. Arguably no figure in any sport has understood how to get under an opposition’s skin with quite the same persistent mordacity as the former prime minister in the ’90s. “How you going over there, Curly? Old darling?” he goaded Alexander Downer during question time in February 1995. When the Liberal Party leader reacted in exactly the way Keating had hoped , he simply mimed reeling in the imaginary fish he’d just caught.
Most of the evidence for either side is only anecdotal. Anything beyond that would constitute a rigorous, perhaps impossible, undertaking for social scientists.
The counterpoint to the sledging enthusiasts is that the current Test contingent are a group of veritable nice guys and still enjoying a run of happy results under a clean-skin skipper in Pat Cummins. “We’d be playing at good old Marathon Stadium back in the day, and I’d be having to kick to win the game or to go eight points up – this is back in the glory days, we’d have 28,000 there,” Johns told. “Finchy would run on with these little bucked teeth, and he’d give me the sand and go ‘you won’t kick this’.