I generally like Australians. They’re good people. Upbeat. Happy. Bright. Fun. Optimistic. There are always exceptions; you can’t like an entire nation, but for every revolting Mel Gibson, there’s always a Kylie to redress the balance. For every Kerry Packer there’s an Olivia Newton John. For every Shane Warne, a limp Jason Donovan.

But when it comes to cricket its no longer about ‘nice’. No longer about decent even. You just take an average Aussie, give him some facial hair and he turns into a wrecking ball. Mitchell Johnson, the latest incarnation of Aussie pace bowler to beat the merry shit out of our fine upstanding English boys with no mercy. He follows a long line from Lilly and Thompson, Merv Hughes, a host of moustachioed marauders intent on the destruction of our cricketing hopes.

And you have to wonder what makes such a small population so excellent at certain sports. Ok, they don’t play football for shit because they lack the subtlety and skill-set that such a game requires, preferring as they do cricket (at very high speed), the brutality of rugby and the abrasive rough-houses of rugby league and Aussie-no–rules football.

The main reason for such sporting excellence is that Australians don’t generally work very much, and when they do its not so hard that they can’t find 6 hours a day to surf, run, drink excessively and fart a lot. And then there’s education. Most Australians can’t read and write very well, don’t do numbers at all and find history a bit ‘old’. So they’re sent out of the classrooms into the 40 degree temperatures to run around and dehydrate instead. Sent to the Outback with Jenny Agutter (if only) on ‘walkabout’.

Yet the main reason, the thing that gives Aussies that ‘competitive edge’ is the hazardous nature of life down-under. A good day in that part of the world is one when you don’t get attacked by a shark in the car park at Tescos. When you’re not bitten by the world’s most venomous snakes, which outnumber the nice animals by 7 to 1. They have spiders that can kill you with a look, a jellyfish so toxic that to swim within half a mile of it will result in scratching your testicles for 6 weeks thereafter. Any closer and you’re dead. Even the butterflies carry Uzis out there. You’re safer in a Tennessee schoolyard than out in the Aussie countryside.

So next time (heaven forbid) the Aussies knock us to hell in a test match, don’t hate them. They can’t help it. Pity them. They grew up with great adversity thousands of miles from civilisation, then grew facial hair. And that’s just the women.

Happy rather late Tuesday

A xxxx