It's Just Not Cricket (this time the game, not the window-bashing insects!)

Not so long ago it felt very good to be an Englishwoman in Australia. Despite a shaky first day or so in the opening Ashes test in Brisbane, when I was repeatedly told by my Australian cousins (I was in Adelaide at the time) that they were going to “give it to the Poms”, we soon began to turn the tide. Having pulled up our socks and drawn the Brisbane test, we went on to annihilate them in Adelaide, something which must have been hard for my cricket-mad Adelaide family to swallow. I had left by this point but I can be pretty sure that they weren’t being so cocky anymore. And it felt bloody good. As has been previously pointed out in this blog, the Australians seem to have a strange inferiority complex when it comes to England – they always feel like they have to not only beat us but ‘take the Poms down’. They are so vehement about it, something that is reflected in the language they use – “we’re going to give them a drubbing”, “we’re going to give it to those Poms”, “we’re going to give those Poms a flogging”, “we’re going to put those Poms to the sword”... you get the picture.


When a traditional inferiority complex is combined with a deeply-entrenched love of sport, you can see why they love to beat us ‘Poms’ so much at any form of sport at all. Of course, by the same token, losing to us in anything from cricket to lawn bowls is more than they can bear. Generally the rule is that if an Australian sporting team is not winning, it is not reported – nothing will be said about it in the media, no-one will talk about it at work. However, if they are winning, that is all you will hear about. And thus has it been during this Ashes series. When they’re winning, it’s all over the new; when they were receiving a ‘drubbing’ there might well have not been any cricket being played in Australia for all we heard about it. Of course, it didn’t stop us from walking around with very smug faces. Unfortunately, our recent defeat in Perth has brought the Aussies out of the holes in which they were sticking their heads and the fighting talk has begun again. I am hoping and praying that we can “give it” to the Aussies in the next test, not because I particularly care about cricket, but just so that we do not have to be subjected to the Aussie swagger.