It took an awfully long time to bowl my first ball in Australia. I was playing grade cricket in Perth in 1981 in front of half a dozen spectators and in the opposition for Melville were Graeme Wood and Dennis Lillee, who was coming back from major back surgery.
A left-hander (not Wood) was on strike when I was summoned to bowl. I set my field carefully like the good old English pro I was supposed to be and was about to propel my first delivery down under when there was a cacophonous yell from the man at deep square leg.
I was impressed and stopped in my runup. Clearly the man on the boundary sought my attention to ensure he was in precisely the right spot. I gave him an encouraging thumbs up but then from a distance of about 70 yards he kept on shouting. I realised he had never been checking that he was standing in the correct place. “C’mon. Let’s knock him over. Get rid of him. Knock him over,” he was yelling. I was only going to bowl a gentle off-break.
Grade cricket in Perth, which I enjoyed hugely when playing for a warm, welcoming club called Bayswater-Morley, where Bob Massie, Bruce Reid and Marcus North learned their cricket, was quite a noisy experience on the field.
On another occasion we were playing against South Perth at Richardson Park, where England have just been for two days. One mean seamer was bowling for the opposition and his long-sleeved shirt was not properly buttoned up so it was flapping wildly in the breeze as he delivered the ball. The batsman, quite reasonably, asked for the button to be done up; the bowler snarled, removed his shirt and finished the over bare-chested, growling, “Can you see all right now?” Suddenly this felt a long way from Taunton.
Five years later when I played a season for Western Australia I discovered behaviour in Sheffield Shield cricket was slightly better but there has always been a different attitude to sledging, which here they often prefer to call “banter” or, if they are feeling scientific, “the art of mental disintegration”.
I remember batting against Mike Whitney, the brisk and busy left-armer from New South Wales, at the Waca in the last half-hour of play and receiving some quiet but very menacing threats about how his extreme pace was going to cause me considerable damage. I survived until the close with my body and wicket intact and then, as was the custom, the batting side would go into the fielding side’s dressing room for a beer after the close of play.
In I went and there was Whitney. Immediately he wore the broadest of smiles, there was an arm around my shoulder and a beer thrust into my hand. “How’s it going down at Bristol?” He asked since he had played some games for Gloucestershire the previous year and we chatted like long-lost friends. This was puzzling, too: sworn enemies at 5.30pm, best buddies half an hour later.
Sledging was brazen, spontaneous and pretty routine but that may have changed a bit now. Andy Bichel, the former Australia pace bowler and selector, once explained to me how in the 90s the Australians became more calculated in what they said on the field. He recalled West Indies’ tour of Australia in 1996-97 and how they had worked out by some form of profiling which players to engage and which to ignore.
It was decided they were better off ignoring Brian Lara, the best batsman. He batted better when sledged was their conclusion. So they ignored him for four Tests even though they found him a highly provocative character and it so happened Lara contributed very few runs. By the fifth Test the series was won by Australia and Bichel endearingly recalled: “We couldn’t resist any longer. We really had a go at him. He got a hundred and West Indies won the match.”
Some pre-planning was mentioned by the wicketkeeper Tim Paine as he looked forward to the Perth Test – “I’m sure we’ll bring up the Duckett affair at some point out there,” he said. No doubt he has been contemplating that as well as his glovework.
Since every area of the game must now be covered by specialist coaches let me offer some help to a beleaguered England side: how about Armando Iannucci as England’s scriptwriter of sledges? He can surely cut deep into the Aussies’ psyche. Maybe Peter Capaldi could assist with advice about the appropriate way to deliver the invective. We are obviously not sledging well enough at the moment.
In reality the calculated personal insult is ugly, though I would never be an advocate of silence out there. It is so much better and often more effective to deliver an aside to one’s colleagues rather than spewing out direct abuse to an opponent.
I enjoyed the saintly and apparently incredulous Adam Gilchrist saying in a young Ian Bell’s earshot in 2005: “Jeez, Shane, I’ve never seen anyone try to play you like that before.” Then there was Doug Walters complaining in the gully in 1974-75 as the hapless Mike Denness made his way to the crease. “Oh no, look who’s coming in now, fellas. We’re going to be held up for at least another 10 minutes.”