It’s the whining Aussies now

Dammika mailed me this article from The Island.

The English are often referred to as "The whining Poms," particularly by the Australians, but the term seems to be fitting them too. After Australia lost the second One Day International narrowly to Sri Lankans by one run, the Australian captain Ricky Ponting was seen in an angry mood, a complete contrast to the mood he was in when the Aussies won the first ODI. On Friday, after the game, Ponting was seen sipping a cool Foster’s Beer in the dressing room after Australia had won, but on Sunday, he was seen smashing his pads down.

When the Tasmanian came down to speak to the media he passed a crude remark at the Sri Lankan journalists when he said, "a huge contingent of Sri Lankan journalists today," Ponting was passing an obvious remark as after the first ODI only a few Sri Lankan journalists showed up at the press conference. However, little did Ponting know that at around 10 in the night after the first ODI some of them were working on tight deadlines unlike on Sunday.

And when he spoke, he had a few complaints as well. "I was disappointed to get the same wicket today. There hadn’t been a lot of cricket here and I would have thought that there was plenty of time for the curator to bring up two wickets for these two games," he said. Over the years, when touring the sub-continent, the Australians have complained about food, water, dust, security and so on and on this occasion Ponting was blaming the wicket.

Speaking further Ponting hailed the performance of his players, whom he said would take a lot of confidence to the next games after playing on a "very worn Sri Lankan wicket."

Meanwhile, paceman Glenn McGrath, who wasn’t picked for the series, too has come up with a list of complaints on Sri Lanka in a column he writes for The Australian, a hardcore nationalist newspaper back in Australia. In the column, McGrath says that "conditions in the country can be harsh....." and singles out security as one of the major problems.

Among his complaints are, "Our other mode of transport is the coach and I always get a bit of a laugh when they call it a luxury coach. To me, it’s an old bus with vinyl seats that get hot and appear to be placed right on top of a bar that’s uncomfortable," he writes.

Probably it’s time to replace the idiom, it’s no more "whining Poms," but it’s "the whining Aussies".