Monday 20 January 2014

Congratulations Australia, shame you couldn't win any respect

THE ASHES are over, the ODI’s are also pretty much finished, England are in disarray but yet I cannot appreciate Australia, particularly Michael Clarke.

This is not sour grapes, Australia deserved to win 5-0 as England were awful and to be honest a 5-0 spanking ought to be handed out in these one day internationals.
Mitchell Johnson is reborn, Ryan Harris defied his knees and produced bowling spell after bowling spell to kill England and in Chris Rogers, Australia had their own fairytale for everyone who thinks they will never reach the top.
But the manner they have gone about this series has left a lot to be desired, play hard yes, but downright bullying is plain stupid.
In the first test, Clarke threatens to break Anderson’s arm, great! Why? Australia were one wicket away from winning the match with plenty to spare, why not remind Anderson how much his team-mates have let him down?
Verbals continued in the second test, ignoring the fact Johnson was ripping through England like knife through butter.
And in the third test match, David Warner (a particularly odious individual) runs to the umpires when England dished out some verbals. Again fine, except Mr Warner has made it his life’s work to be as unpleasant as possible.
Even when the Ashes were done, Johnson sought to have a strop when Kevin Pietersen backed away while he was running in. This is pretty much common place the world over but you wouldn’t have thought so give Mitchell’s verbals in the aftermath.
And finally on Sunday in the third ODI, Eoin Morgan stood his ground when caught and made the umpires check whether the catch was clean. Again, rightly or wrongly, it’s a tactic employed the world over but again Clarke weighed in with a verbal volley.

Australia have won convincingly this winter but Clarke has gone down in my estimation and crossed the line a few times.

In 2006/7 Ponting and his team played hard but let their cricket do all the talking and steam-rolled England. They go down as one of the greats, I doubt this team will.

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