![]() ![]() 'When Jardine was a pupil at Winchester,' he wrote, 'it was at its ghastliest, hurrying students through so that they could make it to the Western Front. One, Frank Devine, attributed his perversity and arrogance to his education as a Wykehamist. mutual.' A few writers began to delve into Jardine's background. 'They don't seem to like you very much out here, Mr Jardine,' the player said to his captain. 'All Australians,' retorted Jardine, 'are uneducated and an unruly mob.' 'Well, in that case,' replied Hendry, 'you can go to buggery.' In a drinks break during an earlier match, Hendry, then 96 not out, was warned by an England player that his interval drink, on Jardine's orders, had been spiked with whisky. When he had been barracked for slow scoring on one occasion an Australian, Stork Hendry, sympathised with him. He looked down his great, hooked Roman nose to revile Australian reporters as vermin. He often wore a multicoloured Harlequin cap and white choker to the wicket to rile them. He wanted his Australian opponents to feel socially inferior, insignificant, unworthy of his presence. But that was the least of his stratagems. Jardine evolved a tactic to scare the wits out of Bradman by ordering his bowlers to aim straight at his throat with a packed leg-side field. The phenomenal Don Bradman was up against them. He was a Scot of orthodox parentage who was chosen to lead England in Australia when they seemed about as likely to win the Ashes as Hussain's team are from this morning. No- one could accuse him of being a Pommie bastard. This one is about the most tempestuous cricket series ever played, the battle in Australia when in a preliminary match exactly 70 years ago this week, England rattled up a mere 634 for nine declared (H Sutcliffe 154, M Leyland 127, D R Jardine 108 not out). It is all about mind games with Australians, which is why I deeply regret that a prepublication copy of David Frith's Bodyline Autopsy was not flown out to Nasser Hussain, England's present captain, before hostilities start tomorrow.įrith writes only one cricket book about every two years, because that's how long it takes him to research the subject. This makes him feel bad because Australians are punctilious about sharing bar bills. You buy the first drink and refuse a second because he is driving. So how do you counter this Aussie aggression? Well, to the gentleman who's just called you a Pommie bastard - he's probably driven out in the rush hour to pick you up at the airport anyway - you retaliate with a few staccato Anglo-Saxonisms and lead him to the nearest bar. That's how it always has been and this epic sporting confrontation will lose all meaning if it loses that intensity. The Australians, on the field, in pavilions, from hospitality suites, in the stands and on the grassy slopes of what they call the outer, want not just victory but utter Pommie humiliation. I once sat near an England player so consumed by nerves that he made three trips to the bathroom to be sick while waiting to go in to bat. ![]() To me, this is the ultimate sporting rivalry. This will be hugely evident in Brisbane tomorrow morning ( midnight tonight on SkyTV) when the latest Ashes Test series breaks out in a cacophony of one-eyed partisanship. Down the generations, this act of generosity had generated an historic and healthy rivalry between our two great countries. They were mostly sheep thieves, pickpockets and prostitutes, who'd been sentenced to deportation from England instead of being hanged. YOU don't become an honorary Australian until one of that convivial mob confers upon you the ultimate accolade: 'Welcome back, you Pommie bastard.' This may grate on refined English ears but you have to understand the background.Īustralia's aristocracy - an oxymoron if ever there was one - now comprises the descendants of those who arrived on those shores in leg irons with First Fleet. ![]()
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