Moshing Mathilda

I got a phone call yesterday morning from a colleague, excitedly asking if I was watching the game between Australia and New Zealand.

Australia were 84/7 and teetering on the brink of their most ignominious World Cup defeat ever — of course I was bloody watching. We had a good laugh, and I told him to catch my column this morning, which would be filled with cheer and goodwill.

Yesterday I predicted that the Kiwis would win this one, a fact I was quick to point out on the phone yesterday morning, and quite frankly at 84/7 I would have felt reasonably justified. Ah…me of little faith.

Of course the Aussies didn’t just win — they murdered the Kiwis, reversing the fortune and inflicting New Zealand’s lowest ever total in a world cup. They didn’t just win — they killed them by 96 runs, and you know what — I’m glad. Let me tell you why.

I don’t like Aussie any more than anyone else, but I know a good cricket side when I see one. This side isn’t just good — they are the best side I have ever seen, and I’ve been watching cricket for a very long time. I believe they are destined to go through this World Cup without losing a game, and set a record for most consecutive victories which will stand for a century or more.

Just as the Barry Richard’s and Graeme Pollock’s will talk about the fantastic sides of the early sixties and seventies, people will talk about this side to bored, skeptical, know-it-all teenagers in 50 years from now, recalling fondly the pace of Brett Lee, the unerring accuracy of McGrath, the heroics of the big guns and the dramatic rescues by the small guns, not to mention any number of catches and fielding efforts so brilliant they could only be dreamed of in the minds of young boys, whose enthusiastic imagination is as yet undimmed by the harsh reality of fielding at silly mid-off with Hayden in full cry facing Shoaib touching 160km/h.

You can forget Waltzing Mathilda here, boys and girls — it’s Moshing Mathilda, and she’s gunning hard. A true headbanger knows the score: you get stuck in the moment you hear the first strains of Nellie The Elephant; you smash your head and face into the first person you see, and when they’re down on the ground you gather round and kick the bastard to death. Afterwards you hug in solidarity, or in the case of the Aussies you share a cold one afterwards.

There you have it: cricket explained through popular — if troubled — youth culture. Or rather, the Aussie mindset is the analogy: beat them down and never let them get up, until the song is over and we can be mates again.

At 84/7, and with Shane Bond grabbing 6/23, you would have expected the Kiwis to have restricted the Aussies to something around 150 at absolute best, allowing for tailenders to get a few lucky nicks before being bowled out in 47.2 overs. Instead Andy Bichel and Michael Bevan put on a record — not just a good — a record partnership for the Australian eigth wicket, of 97, and when they went Brett Lee still managed two sixes off the last two balls to get Australia to 208/9.

The Kiwis couldn’t even bowl them out. How’s that for mean? Despite the fact that the PE wicket has got to be the worst in the world, you would still have expected New Zealand to pass that score with relative ease. It only required them to get four singles every over, and they would have got there with bags of time to spare.

Instead they got bowled out for 112 in 30 overs — their lowest ever total in a World Cup. Now someone explain that to me. Please. Someone explain.

You would have expected the Aussies to come hard — they knew their score at least gave them something to bowl at — but you didn’t necessarily expect them to come out on the field having just taken part in a group satanic ritual, infusing their souls with all that is evil, mean, bitter and twisted. They were just plain ugly, which to a purist is the answer to divine beauty.

Man were they good. Oh man, were they good. Glenn McGrath was as good as he’s ever been, but Brett Lee was downright filthy, his 5/42 a far better performance even that Bond’s. The only mystifying thing was why Bond got the Man of the Match award — great figures to be sure, but it was Lee and McGrath who won the game, or at the outside Bichel and Bevan.

Whatever the case one thing is clear: Brett Lee is the most dangerous bowler around, and he has to be the last person on Earth you would want to be facing in the middle of a world cup game. He has matured so much in twelve months the Aussies will soon be calling him Roquefort. He used to just be quick — in much the same fashion as Shoaib currently is — but now he is deadly, which Shoaib is not. His yorker is the scariest thing I have ever seen, beating even that occasion I was playing the piano in a run-down hotel in Grahamstown at three in the morning one July, only to have an enormously fat, drunk, horny woman stick her wet, nicotine-stained tongue in my ear without warning, drilling it halfway into my head for absolutely no perceptible reason.

I’ve led an interesting life. But we’ll leave that for another time.

I just can’t get over the Aussies. I’d love to see them get beaten by someone, even though I know that probably won’t happen, while at the same time I take delight in always being astounded by them. What bliss it must be if you’re Australian — someone in that side is always going to do something extraordinary, or they’re all going to do their bit towards a big group effort. Either way they’re always winning, which is all a fan can ever ask for.

If you want reasons for their immense success look no further than the folks who are in charge of sport in Australia. I don’t know who they are — I couldn’t care less — but I do know that there are some brilliant, brilliant people running things. It’s not just cricket, you see — in the last ten or fifteen years the Australians have been producing more and more international sporting superstars — cricket, rugby, athletics, swimming, motor racing, tennis — the list goes on and on.

The country has been infused with a mentality (and no doubt a helluva lot of cash) that allows them to dominate their opponents mentally. Look at someone like rugby’s George Gregan, for example — I can’t stand that guy, and the reason I don’t like him is because he is aggressive and nasty on the field of play, but in a jeering, bullying fashion.

In much the same way as Brett Lee, or Bradley Hogg, or anyone other than Glenn McGrath, really. The Aussies claim everyone mistakes their confidence for arrogance, but I believe the reverse is true — they are arrogant, and confident on top of it, and while I don’t like it they have every right to it.

I only have one real problem with it — the Aussies have killed off one of the great traditions of the game: the Gentleman Factor, by starting the trend which sees quick bowlers bouncing tailenders, and overly-dramatic joy and vindictiveness when taking a wicket. I don’t like the way they send a batsman off having just taken a wicket, as I don’t believe it’s necessary.

As the English showed at Twickenham against the Boks last year — play the game hard, but play it like a man and not a thug, and you will stand tall.

But truth be told — it is that attitude which has contributed to their success, so I guess it all comes to which side of the fence you’re on.

I’d rather be on their side, but I can’t stand Foster’s. Mate.

Cheers,

The Twelfth Man