Australia\u2019s cricketers have sometimes \u201ctried too hard to be aggressive\u201d as they sought to live up a traditional stereotype of what is expected from them, England\u2019s James Anderson said on Sunday. England have often been on the rough end of Australian aggression, an approach which culminated in three players, including captain Steve Smith, being banned following the ball-tampering scandal in South Africa.<\/p>\n
Australia have themselves questioned their own win-at-all-costs approach, which led to off-spinner Nathan Lyon saying he hoped his side could \u201cend the careers\u201d of several opponents before last year\u2019s Ashes games. For Anderson, England\u2019s record wicket-taker, the memory of that difficult period appears still raw, with England also claiming that in 2015 Moeen Ali was called \u201cOsama\u201d by an unnamed Australian in that Ashes series.<\/p>\n
Australia carried out an investigation into the incident, which was closed last month after they could not find \u201cany new additional evidence\u201d. \u201cThey have tried too hard to be that stereotypical Australian team that are aggressive and go hard at people,\u201d Anderson, 36, told the BBC although he added that he felt Lyon\u2019s comments were taken \u201cout of context\u201d.<\/p>\n
Last week Australia\u2019s new-look side attempted to introduce a softer look, shaking hands before play against Pakistan in Dubai, when they held on for a creditable draw in their first test since the turmoil in South Africa. Anderson said new Australia captain Tim Paine was \u201ca genuinely nice guy\u201d and was also complimentary about other team members. \u201cMitchell Starc is not naturally aggressive despite being a fast bowler and even Steve Smith is a really good bloke there is no real malice with anything he does so it was really out of character,\u201d said Anderson.<\/p>\n
However, he added: \u201cThe thing about wanting to be good blokes is that you can only be a good bloke if you really are a good one.\u201d \u201cWhen Brendon McCullum was New Zealand captain, he made it all about being entertaining and showing off your skills,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Australia\u2019s cricketers have sometimes \u201ctried too hard to be aggressive\u201d as they sought to live up a traditional stereotype of what is expected from them, England\u2019s James Anderson said on Sunday. England have often been on the rough end of Australian aggression, an approach which culminated in three players, including captain Steve Smith, being banned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44500,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44501,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44499\/revisions\/44501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}