Playing in the Spirit of the Game

Leadership Nuggets from Aussie Cricket’s Travails

Blog by: Dr. Vikram Murthy, Director, Being Leaders Academy

Losing Brings Out the Worst in Winners

A less than flattering persona of the Aussie cricketer was in embarrassing, full-frontal display, in the recently concluded India-Australia cricket series. By the time the final match rocked its way to an exciting finish, Tim Paine and the much-vaunted cricket team he leads, were looking down the barrel of a humiliating “at home” defeat. The ignominy was made even more unbearable because it was a third-string Indian side – a motley, makeshift crew of net bowlers, batting debutants, and injury-ravaged battlers, led by a stand-in captain. It seemed from the Aussie team’s on-field behaviour that the humiliation of losing had unfortunately laid waste to that most sacred of Aussie cricketing’s covenants – play hard, play fair, but never cross the line.

 

Cruelty is Never Competitiveness

This self-propagated and oft-espoused Aussie aspiration to an almost gladiatorial intent when competing in sport, is very susceptible to subjective and self-serving interpretation. Over the past five decades, it has morphed into a conveniently broad tent that is able to hide all manners of morally reprehensible behaviours and actions that transgress common humanity in sport (and society). Physical punishment, stand-over tactics, abusive language, personal vilification, ethnic taunting, racist slander, and every other manner of pain and vitriol is par for the course. When incessantly deployed to psychologically, physically, and emotionally subdue the opposition, then these behaviours and actions are all about weaponizing coercive control, not building competitive advantage. The difference is all the difference.

 

Deploying the Trifecta – Convincing, Confusing, Corrupting

Arguably, over the past fifty years, the mantra of “playing hard but playing fair” has become the victim of systematic obfuscation. It was firstly given an exalted purpose by making it synonymous with playing the “Aussie way,” a siren-call to jingoism that impressionable, young, sportspersons find difficult to resist. Thereafter it was acculturated in successive generations of Aussie cricketers as the absolute key to winning in competitive sport. Finally, it was lauded as the sole cause for Australian cricket’s decades long, global dominance of cricket. All the while, the imponderables in the words, “hard,” and “fair,” allowed the custodians of Australian cricket’s legacy to recraft meanings and redefine expectations for future Australian cricket teams and their leaders.

 

Role Models’ Proclamations – Flawed but Persuasive

Apropos, Steve Waugh’s avuncular advice to Michael Clarke and the Aussie team on the eve of their Ashes series in 2013:

“[The Aussie way] means backing yourself in all situations, attacking rather than retracting, exuding positive body language, [and] displaying an element of ‘mongrel’ in the play, by not backing down when confronted, claiming the high ground, and putting your flag well and truly in the turf.”

This was no Mufasa purveying deep realisations from the circle of cricket life to a naïve Simba. This was Hammurabi expounding the code, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, to a team locked in mortal combat with a foe who deserved no quarter. Steve Waugh was preaching to the converted, as would be evident from this pithy piece of wisdom that Clarke in turn offered to Tim Paine, the Australian captain in 2018: “You are not going to win sh*t if you are preoccupied with being liked.”

 

Mongrel is What Mongrel Does

What mongrels do really well is sledge. The Oxford Dictionary (2017) defines sledging as “insulting or boastful speech intended to demoralize, intimidate or humiliate someone, especially an opponent in an athletic contest.” Only the most disingenuous would attempt to justify such “trash talking” as a strategic ploy and only the most blasé would seek to argue that the boundary line between humorous provocation and calculated insult, is either clearly evident, or unwaveringly stationary. What or rather who, then defines the “harmless sledge?”

As in many social situations the exemplars of the game in any era become the role models who set the boundaries for an acceptable sledge in that era. The boundary has therefore always been porous, and very elastic, and transgressions no matter how serious have always been forgiven as a “rare deviance” and oft times obliquely rewarded – after all, Brutus is an honourable man!

Take for example, Darren Lehmann who in early 2003 marched into the Australian dressing room after he had been run out by the Sri Lankans, exclaiming: “C**ts, c**ts, f**king black c**ts.” The outburst apparently caused shock waves in Yorkshire where Lehmann had been a massively popular overseas player, valued for his runs and praised for his even-handedness and bonhomie. Ten years later Darren Lehmann was appointed the coach of the Australian cricket team. Go figure!

In the same year (2003 was a fine year for Aussie sledgers), in the fourth test in Antigua West Indies, Glenn McGrath found himself uncharacteristically at the receiving end of some staunch West Indian batting. In the penultimate ball of one of his overs, he was hooked for four runs. Stung, he made as if to hurl the ball back at the batsman, Ramnaresh Sarwan, who understandably, flinched. McGrath called him a “p***y,” and followed that expletive with his crowning shot, “What does Brian Lara’s d**k taste like?”

 

Compassion Starts and Stays at Home

Absolution of sorts came albeit in 2018, when Justin Langer the newly minted Australian coach drew a forgiving line under the incident with the observation that “it was a very sensitive time for Pigeon (McGrath) at the time, but the comments “probably crossed the line.” A Solomon had truly come to judgment! Justin Langer is no ordinary Solomon – by his own admission he believes that “in Australia sledging is actually a good word, and a fun part of the game” and as he deprecatingly admits, “he loves to sledge his own family.”

Small wonder that in 2021 the Australian cricket captain engages in some “fun chirping” from behind the stumps, calling Ravi Ashwin, the Indian batsman a “d**khead” whose teammates consider a “goose.” While condemnation was swift and universal from every other quarter, Australian Cricket’s officialdom had Paine’s back, and none was more emphatic in his support than…you guessed right…Justin Langer. “For a bloke that’s barely put a hair out of line, for three years as captain of Australia … he got a bit frustrated for two minutes. The bloke is human, give him a break.” Q.E.D.

 

Three Lessons for Leadership

As the prime minister of Australia found out much to his surprise this weekend, sport’s societal role is not conscribed to providing entertainment for the masses and photo-ops for politicians. Rather, one of its higher goals is to deliver edifying social commentary abstracted both, from its exemplary, and not so exemplary, lived experiences to uplift people and make them act in knowledge of what is right and honourable. “Taking the knee” is a way of being in life, and not merely a symbolic gesture on game-day. Akin to what it teaches us about living, sport also enshrines three simple rules for truly playing hard and fair in any arena:

1. Avoid Narrative Fallacy: Beware of hardwiring an overly simple heuristic, for example, “being a mongrel is necessary and sufficient for success on the playground.” Rather, reflect on the cold reality that you can justify any cause-and-effect relationship by choosing the dots that support your narrative, and ignoring the dots that don’t fit your simple, linear explanation for events.
2. Define the Characteristics for Your Category with Care: Once you create a category like for example, the “Aussie Way,” your conceptual filters parse the behaviours and actions you observe into binary lots of those that fall into the category, and those that fall outside it. Therefore, it is in your own best interests to give considered thought to who is permitted to create a category. Thereafter, you must also determine who can author the category’s characteristics. Unless the characteristics of the category are clearly defined, its boundary (ethical, moral, social, spiritual) becomes amorphous. Erstwhile censured behaviours and actions get legitimised and the notion of what is/is not acceptable becomes blurred over time.
3. Understand the Anatomy of Surprise: The “unexpected” has a very mindless sequence in life. You have an intent that makes you take action. Unfortunately, you misunderstood your world because you have either not created your categories carefully, or not paid sufficient attention to its particulars, or both. Apropos, the sandpaper gate ball tampering scandal that engulfed Australian cricket in 2018. Without a widely shared and deeply understood moral true-north, the Aussie cricket team put ethics, morality and garden-variety honesty to the sword. National pride is still recovering from that body-blow.

 Thus, while the preceding account of Australian cricket’s woes makes for depressing reading, it also carries three mindful markers that leaders must heed if they are to consistently behave in compassionate, considerate and enlightened ways.