Cricket: Aussie media attacks 'insufferably arrogant' players

Australia's players give Grant Elliott a send off during the World Cup final at the MCG. Photo / AP

Not all Australians are on board with sledging, it seems.

A highly regarded Melbourne newspaper has run a column today which laments the manner in which Australia's players conducted themselves during Sunday's Cricket World Cup final.

Writing in the Melbourne Age, sports columnist Greg Baum said the behaviour during the match, including Brad Haddin's relentless sledging of Black Caps batsman Grant Elliott, left a "blot" on Australia's World Cup truimph.

Baum levelled criticism at outgoing captain Michael Clarke, who claimed to have been unaware of the on-field verbals.

"Clarke adopted the three wise monkeys defence, saying he saw, heard and said nothing," wrote Baum.

"More generally, he said Australians played with 'passion, excitement, adrenalin', as if that explained all. He left out the other usual alibis, 'hard but fair', 'not crossing the line' and 'the Australian way', but it was late. Cocooned in sycophancy, the Australians seem not to grasp nor care how poorly this behaviour sits with the other half of a cricket-following public they repeatedly and ever more deeply divide, even in their finest hours.

"They also do not seem to care or grasp how it rankles with opponents, and how insufferably arrogant it makes them look. Do they really think they are the only country that plays with passion and pride?"

Baum said if any team played with passion, excitement and adrenalin throughout the World Cup, it was New Zealand. He also commended Brendon McCullum and the other Black Caps who shook Clarke's hand as he left the field after being dismissed, saying their actions marked a distinct contrast to the way the Australian players conducted themselves.

Baum said he had no problems with on-field banter that heightened the competetive theatre of the game, but that the Australians often went one step further.

"What is objectionable is the snark, the cattiness, the hissing, the goads and provocations, the infantilism," he wrote.

"What is objectionable is the faux offence taken should an opponent be so impertinent as to reply. What is objectionable is to rub a dismissed batsman's nose in his dismissal, rather than let the wicket speak for itself."

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