Section:GDN 1N PaGe:41 Edition Date:190730 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 29/7/2019 19:40 cYanmaGentaYellowb
Tuesday 30 July 2019 The Guardian •
Sport^41
Cricket Ashes countdownScandal will not temper
aggression, says Waugh
Chris Stocks
Mental disintegration is dead, accord-
ing to the man who coined the phrase ,
but Steve Waugh insists Australia will
be as combative as ever during the
Ashes even though the team have
overhauled their culture in the 18
months since the Cape Town ball-
tampering scandal.
Waugh has been embedded in
Australia ’s camp as a mentor in the
lead -up to the fi rst Test at Edgbaston
on Thursday. The 54-year-old, the
last Australia captain to win an away
Ashes series in 2001, will remain with
Justin Langer and his players until the
end of the second Test at Lord’s next
month.
Whatever wisdom Waugh, a man
who won eight successive Ashes series
between 1989 and 2002-03, imparts to
the current generation of Australia’s
cricketers will no doubt prove invalu-
able. One of his chief tips will no doubt
be to maintain their aggressive edge on
the fi eld, even if off it Langer and the
captain, Tim Paine, have cultivateda touchy-feely atmosphere over the
past year or so. That was in response
to the sandpaper incident when Steve
Smith, David Warner and Cameron
Bancroft were caught plotting to doc-
tor the ball during the Cape Town Test
against South Africa in March last year.
All three received lengthy bans from
Cricket Australia following a public
backlash that exposed a wider culture
deemed toxic by many.
Smith, Warner and Bancroft are
all back and in contention to play at
Edgbaston and, although Waugh has
not directly addressed the team about
the events of 16 months ago, he has
no doubts this series will be as hard-
fought as any Ashes campaign.
“There aren’t going to be any shrink-
ing violets out there,” he said. “It’s an
Ashes series, so expect them to play in
a positive frame of mind with strong
body language. This side is going to becombative – that is the Australian way.
They know they can’t cross over the
line. What happened 12 to 18 months
ago has had a huge impact. These guys
have played in a fantastic spirit since
then.
“We have to play with conviction
and courage. That is the way we play.We are brought up to play in a positive,
aggressive manner and I don’t see that
being any diff erent in this series.”
Asked to defi ne mental disinte-
gration, a euphemism he came up
with during his playing days, Waugh
said: “Disorientating the opposition
through extreme pressure.”
But he believes the familiarity
between players today has made it a
thing of the past. “Playing in the IPL,
the players haven’t really got the mys-
tique and you sort of know the players
a lot better,” Waugh said.
“When I was playing against West
Indies back in the 80s we didn’t really
know them and you didn’t engage too
much, so you sort of had a fear fac-
tor. Maybe teams against us felt the
same way.
“You can’t really have that power
over the opposition any more because
they all know each other.”Sandpaper trio now
smooth operat ors in
Australia’s mild bunch
Analysis
Geoff Lemoncomfortable with their behaviour,
Tim Paine took the opposite tack
after his abrupt appointment as
Smith’s replacement.
“The fi rst thing is we have to
listen,” Paine said in Johannesburg
in 2018 while the banned players
headed home. “We’ve maybe had
our head in the sand a bit over the
last 12 months – that, if we continue
to win, we can act and behave how
we like and the Australian public
will be OK with that. What we’ve
found out in the past month or so is
that the Australian public and our
fans don’t necessarily like the way
we go about it. It’s pretty simple.
We have to listen. We have to take
it on board and we have to improve
our behaviour in the way we play
the game.”
With Paine setting this clear
stance from the start the new head
coach, Justin Langer, has supported
it since arriving a couple of months
later while Aaron Finch has carried
it on after taking over Australia’s
white-ball teams. For the time
being it seems to have worked. The
four-Test series against India over
the last Australian summer was
robust, with Virat Kohli especially
involved in some exchanges. But
judging from player responses and
stump microphones there was
always a level of good -naturedness.
So can the cultural shift persist
now that the three players who
triggered it are back in the team?
Of course. It is not as though Smith
is some force of fury; he is just
supremely focused on the job at
hand. That is why he still middles
shots or takes ridiculous catches
after hours of concentration. He
was infl uenced by the mindless chatA
ustralia could not
have designed
a better way to
provoke English
interest than this:
Steve Smith and
David Warner, the headliners of
the sandpaper scandal last year,
ending their bans and returning
to the public eye through the
World Cup, then Cameron Bancroft
completing the triumvirate by
joining the Test squad before the
Ashes begin on Thursday.
The reunion leads to questions
about the nature of the reform and
redemption we have heard so much
about. While the incendiary issue
in early 2018 was ball-tampering ,
the plot to do so was formed
during an angry Test series against
South Africa in which Australia’s
aggression blew up in their faces.
That series followed an equally
bad-tempered Ashes in Australia,
where some Australian players
used on-fi eld abuse as an everyday
tactic. Warner was instructed from
offi cials up the food chain to get in
English faces and, after a 4-0 series
win, they thought the approach
vindicated. Warner was urged to
replicate it in South Africa, with
disastrous results.
The tampering exposé also
showed potently just how many
Australian cricket followers felt
distaste for and disconnection
from their own national team. This
was n ot criticism on partisan lines.
It was a home public alienated by
decades of behaviour that could
not credibly be defended. Where
Smith as captain had brushed off
concern, saying he cared only
that those within the camp were- “the defi nition of being ruthless is
fulfi lling your potential and playing
to the best you can possibly play” - while whitewashing his previous
team’s conduct – “that’s what I
wanted my team to do and, if they
said that was ruthless, that was fi ne
by me” – and insist s the current crop
are much the same.
But Paine’s hold should prevail
and those returning players can slot
into an environment where this is no
longer expected of them. In many
ways it should be a relief, given they
will have enough to think about
just to perform in unwelcoming
conditions. Smith has his
preternatural focus on his side and
privately is pacing the metaphorical
halls, desperate to get started.
Bancroft is trying to remain Zen,
preparing himself mentally for
the crowd response. “People will
react how they want to react,” he
said during the warm-up match
in Southampton. “Hopefully I can
use it to give me energy to want to
perform well. I can’t control that.
I guess the journey that I’ve been
through the last 18 months, you get
exposed to things like that.”
Warner looks the best equipped.
While observers m ay diff er in
assessments of his personal
qualities, none could deny
that stubbornness is one he is
blessed with in abundance. The
characterisation that he feeds
off invective is over-egged but
it does seem fair to say that he is
able to strive hardest when he has
something to push against.
His eye on the past is n ot
looking at last year but at his
underwhelming tours to England.
“They’re always in the back of your
mind. But now it’s just being a bit
more hungry and determined to
p lay the longer innings. I think you
saw that in the [World Cup], that
I hung in there a lot. The old me
would have thrown the bat at it.”
Warner’s discipline, Smith’s
laser brain, Bancroft’s calm : these
are the things the Australian Test
team need in the weeks to come,
not aggression or presence or
any other euphemism. The most
egregious thing about sledging
has always been its pointlessness.
Teams sledge while they are
winning; they do n ot win because
they are sledging. Reviving that
method would have no value at all.about on-fi eld aggression being
“the Australian way” and lacked the
imagination to challenge that.
Acting out that mythology has
been unconvincing in the Australian
team for years. The former captain
Michael Clarke’s “broken fucken
arm” line to Jimmy Anderson was
as notable for its posturing as its
content. The generation after Clarke
are n ot built that way. Their attempts
feel equally forced. Even Warner
spent a couple of years keeping to
himself before he was asked to kick
out the jams in late 2017.
Admittedly another former
captain in Steve Waugh has joined
the team in a vague mentoring role
and still trots out the national clichés▲ David Warner, Steve Smith and
Cameron Bancroft at a nets session
ANDREW BOYERS/ACTION IMAGES VIA REUTERSWarner’s discipline,
Smith’s laser brain,
Bancroft’s calm.
These are the things
Australia need in
the weeks to come
Steve Waugh won eight
successive Ashes series
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