Babyface leads Aussie relapse
Like dear little Dostoevsky I am fascinated by crime and punishment, and in particular the two great questions that have vexed penologists down the ages: are the spots on a leopard born or bred, and can that leopard ever change them?
But unlike Dostoevsky I don’t intend to pussyfoot around these questions. I intend to answer them. I shall adduce evidence from the Australian cricket team.
The first cricket test was played in 1877 and Dostoevsky died in 1881, but he was a useful slow left-armer, so I know he would have been interested in the Australian reputation for playing hard but fair. Hard but fair means boorish and keen to cheat.
The boorishness takes the form of sledging, the noble art of abusing your opponent. To hoary old moralists like myself sledging is cheating, but then three years ago came cheating proper. The Aussies were caught sandpapering the ball.
The three culprits were hauled before the TV cameras where they demonstrated their legendary toughness by blubbing like toddlers. You would have needed a heart of granite not to burst out laughing.
Through litres of snot and tears the captain and vice-captain declared that they had seen the light, that their souls had been cleansed by the waters of contrition and that they were new-born into virtue.
So complete was their change of spots, it seemed, that there was no point in punishing them further. The truly penitent don’t need a penitentiary, nor the truly reformed a reformatory. Nevertheless, Cricket Australia sentenced them to a year of cricketlessness. It then faced a dilemma of its own.
Should it admit to having spent decades fostering boorishness, and start behaving decently? Or should it bring in an academic philosopher to review its organisation? It chose the philosopher. His name was Dr Simon Longstaff and he duly reviewed Cricket Australia. He concluded that they had spent decades fostering boorishness. And he advised that they start behaving decently.
So Cricket Australia appointed a baby-faced new captain to underline their good intentions and sent the team forth to play cricket nicely. The world was astonished. The English team in particular found it unnerving. Who were these unrecognisably sheepish opponents?
The answer seems to be that they were leopards in sheep’s clothing. For in a test match last week Babyface had a relapse. He sledged an Indian batsman in terms that this newspaper would express with asterisks, and he also launched, and I quote, ‘‘an expletive-laden outburst at umpire Paul Wilson’’.
Babyface has since apologised, but the indicative response came from the Australian coach, Justin Langer. Langer failed to see what all the fuss was about, and described the captain’s behaviour as his ‘‘first mistake in nearly three years’’.
As a defence this resembles ‘‘please take into account, m’lud, all the banks that my client did not rob’’. But the key word is mistake.
It implies an accidental error, a slip. But you cannot accidentally abuse an opponent or an umpire. How do I know? Because I have played a thousand games of cricket and never once have I abused anyone and neither have most of the people I have played with. Why not? Well, the answer’s simple. We weren’t brought up playing cricket in Australia.
All of which brings me back to where I began. It would seem that the answers to those two great penological questions are, respectively – are you listening now, Fyodor? This should ramify – bred and probably not.