Mitchell Johnson (right) wonders whether former teammate David Warner deserves a valedictorian selection. Test: Ryan Pierce/Getty Images < p>Elite honesty! Mitchell Johnson bombarded David Warner with a series of angry lifters, and English cricket fans are 100 per cent here for it, because there is absolutely nothing funnier in sport than the huge gulf of self-awareness between how Australian cricket sees itself and how the rest of the world sees Australian cricket.
Johnson, a former purveyor of either unplayable or useless fast bowling depending on the alignment of the stars, targeted former teammate Warner with the fierce hostility he was known for on the field and the laser precision he did not possess. . He questioned whether Warner deserved to be selected for the farewell Test given the opening batsman's poor performance and – more controversially – questioned whether the player at the center of one of the most notorious episodes of cheating in cricket history deserved hero status. p>
“As we prepare for David Warner's farewell series, can someone tell me why?” Johnson wrote in The West Australian“Why a struggling test starter can set his own retirement date. And why does a player at the center of one of the biggest scandals in Australian cricket history deserve to be sent off as a hero?” Johnson later said his column was prompted by a “pretty bad” text message he received from Warner. although he did not specify the content of this message.
Whatever's going on, it's a clear violation of several core tenets of the Aussie sporty lad, a case of brother attacking brother in a shocking breach of camaraderie, and certainly the most upsetting Aussie thing to happen since Helen Daniels died in Neighbours. .
And for non-Australians? Are our sports tormentors attacking each other? Yes, please.
The conflict became both a classic and something that could not have happened in previous generations, because the very nature of the Australian cricketer and the way he sees his place in the world changed forever, and Johnson's remarks about Warner became part of the ongoing culture war between the players past and present. Johnson has already called Pat Cummins “fearless” and Ricky Ponting has defended sacked manager Justin Langer.
Langer himself called those players who tired of his methods and forced him out as “cowards”. From the perspective of previous generations, hard gaming and drinking have been replaced by awakening, charity, and a general sense of touching modernity that belies the way vintage sees itself. Steve Smith even advertises oat milk, not amber nectar, drongo.
Those of us who live in this hemisphere and enjoy the schadenfreude of schism are in dreamland. We English sports fans growing up in the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s had a very clear idea of what the Australian player was: rough, uncompromising, ideally sporting a thick mustache, loving to squash the smaller size 13 Poms. size and at the same time insult them verbally. and scoops up crate after crate of beer.
Australian cricketers striking fear into the hearts of England fans 1970s and 80s. Photo: Adrian Murrell/Getty Images
The likes of Dennis Lillee, Geoff Thomson and zenith Merv Hughes defined for the rest of the world the idea of the Australian cricketer and, indeed, the Australian man. Legendary sleds like “Does your husband play cricket too?” and “give him a piano, see if he can play it”, as well as the more direct, industrial language became an example of the tough, aggressive and overconfident Australian player on the field. A series of larriks, typified by Shane Warne, or David Boon's 52 tins on a flight from Sydney to London, shaped the park's image: a good time, not taking itself too seriously, democratic towards the people. We respected them and feared them, we loved to hate them and – in some cases – we began to feel deep admiration and affection for them: the Panthers, Evil Glenn McGrath who turned out to be not so evil in the end and, most importantly, above all, Warnie .
But in the era of Steve Waugh, something strange began to happen. The win-at-all-costs mentality was still present, but the Test team began to consciously and purposefully position itself not just as the best cricket team in the world, but as a vessel of national identity and values. A key transition point was Waugh taking the team to Gallipoli in 2001. The self-mythologizing, quasi-militaristic journey of The Baggy Green™ then continued during the Justin Langer years, memorably captured in David Brentian's unintentionally hilarious Amazon docuseries. The strange mixture of nationalism, management talk and mysticism brought concepts of “elite integrity”, “leadership group” to a wider audience ” and “elite camaraderie.”
And there was something dissonant in this, in itself. – the self-proclaimed custodians of the spirit of cricket, when every fan and player from every other country thought: wait, are we talking about the same Australian cricket team? It all came crashing down because of the Sandpapergate farrago that Johnson mentions and Steve Smith's crying. Mitchell's civil war against David suggests that Australia's collective cricket madness continues, and for those of us whose sporting lives have been blighted by the traumatic blows of this mob, the circus may continue for a long time.
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