India vs PM’s XI: How cricket has become the Australian premier’s unwritten perk over the years
Australian Prime Ministers don’t wade into cricket. Their toes, it would seem, are permanently sunk into the soft, fine sand on the beach that cricket resembles, while rougher political tides ebb and flow all around.Not merely because the Indian team was camped in Canberra, and paid a visit to the PM Anthony Albanese, but Cricket and the Australian PM are entwined deeper than what normal statecraft, would afford. It’s the unofficial distraction, a PM’s unwritten perk.Back in 2018-19 former PM Scott Morrison had a private WhatsApp group called ‘Legends’, and added Pat Cummins and then coach Justin Langer, onto it. He did his best to gee them up with, ‘good luck, go get ’em today’ messages, according to an Amazon documentary. Tim Paine earlier, received texts of encouragement from Morrison too. But cricket has famously wooed every inhabitant of ‘The Lodge’, the official PM residence.Big challenge ahead for the PM’s XI at Manuka Oval this week against an amazing Indian side. ⁰⁰ But as I said to PM @narendramodi, I’m backing the Aussies to get the job done. pic.twitter.com/zEHdnjQDLS — Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) November 28, 2024PMs, considerably more ancient than Morrison, like Ben Chifley, the first post-war elected head, were in fact lobbied for serious issues. Chifley softened the federal entertainment tax on the sport, which during the 1948 tour by India, took out £17,724 out of the £76,186 gate receipts, writes historian Greg Blood.AdvertisementJoseph Lyons, the Bodyline-era PM, saw the sport as a national distraction to Great Depression, but had to intervene to convince the bruised Aussies to carry on against Jardine’s ‘leg side threat’.Australian state finances were delicate, and he was petrified Britain would play hardball on repayment of loans if the tour was called off. But Lyons famously adjourned Cabinet meetings to receive updates on team selections, kept the radio in his room blaring to catch clues of wicket and weather conditions and set up the Australian Broadcast Corporation in July 1932 for popularising cricket.While Robert Menzies formalized the PM XI tradition that still carries on, his successor Bob Hawke, a grade cricketer in Sydney, famously survived a session till lunch with Jeff Thomson, Max Walker and Gary Gilmour darting all morning at him. Batting with sports writer David Lord in a Parlimentarians vs Press match, he pointed to Lord-Hawke partnership, and quipped, “We would make a great political team with a name like that.” The trade unions chief took a few more bouncers to the head but was elected Prime Minister subsequently.Other PMs encountered cricket on their way to the top post. Paul Keating had his election campaign news pushed way down by Australia refusing to play a World Cup match at Colombo.AdvertisementThe unmissable presence though was of John Howard’s – much before his ICC stint. He notoriously called Muttiah Muralitharan a chucker, saying rather uneloquently with no PM-esque grace that “they proved it in Perth with that thing.” The biomechanics.The PM’s XI and Indian cricket teams are keen to get out on the field. The rain has delayed play for today, but it’s been great to chat with players and fans at Manuka Oval. pic.twitter.com/MADMyDArPD — Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) November 30, 2024The self-anointed cricket tragic, who was a regular at SCG, spoke to Mark Taylor ahead of his 334 declaration in Pakistan, rejigged cabinet meetings to meet Tubby on arrival, found urgent matters to discuss with Britain around Ashes, and was in the stands for Steve Waugh’s farewell, as PM. His constituency didn’t vote him back to power, to watch Ricky Ponting bid goodbye, but the jury is out on whether his offspin action on a Pakistan visit was “biomechanically faultless”, as one commentator described.What he did manage though was to deter Julia Gillard from attempting to roll her arm over, when she visited Delhi as PM. “I wasn’t tempted to showcase my skills … because I don’t really have any skills, so that would be a problem. I have learnt something from watching John Howard and that is, don’t succumb to playing cricket in front of TV (cameras),” she jested.Her decision to bestow the Order of Australia on cricketer Sachin Tendulkar though, saw her being accused of using cricket for diplomatic gain. Her hedge was that the Tendulkar headlines would smoothen feathers ruffled due to a tricky “nuclear issue which is a trust issue with the Indian government.”Kevin Ruud angered his own countrymen when he scolded his team battling the Harbhajan-Symonds controversy in 2008, lecturing, “It’s a tough and competitive business (but) you can conduct it with a bit of civility.” By the time of his second term in 2013, with Australia battling to save the third Ashes Test, and Usman Khawaja given out caught behind with replays unclear, the Gary Sobers fan was billowing away on Twitter like a proper cricket crank, “I’ve just sat down to watch the Test. That was one of the worst cricket umpiring decisions I have ever seen.”AdvertisementTony Abbott, who took office after Gillard, admitted he made it to the Oxford cricket team because he could get lippy. “I couldn’t bat, I couldn’t bowl, but I could sledge,” he said. He then proceeded to call English captain Alastair Cook an ‘extremely stylish man in every sense.’ Swooning over an English captain was more cringe than sledging them.But Malcolm Turnbull, Abbott’s successor belonging to the Liberal Party too, wanted to have nothing to do with sledging. PM during the ball-tampering scandal, he termed sledging “right out of control”, and Steve Smith’s admission a “shocking affront to Australia.”Little wonder then that Scott Morrison who followed, needed to calm things down, and pull off the modern-day, mature, masterstroke – forming a WhatsApp group with all relevant cricket characters on board. But we know how that one ended.Albanese’s cricket cred? He invited the Indians for high tea. Then Virat Kohli brewed a nice spicy masala storm in the tea cup.
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