary aggression and heightened public expectations, the sometimes prickly Kohli and his challenging teammates presents a testing examination of their post-Cape Town manners.

For Australian coach Justin Langer and captain Tim Paine, the challenge is to somehow block out the noise and reflect on a simple truth.

Of course Australia can be both respected and liked by opposition and public if aggression is sensibly — even organically — employed to create the pressure that will examine a batsman or bowler's technique and temperament.

Not, as has sometimes been the case, used to exert the ego of the aggressor and achieve a personal best score on the "brokenf***ingarmometer".

Original Article

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