Published in The Daily Mail, 7 September 2005
It does not matter whether England or Australia triumphs in the fifth Test which begins at the Oval tomorrow–the significance of this clash of two cricketing titans has already been established. England is again a power in the game and Australia is the struggling underdog. I see this this an early sign that England and Australia are trading places, not just in sport but in other walks of life as well.
England has been regarded as a class-ridden, arrogant, unreliable, condescending nation, in mourning for its lost greatness. Its sporting efforts have invariably ended in disappointment. Australia was the young, forward-looking, egalitarian country and its many sporting triumphs a symbol of its confidence.
Suddenly it is the other way round. Australia has become a harsher, less friendly and open nation, uncertain of where it is heading or where its best interests lie. It has tied itself politically and militarily to the United States, but its economic future lies with China, Japan and South-East Asia. Its politicians vacilate and its people are divided.I England is now seen as sure of itself, a vibrant, dynamic place, on the cusp of all the exciting things that happen in the world.
The beginning of the change of places probably goes back to England’s triumph in the Rugby World Cup two years ago. The Wallabies had been thrashing England for years. Seeking enlightenment, a British sports writer asked the former Australian Rugby coach coach, Alan Jones, why Australia played exciting Rugby and England played such boring Rugby. Jones replied, “Because Australia is an exciting nation and England is a boring one.”
That view went right out the window when England won the Cup with some of the most exhilarating Rugby seen for years. And now the Wallabies have clocked up four straight test defeats, their worst run since 1972, while the nation’s Rugby League team and Australian Rules teams have been plagued with British football- style sex scandals.
But it is no accident that it is through cricket, that most political of all sports (it has never been just a game) that the two nations have been working out their rapidly changing relationship. As political commentator Mike Marqusee wrote: “The imperialists who had always presided at Lord’s, who once preached the gospel of cricket’s civilising mission, now grit their teeth in rage as ex-colonial countries transform cricket into an instrument of national assertion.”
One of these ex-colonial countries has, of course, been Australia. Her main enemy on the field has always been England—“The only cricketing nation that can stir up our old colonial inferiority complex,” says Australian novelist and cricket fan Malcolm Knox. “That is, their presence re-asserts our identity”.
Australian author Tom Keneally explains why. “Our only history was European history. Poetry cut out at Tennyson. If we spoke of literary figures, we spoke of Englishmen. Cricket was a great way out of Australian cultural ignominy for, while no Australian had written ‘Paradise Lost’, Don Bradman had made a hundred before lunch at Lord’s.”
Yet surely the past 16 years when Australia has held the Ashes and England’s attempts to regain them were marked by its team’s timidity and excuses for failure, put an end to Australia’s colonial inferiority complex?
Not a bit of it. It turned out that those fiendishly-clever Pommies had a fall-back position. “Even as we beat the English, however, we still served their purpose,” says Knox. “Their solace was, and is, that defeat in sport only confirms their broader human superiority. By confining themselves to playing games for fun, rather than for life and death, the English were allowing us to have our jollies. Being such gracious losers liberated them to to admire the tourist monkeys and indeed to fall in love with Warne, for he is everything an Englishman thinks an Aussie should be–their master at the game and their inferior in everything else in life.”
So there is a lot of Australian resentment to cope with before this swapping of roles is completed. Let’s consider its origins. An Australian backpacker I know was asked by the immigration officer at Heathrow what was the purpose of his visit. He said he was a tourist. For a few minutes the officer chatted with him in a friendly manner and elicited the information that the Australian was a keen amateur actor.
*You never know your luck in London,” the officer said cheerily. “Why don’t you go to a few auditions in the West End. You might get a part.” “Thanks for the tip,” the Australian said. “I will.” The officer immediately pounced: “I’m denying you entry to Britain on the grounds that you intend to seek employment here.”
“You tricked me,” the Australian said. The officer replied, “I’m just doing my job.” The Australian glared at him for a moment and then hit back in the most hurtful manner he could think of: “It may be your job—but it’s not cricket.”
There are more important English acts that Australians considered were “not cricket”. A director of the Bank of England recommended in the middle of the Great Depression that to force Australia to repay its London loans, Australians” “natural optimism, their belief that something would always turn up” had to be destroyed.
There was Britain’s plan in 1942 to abandon Australia to the Japanese if necessary so as to concentrate on the war against Germany. There was the decision to join EEC and end Commonwealth trade arrangements. And, most painful of all, the 1971 Immigration Act ended at a stroke the right Australians had enjoyed since the founding of their country in 1788, that of free entry into Britain and full equality there with their kith and kin.
A more general resentment was that the English preferred to believe all the old stereotypes about Australians instead of keeping an open mind.
In a match at Lord’s some years ago, Australian fast bowler Mervyn Hughes (he of the big handle-bar moustache), was fielding near the boundary. Between overs he signalled to the dressing room with two fingers raised.
In a mock Aussie accent, an Englishman in the crowd offered the caption, “Two Foster’s, mate.” The England fans roared: it was well-known that Australians were big beer boozers. Today it is England that has a binge-drinking problem while Australians have moved on from swill beer drinking to the civilised sipping of their fine wines. And, incidentally, the use of “mate: as a term of friendship and familiarity is now more prevalent in England than in Australia.
Then there’s politics. A few days after Tony Blair become Prime Minister in 1997, Martin Kettle, a leading British political commentator, received a call from an Australian friend of Blair’s offering advice on what made Blair tick. “You’ve got to realise that Blair’s not English at all,” he said. “He’s Australian.”
Kettle decided this Australian friend was onto something. “Blair is not in awe of the past. He is not intimidated by class. He is a meritocrat, a doer and a practical, problem-solving politician. He is not particular about where he gets his ideas from. He is simply happy making his own history. He is not inhibited by history or deference from changing what needs to be changed.” Even accents are swapping places; a letter in the Spectator reader suggested that Blair had stopped talking ’posh’ and had gone in for the sounds of the post-’Neighbours’ generation.
Knox points out that 2005 is England’s first fully Blair-era team. He says they are not gentlemen, they are not yob yuppies. They are a stock of likeable, classless professionals from the provinces. They seem strangely classless. There’s something Australian about them.
And–dare I say it as an Aussie–perhaps that explains their success..
Phillip Knightley is the author of Australia: A Biography of a Nation (Vintage). He divides his time–and his loyalties– between Britain and Australia.
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