buggers and dished out some dirt - some stories, of course, are apocryphal, some hold true and some, in the days before stump mic, never made it out of the middle.
Surely, though, it was revealing to hear Chappelli take to Channel Nine this summer to express his distaste at the antics of Clarke’s boys. The gist of his argument was that wit, the key to all great sledges (think Ian Botham’s response Rod Marsh), had disappeared and that this was just vulgar yobbery. Even if sledging has always happened, it hasn’t happened like this.
Steve Waugh, when captaining Australia’s greatest modern team, picked up where Chappelli left off, labeling his side’s sledging “mental disintegration”. These days, the buzzword is “banter”.
There are other myths about sledging, most of which find their roots in Waugh’s era. One was that sledging gave that great team “the edge”, and that it is having the same effect on this team. With regards to Waugh’s team, such an idea is laughable. What gave them the edge was that they had, in the form of Messrs Hayden, Langer, Ponting, Waugh and Waugh, five of the finest batsmen to don the Baggy Green. They had Australia’s finest wicket-keeper batsman, the perfect seam bowler in Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, the greatest spinner of them all. Those who filled the team - the likes of Martyn, Gillespie, MacGill and Lee, were no slouches themselves. That team didn’t need any more “edges”. They were one of the sharpest teams to play the game.
Equally, fans of this Australia team are doing the XI a disservice if they believe that they need an “edge”. Waugh’s side they are not but they do possess the world’s most devastating opening batsman, the game’s most devastating opening bowler, the runs of Michael Clarke, the class of Ryan Harris and the grit of Brad Haddin. They don’t need what Graeme Smith might describe as “bull dot dot dot”. Opponents are going to be far more perturbed by the bombs that Mitchell Johnson is hurling at them, not the faces he’s pulling or the nonsense he’s spouting.
Of course, Australia aren’t alone. Anderson admitted during the Ashes that he believed that sledging helped him and few in England were asking for sympathy for Jimmy in the wake of the “broken fucken arm” affair. Likewise Steyn is prone to histrionics and Indian teams of the recent past have had plenty of chirp.
However, while Steyn can be seen nearly destroying the stumps and doing his best impression of a tradie firing up a chainsaw when he takes a wicket, it is rarely directed at the batsman himself. It is hard to remember a team indulging so excessively in the send-off - ugly at the best of times, down right rude at its worst - than this group of Australians.