It’s safe to say Alastair Cook would not have much enjoyed his 100th Test. His men were 2-0 down heading to another belting in Perth. England fielded for days, Ryan Harris chainsawed his off-stump in half, Graeme Swann was hit out of a career, Shane Watson defied a famously difficult relationship with centuries. Temperatures throughout were around 44C.
In the coming week, Steve Smith will reach the same milestone in front of a crowd at least as unsympathetic, in a place as far from home. In a way it is appropriate for a career defined by one team. Another 13 runs and Smith will pass Viv Richards for runs visiting England, Garfield Sobers for runs against England, and Allan Border for Ashes runs. That would leave only Border and Don Bradman ahead of him on the first two counts, and Jack Hobbs with Bradman on the third.
Leeds will give Smith a reception unlike any received by Border, Bradman or Hobbs. With a three-day turnaround, the angst and antagonism over Alex Carey’s dismissal of Jonny Bairstow at Lord’s will have built rather than dissipated. England’s players will encourage it. It will amplify what already would have been directed at Smith as captain during Australia’s sandpaper cheating fiasco of 2018.
During the 2019 Ashes, crowds heckled Smith throughout his twin tons at Edgbaston and when he was knocked out by Jofra Archer at Lord’s, both on his way off and resuming. By the time of his double ton in Manchester they were tiring, and his last hit of the summer brought a grand ovation at the Oval. A series of 774 runs from seven innings, a mark only three players have bettered from so few, was deemed to deserve respect.
Perhaps it was naive to be surprised four years later when Lord’s booed Smith on to the field again. That acceptance on the previous trip had been for one moment only, and now he returned to zero. “Are you sure you want to overwrite your saved game data?” “Press X to proceed.” Fair enough, Smith did what he did and nobody is compelled to give him a pass. But once Bairstow had his stumps thrown down on a pre-prandial wander, England supporters connected the two. Here were those unscrupulous Australians, still willing to stop at nothing for a win.
The connection is specious. Roughing up the ball, by cricket’s laws, is cheating. Enacting dismissals defined by those laws is the opposite. The “spirit of cricket” argument is an emergency raft, inflated when someone has nothing else to keep them afloat. One might point out a starker shortfall of spirit in jeering an injured player off the ground, or kettling a team that has no choice but to pass through a group of spectators.
As an Australian without the baggage of supporting either team, the Bairstow blow-up was at first just confusing. What was the discontent actually about? A couple of days of conversations have helped clarify aspects: the sense of a trick being played when the target is unsuspecting, a wish for gentility towards those who don’t intend error, a want for a contest defined by bat versus ball. Accusations of hypocrisy for previous England actions won’t change those sentiments and there is a case to be made for the merits of leniency.
Equally, professional sport is where leniency should be least expected and Australia, down through its levels, is a harder school of cricket. In our country, non-striker run-outs sometimes still threaten to boil over into fistfights. But at the striker’s end, with the job of facing the ball and knowing where it is, there is little disagreement that you are fair game until that ball is on its journey back to the bowler. It is an accepted standard, by which the only thing underhand about Carey’s action was the throw.
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Ultimately these are two different positions coming from two different worldviews. And that’s OK. Both are acceptable. This is what there has been no appreciation of in the torrent of accusation and pontification in one direction and the puzzlement quickly becoming defensive anger from the other. Even cultures that share a language will falter in understanding.
This is not a situation where either view is right, or can be. It is a situation of norms that don’t translate. England supporters, players, coaches can advocate the approach at which it took Brendon McCullum a decade of reflection to arrive. That doesn’t make it cynical or soft. Just as Australians can believe in a stricter interpretation without being villains.
Above all, that differing view does not deserve abuse, derision, or the label of cheat. If there is actually a spirit of goodness in cricket, it should be big enough to recognise that.
