Australia and Sport

“In a land where sport is sacred
Where the labourer is God
You must pander to the people
Make a hero of a clod”

Henry Lawson, 1892

“For many Australians, playing or watching sport gives life one of its principal meanings and sport to many Australians is life and the rest a mere shadow. To many it was considered a sign of degeneracy not to be interested in it.”

Donald Horne, 1964

MANY PEOPLE, certainly in Australia, might well think the first lines above were merely typical of Jardine’s alleged condescending attitude to Australia and Australians in general. They would be wrong, the words were written by one of Australia’s most famed poets and short-story writers, Henry Lawson, some 40 years before the Jardine tour, when Lawson was 25 years of age and living in Sydney. Lawson had an eye for the social environment and could see the central position of sport in the ethos of the nascent Australia.

Lawson was not alone in this perception, however, for at about the same time, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, paraphrasing Karl Marx, observed: “Ever since God died sport has replaced religion as the opiate of the people.”

Nietzsche was speaking in general but he might well have been referring to Australia, for more than in any other country, sport is the “opiate of the people”. Just as on a drug, Australia seems to have a dependency on sport and sporting success for its identity and sense of well-being.

In his book, The Tyranny of Distance, Geoffrey Blainey describes how Australia emerged in the 19th century as one of the most sports-crazy nations in the world. This was apparently not so much because of the climate but rather because of a society dominated by young males who preferred increased leisure to higher wages when labour shortages enabled improved working conditions to be obtained. The lines of Henry Lawson clearly reflect that position. So too does the opinion of Donald Horne.

This constant preoccupation with sport colours the Australian landscape: physical, cultural, financial, emotional and social, Australia’s world sporting rankings being studied as closely as the stock market, exchange rates and relative GNPs. Considering the enormous resources devoted to all types of sport at Federal, State, council and community levels, not to speak of massive commercial endorsements and advertising, almost certainly Australia spends much more on sport, per capita, than any other country in the world. There are 100 Grade cricket teams in Sydney and the street directory for the Sydney area lists 137 golf courses, 334 tennis clubs/courts, 50 squash courts, and in Sydney Harbour alone there are 41 commercial yacht marinas; all this for a population one third that of London. If the UK, for instance, were to devote similar amounts to sport, then on a per capita basis, the cost would probably be about ten times the total now spent.

It would be a very unusual week indeed if, in any of the leading capital city papers, there were not large front-page articles featuring sport of some sort. Sport is front-page news, regularly featured in editorials and not just tucked away in the sports section at the back of the paper. The same goes for radio news. Almost all hourly news broadcasts include items of sports news and, in particular, any Australian success anywhere in the world. The covers of telephone directories feature sport and the backs of calendars detail Olympic medal counts among Australian vital statistics; to say that Australia is enthusiastic about sport would be rather like saying the Pope has some interest in religion.

However, that such a huge investment pays off is demonstrated by Australia’s performance in the Olympics. Although only 52nd in the world by population and ranked 13th by GDP, Australia was placed fourth in the medal tally at the 2004 Olympics. However when in the 2008 Olympics Great Britain came fourth, relegating Australia to sixth spot, this caused such indignation that the secretary of the Australian Olympics Committee said they would regard the 2012 London Games as another form of Ashes – Britain just had to be beaten. Australian sporting success should never come as a surprise and yet when this massive material, emotional and financial investment produces the inevitable success, Australia tends to react as if the result was spontaneous evidence of the country’s natural talent.

A boy born in Melbourne has no more instinctive aptitude for sport than one born in Madrid, Manchester or Massachusetts but he grows up in a culture surrounded and enveloped by sport. If nothing else, peer pressure ensures that he cannot avoid being well aware of the crucial importance of sport in his environment and even if he is not particularly successful at sport himself his social image may demand sporting knowledge and enthusiasm.

Such priorities and apportionment of resources must have its downside. Sydney is Australia’s largest city and on average receives 50% more rainfall than London. Yet, with only a third of London’s population, it suffers water supply problems because nothing has been spent on increased water storage capacity for over 40 years despite the population having doubled in that time. Storm waters pour out to sea and although London has recycled water for over 100 years not a drop is recycled in Sydney, which regularly lurches from one water crisis to another. The same neglect of public utilities is true of electricity supply, with predictable demand having outstripped supply, and power cuts imposed in some areas. For a truly global city Sydney’s rail network is little more than rudimentary, a number of services not providing toilet facilities and huge areas of the city having no access to rail services at all. However, millions of dollars have been poured into various sporting facilities by successive governments. One of the results of this massive investment in sport has been that the excess of sporting stadia in Sydney is such that the world-renowned Sydney Cricket Ground has actually had to bid against another Sydney stadium to stage some international cricket matches.

Successful Australian sportsmen and women are elevated to a national heroic status that would astonish any other country and anyone achieving sporting success, particularly at international level, is feted almost as a demigod. He or she is revered and consistently featured in the media, editorials, advertisements, postage stamps and more and is rewarded with substantial commercial endorsements. But the temptations of such glory and social kudos can have macabre consequences. In 2011 a young Sydney woman was sentenced to 18 years in prison after being convicted of having murdered her new-born baby daughter because she feared that having to care for the babe would spoil her chances of being selected for the Australian water-polo team.

It was essentially because of this national obsession that with his World Series Cricket matches Kerry Packer was in a position to force the Australian Cricket Board to allow his Channel 9 television station the sole rights to broadcasting Test and one-day international cricket matches. It is improbable that a media mogul in any other cricketing country would have been able to wield such influence at that time. However, Australians do not go to watch cricket as such but go to watch Australia win and if Australia don’t win the crowds will stay away in droves. Packer knew this and irrespective of the rights or wrongs of the situation a sports-mad public would not for long tolerate a losing Test team that was shorn of its best players and thus the Australian Cricket Board handed over the televising of cricket for Packer’s 30 pieces of silver.

It has been said that Packer was interested in the good of cricket and there may be an iota of truth in that, but more likely is the fact that Packer was motivated by the interests of his business empire. The fall-out in terms of higher earnings for international cricketers did not occur simply because he felt it to be deserved but came about as a natural consequence of the intense commercialisation of the game in Australia that occurred after he took control. The Packer takeover did have one beneficial outcome however, as more between-over television advertising can be fitted into a day’s play with a six-ball over than with an eight-ball over, thus providing an increase of 33.3% in advertising time. The eight-ball Australian over was therefore scrapped and Australia fell in line with the rest of the world and all at the behest of Channel 9 and the extra advertising revenue that could be generated by making this change.

Nobody who plays any game actually enjoys losing for that would negate the whole purpose of the contest. But Australians not only seem to detest losing, they actually resent it. As Jack Hobbs observed: “It is entirely the result that counts in Australia, in contrast to England, where the ‘play’, i.e. the actual performance, is just as important.”

Simply enjoying the spectacle of a cricket match or the mere participation in a game seems largely foreign to most sections of the Australian public. This attitude seems deeply rooted in Australia and was demonstrated by Warwick Armstrong as long ago as the fifth Test at the Oval in 1921. Faced with a certain draw, Armstrong put on only his change bowlers and then ostentatiously leant against the pavilion railings to read a newspaper, taking no further interest in the game.

Describing the incident in his biography of Wilfred Rhodes, Sydney Rogerson commented: “It was not an edifying exhibition, but what of it? Warwick Armstrong had throughout his long career been the uncompromising realist. His only concern was to win. The game as a spectacle was an entirely secondary consideration.”

It is probably this priority of the result over the play, or the way the game is played, that has been the reason that “walking” – the batsman acknowledging that he has hit the ball and it has resulted in a catch – has never been accepted in Australia. “Walking” was for many years regarded as a virtual obligation among many cricketers in England, it being thought bad form to do otherwise. Not so in Australia, where a batsman will always wait for the umpire’s decision. Australian Test wicketkeeper/batsman Adam Gilchrist provoked considerable debate in Australia recently when he decided to “walk”. He had gone against the tide, and from the discussion that followed his action it seemed as though a sizeable element felt that walking was a sign of weakness rather than a demonstration of integrity. Here is one aspect where, despite the social distortions, the influence of the amateur in England produced a more balanced outlook, a sense of proportion that would probably be treated with derision in Australia.

The national priority for sporting success is so important that it became a Government matter when Australia’s total medal tally was only five at the 1976 Montreal Olympics; it was felt to be an unacceptable national humiliation. But there was political advantage to be had if something was seen to be done to correct this aberration and the Australian Institute of Sport was established by the Government, making Australia the first country in the world outside the then eastern bloc of Europe to operate such a national institution. This institute has now been expanded, and each State has its own Institute of Sport. Funding is Federal and State, with substantial commercial contributions. In Britain, by comparison, there has until very recently been relatively little Government interest or initiative in the sporting area because there is no similar public demand for such action. If there were, and there were votes in it as there are in Australia, then British political parties would include sports funding and support as a priority in their election manifestos. This is still not a British national issue, although allocation of National Lottery money has produced an improvement in performance.

Sport’s pivotal role in the Australian national culture makes consistent success absolutely vital and the country will go to almost any lengths or expense to ensure victories. The country tends to view its global image through the prism of sport, and assumes that the rest of the world sees it in the same light. As a result of this tunnel vision there is the impression that Australia, perhaps through or because of its geographical isolation, has something to prove through sport.

As mentioned earlier when the 2008 Beijing Olympic medal tally showed Great Britain at fourth ahead of Australia at sixth it produced almost a nationwide outcry and a demand that the target of being ahead of Britain should be pursued as a national crusade for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, which it was. In the early stages of the 2012 Games every event where there was a British and an Australian athlete taking part would attract TV scrutiny to see which of the two either won or came ahead of the other and this spectacle continued until it became clear that Britain was going to end up with far more medals than Australia when it quietly disappeared.

The Australian swimming team didn’t do as well as expected (or rather as it was claimed they would) and this has resulted in a Government enquiry and countless magazine and newspaper articles, all of them heaping savage criticism on the team; it didn’t occur to anyone, apparently, that the opposition might have been better. Such was the national fury at Australia’s tenth position that the Australian Sports Commission has just announced that Australia must finish in the top five at Rio de Janeiro in 2016, must finish on top at the Commonwealth Games, must be in the top 15 at the Winter Olympics and produce at least 20 world champion athletes each year. That Australia should still react in such a fashion some way into the 21st century does once more put into perspective the problems Douglas Jardine encountered some 80 years earlier.

When England retained the Ashes in 2010/11 by a margin of 3-1 with the three victories being achieved by an innings, the reaction throughout Australia was not merely one of disappointment but national anger, the press calling it “national shame”, it was a calamity of seismic proportions. Front page headlines screamed “national humiliation”, “a nation’s disgrace” and so on, the fact that Australia had lost to a better team was inconceivable and impossible to accept; Australia had suffered global humiliation. It became such an issue that the nation’s cricketers called for the selectors to be sacked. It was not, apparently, the Test cricketers themselves who had lost, but the people who had picked them – an interesting reversal of roles and responsibility.

The nation’s only national newspaper The Australian trotted out the customary anti-England sentiment when it said: “It’s bad enough being beaten in England with its warm beers and cold pies but to lose here!” Such was the national reaction that Cricket Australia established a high powered enquiry panel chaired by an ex-general manager of the National Australia Bank and chairman of BHP. A leading United States firm of management consultants, Heidrick and Struggles, was engaged to advise and to interview all players and require each of them to complete a detailed questionnaire. The same reaction was evident when following on from this calamity Australia were knocked out in the quarter-final of the 2011 World Cricket Cup. TV current affairs programmes grilled the then Australian captain, Ricky Ponting, to investigate the national implications and significance of such a disaster. That this should have occurred in 2011 provides a further perspective on the reaction in 1932/33 when instead of mere disappointment the results had gone against all predictions.

A good example of the success goal is the priority for quality competition and the manner in which cricketing authorities in Australia will view an application for a new Grade team. In order to ensure this would not dilute the level of existing competition it is unlikely any such application would be approved unless an existing Grade side were to be removed. Compare this with the recent emergence of Durham as a county side in England. It might have been thought that there were already too many county teams and that too much first-class cricket was being played in England without adding to the number of counties. Australia’s population is now some four times the size of when the original State sides came into being and the larger States could now easily support two or more teams but that won’t happen in the interests of maintaining intensity of competition.

There is a saying that “winners are grinners” or, as Ian Chappell is reputed to have stated: “Winning is not the most important thing – it is the only thing.” There is little point in claiming anything as quintessentially representing the culture of a country unless it is accompanied by quality and consistent victories. Needing an opening bat in the 1980s, Australian citizenship was granted to South African Kepler Wessels with a speed that must have totally dazzled him. At about the same time, Zimbabwean Graeme Hick appeared as a likely champion Test batsman for England. However, although they had rapidly snaffled Wessels for themselves, Australia then stridently demanded that Hick should serve a five-year residency period before qualifying for England. There was no way Australia could possibly justify claiming one and yet even attempt to protest the other and the double standards so brazenly paraded were such that one has to ask whether the same one-eyed attitude was not a factor in 1932/33?

This will be examined later, but it seems likely that in both cases and in spite of the obvious self-interest in their complaints, their annoyance at being disadvantaged was such that the protests were mounted irrespective of their highly dubious justification. This may also explain why Australia has been involved in more Test cricketing controversies than any other country.

The same attitude holds true in comments made by the Australian media when South African Allan Lamb was playing for England. Ian Chappell was particularly scathing on this issue. Yet at the same time, in addition to Wessels, Australia has eagerly welcomed into its own sporting ranks international stars such as Russian boxers and pole vaulters, Fijian rugby players, Czech and Yugoslav tennis players, Bulgarian weight-lifters, Canadian skiers, and so on. Good for the goose but not for the gander.

Cricket participation at all levels is massive, and competition reaches abrasive levels that most cricket enthusiasts in Britain would find quite astonishing. Any cricket other than competitive Grade cricket is condescendingly referred to only as “social” cricket, and thus the type of fairly friendly annual matches between villages that exists in say, the New Forest or the Weald of Kent, are almost unknown. Virtually all sports in Australia are organised with the sole view of producing a top-class Australian team. This is in contrast to England, where playing for the pure enjoyment of participation still has a considerable following.

Junior cricket, for instance, is organised in every State on an age basis such as Under-10, Under-12 and Under-14, with a league for each age group and the various towns competing in these groups at an annual final. Young children learn competitive sport at a very early age and are granted facilities with seniors, a situation that would rarely occur in England. One promising young Australian golfer known to the author, playing off an adult handicap of ten at the age of 12, was thought to be good enough by the club professional to play in the club’s senior competition. In Australia this would not have been unusual but when his family moved to England, the local golf club there regarded boys of his age as something of a nuisance, and the very idea of playing alongside the adults was regarded as ridiculous. Fortunately for the lad concerned, his family moved back to Australia.

An example of the degree of passion involved in cricket in Australia occurred after a Sheffield Shield cricket final where Queensland narrowly lost to New South Wales, and Queensland fast bowler Carl Rackemann broke down and wept uncontrollably in the dressing room afterwards. At that time Queensland had never won the Shield but, nonetheless, it would be difficult to imagine any English cricketer giving way to tears however great their disappointment.

A similar lachrymose display came from Kim Hughes when he resigned the Australian captaincy in 1984 and again in 1985 when Australian batsman Wayne Phillips was given out caught from a ball that rebounded off David Gower’s boot.

Perhaps the most dramatic display of sporting grief came recently when Ponting announced to the Australian Test team in their dressing room that he would be retiring after the third Test against South Africa in December 2012. The whole team burst into tears, Australian captain Michael Clarke could not hold back his tears when confirming Ponting’s announcement to TV cameras, and then to cap it off proceedings in Federal Parliament were interrupted so that the Prime Minister could immediately relay the sad news to the members present.

There is, in Australia, a much larger gap between winning and losing than there is in England. Victory is triumph, defeat humiliation. Even as respected and measured a player/commentator/author as Richie Benaud has recently been reported in The Weekend Australian Magazine as saying that he felt humiliated every time he lost a Test match. There may be a host of reasons why the other side won and of course there is disappointment and frustration, but “humiliation” – why? The fact that this comment came from as balanced a person as Benaud says a lot.

Is it just culturally unacceptable to lose, even to a better team, or has there been invested so much emotion that a loss is a national calamity? And taking this a step further, being humiliated would obviously be resented which may explain the antagonism that characterises Australian cricket. By comparison when India won in the final of the 2011 Cricket World Cup, Sri Lanka’s losing captain Kumar Sangakkara graciously and generously said: “Of course it’s disappointing to lose but the better team won,” and he praised the Indian captain MS Dhoni, saying: “He is very intelligent, very smart, the epitome of captain cool.”

One can but hope but it is slightly difficult to imagine any Australian captain making such a comment. On a similar plane, in the sixth Test of the 1981 Ashes series, a young Australian batsman, 22-year-old Dirk Wellham, made his Test debut. In the second Australian innings Wellham was nearing his century when he mistimed a drive and was nearly caught at mid-off by Geoffrey Boycott. At the end of the over Ian Botham came over to Wellham, put his hand on his shoulder and said: “Look, you’ve done all the hard work, don’t muck it up now.” This was his first Test and Wellham went on to make 103. Would an Australian have offered such friendly encouragement had the roles been reversed?

On a similar level, it is probably true to say that no cricketing country other than Australia would have ordered an under-arm “grubber” to be bowled to ensure the other side could not win. Yet this is what did happen in a one-day international between Australia and New Zealand. Greg Chappell was the offending Australian skipper. The possibility of New Zealand getting the required six runs off the last ball of the match was extremely remote, but Australia just could not risk even that slim chance and especially against New Zealand. T-shirts soon appeared in New Zealand with the caption “Australians have an under-arm problem”.

At the commencement of England’s 1978/79 tour, an Australian businessman offered $A1,000 to any Australian bowler who took the wicket of Geoff Boycott in the Test series, Boycott being thought to be the main English batting obstacle. He was prepared to invest $A10,000 to provide an additional incentive for Australian bowlers, as if they needed it, to perform in the Tests. It is this constant preoccupation with sport and success for their country that drives the Australian persona. Donald Horne, quoted earlier, wrote: “To stay at home or even go to the beach and sun one’s self was evil when one could be playing a game or watching others play one. At schools games have been coldly organised on impelling competitive principles. Competitive sport in Australia can still be a ruthless, quasi-military operation.”

The Oxford Dictionary defines the word “sport” as meaning amusement, diversion and fun but with such confrontational intensity it is difficult to see how these words could apply to “sport” in Australia.

In 1986 Patrick White, Australia’s Nobel Prize winner for Literature, said: “It seems as though life itself now depends on sport, with a PM who materialises miraculously as cheer-leader at every sporting event. This would be less nauseating if it could be seen as genuinely patriotic rather than political.”

But in Australia there are votes, millions of them, in sport. Describing this national fixation and non-stop preoccupation, Jack Hobbs said in 1933: “The average Australian is far more partisan and antagonistic to opponents than the average Englishman. Things they admire in their own teams are jeered at when shown by their opponents. We saw this often when there was slow play. If Woodfull stayed a long time, it was ‘a great fighting innings’; if Sutcliffe or Wyatt stayed, it was ‘a drab and dreary display’.”

Instead of hospitality for visiting cricket teams much of the media displays hostility, a siege mentality as if the tourists, especially if they are English, are threatening invaders to be repelled. This difference was recognised early in 1934 by Lord Castlerosse, a regular writer for the Sunday Express. He wrote: “Very soon the Australian cricketers will be with us and very naturally I hope they will be received with every hospitality. And yet those who love cricket must be beginning to wonder whether Test matches are in the best interests of the game. Here in England we do not know the bitterness which these games engender, because when we are beaten we take it calmly and, after a couple of groans, forget it. In Australia however another spirit prevails. There, Test matches are not carried out as games, but with all the ferocity of war.

“I have seen and met a very considerable number of our countrymen who have represented us in Australia and they all deplore the spirit in which the Test matches are played. They say you are popular enough if you lose, but if you win you engender an antagonism which is deplorable.”

Not only has nothing changed since then but with the hyper-commercialisation of Test cricket in Australia antagonism is valued because on-field confrontation is exactly what the sponsors want. Australia has always had a reputation for competition and even aggression but this has now been raised to a higher level with fast bowlers overtly demonstrating venomous attitudes towards batsmen. The gladiator-pit atmosphere is intensified by blaring rock music and a large screen that flashes the word “Tonk” every time a boundary is struck.

The Melbourne Cricket Ground has a capacity of 100,000 and is regularly filled even for local AFL matches. By comparison Lord’s holds only 28,000 but, even if it were the same size as the Melbourne Cricket Ground, that capacity would rarely be met because, despite the population of London being three times that of Melbourne, there does not exist in England the same sporting obsession that drives the Australian culture. The ‘Ashes’ as a cricket trophy is far more important to the whole nation of Australia than it is to English cricket fans. There is enthusiasm in England particularly among cricket followers but no national furore. Not so in Australia where, to a substantial degree, the whole country seems to view its global image through consistent Ashes success.

Samuel Canynge Caple provided an excellent description of this difference in his 1961 book The Ashes at Stake when he said: “It is quite useless entering a Test series against the Australians, down under or in this country, in the spirit of ‘may the best man win and to hell with which one it is’ and hoping that the Aussies will play it your way. To an Australian cricketer there is one reason and only one why he plays Test cricket, and that is either to retain the Ashes or if by some amazing mischance Australia happen to have lost them, win them back. And it is quite ridiculous to expect any other approach to what may still be only a game to the average Englishman, but to all Australians it is a challenge, which having been accepted, means war to the knife.”

Although Ashes-winning England teams have for the first time paraded through London this sort of celebration has been common in Sydney for some decades where thousands of adoring fans line the streets to cheer their heroes and demonstrate the nation’s support. By contrast, an Ashes loss almost assumes the dimension of national catastrophe. Little if any consideration seems to be given to the possibility that the other side might have been the better. Naturally, there is disappointment in England when the team loses, but in Australia the reaction amounts to disgust.

As an Australian sports journalist recently conceded: “Australia is triumphant in victory, but precious, thin- skinned and defensive in defeat.” Rarely will the Australian media concede that their team has been beaten by a better side. It is almost as if the possibility of superiority elsewhere is unacceptable and, therefore, any defeat must be due to errors by the home side. There is no admission that they had encountered greater skill and performance. Usually some excuse or an unfair cause will be sought but, if none can be found, then the Australian side will be subjected to merciless scrutiny, with little thought given to the performance of the opposing team.

As a case in point, Jim Laker’s remarkable achievement of 19 wickets in the Old Trafford Test of 1956 is dismissed as a freak obtained only through a pitch that had been deliberately prepared specially for him. Bill O’Reilly, then a journalist, contemptuously dismissed the result, saying the wicket was a farce, and that was why Australia had lost. Neil Harvey still says the same thing but he bagged a pair to Laker so he would hardly be expected to say anything else. This view overlooks the fact that not even MCC could organise who would win the toss. Neither did MCC have sufficient influence on when and if the weather would intervene.

There was also the fact that in the Australian side were two of their greatest spin bowlers, Benaud and Johnson, who between them took 357 Test wickets but they could manage only six for 274 in the England innings. They didn’t bowl at the same time in the match as Laker, but Tony Lock, the arch destroyer of batting on helpful wickets, did bowl at the same time and, in fact, bowled more overs than Laker, but managed only one wicket. The truth is that the 1956 Australians seemed to be mesmerised by Jim Laker. It was not just in one Test match that Laker also took all ten Australian wickets in one innings, he did it also in the Australians’ match with Surrey, an innings in which Tony Lock bowled 33 overs without success. But – would there have been any complaint had Australia won?

Another example of this attitude to losing Australian teams is the treatment handed out to Test captain Herbie Collins when he returned from England in 1926, having lost the Ashes series 1-0. He was immediately removed from the captaincy both of his own club, Waverley, and that of the New South Wales State side. Moreover, the Australian press vilified him in merciless fashion. Collins, one of the very few batsmen who averaged more in Test cricket (45) than he did in first-class matches (40), was so affected by this treatment that he retired from cricket, citing “ill health” as his reason. Whether this attitude towards the losing leader also contributed to his subsequent inability to find employment is not known but, only five years later, his financial straits were so dire that he was applying to the New South Wales Cricketers’ Fund for help.

More recently, the Dutch coach for the Australian football team in the 2010 World Cup was pilloried unmercifully when Australia did not make it out of the first round of matches. This despite the fact that even now there is relatively little football played in Australia, and there is far less money available compared with the millions poured into rugby league or AFL. Moreover Australia were attempting to compete with countries like Brazil, Argentina, Spain or Italy where football is their only sport and virtually a national religion. But – success is demanded and if it does not appear then a scapegoat has to be found – a reaction quite detached from reality.

The Barmy Army irritates Australians, not because of their chanting and waving, but because even if England are losing, they enjoy themselves. There is nothing more frustrating to an Australian than an opponent who does not feel the same anguish as they do when on the receiving end of a defeat. One of the reasons for Australian sporting success is the massive gulf between winning and losing. If losing is total anathema, then that extra yard to win will always be a constant aim.

In 1964, as mentioned in the introduction, Donald Horne published his acclaimed evaluation of Australian society, The Lucky Country. Horne is quoted at the beginning of this chapter, but in that book he also wrote: “Sport has been the one national institution that has had no knockers. To play sport or watch others play, and to read and talk about it was to uphold the nation and build its character. Australia’s success at competitive international sport was considered an important part of its foreign policy.”

Even local journalists recognise this all-consuming drive for victory and in a recent article one lamented: “Australians now clearly prefer a lot of villain in their sporting heroes – victory and victory alone seems to have become the Holy Grail of Australian sport.” This was not something new, for as Chappell said, “winning is the only thing”. In 1932/33 Australia was, and still is today, a country that just does not understand a smiling loser.

In purely operational terms the 2000 Sydney Olympics was unique in that a profit was made. This was very largely due to the massive public support and an enormous army of volunteers who manned just about every post and took on any job unpaid simply for the pride of being there and being able to say that they had been involved. This generous Australian public contribution and community gesture was quite unique in the annals of the Olympic Games and would probably not be found in any other country.

In August 2006 a history summit was held in Canberra to discuss the teaching of Australia’s history. Gregory Melleuish, Associate Professor of History and Politics at the University of Wollongong (and one assumes a cricket enthusiast), said that one of the focuses should be the position of Don Bradman in Australian culture, as also should be the quest for sporting success. It should be pointed out that this was a history summit, to debate how Australia’s history should be taught in schools. Recent discussion concerns what questions should be posed to immigrants seeking Australian citizenship to test their knowledge of Australia and it was suggested that knowledge of cricket should be included as one of the questions. It might of course be a little confusing for an Afghan to be asked to explain a “Chinaman”, but maybe it has not yet gone that far.

The continual success of Don Bradman was necessary for the Australian psyche. Jack Fingleton recounts the following 1936 instance in his book Cricket Crisis: “I once saw O’Reilly playing in Sydney for the Australian team that had been unbeaten in South Africa. It was the beginning of the next Australian season and the other team was captained by Bradman. That Australian team was pardonably proud of the unbeaten record it had in South Africa, but thoughts of its record had to be cast aside when Bradman came to bat. It was Saturday morning and just prior to lunch. O’Reilly was in magnificent bowling form and had just taken several quick wickets. He was immediately taken off. He was itching to get at Bradman before he had settled down, but the afternoon crowd could not be risked.”

Even years after his death, “Bradmania” still reigns in Australia, with new books appearing regularly that explore just about every facet of his lifestyle, habits, relationships and records. One of Sydney’s leading bookshops recently had eight different Bradman books on its shelves. The postal address for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in every State capital is PO Box 9994, the significance of this number being that the career Test batting average of Bradman was 99.94.

With this type of cult still continuing some years after Bradman’s death, and some 80 years after the 1932/33 series, it seems fairly clear that Jardine would probably have run into an indignant brick wall with any tactic that made Bradman ineffective. By the time of the 1932/33 series, Bradman was not merely a sporting hero. Australia had canonised him and elevated him to an iconic stature.

But if sport is pivotal, then betting and beer comes a close second.