Soccer or Cricket. What is the most representative team?

For most of the time of the A-League existence, Association Football and Cricket – two sports played in summer – have maintained a sort of distance.

However I do wonder whether cricket did look at the A-League and felt that it did suck some of the summer attention away from it. Apart from the Ashes the traditional test apparently wasn’t being as popular as previous years. The one day game also (from what I was reading at least) was losing some audience. That is why they created the Big Bash League. A form of the game that despite being despised by the traditionalists has proven to be very popular, especially amongst the young.

I am not sure whether the Big Bash League was partly created to counteract any potential inroad of the A League on its traditional summer patch. Maybe it was, if the tweets of Malcolm Conn, the communication manager of Cricket Australia, are anything to go by. Malcolm went on a campaign of highlighting how the BBL was thrashing association football in the ratings at every opportunity. This included comparing the Socceroo games, which I thought thoroughly reprehensible. Its understandable advocating the success of a domestic competition against another, but negatively comment on the national team, the national team that represent Australia is ..well… un-Australian.

On the other hand I think that Gallop was responsible for this sort of code war. I cringed right at the start of his mandate as CEO of the FFA when he mentioned the hoary chestnut of association football being ‘the sleeping giant’. Then at the start of this season saying that ‘“other competitions have gone to sleep.” could not fail to raise the hackles of cricket.

As I said before, this sort of stuff is unnecessary and it betrays a sense of inferiority.

However, the latest statement of Gallop is right on the money.

We’re our true national team says @FFA boss David Gallop – http://t.co/LSZlIhgPIy #GoSocceroos #AsianChampions pic.twitter.com/emofgCBEER

— Socceroos (@Socceroos) March 18, 2015

Cricket was outraged. Malcolm did not fail to disappoint.

 

Memo David Gallop. Your latest propaganda missed a bit of Asia. The 1.5 billion cricket lovers from South Asia chasing the @cricketworldcup

— Malcolm Conn (@malcolmconn) March 17, 2015

Memo David Gallop the ALeague backbone you talk about is shrinking. Crowds ratings down to a fraction of @BigBashLeague

— Malcolm Conn (@malcolmconn) March 17, 2015

Clearly David Gallop isn’t aware that Australia’s greatest annual migrant intake is now from cricket loving South Asia #factfreepropaganda

— Malcolm Conn (@malcolmconn) March 17, 2015

Then Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland came out stating that the cricket national team was still the country’s most popular team — “followed by daylight”.

I think that both Mr. Conn and Mr. Sutherland didn’t undertand what Gallop said. As George Donikian so succincly put it.

Gallop & Sutherland are BOTH correct Socceroos best team represents multicultural Oz while our cricket team is most popular team #offsiders

— George Donikian (@GeorgeDonikian) March 22, 2015

The discussion also ensued on Offsiders yesterday, and again the essential question was not discussed. Chloe Saltau from The Age again cited how more popular the BBL was to the A-League missing the point completely, as I tweeted while the program was on.

 

I think Gallop and Sutherland were talking about different things. Diversity and popularity. Cricket team is still very anglo #offsiders

— Guido Tresoldi (@GuidoTresoldi) March 21, 2015

Perhaps I was being less diplomatic than Mr. Donikian, but my observation of cricket over the years is that it is a bit like Ramsay St.

Big Brother house must be in Ramsay St. No Blacks, no Asians & no Wogs.

— Nick Giannopoulos (@NikGiannopoulos) August 14, 2012

Let’s look at the team that is currently playing for the Cricket World Cup.

Michael Clarke

George Bailey

Pat Cummins

Xavier Doherty

James Faulkner

Aaron Finch

Brad Haddin

Josh Hazlewood

Mitchell Johnson

Mitchell Marsh

Glenn Maxwell

Steven Smith

Mitchell Starc

David Warner

Shane Watson

The only player I could find from ‘non English speaking background’ was Mitchell Starc whose father’s parents are from what is now the Czech Republic. But apart from that I see a solid anglo-celtic background team.

Compare this with the Socceroos. The site codehesive showed how many connections teams in the last world cup had with overseas heritage. Australia was second in all 32 teams

 

These were the players with an international connection:

Ivan Franjic Grandparent from Croatia

Jason Davidson Grandparent from Japan and grandparent from Greece

Tim Cahill Parent from Samoa and parent from England

Matthew Špiranovic Grandparent(s) from Croatia

Oliver Bozanic Parent from Croatia

James Troisi Parent from Italy and parent from Greece

Mile Jedinak (c) Grandparent(s) from Croatia

Eugene Galekovic Grandparent(s) from Croatia

Dario Vidošic Born in Croatia

Massimo Luongo Parent from Indonesia and parent from Italy

Mark Bresciano Parent from Croatia and parent from Italy

Then if we look at the players that were selected since then such as Tomi Juric, Robbie Kruse and Terry Antonis, and we can see how the Socceroos are much more representative of a real multicultural Australia.

Of course Sutherland is right when he states that the cricket team may include Pakistani-born Usman Khawaja and Fawad Ahmed, indigenous former Australia all-rounder Dan Christian, Portuguese-born Moises Henriques and Gurinder Sandhu, who is of Indian heritage. However it seems that cricket has discovered NESB Australians very recently. The Australian National Association team had them for yonks, and yes when many referred to the code as ‘wogball’.

We can say that the Australian cricket team is the most popular. But when it comes to be the most representative the Socceroos have – to use a cricketing analogy – runs on the board.