Planet Earth to Australia: sledging doesn't work!

● The Australians slung sledges at Quinton de Kock for the best part of 218 minutes at Kingsmead. Theunis de Bruyn copped it for 111 minutes. Aiden Markram came in for 340 minutes of the stuff.

That’s 669 minutes between them, or more than 11 hours. Only in the second innings. Involving just three of South Africa’s batsmen.

However you measure it, that’s a lot of trash talk. And for what?

The fact that De Kock, De Bruyn and Markram spent 31 minutes less at the crease than it takes to fly from Johannesburg to Sydney despite being told every other moment they were too chicken to deal with the beef being thrust down their ears, and much worse, proves one true thing: sledging does not work.

If, in all that time, you can’t sledge three batsmen out, best you shut the hell up and make another plan.

The Aussies’ defence of their butt-ugly approach to anything on the field that doesn’t involve tangibles like bats or balls comes down to: “This is the way we play.”

Honestly? The team of Fred Spofforth, Victor Trumper, Clarrie Grimmett, Don Bradman, Bill O’Reilly, Jack Fingleton, Keith Miller, Ray Lindwall, Dennis Lillee, Ian Chappell, Jeff Thomson, Richie Benaud, Shane Warne, Adam Gilchrist and Steve Waugh have been succeeded by yobs who refuse to entertain the idea that their way might not be the right way.

Australia’s cricketers have always been tough nuts who wore their hearts on their sleeves and batted, bowled and fielded as if their lives depended on winning.

Of course they’ve said stuff to opponents that would have earned them a smack upside the head from their mothers. But they played as if they knew they were part of a greater good, not as if the game itself was there to be conquered and owned.

Trumper gave us a photograph that will always inspire the next generation to find out what happens when you hit a cricket ball with unadulterated joy.

Bradman gave us the gift of knowing that the finest batsman of them all was also among the least orthodox.

Miller gave us the perspective that comes with having survived a war as a fighter pilot.

Benaud gave us the dignity of truth told sparingly.

Warne gave us flawed genius.

Gilchrist gave us thorough decency. What do the current Australia team give the game?

Some of the most talented players around, granted. But players require more than talent to properly represent the game, themselves, their team and their country.

The Australians have failed to meet that high standard since last Sunday, when none of them saw fit to stop David

Warner from spewing invective at Quinton de Kock as the players left the field for tea on the fourth day of the first test.

Perhaps what Warner said didn’t sound all that different to what he had spent the previous few hours saying on the field, and so they didn’t notice that he was still going.

Sadly some South Africans’ response has been to take the ugliness to the next level, not to be better people.

Do some of this Australian team behave the way they do because they think that’s what it means to be Australian?

How does that square with the image projected by Steve Smith, their captain, who plays, talks and behaves as if he might yet give back to cricket some of what it has given him?

It doesn’t take long to find enlightened, progressive Australians. And it doesn’t take long for them to cringe at the crassness of their compatriots.

Australia has given the world Germaine Greer, Gough Whitlam and John Pilger. It’s also saddled us with Rupert Murdoch, Pauline Hanson and Greg Ritchie.

The sight of Warner spinning, all but out of control, up a staircase at Kingsmead opened a window on a part of being Australian that shames other Australians.

It is the window to a stinking toilet.

The gave us Whitlam, Greer and Pilger; and also saddled us with Murdoch, Hanson and Ritchie