By Gideon HaighDavid Warner. A microphone. A recorder. A question about sledging. What could possibly go wrong?
Quite a lot, it would seem, if you have followed this week’s headlines. For in his promotional roles for the Ashes in the past week, Australia’s vice-captain has sounded more like a heavyweight at a weigh-in.
“As soon as you step on that line it’s war,” Warner told the ABC last weekend. “You try and get into a battle as quick as you can.
“I try and look in the opposition’s eyes and try and work out: ‘How can I dislike this player? How can I get on top of him?’ You have to delve and dig deep into yourself to actually get some hatred about them to actually get up when you’re out there.”
It was spendthrift language (“war”, “battle”, “hatred”), and predictably incurred censure (“pathetic”, “destructive”, “deplorable”).
Even Warner resiled just a little, tempering his remarks at an event on Tuesday: “Everyone’s mates, we are mates, but sometimes you have to really try and work a way out to actually build some kind of — I used the word ‘hatred’ the other day — but some dislike, make things a little bit uncomfortable for blokes when they’re out there.”
In other quarters, of course, there was also lip-smacking relish: Warner was “bringing back the sledge”, which among some breed of fans occasions waves of nostalgia.
At the very least, it demonstrated again why Warner is box office, all or nothing with bat and mouth. But there was more substance to Warner’s remarks than most chose to see.
His most provocative word was actually not war, battle or hatred — the hackneyed hyperbole of an age in which nothing is knowingly understated — but try.
Warner was straining, awkwardly, to convey that tapping into peak aggression does not come naturally; it requires an individual to “delve and dig deep”; it might even necessitate generating a simulated animosity.
The idea is older than it seems. Last week, coincidentally, I enjoyed The Kid From Coraki, the newly published memoir by Richie Benaud’s late father Lou.
It’s a charming book full of affirming sentiments about cricket’s moral excellence (“Ethics and cricket are like true friends — never at their best when parted”).
Yet Lou also recalled how, even in his bush cricket in the 1930s, he would try to work up what he called “inward anger”, sometimes against a particular rival. He recommended: “All players should develop inward anger, a surge of controlled aggression, of fierce determination to cope with the challenge of batting or bowling in difficult circumstances.”
If it lacked Warner’s exorbitance of expression, Lou Benaud’s approach originated in a similar sentiment. “Inward anger”, “competitive juices”, “game face”: whatever you call them, these distinguish sport from recreation.
Why would Warner need to strain for this competitive state? After all, it is usually said of him that the reverse is true — that his native belligerence has required self-conscious subduing.
Maybe, maybe not. Warner turns 31 on Friday. He has done what he does many years, in humdrum as well as heightened circumstances. He is happily married, has two bonny daughters, could retire tomorrow and lead a life of comfort verging on luxury. There is none of the stereotypical cues for a kill-or-be-killed competitive urge here.
Nor was Warner’s qualification about “everyone’s mates, we are mates” a throwaway either. Scroll through Warner’s T20 timeline and consider the breadth of his past and present comrades. From India: Sehwag, Gambhir, Ishant, Dhawan, Rahul, Yuvraj, Bhuvaneshwar and Nehra. From South Africa: Steyn, Morkel and de Villiers. From New Zealand: Taylor, Boult and Vettori. From Sri Lanka: Jayawardene and Dilshan; from West Indies Gayle and Sammy.
The effect of this kind of mixing, matching and blending in domestic T20 dressing rooms has not been uniform, but is not to be underestimated. In his last book, Kevin Pietersen talked about the complication of playing against Warner in the Ashes having played with him at the Delhi Daredevils: “I was thinking, I can’t abuse this bloke — I play with him in India. I’ve spent so much time with him, I know that, actually, he’s a cool dude.” Warner hard to dislike? Who knew?
During the recent short-form tour of India, the Australians were actually criticised for their reticence, for having on the field too little to say — which must surely be a first.
Warner’s old Daredevils mentor Virender Sehwag ascribed this to self-interest: “They [Australian players] are scared because of next year’s mega IPL auctions. If they had sledged the Indian players in the ODI series, then the Indian franchise owners might think before bidding high for the Australian players.” Too cynical? It has become, in many respects, a very cynical game.
Another inhibitor certainly exists, which is the ICC’s new system of automatic suspension for the accumulation of four demerit points within a 24-month period.
Whatever its value as a deterrent, it has already had some risible outcomes. Not so long ago, for example, Kagiso Rabada was rubbed out of a Test for the misdeed of swearing at nobody in particular but within the range of a pitch microphone. Around the same time, sages were urging Ben Stokes to infringe deliberately in order to incur a pre-Ashes suspension, thereby wiping his proverbial slate clean — that, of course, was before Stokes took another proverbial slate and broke it over his own head.
All of which adds up, and affords a context to Warner’s seeming verbal incontinence. Aggression is abiding, but must be adapted: it may now need to be premeditated, husbanded, channelled, even feigned.
There is a risk in this, too — that aggression becomes simply another commodity in a game whose spontaneity is always under threat from straitening influences.
This week, Cricket Australia foreshadowed an official social media “rallying cry”: the officially sanctioned and sterilised aggression of a hashtag, #BeatEngland.
I know that Luther would today not nail his 95 theses to a church door but tweet #PlenaryIndulgencesLMFAO instead. But if this is the alternative, I can forbear promiscuous use of words like “war”, “battle” and “hatred” — after all, media outlets debauch them of meaning daily.
In an Ashes summer, part of the fun is the licence inherent in the strength and length of competitors’ connections. Sir Robert Menzies’ lines in Wisden now read a little anachronistically, but the sentiment is worth reiterating: “Great Britain and Australia are of the same blood and allegiance and history and instinctive mental processes. We know each other so well, thank Heaven, we don’t have to be too tactful with each other.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/opinion/gideon-haigh/the-ashes-david-warner-is-pure-box-office-as-england-approach/news-story/2a71432857dac0a9c98b394f99172aa1
