Shut your mouth Aussies

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“Talk less than you know.” Perhaps no body taught this to Mr. Ricky Ponting when he was a child and may be was less arrogant. The result is showing so often in India’s tour to Australia, early this year (Dec 2007 – Jan 2008).

Before the first 20-20 World Cup this same Mr. Australian Captain had dismissed Team India, not as a possible threat to Australia. He went further saying that India was a highly overrated team and he knew whom to watch out rather than India.

Everybody knows Dhoni’s boys owned Aussies and further captured the First T20 world cup.


After that the T20 match in India, was a replay of the T20 world cup where Indians proved their superiority in this version of cricket.

Spurts of controversy surfaced even before Indian team landed in Australia. Harbhajan the turbunator along with Yuvraj singh declared that this Team India was not going to take the verbal blows lying down; on the contrary they would come back and make the scores even.

Australian players were not ready for this payback as they were not used to this. I would even say that they were not prepared for something like this from players of subcontinent.

Harbhajan was marked.

First test at Melbourne was lost by India in a pathetic manner, may be that was the reason India cam back so strongly at Sydney in the second test.

Whole world saw whatever happened in the second test at Sydney, and is marked as an event which will be referred as an example to the whole cricket world in future. Steve Buckner had to go back home, ICC had to bend and release Harbhajan from the “racist” tag.


And then Mr. Ponting again with lot of Australian players started saying that Indians were making issues because they could not win against them. This was a popular myth amongst Aussies as they were the regular world cup champs. In fact it was an Australian who went running to the umpires and complained about Harbhajan.

India came back strongly in Perth, which is supposed to be on of the fastest wicket and was supposedly a graveyard for India – Australia fell in that and India drew the first blood.

The fourth test at Adelaide was tough for both the teams and it was a draw.

Australia won the series by 2-1. (One was the great Sydney fiasco caused by bad umpiring), from that time Australian cricket fans and players had started promoting a ‘fact’ that was – Even if India was a victim of a few bad decisions, they could never stand as a challenge for Australia.

Next was the commonwealth triangular series with Australia, India and Sri Lanka. But everybody knew that the finals were slated between Australia and India.

Muttiah Muralidharan, great Sri Lankan off spinner but another Australian ‘not so favorite’ boy, was attacked as Sri Lankan team landed in Australia. If the same incident would have happened in India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka, Aussies would have even cancelled the tour on security reasons. But even Murli preferred to ignore that. (May be that is what a ‘cultural difference’ between Australia and the other teams as defined by Mr. Alan Border.)

Qualifying the finals, Australia was at the top positions but again in the pool games there were unpleasant incidents and this time Australian players found a new scrape goat and that was Ishant Sharma. This lanky youngster was a major problem for Ponting and CO. Specially Ponting was a bunny for Ishant. They had to do something which could spoil the young man’s rhythm. And there was Symonds again, complaining to umpires. No so ironically only Ishant was fined as the norm goes with subcontinent players.

Australian strategy was very clear. Kill the opponent on the field and off the filed. Pick up the match winners from the opposite team and drag them alone, like they did with Sachin Tendulkar in the 1999-2000 tour (remember: the infamous ‘Shoulder Before Wicket’)? Like they did with Murlidharan. Like they did with Shoaib Akhtar. They tried to do the same with Harbhajan and Ishant Sharma. But thankfully the Indian media, Indian online communities, people from India stood united and let the world know that the dirty tricks they played under the label of ‘aggressive game’ were no longer acceptable.


Before the finals started Sir Ponting again opened his big mouth and said “There will be only two finals. (Australia will win first two finals so there will not be any need of the third one)”. Sachin Tendulkar said the same to one of his Australian fan when he was questioned whether he will be playing in the third final. Tendulkar said and made sure that he was not talking nonsense by scoring a century and 91 in both the finals and helping team India’s clean win.

Mr. Ricky Ponting, time has come that you and your boys should concentrate on cricket more and win matches on your merit. Australian Cricket Board is known to be a very strict institute where champions like Warne and Mark Waugh were not spared so time for a reinvention Team Australia. No one is invincible; one has to fight for that. A lesson to team India or all the cricketing teams as well.