Cricket is all about timing
On the eve of the final test in this summer’s Ashes it looks worryingly as if it will be back to business as usual as an Australian team looks to be in the ascendant while their English counterparts struggle for form and confidence.
In amongst all the usual banter there was a fascinating moment just a week or so ago, which suggests that when it comes to timing Australia may be winning the war of words as well as the battle at the crease.
We are all familiar with a world of leaked dossiers and where the news in the morning consists not so much of what’s already happened but who’s going to be saying what during the day at a number of press conferences.
It’s not a world that is normally associated with cricket and not with the Australian team who have built their brand far more on a rather direct and plain-speaking approach.
Yet the publication of a dossier compiled by former Australia batsman Justin Langer created quite a stir. Apparently submitted to his former captain Ricky Ponting at the start of the series, it works its way through the England team line up with some choice language and some all too unflattering observations.
Apparently the primary audience was the Australian team, designed to give them insight and confidence going in to the series with a team England captain Andrew Strauss had (perhaps unwisely in retrospect) described as missing the aura of previous touring Aussie teams.
But was it really? The timing for a start of the release of the dossier was perfect, coming hot on the heels of a humiliating defeat at Headingley, rubbing plenty of salt into open wounds. From a communications perspective the timing of this ‘leak’ couldn’t have been better.
What’s really interesting though is that earlier this summer Cricket Australia announced it had banned its players from ‘sledging’ – a technique whereby verbal (and normally insulting though often also humorous) banter is aimed at opposition players in an effort to unsettle them. Something in which the Aussies are world masters.
It’s been frustrating for them, no doubt about it as their natural game plan is disrupted and the spotlight is on them and their behaviour.
At which point Langer’s dossier suddenly looks like a master stroke that he couldn’t have played better with the bat – the team aren’t allowed to sledge, so what does he do? He takes on the whole England team, not just in the relative privacy of the cricket pitch but in England’s national press.
It’s the ultimate sledge. The impact on an England team desperate for success remains to be seen, but you have to have a little sneaky admiration. Maybe it would be better to go back to the good old days.