BBC's Jonathon Agnew wrong and hypocritical to invoke the memory of Phil Hughes

Veteran BBC cricket commentator Jonathon Agnew is entitled to his opinions and indeed make a contribution to the debate about so called sledging in Test Match cricket, what he should not have done is to use the tragic death of Phil Hughes to mount a personal attack on the entire Australian cricket team. This was in my opinion opportunistic, highly biased, bad journalism and decidedly arrogant.

There appears to be an expectation with sport and sports people, like rock stars and celebrities that they live in a world beyond normal life full of its triumphs, struggles and contradictions. Even their mortality seems to take us by surprise – they are somehow beyond the realm of existence that we who watch and admire. The manner in which millions of human beings live on the uncertain outcome of some sporting event, or turn sporting allegiances into an opportunity for violence.

Agnew argues that the Australian cricket team in the wake of the tragic loss of a friend and team mate should have used the opportunity to play their cricket against India in silent contrition, why, because as Agnew argues, of their bad behavior. All international cricket teams make comments to each other and this series was no different - some of the Indians were also rather good at so called sledging too. This is true at any level of cricket. I can testify as a club level player to seeing and hearing some astonishing exchanges and temper tantrums on cricket fields in Australia and the United Kingdom, but this was the exception not the rule.

In comparison to countless other sports, there were no brawls in the recent Australia-Indian series. If you want to see out of control go and watch an ice hockey fight and brace yourself. Test match cricket, or cricket at any level at its worst is often a very small minority of disgruntled idiots in the midst of acrimonious competition. In the recent Test series there were a few moments of chest thumping and childishness yes, but this only applied to some in either team. Each team has their repeat offenders too. Every human being can behave badly so no nationality, religion or ethnicity provides an amnesty to such possibilities.

Agnew is a solid commentator, had a long first class career, but a very short international career. He is also a man very much of his own background and upbringing. I do not attack him for this, but it is perhaps pertinent to his possible outlook. For centuries those from privileged backgrounds in the British Isles looked on the 'plebs' with a combination of hostility, anxiety and paternalism. The plebs, aka the overwhelming majority of everyday society were naturally less sophisticated and of course 'barbarians'. The cunning 'plebs' are the worst, they were ruthless and more dangerous to the privileged classes due to their ignorance of what being truly civilized means, that is, understanding their place. Much of this class ridden and imperial world view would find expression in war, in Empire, in the settler colonies, in the so called hierarchy of races which justified imperialism, colonization etc.

Agnew actually has an expectation that the Australian cricketers should be more, well, like him, because presumably that would elevate them. It is obviously beyond question to him that he is able to link the tragic death of Phil Hughes to his own need to cast universal moral judgments about the way others should behave in the wake of such a tragedy. Australian cricketers are of course not the only ones that can feel his moral judgments.

I recall a commentary exchange between Agnew and Sir Geoffrey Boycott. Boycott, stirring the possum as it were, mentioned how he'd smashed Agnew to all parts of the cricket ground during a particular county match. Agnew recalled an appeal for a catch against Boycott off his own bowling during that game which was given not out by the umpire. "Do you remember that", Agnew pointedly asked Boycott. Boycott gleefully continued stirring. Agnew was entitled say what he thought, but it was the tone of his voice that implied something more - a very self-righteous and indignant sense of a great injustice done to him by an ever odious Boycott.

Agnew's implication being that Boycott was out, knew he was out, and because he did not walk off, this confirmed what Agnew believed about Boycott - he was dishonorable, dishonest, a real bastard etc. Boycott as is his way, could not have cared and seemed amused that something from so long ago riled Agnew so much. Given their differing backgrounds, and the school master tone adopted by Agnew, this might not have been lost on Boycott. In Agnew's world, if Boycott would have been, well more like Agnew – a proper gentleman, he would have had Boycott's wicket all those years ago.

A professional cricketer of Boycott's coalmining family background growing up post war Yorkshire works hard not just for a living, but for a future. Boycott loved his cricket, but unlike Agnew with his privileged education and upbringing, the consequences of failure for Boycott as a professional cricketer in the late 1950s and into the 1960s were stark – to miss an escape from poverty, from poor health, a chance to transform one's life. This is in my view is what shaped the hardnosed Boycott. Not so for Agnew. He came to cricket in the late 70s through his private school background, it was his bliss.

Whether Boycott knew he was out or did not, he was not obligated to do anything other than his job, wait for the umpire's decision and get on with making runs. The players live with the consequences of their actions, good, bad or otherwise.Boycott's record and the general fate of the many England teams he played for during his long career, whatever one thinks of or even says about him personally, speak for themselves.

Bad behavior, bullying, nastiness etc. is endemic to highly competitive zero sum occupations. We like to win, we often glorify winning to such an extent that we overlook the implications. This helps to obscure much of our own personal hypocrisy. For example, in a book about his early years playing cricket Agnew wrote:

For an eighteen-year-old bowler I was unusually fast, and enjoyed terrorising our opponents, be they schoolboys (8 wickets for 2 runs and 7 for 11 stick in the memory) or, better still, the teachers in the annual staff match. This, I gather, used to be a friendly affair until I turned up, and I relished the chance to settle a few scores on behalf of my friends – for whom I was the equivalent of a hired assassin – as well as for myself.

When things do not go our way, it is easy to assume the so called moral authority of being a 'victim' in sport, then it is easy to explain away professional failures, just like Agnew with Boycott. It is more difficult to embrace the resilience of individual choice and rational expectations. We cannot expect to not deal with people who do not behave as we wish, and we cannot always have the outcome we desire. Unrealistic ideas of entitlement, particularly from others, can set you up for perpetual disappointments. We do after all have to survive in a world where hypocrisy and injustice infects everything.

You stand up to bullies, you accept the good fight, but you also need to accept that, as Clint Eastwood's character in 'Unforgiven' snarls before shooting Gene Hackman's Sherriff character, "Deserve ain't got nothing to do with it". That is, there should be no entitled expectation of final victory or justice.

Like life sport is not fair, it can be ruthless, bad things can happen to good people, those who deserve to get there might not get rewarded, bad decisions happen when they should not, arguments occur, tempers lost, lines can be crossed. Simultaneously, it can be compassionate, empathetic, good things can occur, you can be rewarded, good decisions happen, boundaries are respected. Like human beings it is contradictory, precisely because we are human beings. Sport like civic life is among the most highly regulated and administered activities on the planet, yet it unrealistic to expect that everyone will behave to some ideal standard, yet alone Agnew's edict.

When my 5 year old son asked me about Phil Hughes it was heart wrenching to explain what had happened. But I also explained to my son about the idea of risk and that neither Hughes' nor the unfortunate bowler had done anything wrong, he was wearing a helmet, he was wearing the protection, and it was a terrible accident. So we must respect the cricket ball, as we must respect risk. There are few guarantees that are absolute, so we must attempt to be resilient.

As a child, and in the days well before helmets and children being placed in mothballs, I asked my wonderful primary school cricket coach Wayne Buckley what to do when afraid the bowler will hit you with the ball, 'Son', he emphasized, 'that is why you have a cricket bat'. What someone else chooses to do to us, or say to us, whether they are honorable in some antiquated notion like Agnew, well that is for them to deal with. They live with their own choices and outcomes. The outcome might not be the one we hope for, but if we do not give up we are winning a different type of victory - one that does not require validation.

That the Australians in particular, and Indians, were even able to play this recent Test series in the circumstances was a sign of resilience. There was nothing said on the field that was very controversial, some silly chest beating and verbal theatrics. Most players on either team said next to nothing to each other as far as I saw, a few players, as is always the case, happy to engage in verbal battle.

This had nothing to do with the death of Phil Hughes.

Unlike Agnew, the Australians and Indians were there to play top level international cricket. It was a magnificent series but there could only be one winner this time. The Indians will already be plotting how they can put this same Australian side to the cricketing sword (again) next time it tours India. That is why they are among the very best players anywhere in the world, this is also why they are very likely to be favorites at home next time they play Australia.

We might say that winning and successful output is not everything, I agree, but at a professional level it is often the very measure of your individual worth to an organization. Sad but true. The gulf between what we teach our little children to value, and what types of behavior can be rewarded as adults, is often a chasm. We might consider the Lance Armstrong saga here, but does anyone doubt that some in our society manipulate the system and have many more opportunities to sidestep personal responsibility than others? No. Would anyone think that Rupert Murdoch is just an ordinary US citizen no more or less significant than some Mr.Smith from Idaho? No.

Therefore, we have an obligation to try as hard as possible to not give up, most importantly, on ourselves, in the face of adversity, acknowledge our own occasional hypocrisy, and try to be resilient. Dealing with the harsh disappointment of reality in something often as trivial as sport is maybe more significant than we appreciate. Ask the magnificent Clive Lloyd how he and the West Indians eventually dealt with their absolutely devastating 5-1 drubbing at the hands of the Australians in 1975-1976? Then go and ask the Australian sides that faced them from the late 1970s to the early 1990s about the experience! The Windies knew they represented something more than a mere cricket team for its Caribbean fans.

We must try to learn more from adversity and failure than anything else in my opinion. We will after all experience more of this than the opposite. If we permanently deflate into nothingness when we fail, or when we endure injustice, encounter people who lie and deceive, fail to overcome a challenge, how can we ever seek real happiness? We can learn to see defeat as a temporary setback, and like Lloyd's Windies hand them their 'arses' fair and square (in a metaphorically sense of course!) when the next opportunity arrives.

Boycott was a fulltime 'professional' willing to live and die by what he could achieve on a cricket field. Agnew no doubt could have pursued a number of employment options, cricket might have been hard work, but is was his pleasure. His failure as an international cricketer has not diminished his well remunerated commentating opportunities. Yet he was still aggrieved enough to recall an event before the advent of fire where he thought that he had Boycott 'out'. In Agnew's world Boycott is still a cheat, and still a bastard for not behaving the way Agnew thought he should have.

In his long first class career Agnew would no doubt have been awarded some wickets from bad umpiring decisions. I am sure there were times that Boycott was given out in a match when he actually wasn't, but with one hundred first class centuries and over 8,000 runs for England he more than made up for whatever setbacks he encountered and made the most of the life opportunities he experienced because of his success as a cricketer. That is in the end why someone like Boycott loved or loathed will always be famous for playing international cricket, while Agnew, will always be known as someone writing about what others have done playing international cricket.

Bringing Hughes' death into his rather weak argument against the Australians (and it was only the Australians he singled out), was crass and opportunistic of Agnew. Certainly, if he wishes to talk about bad behavior and sledging, fine, be specific, name the actual players all over the world, do not generalize. The death of Hughes has nothing at all to do with what people do or say on a cricket field, or anywhere else, nor does it obligate anyone connected to Hughes to behave as Agnew believes they should. Agnew is not only being a hypocrite, but is being deeply disrespectful to the Hughes' family, his many friends in the Australian cricket team and around the world still mourning his untimely death.

Agnew's view is an absolutist and utopian view based on highly selective and unrealistic cultural biases. Worst of all, he has quite egregiously linked (intentionally or not) the freakish accident of Hughes' death after being struck by a bouncer to some particularly Australian brand of unnecessarily aggressive cricket.

This is a travesty.

There was no malice behind that ball, no aggressive sledging or chest beating immediately prior to it, young Sean Abbott has probably sent down thousands of bouncers in his cricketing life, the shot Hughes's missed he had probably played thousands of times and watched it go for four after smashing it, he was well set and headed toward yet another century. The ball hit him in the most extraordinarily unlucky spot even though he was wearing the full protective kit.

Sean was a former New South Wales team mate and a friend of Phil Hughes. Neither did anything wrong, but it was quite wrong for Agnew opportunistically to suggest there was any link between Hughes' and so called sledging on the cricket field. He simply does not have either the right, or the moral authority to make such an arrogant generalized assessment. Perhaps he should reflect on the obvious glee he seemed to take 'terrorizing' opponents as a fast bowler when he was a young man. For Agnew to do this so close to the death of Hughes and immediately prior to a limited overs series where the Australians play England and India, and later co-host a World Cup with New Zealand where it will play England first, is very unwise. If there was not enough motivation for the Australians to want to ruthlessly maul England again, Agnew's arrogance has provided just that bit more.