Sledging: It's for the best

It took almost three years, but the Australian Cricket Team is starting to put the after effects of the Harbhajan Singh - Andrew Symonds incident behind it.

I opined in this space during the disastrous South African series in 2008/09 that the Australians were too quiet on the field, and this reflected a state of mind created by the media furore after the New Years' Test of 2008 versus India. At that time, Graeme Smith even commented publicly about the lack of any chatter on the field from the Australians.

The furore was to blame for this retraction of the Australian Cricket Team into their collective shells. Despite the clear, indisputable fact that it was the Indian and not the Australian who used the racial slur, the Indian media went into a frenzy. Well, that is not entirely accurate - they're always in a frenzy. For the ideal paradigm, as Obama is for Fox News, Australia is for the Indian media.

Generally, Australians play hard. They use any legitimate means to unsettle opponents, and they do this to opponents of all colours and creeds.

The Australians rediscovered the art of sledging at the WACA Ground, but only after Kevin Pietersen stirred the sleeping giant by verballing Mitchell Johnson. Johnson was suddenly more emotionally involved in the contest, and produced a spell that turned the test match and perhaps the series.

Suddenly, the Aussies were sledging the English, and this is for the better, because a verbally aggressive Australian side is usually a successful one. However, this on-field banter, despite being obvious to all and sundry watching at home on the High Definition TV sets, did not set off the left-wing sporting intelligensia of the Fairfax press and their associated cheering brigade the way it did when we were playing India. To sledge a white South African playing for England is A-OK, but to do it to an Indian of colour is racism and shames all Australians. What tosh.

I don't really care if the Australians are liked or make friends. They are paid, very well in fact, to win games of cricket, and they lost a whole bunch of them quietly, but only when they started to show some real backbone and started to talk back to an English line-up starting to resemble their supporters for annoyance and arrogance, they started playing better cricket and the results came swiftly and dramatically.

So, here's to the Australia of old, in it to win it, taking no prisoners, and not caring what people outside of the team think about their manners and other such bunkum. On to Melbourne for Boxing Day, and hopefully the Christmas spirit of generosity won't extend to the field of contest.