Aussie cricket not all out yet
AMID the #tapegate humiliation of our national cricket team, there has been some lost opportunity for fostering a character trait we routinely declare as vital in this Aussie society.
I’m not talking about humility or honesty, things that flash harry David Warner and his once merry band of sycophants would struggle to locate even if you drew them a map.
As the layers of scandal continue to document Our Greatest Shame Ever, there’s been an endless parade of adults flagging the same conundrum. What about the kids? Well. Amid the adult hand-wringing, this week has shown that it is kids who can teach us grown-ups a thing or two about resilience since we seem to have conveniently forgotten about it.
Let’s go back 37 years to when the Australian captain Greg Chappell took his bowler brother Trevor Chappell aside and instructed him to make his final delivery an underarm ball along the ground. Trevor did so, and the ball rolled to New Zealand tailend batsman Brian McKechnie, who had no hope of scooping it up and sending it flying over the fence for the required six runs.
I can remember watching this on the television with my dad and brother at the time. Were we shocked? You bet. But what I don’t recall is the parental analysis and overindulgence that followed. And that’s because it didn’t happen.
There were no hysterical voices raised in fear that their children would be incited to cheat in their own lives, whether it was during the local backyard cricket match or their Monday morning spelling test. The kids survived it and it never once occurred to me to blame Chappell when I was caught out in a lie or didn’t brush my teeth for the obligatory three minutes.
I remember dad’s disappointment that an Australian cricketer would behave in such an unAustralian way. So no one ever forgot what happened but we moved on. It became part of the furniture of our sporting identity, along with the triumphs and defeats, heroes and villains. But it did not define who we were.
A chat with my cricketing teen son and others in his playing demographic revealed this sentiment: the current mob who scuffed the ball in South Africa are idiots who took a stupid risk but they don’t represent us, so it’s OK Mum, I still love sport and I will still play cricket.
While normally it is parents setting an example for kids, this time it is the youth who are leading the way.
Their message for all those parents asking, ‘how do I explain that the team are cheats?’ is simple. A few players chose to do the wrong thing, they got caught and now you have a front-row seat to watch how consequences work. Grown-ups, like everyone else, have to cop consequences.
For many Australians, sport is their religion, and they feel personally affronted that a group representing their country could betray them so badly. But no one was physically hurt, no one altered the course of history in any major way.
I could hear funeral drums beating when I read this from a New Matilda writer: “We’re stripped bare ... There is nowhere to go from here but down. We’re going to have to find a new identity, because this one is done.”
Rubbish. I’m not sure spending so much energy on outrage, conjecture and demands for retribution is healthy for anyone. Certainly not our kids. They have learned this week that their heroes can stumble and fall off their pedestals, but that does not make them evil.
Just human and very stupid and arrogant.
NO ONE WAS PHYSICALLY HURT, NO ONE ALTERED THE COURSE OF HISTORY IN ANY MAJOR WAY