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Australia are just not hairy enough[/size]
Alot has been written about what the Australians must do if they are to claw their way back into the Ashes. Surprisingly, nobody has so far identified swearing as a key area. Clearly, people are forgetting what the former Australia Test batsman Dirk Wellham had to say on the topic. This being a family newspaper I can't offload Dirk's full and considered view in my first few paragraphs for fear that kiddies may read it, the prevailing feeling being that schoolchildren these days have such a short attention span that they won't get beyond the first half-dozen sentences unless they come across the words nipple, zombies or Bruno. So now we're stuck with them for a while yet.
To fill in then before the young ones peel off in search of Pamela Stephenson's sexual advice column and we can get back to Dirk in all his glory, let us consider Brett Lee whose absence through injury has preyed on the minds of the visitors. When the New South Wales paceman was a youngster Dennis Lillee coached him in the art of bowling. And the 32-year-old clearly attacked the task with the same exuberant relish that David Pleat brings to his thrilling improvisations on the theme of Jose Bosingwa. Because he does a more or less inch-perfect rendition of the old DKL war-dance appeal that sees the paceman whirling round, arms in the air and knees wide apart before sinking slowly into an unsteady crouch like a man perching above a toilet of dubious cleanliness.
Despite this excellent mimicry it is fair to say that Lee is no Lillee. He is quick, he is hostile, but the plain fact of the matter is that he is just not hairy enough. His mentor had a chest like a hotel doormat. You could have brushed barnacles off a tramp steamer's hull with his moustache. The man literally bristled. Lee by contrast is clean-shaven and clean-cut. When Lillee bared his teeth flocks of crows flew into the air cawing demonically and mothers hurried their children indoors. When Lee snarls he looks like the office junior from accounts reaching for the high notes during a karaoke rendition of I Want To Know What Love Is.
Don't get me wrong, Lee seems a nice and amiable lad and is doubtless popular with mums, it's just I'm not sure if that's what you really want from a strike bowler. Fast bowlers need to be crazed and angry. Bob Willis steamed in with such a wild and psychotic look that the fact the embodiment of evil in Twin Peaks shared the same first name was surely no coincidence. I bet David Lynch saw the highlights from Headingley and yelled: "Screw Dennis Hopper! That's the madness I'm looking for!"
The hairiness is the main thing, though. And it's not just Lee. The whole Australian team are Beckhamesque. Before the series quite a few pundits claimed that Peter Siddle "reminds me a lot of Merv Hughes". Now you have to ask "In what sense?" because, unlike Merv, Siddle doesn't look anything like a Victorian strongman. Try picturing him in a leopardskin leotard, if you don't believe me.
Hairiness has been a key component of Australian cricket success since the days of the Chappell brothers. Admittedly, Steve Waugh didn't have a moustache, but you felt that he could have grown a grizzled Zapata in a matter of minutes if he'd wanted to. He'd just have had to concentrate his mind and a bushy caterpillar of brush would have popped up on his top lip and thickened like one of those speeded-up nature films that show us how flowers work. You might wonder if facial hair can really make a difference. But didn't the great and wise Mike Brearley grow a beard before leading England to Australia in 1979 specifically for its psychological impact?
I'd have to say Ricky Ponting's gum chewing has hardly been of the highest calibre either. Previous Australian captains have really worked on that gum, either viciously chomping it as if it was Ian Botham's face, or giving it a big, thoughtful roll around the mouth to create the impression that a cunning plan was coming together. Ponting's chewing in the first two Tests has been very lacklustre and absent-minded, with the slight air of somebody who is just wondering how long they have to keep going after the taste of the sugary coating has worn off before they can surreptitiously tuck the stuff away under the nearest window ledge.
Anyway if this arcane waffle hasn't shaken the kids off by now, then I think they deserve a reward. So to Dirk Wellham, state captain, Test centurion (and moustache sporter), turned schoolteacher and thinker. Writing of Allan Border's captaincy technique a few years ago, Wellham described the central place the word "fucking" played in forging a formidable Aussie team, observing: "[The] reliance on strong, decisive, male, independent players is symbolic of 'fucking', and the absence of collective psychology. Paradoxically, fucking can also be a group, sharing arrangement, of mateship."
To be honest, I am not quite sure what Dirk is driving at here, but it seems to me his advice to Ponting would be: use more expletives and cut out the occasional net practice in favour of an orgy. Over to you, Punter.
