It is well known that the present-day Aussies are descended from criminal stock which the English wanted to push off the edge off the world. But some mischief-monger discovered that the world wasn't flat and, therefore, has no edge off of which which to push the undesirables. The next best thing was to send them as far away as possible, and to that end the English shipped them off to what was then the edge of the known world: way down under. It was also a very unpromising land. The British upper class was wetting its lips at the prospect of their criminal underclass being thus eliminated for good and their society made genteel once again, cleansed of thieves, murderers, those born out of wedlock, deflowerers of the fair English maiden and general sinners from the lower classes.
Alas, they made one mistake. They taught them to play cricket in the penal colony.
Ever since, the Aussies' main mission in life has been to beat their former tormentors and rulers at cricket. As often and as humiliatingly as possible. Perhaps in a reference to the bad taste this left in the mouths of the English cricketers in particular and the English nation in general, they named the act "Ashes". Once in a while they too get humiliated, as during the last summer in England in which the ashen faces and taste of ash in the mouth belonged to the Aussies. In the good old days they had to cross five of the seven seas each way and there was no guarantee that they would reach England nor return from there if they did reach England in the first instance. The English of course delighted in this for, although it meant they could lose some of their own in these sea voyages, it was equally likely that some Aussies would be lost too; the chances were higher because the latter were illiterate and could not read the signposts along the way. For example the big strapping lad from Alice Springs could take the wrong turn (hence the name wrong 'un - see what I mean by illiteracy?) and instead of arriving at Sydney harbour, could very well get lost in the great Australian desert. He however could not become anyone's dessert for there were, and still are, no predators of humans in Australia which is really a pity -the lack of predators, not the wrong turn.
So in between creaming the best the English could throw at them and in order to break the long sea voyages into shorter ones and thus minimise the chances of getting lost at sea, the Aussies took to stopping by at Bombay. The fact that there were many a fair English maiden there who were desperate for male company of the "European" variety also made the stop interesting. After all most of the Aussies spent their time in the outbacks where the only female living things were ewes and she-kangaroos. With the latter prone to jumping around a lot on two legs, amorous intentions were hard to consummate. To get into shape for their English cricket season and to impress the English maidens on the Bombay maidans, they took to playing some cricket while in Bombay. Once in a while they would invite locals to play them.
Which was a bigger mistake;
For the local Bombay wallahs, I mean. The Aussies discovered someone they could beat regularly with consummate ease. Like the boy who gets kicked by the school bully coming home to kick the cat. Except that in this case they didn't come home, but got to kick the cat a lot earlier, on the way home actually. The revenge - it wasn't really revenge, but try making these fine points to the Aussies - was swift. Being illiterate they hadn't learnt that revenge was best served cold.Once they got addicted to kicking the cricketing cat -which had become Indian rabbit in their cricketing parlance - they started inviting the rabbits to Australia to beat them there so they need not be separated from their ewes and she-kangaroos for long stretches of time. The rabbits were bludgeoned to death and fed to the cats - not the ones they intended to kick, for that cat had become a rabbit which was killed to feed the cat which was not a rabbit to begin with. The Bombay-wallahs, ever on the sharp lookout for some quick money accepted, lured by the promise that one Aussie Dollar was worth gazillion Indian Rupees and you could bring back Audis, Rolls Royces, Ferraris and the like without paying any taxes. Occasionally they brought home an Aussie bride without taking dowry and realizing what the absence of dowry meant, sent them back later.
That was mistake number three.
Playing the Aussies, not sending the bride-sans-dowry back.
Notwithstanding the allure of Audis, Beamers and Ferraris and the prospect of not paying the government any tax in return for Bharatth Ratnas and like titles, engaging with the Aussies in a sporting endeavour is a dangerous game if you'll pardon my pun. The Aussie origins ensure that it wont be a fair game. Take thieving / stealing for example: they even had to steal a poor Welsh girl to make her their prime minister. Of course she has a better hair day these days than Welsh generally do and can't sing alone or together as is the Welsh propensity. She was so "Ozzified" as to lead her senior and mentor up the garden path and shaft him - not the other way round as nature intended. But I digress.
The Aussies are generally wood choppers, loaders, dockworkers, sheep shearers and aborigine hunters. They are not gentlemen. Like our players are. Our players are mostly from Nawabi khandaan or, when they are not muslim, its Hindu equivalent. In Tamil they would be knowns as "Raja veettu kannukkutty". Roughly translated it means the King's heifer: it leads a privileged life and doesn't have to earn its living by doing cart-pulling, hoeing a field or anything at all. All it has to do is to eat well live well, roam unmolested and uncontrolled, grow up to be a big fat bull, and service sundry cows. In other words live the life of a gentleman. The muscular wood chopping Aussie cricketer brings to the field a very different attitude to our own boys whose principal aim in life, as befitting a "raja veettu kannukkutty", is to "make it large" and cavort & consort with sundry page three cows.
The Aussies steal our runs, murder our bowlers and lust after our sisters and mothers. Our boys are made to run and fetch, the poor gentle souls. Hands that are too delicate to hurt even a rose are made to twirl a rough leather ball hour after hour; to stop it and catch it when it is hit very hard; run after it when it is misdirected away from our boys instead of towards them as you would expect from a more civilized people.They have no respect for age or reputation. They have been particularly harsh on three of our most venerated players, one called the wall for his predilection to attract people who wail and the other, a "jewel of India" (no, not the restaurant in Worli, Mumbai, not even the one named after him); the third whose name sounds like aubergines (brinjals, you less literate ones !) and lentils in Tamil and whose name takes longer to spell than the time he spends in the middle despite his being very very special. They are systematically treated harshly, unmindful of their status and standing, made to stand in the sun for long and not allowed to sit, and generally denied the treatment and adulation they are accustomed to. How dare the criminal bastards do this?
The illiterate ones call our graduates and double-graduates names and suggest an eagerness to cohabit with their sisters and mothers. The outback ogres give our boys nightmares on the field and get them drunk off of it. They tempt our boys with their temptresses who are only too eager for gentle and cultured company after years spent in the outback watching sheep and Flying Doctors on the telly.
The only way you can explain all this is through their predilection to not play fair.
Alas, they made one mistake. They taught them to play cricket in the penal colony.
Ever since, the Aussies' main mission in life has been to beat their former tormentors and rulers at cricket. As often and as humiliatingly as possible. Perhaps in a reference to the bad taste this left in the mouths of the English cricketers in particular and the English nation in general, they named the act "Ashes". Once in a while they too get humiliated, as during the last summer in England in which the ashen faces and taste of ash in the mouth belonged to the Aussies. In the good old days they had to cross five of the seven seas each way and there was no guarantee that they would reach England nor return from there if they did reach England in the first instance. The English of course delighted in this for, although it meant they could lose some of their own in these sea voyages, it was equally likely that some Aussies would be lost too; the chances were higher because the latter were illiterate and could not read the signposts along the way. For example the big strapping lad from Alice Springs could take the wrong turn (hence the name wrong 'un - see what I mean by illiteracy?) and instead of arriving at Sydney harbour, could very well get lost in the great Australian desert. He however could not become anyone's dessert for there were, and still are, no predators of humans in Australia which is really a pity -the lack of predators, not the wrong turn.
So in between creaming the best the English could throw at them and in order to break the long sea voyages into shorter ones and thus minimise the chances of getting lost at sea, the Aussies took to stopping by at Bombay. The fact that there were many a fair English maiden there who were desperate for male company of the "European" variety also made the stop interesting. After all most of the Aussies spent their time in the outbacks where the only female living things were ewes and she-kangaroos. With the latter prone to jumping around a lot on two legs, amorous intentions were hard to consummate. To get into shape for their English cricket season and to impress the English maidens on the Bombay maidans, they took to playing some cricket while in Bombay. Once in a while they would invite locals to play them.
Which was a bigger mistake;
For the local Bombay wallahs, I mean. The Aussies discovered someone they could beat regularly with consummate ease. Like the boy who gets kicked by the school bully coming home to kick the cat. Except that in this case they didn't come home, but got to kick the cat a lot earlier, on the way home actually. The revenge - it wasn't really revenge, but try making these fine points to the Aussies - was swift. Being illiterate they hadn't learnt that revenge was best served cold.Once they got addicted to kicking the cricketing cat -which had become Indian rabbit in their cricketing parlance - they started inviting the rabbits to Australia to beat them there so they need not be separated from their ewes and she-kangaroos for long stretches of time. The rabbits were bludgeoned to death and fed to the cats - not the ones they intended to kick, for that cat had become a rabbit which was killed to feed the cat which was not a rabbit to begin with. The Bombay-wallahs, ever on the sharp lookout for some quick money accepted, lured by the promise that one Aussie Dollar was worth gazillion Indian Rupees and you could bring back Audis, Rolls Royces, Ferraris and the like without paying any taxes. Occasionally they brought home an Aussie bride without taking dowry and realizing what the absence of dowry meant, sent them back later.
That was mistake number three.
Playing the Aussies, not sending the bride-sans-dowry back.
Notwithstanding the allure of Audis, Beamers and Ferraris and the prospect of not paying the government any tax in return for Bharatth Ratnas and like titles, engaging with the Aussies in a sporting endeavour is a dangerous game if you'll pardon my pun. The Aussie origins ensure that it wont be a fair game. Take thieving / stealing for example: they even had to steal a poor Welsh girl to make her their prime minister. Of course she has a better hair day these days than Welsh generally do and can't sing alone or together as is the Welsh propensity. She was so "Ozzified" as to lead her senior and mentor up the garden path and shaft him - not the other way round as nature intended. But I digress.
The Aussies are generally wood choppers, loaders, dockworkers, sheep shearers and aborigine hunters. They are not gentlemen. Like our players are. Our players are mostly from Nawabi khandaan or, when they are not muslim, its Hindu equivalent. In Tamil they would be knowns as "Raja veettu kannukkutty". Roughly translated it means the King's heifer: it leads a privileged life and doesn't have to earn its living by doing cart-pulling, hoeing a field or anything at all. All it has to do is to eat well live well, roam unmolested and uncontrolled, grow up to be a big fat bull, and service sundry cows. In other words live the life of a gentleman. The muscular wood chopping Aussie cricketer brings to the field a very different attitude to our own boys whose principal aim in life, as befitting a "raja veettu kannukkutty", is to "make it large" and cavort & consort with sundry page three cows.
The Aussies steal our runs, murder our bowlers and lust after our sisters and mothers. Our boys are made to run and fetch, the poor gentle souls. Hands that are too delicate to hurt even a rose are made to twirl a rough leather ball hour after hour; to stop it and catch it when it is hit very hard; run after it when it is misdirected away from our boys instead of towards them as you would expect from a more civilized people.They have no respect for age or reputation. They have been particularly harsh on three of our most venerated players, one called the wall for his predilection to attract people who wail and the other, a "jewel of India" (no, not the restaurant in Worli, Mumbai, not even the one named after him); the third whose name sounds like aubergines (brinjals, you less literate ones !) and lentils in Tamil and whose name takes longer to spell than the time he spends in the middle despite his being very very special. They are systematically treated harshly, unmindful of their status and standing, made to stand in the sun for long and not allowed to sit, and generally denied the treatment and adulation they are accustomed to. How dare the criminal bastards do this?
The illiterate ones call our graduates and double-graduates names and suggest an eagerness to cohabit with their sisters and mothers. The outback ogres give our boys nightmares on the field and get them drunk off of it. They tempt our boys with their temptresses who are only too eager for gentle and cultured company after years spent in the outback watching sheep and Flying Doctors on the telly.
The only way you can explain all this is through their predilection to not play fair.
There has been some suggestions that there might be a Part II to this post. I absolutely and categorically deny that there is any such thought in my mind right now. As for the future, who knows the future?
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