Cricket culture or celebrity culture?
Nick Bryant, the BBC's Sydney correspondent, writing in the Australian , wonders if the winning culture of the Australian cricket team has been overtaken by celebrity culture.
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
Nick Bryant, the BBC's Sydney correspondent, writing in the Australian, wonders if the winning culture of the Australian cricket team has been overtaken by celebrity culture.
The emergent face of Australian cricket, at once dazzling and disorientating, stares out this month from the glossy front covers of two glamorous magazines. The first features the Australian vice-captain, Michael Clarke, resplendent in a pair of metallic denim jeans that look so ball-crushingly tight they would struggle to accommodate a stray Murray mint, let alone his protective equipment. The second shows Mitchell Johnson's girlfriend, Jessica Bratich, wearing significantly less apparel; a green and gold bikini emblazoned with the Southern Cross.
Both are reminders that the changes overtaking Aussie cricket are not limited to the exodus of playing legends but extend to its off-field philosophy and dressing-room culture. In pondering the relative decline of a team in transition, 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. Has not a winning Australian cricket culture been contaminated by the fripperies of Australia's celebrity culture, as the fear factor has come to vie with the celebrity X factor?
Brydon Coverdale is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. He tweets here