As the Australian cricket team’s tour of South Africa descended into bickering and strife after the first Test, one of ESPNCricinfo’s most esteemed writers plotted a trail through some of this century’s on-field heat. “Why is it,” wondered Sharda Ugra, “that whenever there is an epic-proportion bust-up in international cricket, Australians are almost always involved?”



A few days later, Bangladesh played out an ill-tempered match in Sri Lanka: the 12th man nearly punched on with fielders; the captain nearly ordered his batsmen off the field; and while Bangladesh won at the last gasp, a glass door in the visitors’ dressing room was smashed with no-one admitting responsibility.



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Imagine, for a second, the commotion had Australia feinted at abandoning a game during a tense finale, or walked away from damaged facilities after being extended a host’s hospitality. Imagine how this would have been slotted into a narrative of bad manners and worse sportsmanship, of aggression bordering on violence, of petulance unique to the game’s most successful nation.



If you write in support of Ugra’s position, some readers will accuse you of bashing Australia. If you make the previous comparison with Bangladesh, others will accuse you of being a partisan Australian hack. In a polarised sporting world, making note of something that actually happens is apparently the same as taking sides.



Instead, as in many situations, two things can be true at once. Australia can have a poor behavioural record, while also having extra weight apportioned to those sins. Rewind to Smith’s first series as full-time captain, criticised by ABC commentator Dirk Nannes for ignoring New Zealand’s Ross Taylor after a double-hundred.

Smith complained that the ‘ugly Aussies’ tag was the fault of eras past. Nannes explained that Smith was right, but that it only meant the new team must go to even greater lengths to compensate. This isn’t another airport check-in – the baggage may not be yours, but sometimes you’re lumped with it.



Kagiso Rabada is on the same plane. The bowler’s shoulder-clip on Smith during the Port Elizabeth Test could have been construed as an accident, but he had recently been pinged for a similar bump on another departing batsman. His subsequent send-off of David Warner might have been forgiven, but it happened hours before his Smith hearing.

For Rabada and for Australia, if the spotlight is on, there’s little use arguing that it’s unfair. You can only get on with living in its glare. If that means you have to live more cleanly than others, then sometimes that’s just the way it’s gonna be, little darling.



This is what Rabada has hopefully grasped, after measured remorse at his press conference after that second Test, and an incredibly lucky escape from suspension after his ICC appeal. Contrarily, it’s what Smith doesn’t seem to have grasped yet. Australia’s captain is a decent human being, but so far is in denial, effectively saying that he shouldn’t need to be concerned about the public view because his team is within the bounds he deems acceptable, and plays best when going hard.

This fails to acknowledge how nebulous and subjective these concepts are. It also fails to recognise the power of perception, no matter how justified you believe your actions to be.



Before the Ashes, I wrote of Smith’s team as a new breed of nice young chaps. A few months later, that’s out the window. But the on-field unpleasantness feels like roleplay, a mimicry of previous eras, especially when it reels in younger players like Pete Handscomb or Cameron Bancroft.

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After two Tests with the effects microphone in my radio headset, I can attest that Tim Paine behind the stumps is laconic and relatively easy on the ear. When he replaced the combative Matthew Wade before the Ashes, David Warner and Nathan Lyon ramped up their aggression. They now see it as their job as senior players.



Smith is more the type to stand in the field and fidget than snipe at batsmen. But whatever his instincts, he knows how much harder his life is when his team is losing, and has decided they’re a better chance while snarling. Correlation is not causation, but there’s no shaking a long-held belief that because the Aussies are aggressive when they win, they win because they’re aggressive.



At the same time, sledging is hardly unique to Australia. Sure, parts of our discourse are abrasive – it’s compulsory for backpacking Australians to bond over how easily we can shock the nearest Brits or Americans by our cheerful lobbing of c-bombs. Perhaps a few decades ago, some more genteel opponents were taken aback. These days, most professional teams give as good as they get.



Quinton Friend, a vastly experienced first-class bowler, was suspended from South African domestic cricket for a verbal blow-up in 2007. “It’s been part of the game in South Africa and always will be,” he told ABC radio during the second Test. “I’m all for it, it’s just important that they don’t cross the personal barrier. Here and there it’s going to get a bit fiery.” Current batsman Dean Elgar had similar sentiments before the third Test: “I’ve been on the receiving end of it and I have also been one to give it out a bit, in all the right measurements.”

That doesn’t mean it’s all forgotten at stumps, though. There is genuine bad blood: South African captain Faf du Plessis hasn’t let go of his last visit to Australia, when he was charged with ball-tampering after being caught on camera in Hobart.

Local sources in South Africa indicate that du Plessis and some officials still believe that Australian officials tried to set him up, when really it was a case of Australian media outlets beating the hell out of a story in a quiet part of the sporting year. So there was a hint of retaliation in Durban, in the way that CCTV footage was leaked of Warner blowing up at Quinton de Kock, and the public spite of this series really spilled over.



The story dragged on until the second Test. Idiots in the crowd brought props to demean Warner’s wife, Cricket South Africa officials supported them, Rabada threw his left arm in and nearly got his arm left out. Australia didn’t get much chance to annoy anyone – getting well beaten tends to do that.

Then there was Vernon Philander, whose Twitter had an extended pop at Smith at exactly the sort of hour of the night when one might be tweeting after twenty Castle Lites, and who the next morning claimed to have been ‘hacked’ by a very specific computer operative with the professional pride to mimic the bowler’s exact syntax and spelling style, and whose limited and highly-specific ambition was to stoke tensions between two cricket teams in a minor and one-off fashion.



There is hypocrisy on both sides. De Kock at times claimed he’d said nothing to Warner, only for later video footage to contradict him. It’s harder to swallow the tale of South Africa as the bullied minnow when there’s a lack of candour afoot. At the same time, those Australians never reveal what they say on the field, forever invoking the omerta of the white line, but chose to release enough information about de Kock to make a case that he was past their mythical standard.



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But now we go on to Cape Town, the third Test, and there is hope that these atmospherics may clear away. Even if they do, there’s the question of the next ill-tempered series, or the next; more contests where cricket’s form is overtaken by indulgence and play-acting.

Through the early 2000s, with Australia’s reputation at its lowest, management commissioned ongoing reports into the public view of the team and individuals. It was a matter of priority, which players had impressed upon them. This has been allowed to slide, and when CA boss James Sutherland publicly censured his team after the Durban Test – though he apportioned blame to both sides – it spoke of belatedly trying to regain control. The fractured relationships of last year’s pay dispute can’t make it any more palatable for players to take direction from head office.

Perhaps Australians really are the worst sledgers and brawlers. Or maybe it’s a more competitive field. Either way, it’s indisputable that opponents, fans and media react more strongly when Australia gets involved. It’s down to Smith to change that: he can either do the work to break with Australia’s image problem, or double down on chasing its supposed benefits. At the moment, he still seems to think he can have both.