DAVID JONES: How Headingley’s Western Terrace made protests at the Lord’s Ashes Test feel positively monastic… After the Bairstow stumping storm, the Aussies journey to Yorkshire to face the wrath of cricket’s most daunting crowd
Who’d have been an Aussie cricketer in Leeds today?
Four days after invoking the wrath of English cricket fans with an act of rank bad sportsmanship (or some might say smart thinking), they journeyed to Yorkshire and faced the wrath of the game’s most daunting crowd.
The brash, beery, ultra-patriotic fans – almost all male – who congregate on the stadium’s Western Terrace.
At Lord’s last Sunday, the MCC members in their sharp blazers, and bacon-and-egg striped ties, may have rattled our Antipodean visitors with an uncharacteristic show of disdain, following their wicketkeeper’s controversial act of opportunism.
But compared to the gauntlet of hatred the Australians ran on the first morning of the third Test at Leeds, the reaction of the gin-and-tonic brigade in leafy St John’s Wood was positively monastic.
Four days after invoking the wrath of English cricket fans with an act of rank bad sportsmanship (or some might say smart thinking), they journeyed to Yorkshire and faced the wrath of the game’s most daunting crowd (pictured)
As the bete noire of Lords took guard, someone reprised an old football terrace chant – ‘Shoes off if you hate Carey’ – whereupon thousands of sandals, trainers and loafers were waved in the air
Ever since Australian Alex Carey cunningly rolled the ball at Jonny Bairstow’s stumps (pictured), when the England batsman assumed the over had ended, there has been much debate about ‘the spirit of cricket’
Ever since Australian Alex Carey cunningly rolled the ball at Jonny Bairstow’s stumps, when the England batsman assumed the over had ended, there has been much debate about ‘the spirit of cricket’ – that ill-defined lore about the gentlemanly manner in which the game should be played.
But on the Western Terrace, the words ‘cricketing spirit’ hold a rather different meaning. LBW? Lager, bitter or whisky, mate? Run out? Oh ‘eck – someone better nip out to the off-licence.
Ordinarily, the crowd is relatively muted before lunch, even in this section of the stadium. The hostility tends to ramp up as the day and the alcohol consumption wear on. Today, though, embittered Tykes began pouring the poison even before the first can was opened. To the Australian team’s evident anger, a chorus of boos marred their national anthem.
Australia’s Usman Khawaja is bowled out by England’s Mark Wood at Headingley
The furore gathered steam with the fifth ball of the day, when Stuart Broad dismissed opener David Warner, whose pugnacious loathing for Pommies makes him a perennial pantomime villain.
Ordinarily, when a Test batsman is out for a low score, he is permitted to trudge back to the pavilion in silence, his premature departure considered to be indignity enough.
Not here. Not with anti-Australian feelings running so high after ‘Bairstowgate’. ‘See ya later, you cheating b*****d,’ yelled the middle-aged man sitting next to me, who had seemed civil enough when we chatted before play began.
‘Aye, go on,’ snarled his companion, in a thick Tyke brogue. ‘F*** off back on the boat.’ By the time Steve Smith, Australia’s most despised gladiator, walked to the wicket, the mood on the Western Terrace had turned as ugly as it was in the Roman Colosseum on tournament day.
Steve Smith’s (pictured) genius will be forever marred in the eyes of England fans by his leading role in the ‘Sandpaper-gate’ affair
‘Cheat, cheat, cheat,’ the Terrace chanted, as he marched to the crease. Then, when he was out cheaply, it was: ‘Cry on the telly, we saw you cry on the telly’, a mocking reference to the tearful mea culpa (pictured) that completed Smith’s fall from grace, in 2018
Statistics suggest that Smith is the second greatest batter of all time, his run-scoring average inferior only to that of the legendary Don Bradman.
But Smith’s genius will be forever marred in the eyes of England fans by his leading role in the ‘Sandpaper-gate’ affair (when the Australians smuggled a sheet of sandpaper onto the field to roughen up the ball and make it swing) and today, of all days, Yorkshire wasn’t going to let him forget the nadir of his career.
‘Cheat, cheat, cheat,’ the Terrace chanted, as he marched to the crease. Then, when he was out cheaply, it was: ‘Cry on the telly, we saw you cry on the telly’, a mocking reference to the tearful mea culpa that completed Smith’s fall from grace, in 2018, and preceded his year-long ban. Watching the great Australian leave the field, one spectator remarked that he had only one regret: that he hadn’t been carried off on a stretcher after being hit by a Mark Wood 96mph bouncer. I’d like to think he was joking.
Thankfully, amid all the rancour there was also much humour. Dollops of Yorkshire honesty and cricketing common sense, too, where the Bairstow affair was concerned.
Queuing for their umpteenth round of beers (they’d already sunk four pints on the train journey, they said), I met the Four Amigos: a quartet of mates dressed in ponchos and sombreros, who turn out at weekends for Thorpe Audlin Cricket Club, in the Pontefract and District League. ‘If you think we’re all hostile, come back this afternoon. You won’t be able to understand a word we’re saying,’ said club treasurer Alex Biggs.
As to the validity of the Bairstow run-out, Ben Thomas, himself an opportunistic and highly volatile wicketkeeper, was in no doubt.
‘Of course he was bloody out,’ he said. ‘And I would have done exactly the same as Alex Carey. In fact, I try the same thing every week. All this stuff about the spirit of the game is rubbish. You do what you can to win.’
Whisper it softly on the Western Terrace, but having kept wicket – to a modest standard – for many years, I quite agree with him.
You had to laugh at the reception Carey received when his turn came to bat, though.
As the bete noire of Lords took guard, someone reprised an old football terrace chant – ‘Shoes off if you hate Carey’ – whereupon thousands of sandals, trainers and loafers were waved in the air.
As for local hero Bairstow, he was cheered like a warrior returning from war, and drew more cheers by theatrically grounding his bat behind the popping crease every time he blocked the ball, as he ought to have done last Sunday.
So much for the players. What was it like to be an Australian spectator? Surprisingly, the ones I met were having a lot of fun, because where cricket differs from football is that the animosity some might feel towards opposition players seldom extends to their supporters.
Sporting his yellow and green jersey with pride, Sydneysider Jamo Bennett, 22 – who moved to Britain nine months ago to work in financial services – judged earthy Leeds far more welcoming than snooty Lord’s. ‘The further north you go, it seems the nicer people are,’ he said, adding that he didn’t feel in the least threatened.
Melbourne lawyer Alex Blennerhassett, 29, a female friend, concurred. ‘The guy in front of us has just called us a ‘bunch of Australian c***s’,’ she said, smiling.
‘But I don’t mind that at all. At least when he saw me, he said: ”Except for you, my lady!”
When a gruff Yorkshireman apologises for insulting an Aussie sheila with the most offensive word in the dictionary, who can rightly say there’s no chivalry left in the game of cricket?
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