In It to Win It: The Australian Cricket Supremacy

256 Pages·2006·0.73 MB·english

by  Peter Roebuck

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IN IT TO WIN IT
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PETER
R O E B U C K
IN IT TO WIN IT
The Australian cricket supremacy
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To all my colleagues on The LBW Trust
Learning for a Better World
and all its sponsors, donors and students.
First published in Australia and New Zealand in 2006
Copyright © Peter Roebuck, 2006
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in
writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968(the Act) allows a
maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be
photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that
the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration
notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: [phone]
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Email: [email protected]
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Roebuck, Peter, 1956- .
In it to win it : the Australian cricket supremacy.
Includes index.
ISBN 978 1 74114 543 4.
ISBN 1 74114 543 0.
1. Cricket - Australia. 2. Cricket players - Australia. I.
Title.
796.358650994
Typeset in 11.5/14 pt Galliard by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
List of Scorecards x
1 Playing the Game 1
2 Setting the Scene 10
3 The Chappell Challenge 23
4 Down in the Dumps 34
5 Panning for Gold 45
6 Crossing the Simpson 60
7 Border Patrols 69
8 Put in Their Place 85
9 Pummelling the Poms 110
10 Subduing the Africans 134
11 Reaching the Summit 145
12 Great Days Indeed 155
13 Many a Slip 171
14 End of the Waugh 189
15 Punter Takes Charge 204
16 England Expects . . . 217
17 Australia Meets Its Maker 225
Index 241
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‘I think we have turned the corner in one-day cricket. I
think that from now on we are going to be very, very hard
to beat.’
Allan Border, at the 1987 World Cup
Letter to The Times
Sir,
Thirty years ago I returned from Australia where I had
a job with an international oil company. Everyone from
the directors to the shop floor lunched together and rank
was temporarily suspended.
Back in England I took a job with a Midlands
engineering group. There were five different levels of
canteen and dining room.
Yours faithfully,
G.A. Dawson
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Preface
A
ustralians have always played cricket by their own lights.
Unimpressed by an inheritance from a distant land, they
embarked upon their own independent course. From the
outset, Australian cricket’s approach was founded in realism. By and
large, it has lacked sentiment and charm, in which respect it reflects
the nation. Snakes wriggle in the interior, sharks swim in the seas,
grim-jawed competitors stand at gully, sardonic remarks poised on
their lips. Robin Hood was the English champion, Ned Kelly his
antipodean equivalent.
Australian cricket is the sound of sprigs on concrete, the sight of
umpires with fingers raised high above their heads, the reading of the
score the wrong way around, leg spinners ripping the ball with all
their might, a slip cordon unemotionally chewing gum as a fast
bowler reaches his mark, and sunscreen splashed across faces. It is a
game of harsh light, fiery bowlers, forceful batsmen and lean fields-
men, a game played across the nation.
Romance is scorned, the fancy talk heard elsewhere is loved in
secret but noisily rejected. No need has ever arisen to revisit the
heroes of Australian cricket because there are no illusions to crush.
Recent books about English champions which have revealed flaws
will upset those convinced the game is played by special people
whereas, in fact, it is merely a special game. Australian cricket cut out
the cant on the day Fred Spofforth first marked out his run, on the
day his comrades heard English amateurs address their professional
colleagues in disparaging tones.
Australian cricket is gritty and democratic. It belongs not so
much to the bluebloods as the redbloods. It reflects the rigours of
the climate and rejects the prim and proper. Australia expects its
cricketers to be characters. They might be as dark as Lillee, as defiant
as Border, as swashbuckling as Michael Clarke. Provided they are
distinctive it hardly matters. Australia likes sport and sportsmen.
Apart from Cathy Freeman, Makybe Diva and Ian Thorpe it does
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INITTOWINIT
not, though, live and die with them. Australia enjoys the sporting
moment and the triumph but is also capable of moving on. Greyness,
skiting, whingeing and whining are frowned upon. The real desire is
always to get on with the game. The old call, ‘Ave a go yer mug!’
reverberates. Indeed it expresses the national outlook. Australia may
be unsettled by oddballs but it likes triers. The rise and fall of Steve
Waugh was a matter of debate and his century reached at the last ball
of the second day of the 2002/03 New Year’s Test provoked wide-
spread celebrations for it epitomised the toughness of life and the
survival of the individual. And never mind that Waugh himself could
be as cranky as a rudely awoken koala.
Aggression has been the other constant factor of Australian
cricket. Defeat is the almost inevitable result for any Australian team
reluctant to force the pace. Something in the national psyche rebels
against the English custom of turning every game into a version of a
cross-country run. An attacking approach is instilled from an early
age—the need to score runs, to take wickets and to avoid wasting
time. Woe betide the batsman who potters around like an ancient
inavillage sweet shop. From ‘Terror’ Turner to Lillee, from Trumper
to Ponting, Australian cricket has been played from the front.
It has been a great and sustained tradition and the green cap coloured
after the wattle has become its enduring symbol. Few sporting symbols
adopted by teams have had as much effect upon opponents as this oddly
shaped piece of headgear. The All Blacks have their war dance and their
shirts, the Welsh sing, the Scots play their pipes, northern Europeans
paint their faces and Englishmen clap their hands but none surpasses
the power of the cap worn by the Australian cricketer.
Respectful of history, determined to channel its power, Waugh
used the ‘baggy green’ to remind his players that they were part of a
great tradition. To disgrace the cap was to betray a history and a
nation. The cap perpetuates the myth that Australian cricket has but
a single mind. Over the years there have been rebellions, all of them
about money and power, and two of them (1884 and 1902) occurred
before the baggy cap started appearing on distinguished heads. Once
the cap was established, nothing was allowed to compromise the
team or its motif. The baggy green cap has been a constant in
changing times, timeless and defiant, not so much a relic as a
reminder that some things are not for sale.
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PREFACE
Over the years the cap has reflected an unchanging tradition that has
taken us from Charlie Macartney to Brett Lee. It has been an eventful
journey. Only when a generation arrives that believes it is above such
reference points will the game start to fade in the wide brown land.
Australian cricketers have a reputation to maintain. Overseas, they
are regarded as a hard bunch prepared to pay any price to prevail. Of
course that is to oversimplify the matter. Yet there has indeed been a
sense of the indomitable that has taken the nation from Warwick
Armstrong reading a newspaper on the boundary to Ricky Ponting
saving a Test match by batting almost an entire day. The Australians
might lose but they never lie down. It is not allowed.
Australian cricket’s recent domination has been a mixed blessing.
Under three very different captains Australians have played the same
forcing game, searching for wickets or boundaries. Others have copied
them and, as a result, fewer matches have been left drawn. On the
other hand the Australians’ uncompromising approach has provoked
conflict and eventually the game’s rulers felt obliged to appoint
referees to oversee matches and impose discipline. Australia has been
respected but not loved, sometimes not even in its own backyard.
This book is the last in a series that has included my memoirs and
a collection of character studies. It is a search for Australia through
its cricket. It is also an account of the almost uninterrupted success
enjoyed by Australia over the last two decades. That the run ended
with defeat in the most memorable Ashes series ever played was a
stroke of luck. In the event the 2005 Ashes campaign provided an
insight into the nature of both countries and both teams.
Thomas Keneally has observed that the curiously Australian blend
of democracy and authoritarianism started with the first governor,
Arthur Phillip, who distributed provisions evenly between every
inhabitant of the settlement—convict or free settler—and then sent
out shooting parties to exact revenge upon hostile elements. Phillip
could have been an Australian cricket captain.
My thanks go to Patrick Gallagher and Angela Handley from Allen
& Unwin for their support, assistance and interest. Matthew
Klugman and Alex McDermott made vital contributions by collect-
ing material, offering suggestions and demanding rigour. Finally my
thanks go to my fellow Australians for putting out the welcome mat
all those years ago.
IX
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List of scorecards
Australia v England, World Cup Final,
8 November 1987, Eden Gardens, Calcutta, India 83
Australia v West Indies, Fourth Test,
23–26 January 1993, Adelaide Oval, South Australia 107
Australia v England, First Ashes Test,
8–13 June 1989, Headingley, Leeds, UK 113
Australia v West Indies, Fourth Test,
29 April–3 May 1995, Sabina Park, Kingston, Jamaica 152
Australia v West Indies, First Test,
5–9 March 1999, Queen’s Park Oval, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad 157
Australia v Pakistan, Second Test,
18–22 November 1999, Bellerive Oval, Hobart, Tasmania 165
Australia v South Africa, World Cup Semi-final,
17 June 1999, Edgbaston, Birmingham, UK 187
Australia v England, Fifth Ashes Test,
2–6 January 2003, Sydney Cricket Ground, New South Wales 201
Australia v India, World Cup Final,
23 March 2003, The New Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg,
South Africa 215
Australia v England, Second Ashes Test,
4–8 August 2005, Edgbaston, Birmingham, UK 230
X