PASTIME FOR PIRANHAS
William Deedes on the desperate state of Australian cricket
Melbourne TWO of Australia's leaders are in the toils: Allan Border, captain of cricket, and John Howard, who leads the Liberal opposition to Bob Hawke's government. One enters them in that order, partly because it accords with the priorities of all good Australians; partly because Border's trou- bles are more serious than Howard's. They run deeper.
There comes a time in the life of all political parties, after all, when they appear to be sinking under the weight of their own ineptitude. The Australian Liberal Party is well into that. For one thing, it has seen thrown off its balance by the astonishing orthodoxy of Hawke's so- called Labour government.
Like some Conservatives here, Austra- lia's Liberals think of themselves as the ruling party, born to govern not to oppose. Hawke's Labour predecessor, Gough Whitlam, consoled them because his extra- vagant behaviour offered plenty to oppose — and ultimately toppled him.
So in a different way did the old-style Bob Hawke, who was a near-alcoholic, a womaniser and, when he first arrived in Canberra, a fairly clumsy politician. The born-again Hawke, off the grog and the Villiger cigars, now on the Pritikin diet and enjoining his ministers to get fitter, looks the best armoured prime minister Austra- lia has seen since Menzies. Trade is bad, manufacturing sinking fast, the floating Australian dollar was down to 50p, interest rates are high — but outward appearances belie all this. Australians are comfortable.
Howard's dilemma was well illustrated by the turn of events after last month's bid by Mr Holmes a Court for Australia's giant BHP. Hawke and Keating (Labour's treasurer) were content to let market forces and the shareholders settle it. There's pragmatism. The right-wing coali- tion (Liberal and Country parties) under Howard started a public quarrel among themselves over whether and where to put a spoke in the Holmes a Court wheel. As it turned out, the High Court, for the time being, did it for them.
These troubles, however, look ephemer- al alongside Allan Border's. Though they sometimes seem odd to us, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with Australia's poli- tics. But there is something profoundly wrong with the state of Australia's national cricket.
Since Border took over the captaincy in December 1984 from an unhappy Kim Hughes, he has won five, lost seven and drawn eight of his 20 Test matches. The important figure is not the losses nor the draws but the total in ten months of 20 Tests (including one-day internationals). They represent 10 months' work in the year.
It will be argued that the strain on David Gower and his men is hardly less; and that this is reflected in the pretty lacklustre performance of the MCC in the West Indies, West Indian fast bowling notwith- standing. Border and Gower certainly share one disability. Neither of them has command of his team. They cannot ordain, as their earlier predecessors could, the disciplines and hard work which an inter- national cricket side has to practise.
The modern cricketer is largely auton- omous. The senior and best-known enjoy lucrative commercial contracts and their own life style. The younger ones, who prefer golf, tennis, sunbathing or fleshpots to fielding practice on a by-day are simply not amenable to being ordered about off the field.
When, after losing the first one-day international against New Zealand at Dunedin, Allan Border astonished Austra- lia with a public threat to abdicate, he made it clear that this was not because they had lost but because he felt that the players were not trying to give of their best. Men on treadmills rarely do. Australia lost the next one-day match at Christchurch as well, but Border then revealingly declared that the boys had given it their best shot. 'Even though we lost, the effort and attitude we put in was what I'd been asking for,' he explained. His earlier bombshell then appeared to work its way through the side. Australia won the last two one-day internationals and squared the series two-two. Border has suspended judgment on his future. For him and for Gower the international cricket programme has become frenetic, but in Australia under the influence of Kerry Packer it has also become bizarre. The cash tills jingle merrily (for some) and the standards of cricket fall.
As an Australian writer observed after the Dunedin match, with his eye on the terraces — 'littered with the debris of the modern one-day game, much of it human — 'The crowd paid the cash; cricket in the coloured garb of a travelling circus paid the price.' The so-called executives of Austra- lia's game have not simply abdicated. They are already in exile. So Border has had cricket? Not at all. Among the countless interviews they drew from him de profundis was one in which he talked cheerfully of his forthcoming season with the Essex county team. Border learned his cricket disciplines during his time in Lancashire League. He relishes the idea of playing cricket again, is weary only of captaining an undistinguished Australian side in a diree' lion he instinctively mistrusts. Packer's self-promoting, asset-stripping devices, fostered by a universal trend towards blood lust in sport, has turned top Australian cricket into a pastime for piranhas. Let us imagine a sixth form quiz at Geelong, and here is their starter for ten. `Who would you sooner be: John Howard or Allan Border? 'Border', they all write down. Duck.
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