They look like a couple of nice boys. Wheatfield hair, slightly awkward smiles. Helpful at charity days, polite at press conferences, respectful about others in their field. Not quite with the cherubic aspect they had when beginning their current vocation, but hints of those chubby dimply faces remain.
Steve Smith and Joe Root, Ashes captains, don’t fit the mould. It’s supposed to be all tough guys and hard bastards, sledging and chuntering, flint-eyed glares and “broken fucken arms”. Chappell, Border, Illingworth, Jardine, a legacy built on rough words and wads of brutalised chewing gum.
Smith and Root are staunch, don’t doubt it. They’ve faced down scary bowling in draining conditions, soaked up scrutiny and pressure, and come out as two of the world’s best practitioners of their niche and particular art. Fifty-one international centuries between them, leaders of their sides by their mid-20s.
They have never faced off in an Ashes before, but they could face off in three or four more. It could be one of the great rivalries. And it could be completely different to what we’ve come to expect. The two sides are not built in the image of those captains, but follow their style closely enough. This is a different time.
After the fourth Test against India at Dharamsala this year, concluding an often fractious series, the question was whether this Australian team would follow the hard-edged route of the 2013-14 whitewashers. “I don’t think this group is at that stage,” said coach Darren Lehmann.
“Obviously we’re less aggressive than we have been in the past. They have had to work out the way they want to play as a group and I think it has been brilliant. I have actually changed a bit in my ways as a coach and I’ve really enjoyed watching how they go about it.”
Root, meanwhile, waxed lyrical in an All Out Cricket interview about the stated values of his primary school, including kindness and creativity. “All the best leaders have those qualities… We have some great blokes in the team who know how to behave and interact with people not just in the squad but those outside cricket who hold all those values as well. When you have the same views you become closer as a team.”
There were a million ill-informed column inches in the 2000s about Michael Clarke being “metrosexual” because of an earring and a tattoo; it was a sort of mass howl of old men terrified at their own irrelevance. These days players like Usman Khawaja, Nic Maddinson, Peter Nevill and Adam Zampa can dress sharp, engage in cultural pursuits and not surrender their bona fides as cricketers.
Khawaja and Moeen Ali have prompted and led conversations about religion and race, and avoid the booze-soaked sponsorship and celebrations that remain standard. Alastair Cook is the quiet old pro, Pat Cummins an eloquent chap who has just finished his university degree.
Chris Woakes, Peter Handscomb, Matthew Renshaw, Jos Buttler, all fit the nice boy mould. Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Stuart Broad are more senior, but come across as pleasant human beings. There is the odd snarl, the odd throw at the stumps in the follow-through, but even that seems like it’s for show.
Doing it for show was what came to mind recently with David Warner’s lines about hatred and war. Warner is the embodiment of Australian cricket’s change. The hard-drinking attack dog repudiated his ways, saying he was pushed to be aggressive by Lehmann and Clarke. In the West Indies in 2015, he adopted a monastic silence, and in the months thereafter became The Reverend.
Teetotal, fittingly, Warner got into mindfulness and meditation. “I basically preached for a good month,” he said in a June interview. “Whenever I was at training and someone said something negative I would reiterate three positive things about them.”
Another quiet operator, Nathan Lyon, came out with his own slew of aggressive comments on Monday, saying that Australia wanted to end careers, that the 2013-14 tourists were terrified from “one to 11”, and that it was an “unbelievable feeling” to watch a team disintegrate. “There’s a lot of scars for the English guys, especially coming over here, especially when we have two guys bowling 150, not just one now.”
The antagonistic comments have a feel of fake it till you make it. Of senior players thinking that it’s their responsibility to escalate the war of words, rather than something they naturally want to do. Perhaps it reflects the faintest flicker of doubt in even the hardest of Ashes captains. “We have to hate them,” Jardine exhorted his bowler Gubby Allen, who refused to batter Australia with Bodyline tactics. “It’s the only way we’re going to beat them.”
But beyond that, it raises a broader question: can you actually be yourself in the confines of an Ashes series? Do you have to conform? Starting with their leaders, the current forms of Australia and England both look like teams that have realised they’re better suited to another way.
Clarke had the line about broken arms, but Starc’s best against Pakistan last December was, “Send his bails to Wales.” Australia’s sledging is dross. They’re pretending, and it’s not convincing. The speculation about whether Ben Stokes will join the tour is relevant – he’s always praised for bringing combativeness, but that attitude hasn’t more broadly brought good things. Root and Smith are some of the world’s best without it. But there survives the idea that it’s needed, among the things that are less pleasing about sport: the pressure to conform, to close ranks and close minds. Perhaps this time around, a few nicer boys can show that’s not needed.
