C for cricket - or celebrity?
Dazzling and disorientating, two glamorous front covers from two of this month's glossy magazines show the new, emergent face of Australian cricket. One features the Australian vice-captain, Michael Clarke, dressed in a range of fashion forward clobber, which includes a designer leather jacket and tight, metallic denim jeans. The other features Mitchell Johnson's girlfriend, Jessica Bratich wearing significantly less apparel: a green and gold bikini emblazoned with the Southern Cross.
Both underscore how the culture of Australian cricket is changing, and why the Australians are no longer the outfit they once were. They serve as reminders that the comparative decline of Australian cricket is not limited to the exodus of playing legends but extends to its off-field philosophy and dressing room culture.
The focus naturally has been on the absence of Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist, Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden. But something else is missing, as well: the sheer bloody-mindedness of the Border years, and the austerity and discipline of the Waugh era. But the winning Australian cricket culture been also contaminated by the fripperies of Australia's celebrity culture, as the fear factor has come to vie with the celebrity X Factor.
In this new celebritocracy, Michael Clarke and Lara Bingle are obviously cast as Posh and Becks; Brett Lee is celebrated as much for his Bollywood melodies as his chin music; and Mitchell Johnson achieves almost as much fame as the torso of the 'Men of Cricket' calendar as the tormentor of visiting batsmen. After being sent home from England in disgrace, Andrew Symonds meets the televisual requirements of the age by seeking prime-time, public redemption: a soft-focus confessional on Sixty Minutes.
As Jessica Bratich reminds us, the WAGs - wives and girlfriends - have also come to enjoy a much higher public profile, which is sometimes more Lads mag than Ladies pavilion. In announcing his retirement, Matthew Hayden spoke wistfully of the "brothers of the Baggy Green". But the WAGs have encroached on this male dominion.
Ashes winning captains of recent vintage have sought to reinforce the team's rich cultural heritage. Steve Waugh heightened the veneration of the Baggy Green, a surprisingly recent "tradition," by ordering every player to wear it during the side's first fielding session. Then there have been those graveside visits to Gallipoli and other European battlefields where Australian diggers shed their blood en route to Britain, and the quasi-religious significance of the team song, Under the Southern Cross, which is belted out in the dressing room at the conclusion of every victory.
This high holy ritual became the focus of a dressing room spat at the end of the home series against the South Africans, when Simon Katich took exception to Michael Clarke reportedly wanting to hurry up the singing of the song so he could leave the dressing room. Traditionalists saw it as powerfully emblematic: a clash of cricketing civilisations, in which the old rubbed up against the new. Simon Katich was cast as the preserver of traditions.
Of course, it would be foolish to write off the Australians as a bunch of starry-eyed softies. Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey remain some of the most serious-minded of modern-day cricketers. And the great blonded one himself, Shane Warne, wasn't exactly a shrinking violet on the celebrity circuit.
But there is a strong sense that the Australians are not as single-minded as once they were, and therefore should not be feared to anywhere near the same extent. Ask yourself which one would you rather face. Steve Waugh in his fanatical pomp? Or Michael Clarke in those fantastical designer pants?
We have entered a new era in which Australian cricket has become more metrosexual than macho. More hair gel than zinc cream. More tight metallic denim than conventional baggy green.
I'm 
Comments
or to comment.