OPINION
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In cricket, they call it sledging but for the sake of reality, I'm going to call it what it actually is: bullying - unsportsmanlike bullying. Wikipedia describes it as "the practice whereby some [cricket] players seek to gain an advantage by insulting or verbally intimidating opposing players".
That's unsportsmanlike, right? It's definitely bullying.
I'm not talking about the so-called good-natured ribbing and competitive banter that's been part of cricket for more than 100 years. I'm talking about the sour-faced taunts, the veins-in-the-neck-popping gesticulations, the screaming send-offs and foul-mouthed character assessments that seem now to be a part of modern cricket.
Steve Waugh liked to call it "mental disintegration". I like to call it churlish schoolboy pushiness.
There has been plenty of talk about bullying this summer. A lot of the gibber has been gleefully espoused by smug commentators who rub their metaphorical hands together with anticipation, like third-graders who can't wait to chant "Fight! Fight! Fight!" as Jones and Witherspoon punch on near the bubblers at play lunch.
The same pundits say bullying is now "part of the game". Australians are apparently expert at it and are proud to claim it. Hardly a pre-match interview goes by without some green-lidded cricketer or other saying "we're not going to change our style of play" (code for "we're committed to relentlessly bullying other players this series") or "we'll be giving as good as we get" (which also reads as "they're bullies, we're bullies. Bullying is great! Bring on the bullying"). Often these declarations of intent are delivered with a little wobble of the head or a smirk that I presume is designed to project machismo. To me, it projects kindergarten-level immaturity.
Yet even our Prime Minister deemed it prudent to talk up cricket's most childish element as something to aspire to when he hosted the Australian and Indian teams at Kirribilli House on New Year's Day. Reflecting on his own playing days as a student at Oxford University, Tony Abbott boasted that his greatest skill wasn't opening the batting, it was opening his gob and spewing insults at his opponents.
"I couldn't bat, I couldn't bowl, I couldn't field, but I could sledge [bully], and I think I held my place in the team on this basis," the PM said, without any trace of regret or embarrassment. Then again, he's been Australia's Bully-in-Chief for a while now so I guess it's no surprise.
I've found that people who speak up against this puerile pastime are the ones who are considered out of line. "Lighten up," I've been told. "It's the Poms! We've gotta hate the Poms."
This week, the respected BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew went out on a bit of a limb and accused the Australian team of failing to honour the memory of batsman Phillip Hughes by continuing their bullying during the series against India.
"Michael Clarke said very clearly that Hughes' memory would run through the team and would be in the way they would play their cricket," Agnew said.
"Well, I haven't seen evidence of that. I really hoped that out of this tragedy might have come some good. But the players haven't behaved any better and I think that's a real disappointment."
Naturally, this was rejected by the Australians: "I think there was still a lot of respect," Australian batsman Chris Rogers said. "India gave as good as they got and we like that [see?]. Everyone is desperate to win and sometimes these things happen ... at times the anger does rise to the surface. I'd like to think it was pretty hard fought, but everybody afterwards still gets on and what happens on the field stays on the field."
Well, you're dead wrong about that, Chris. Bullying doesn't stay on the field - it's beamed live into millions of homes around the world. Particularly vile examples of bullying are replayed and expertly dissected by past great bullies in the commentary box and often will get another airing in the nightly news. The bullying is written about in blogs, newspapers and even books.
And that is how the under-9s hear about it. Kids take their cues from their heroes in the baggy green - a fact that's becoming unsettling. A friend of mine's 14-year-old son recently played in a game during which the opposition wicket keeper told every single teenage batsman to "get ready for a broken f---king arm" every time their strike bowler started his run-up. Now, where would a young lad learn such revolting, unsportsmanlike behaviour I wonder? From the erstwhile Australian cricket captain Michael Clarke of course! It was a verbatim mimic of Clarke's infamous bullying of England's Jimmy Anderson in 2013.
If he keeps it up, maybe that young keeper could make a future for himself in politics. Surely the PM would approve of such a precocious talent.
The fact is Australia's cricketers get paid big bags of cash to travel around the world and play a game with a ball, bats and little sticks in the ground. In the process, they represent all of us. Based on much of their on-field behaviour, there are plenty of people around the world who could be forgiven for thinking Australia is populated by nasty, spoilt mongrels.