Everybody enjoys a bit of 'Joshing'

Just kidding, Lads...

    Everybody enjoys a good ‘line’ in a sports press conference, such is the prevalence these days on ‘controlling the controllables’ and ‘executing our skills.’ A sportsman or woman prepared to take the risk of speaking their mind, in public, are creatures and deserve to be cherished.

    A modicum of forethought beforehand helps, but occasionally these free-speakers are caught unawares and their answers aren’t necessarily what they might have said had they been handed the questions beforehand.

    So poor old Josh Hazlewood, lambasted for saying that Australia would consider fixing their match against Scotland in order to eliminate England on net run-rate. Nobody does banter better than the Aussies and no body of players, ever, has been able to talk as close to ‘the line’ as the Australians without crossing it.

Let’s not forget that ‘Joshing’ is an actual thing: it’s in all good dictionaries. It means: ‘to tease someone in a playful way,’ or ‘engage in joking or playful talk with others.’ And didn’t Hazlewood do it well! No doubt the uproar and opprobrium in the English media generated guffaws of laughter in the Australian squad, and in Australia for that matter. Good for Josh.

    There was some proper, self-righteous indignation from some quarters. The people saying that players should never joke about match-fixing are denying one of the fundamentals of human nature – laughing at misfortune or poor judgement. Doing so in private is the way to go, of course.

    Given the ICC Anti-Corruption Unit’s continuing success in nabbing fixers and victims from the smaller teams and nations is confirmation that the problem will never be solved or disappear, only monitored and managed. International cricketers have been warned and sanctioned, officially and sometimes privately, for less than Hazlewood’s joshing.

    Any deliberate or conscious alteration of the natural course of a match is fixing. Some players have received suspended bans and fines for merely talking about doing so. By doing so in an internationally televised press conference, the view must be that Hazlewood couldn’t possibly have been serious. Understandable. Just humour.

     The least he might have considered in the aftermath was ‘clarify’ his comments, given that an apology was out of the question. Team management would have been hauling him away from anything which might be construed as a back-track, or even an admission that his comment may have been inappropriate.

Plan ‘B’ is always to find a scapegoat, and there is always an easy one available. This simple task was left to Hazlewood’s mate, Mitch Starc, who delivered during his own post-match press conference following the victory against Scotland:

    “That was a line blown out of all proportion by you guys,” Starc said, confirming that it was mere ‘banter’ and that the media were to blame. Whatever.

    Final thought, on a different line. What happened to the sports mantra about ‘wanting to play, and beat, the best in the competition’?

    Gary Player wasn’t the perfect sportsman his carefully managed reputation would have us believe, but he genuinely believed this, and repeated it often: “Never wish your opponent misses their putt, it’s wasted energy and bad karma. Rather concentrate on making your own putts and focus on trying to beat him rather than on him losing.”

    There are literally hundreds of examples of magnificent sportsmanship in Australian sports history, churlishness is not a national sporting trait. From time to time, though, over the last 30 or so years, it seems to be something which trips up the national men’s cricket team. Never mind. It seems not to make them any less brilliant at the game.