War of the Words!?

For a blog with a name borrowed from cricket, you would find it extremely surprising not to find one single post dedicated to the sport so far. Not that I didn’t have opportunities to write about, there was India’s fairly successful tour to England, their incredible feat of winning the first edition of Twenty20 World Cup and of course cricket games between other countries. I had, on several occasions thought about blogging on cricket. But the recent Australian tour of India had some interesting sides to it other than the post itself, which makes an inspirational post. Not for the on field performances of both the teams, but for their off field antics.

Australia, for long have been the champions of World Cricket and this is reflective in their attitudes. They have an incredible team of immensely talented players. They have always had. But cricketers from the 90s and beyond are exemplary. Who could ever forget the grace of Mark Waugh, the perseverance of his twin brother Steve Waugh, the leadership of Mark Taylor, the exuberance of Shane Warne, accuracy of Glen McGrath, the sweet timing of Adam Gilchrist? The list goes on. I have been fortunate to watch some exciting sportsmanship of not only their top level players, but also players like Justin Langer, Michael Bevan, Damien Fleming, Jason Gillespie etc. Justin Langer’s awesome innings while chasing a 350+ score in the second innings of a test match against Pakistan along with Adam Gilchrist a few years ago is still fresh in my memory. What about Ricky Ponting’s ferocious hitting in the finals of 2003 World Cup against India? And Mathew Hayden and Andrew Symonds…tormentors in chief not just for the Indian team, but for every cricket playing team around the world. No wonder, they are the crowning glory of the world of cricket for the last decade. But has their continued success lead the team to be a bit arrogant?

We have seen instances of the Australian arrogance over the years. Behind the wicket sledging, bowlers’ mouthful to the batsmen, batsmen coming hard at the opposition bowlers, we have seen it all. But when Ricky Ponting with an eagerness to get his hands on to the coveted champions trophy, tapped Sharad Pawar, the president of the board of cricket control in India, and Damien Martyn nudged him out of the podium for a group picture, the bad boy image of the Australian Cricket Team had clearly arrived.

But we got to watch the real ugly side of cricket only during the recently concluded Australia’s tour of India and India’s victorious 20Twenty world cup campaign, where they easily defeated the champion Australian side to sail into the finals. The tour emphasized how bad losers the Australians were. Personally, I think if you experience continued success, you have high levels of confidence and you feel invincible. When you suddenly realise that you are vulnerable. Symond’s outburst against the Indians for their celebrations of winning the World cup was really surprising. What a nation we have in Australia, they can tap and nudge dignitaries to celebrate their success, but they cannot tolerate another team, albeit in a much humble way.

Nevertheless, there is something about the current crop of Indian players, they show a good deal of aggression. But you need to back the aggression with consistent success. There’s no point being aggressive when you are not winning. We saw plenty of verbatim between the Australians, especially Hayden and Symonds and the Indian team’s poster boy, Sreesanth. But Hayden and Symonds backed up their aggression with magnificent stroke play and were pivotal in Australia’s series victory. On the other hand, Sreesanth failed to impress with his bowling and did nothing to push India towards the brink of success. So are Australian’s justified in their aggression? Probably!?!