Michael Jennings is probably too classy to rave about this here (although I have been checking just to be sure), so I will do it for him. Well, let the man from Cricinfo.com do the raving for the both of us:
Saeed Ajmal to MEK Hussey, SIX, Australianism prevails! What a great dramatic game this has been. Goose bumps! Michael Hussey has played like a dream. Whaddaplaayaaaa! He finished the game with yet another big hit. This is the Twenty20 innings of his lifetime. He finished it in style. He cleared the front foot and swing the ball over long-on. The while ball disappeared beyond the boundary. The Australian dug out erupted in joy. The Pakistani camp is stunned. U N B E L I E V A B L E. Hussey is mobbed by his team-mates. Clarke envelops him with a hug. The entire squad is out there on the ground.
Paskistan recently toured Australia, and I think (Michael J will know) that they lost every game they played, with varying degrees of embarrassment ranging from quite a lot to total. After the tour, their selectors banned various major players for misconduct. It was the tour from hell. There was no way they were not going to be obliterated by the Aussies in this game. Come to that, how the hell did they get to this semi-final in the first place? Yet as the game turned out, they will be gutted to have lost it. At no point during this entire contest other than during the last three or four balls of it, did Australia look like being within a mile of winning, yet thanks to another Aussie Michael, Michael Hussey, who hit 60 in 24 balls, including six sixes (three of them off the last four balls of the game), they did win, and what is more, with an entire ball to spare.
Sunday, it’s Australia v England in the final, of the Twenty Twenty world cup or championship or whatever it is in the West Indies. After they had this scare, you would bet even less against Australia winning the final than you would have done anyway. I don’t see Australia getting ambushed by England now, even though England have played out of their skins throughout this tournament. England’s best chance was always going to be if the Pakistanis beat the Aussies by playing out of their skins (which they did – right up until the bit when they lost) and then partied so hard that they failed to show up for the final.
But then again, as this game demonstrates, in T20, nothing is impossible.
And especially not if you are Australian. Now the Cricinfo man is quoting the late John Arlott:
“Australianism,” wrote Arlott, “means single-minded determination to win – to win within the laws but, if necessary, to the last limit within them. It means where the ‘impossible’ is within the realm of what the human body can do, there are Australians who believe that they can do it – and who have succeeded often enough to make us wonder if anything is impossible to them. It means they have never lost a match – particularly a Test match – until the last run is scored or their last wicket down.”
Indeed. Good luck England on Sunday. They’ll need it.
A bit later: slightly calmer Cricinfo match report here. Which I will now go and read.
And a bit later than that: incoming email from Michael J. Nothing in it. Title: “YEEEEEAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!” Copying and pasting of email titles doesn’t work with me, so can’t swear to the exact spelling there.
Michael Jennings is probably too classy to rave about this here
No. I am not.
and I think (Michael J will know) that they lost every game they played, with varying degrees of embarrassment ranging from quite a lot to total.
Pakistan did indeed lose every game on that tour of Australia – eleven games straight. That was statistically the worst performance by any touring side in the history of cricket. The worst game on that tour for Pakistan was this one, in which (like today) Pakistan completely dominated right up to the very moment when they lost.
It’s worse than that though. After today, Pakistan now have a thirteen game straight losing record against Australia. In test matches against Australia, Pakistan have a twelve game losing streak going back eleven years.
I figured he didn’t post about it because it’s cricket and therefore, nobody gives a crap. :-p
I think that “Australianism” is why the “lay down sally” affair was such a big story and just ran and ran in Australia (that and the ‘cat fight’ element).
You might recall that Sally Robbins was a crew member of the 2004 Olympic Australian Womens rowing Eight – Australia were in third place in the final on course for a bronze and close to the finish line when “lay down Sally” gave up, let her oar drag in the water, slowing the boat down and leading to a fifth place finish.
She claimed that she had given 100% and that complete and utter physical exhaustion meant that there was absolutely no way that she could carry on.
There is no clearer violation of “Australianism” than this and many simply didn’t care how tired she was. What she did was wrong, unacceptable and “un-Australian”. pure and simple.
So based on the cricket rule that says that everyone is a supporter of their own team, AND whoever is playing Australia, there’ll be a lot of England supporters watching on Sunday?
MarkyMark, I think your example encapsulates Australians very well.
Yes. If you want to try to play even low level sport in Australia without the approved “Australianness”, you will find both it and the later consequences of doing so to be unpleasant. Poor Sally Robbins will no doubt be mocked for the rest of her life, and her best bet is probably to emigrate. (I mean it). As a defence of some aspects of Australian sporting culture, I will add that Australians really don’t like cheats (the emphasis on playing as hard as possible to the limits of the laws is true, but going beyond the limits of the laws is very strongly frowned upon) and on those occasions when Australians lose, they generally lose graciously. “Well played”. (Perhaps said through slightly gritted teech. Hand shaking occurs). “I believe the rematch starts in 357 days, 12 hours, three minutes, and 10.57 seconds”).
Some of my readers will take issue with that last comment, and I will defend it by saying that Australians can often be ungracious winners. We cheer much too loudly, and make far too many sarcastic and overbearing remarks about the opposition, and we enjoy winning the Ashes 57 times in a row without expressing any sympathy for the opposition and celebrating any less than the first time. As Australian teams generally do win much more often than they lose, you see that far more than the reactions when they do lose.
On the other hand, oh boy that was a good victory last night.
“Australians really don’t like cheats” except when they have to bowl underarm to prevent the other side from winning.
But that aside, allow me to paraphrase some Frenchman, about 20/20:
“C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas le cricket. ”
Also, 20/20 isn’t played for at least three days, nor in whites, so it can’t really be called cricket.
But have fun tomorrow, Poms and Convicts.
Now, now, Kim; you mean you noticed their obvious hypocrisy?
How do you spell schadenfreude?
Some of them just choke on the big occasions
Not much fun in Stalingrad, no. And all that
“Australians really don’t like cheats” except when they have to bowl underarm to prevent the other side from winning.
In the 30 years since that incident, I am yet to find an Australian who would say that he liked Greg Chappell much after it. It was hugely unsportsmanlike, and everybody knew it instantly and thought it was a national embarassment. Chappell’s reputation was damaged enormously by it, in Australia probably more than elsewhere. On the other hand, it was entirely within the rules. Is that cheating? I’m not sure that it is, although it was clearly against the spirit of the game and the wrong thing to do. (It was also entirely unnecessary to win that particular game, given that a tail order batsman needed to hit the last ball for six to tie the game, which was hugely improbably, so the entire country still hasn’t figured out what Chappell was thinking).
On the other hand, compared to (say) an incident in which a national captain repeatedly took bribes from bookmakers to lose matches, recruited a number of junior players on his team to do the same, was incredibly disingenuous about it when he was caught red handed, and many of whose countrymen spent the next five years making excuses for his disgusting degradation of the game, it was actually pretty small beer.
As for the final played today, England played superbly and have my congratulations on their victory. I’m looking forward to the Ashes at the end of the year.
Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!
If this tournament has shown us South Africans one thing it is that we do not deserve our ‘choker’ tag. Choker implies some measure of success. We are just really ****. Time for Graeme Smith to fall on his sword.
Bowling underarm was perfectly legal when it happened. Hard to “cheat” when you aren’t breaking any rules.
Oh, and T20 is crap
I may be South African by birth, but I stopped supporting SA cricket long ago*, Michael, so the Hansie Cronje dig is irrelevant in arguing with me.
Nowadays I support whichever team is playing Australia.
Oh, and sorry the Convicts lost the silly 20/20 thing. Better luck in the next Ashes.
*When the team’s name was changed from the Springboks to the Flower People or whatever they refer to themselves as, these days.