My thoughts on Australian cricket

A reason why I barrack for any cricket team playing against Australia.....

 The Dismissal and the Grubber

You may call me un-Australian, a turncoat or a traitor,
Or the coarser, (contradictory!) term for “copulating masturbator”,
Because as I will now confess – and I do it with some pride –
When it comes to Aussie Cricket, I support the other side!

When I was just a wee lad, I lived within a mile
Of “The Great” Sir Donald Bradman (now said with sardonic smile),
In Kensington, in Adelaide, both named for English royalty,
But Australia at Cricket had my own unquestioned loyalty.

I don't pretend that I was such a wonder at the wicket,
But I had a clear idea of what was, and wasn’t, “Cricket”:
If you knew you were ‘out’, you ‘walked’, without a backward glance,
And in any game you gave your foes a proper sporting chance.

This code of decent conduct wasn't just for flannelled fools:
It was central to our culture, in unwritten ancient rules.
To protest unfair conditions, it was fair to strike and picket,
And many of our best traditions trace their roots to cricket.

For chivalry was at the core of Cricket’s conduct code,
And rivalry was moderated in a civil mode;
You don’t kick folks while they are down, or hit a kid with glasses;
Where not wanted you don’t hang around, or make unwanted passes.

There were “gentlemen’s agreements” which were very rarely breached;
Most preachers (though with grave exceptions!) practised what they preached;
And in Parliament, a hostile Senate wouldn’t stop Supply
To a Lower House majority, no matter what or why.

But two things happened, un-Australian, very deeply felt,
That finished Nice Guy decency – two blows below the belt –
For both of which I feel I'm not the one who should to be blamed,
But so many of my countrymen upheld them, I’m ashamed.

You may tell me The Dismissal was from another age,
But by the grace of Gough I swear, I do maintain the rage,
And Fraser's grubby deal with Kerr and Bjelke, (now in Hell),
In the Chappell Brothers' Grubber found a perfect parallel.

Perhaps one day I'll write about those shameful acts in verse,
When I've stewed and brewed the necessary Venom for my Curse . . .

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But right now I'll tell it in simple prose because it's so much less difficult and I want it done by today.

Lest We Forget the Dismissal of November 11 1975

Whitlam Govt elected 1972, re-elected 1974 with majority of 1 in the Senate Labor Senator Milliner from Queensland died early in 1975. Bjelke-Petersen, (oh sorry Limpy, SIR Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, the REAl Thing Knight!)refused Whitlam's request to replace him with, wait for it, Mal Colston, (later himself famously called by Senator Robert Ray "the Quisling Quasimodo from Queensland" for ratting on the Labor Party for purely mendacious reasons); instead, against Parliamentary usage, and through a tortuous and devilishly clever series of pre-emptive and pro-active manoeuvres Bjelke-Petersen, the evil bible-bashing bastard, appointed the slimy Albert Field as the replacement Senator . . .

 He claimed to be a Labor man, but immediately made his intention clear, to bring down the Whitlam government. The loss of Labor's working majority in the Senate was used by the Coalition (The same old bloody Coalition eh!) to deny Supply through the Senate, again flying in face of long-established Parliamentary practice, and eventually leading to the Kerr-Fraser coup.

 Lest We Forget. November 11, 1975.

In 1981 Australia was playing New Zealand in a series of one-dayers. Each team had won once. In the third match, Greg Chappell, the Australian captain, was caught by outfielder Martin Snedden when he was on 52, as the fieldsman himself claimed and as photographs confirmed, but Chappell refused to walk, he was given not out and went on to make 90 before being caught by Bruce Edgar, later to score 102 as the not-out batsman at the non-striker's end during the infamous incident that followed at the very end of the day.

With just one ball left to be bowled, NZ was trailing by six runs, a sensational situation indeed, with Brian McKechnie, the Kiwi on strike, bracing himself to try the almost unthinkable task of hitting a six off that last ball, to tie the match. Greg Chappell then gave the most disgraceful order of all time by a cricket captain, "ordering" his younger brother Trevor, who was bowling, to bowl a grubber - euphemistically called an "underarm bowl", technically legal, absolutely illegitimate.

Just like the Fraser-Kerr coup.

Brian McKechnie patted the impossible ball away from his wicket, and walked from the field throwing down his bat in disgust - an act which saw him censured for bringing the game of Cricket into disrepute . . . 

Australia won the game, but were booed off the field.

And ever since then this Turkey has barracked for every other team to play Australia at cricket, the Kiwis in particular. I used to seethe at sledging by any side (but Australia was always the champion sledger anyway) and it was a red-letter day when Shame Warne broke his finger, I'm nasty like that, but really all that's left for me now of the game of Cricket is a lingering feeling of betrayal and loss of innocence. Thanks to the Chappells, now iconic idols of rewritten history.

So before you call me traitor to the country of my birth I'd rather live in Australia than anywhere else on Earth, . . .

And one day I'll finish this story in verse, with the middle bit filled in. But before the current Ashes series is finally dead buried and cremated I want to say how delighted I am that Australia is finally getting its comeuppance for all the stuff in cricket that has made me ashamed of my countrymen, the sledging and slagging, the refusals to walk, the gloating and self-importance, the outrageous behaviour . . .