Aggressive cricket. In your face cricket. Chirping away general bullying cricket. Many seem to think that it’s just not cricket, which is rather strange and it’s no surprise the Michael Clarke will continue to play a tough style of cricket. In fact, it’s pretty obvious that it’s the only way for Australia to continue to try reach the heights of the past few decades.

But there’s no need or point to single them out as being different to any other test playing cricket side, or that they are doing something crazy. Against England, it was a clear tactic to ruffle a few feathers. I mean it’s the Ashes folks, all other cricketing nonsense aside and thanks to a lack of any sort of test match cricket competition, the Ashes is the biggest, baddest cricketing event we have. The Aussies were coming off a bit of a touch up at the hands of the Poms, so all power to Australia for finding a way to win.

This notion that Michael Clarke is an evil wee chap is rather puzzling. Sure, he’ll do whatever it takes to win which includes hurting people and mentally dismantling them but he is always there to shake an opponent’s hand. The respect shown by Clarke as Pakistan returned serve was admirable and that my friends is the true spirit of cricket. Cricket is about being all lovely dovey, no the gentleman’s game is about competing as hard as you can and shaking hands afterwards ... as is all sport.

Clarke even gave Steve Smith a bit of a reality check against Pakistan. Smith was chirping away and Clarke appeared to basically tell him to shut up. Clarke isn’t dumb and has grown up as a part of an Australian side who were nothing but bullies, no one questioned their methods did they? Clarke has some great weapons at his disposal, especially with Mitchell Johnson. Don’t expect that to ease up as their pace attack is full to the brim of young aggressive quicks such as Pat Cummins. So my question to you is how are you going to tell your bowler who can bowl 150km/h to bowl? Short stuff, with an aim to fulfill the batsmen with a sense of ummm, shitting their pants would be the go.

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The thing that I struggle to understand is that the Australians aren’t and haven’t really done anything too different from what other captains and countries do. I love Brendon McCullum as our captain because he’s aggressive, while not as bully-like as Clarke, he is a lot more assertive and leads the team as such. Graeme Smith was no different and even though he has retired, you’d be a fool to think that South Africa would ease their foot off the sledge/bullying pedal. You could make a pretty strong case that Alistair Cook and England aren’t in the best of form as a team because they simply aren’t aggressive enough. Passive field positions, a passive style of play and when they try to get aggressive, we’ve found that they usually do so towards each other.

Cricket is a game that is played within a set of ideals and morals and for me this includes playing with an aggressive nature. We all know that sledging is a great part of cricket, it’s the only sport that really lends itself to a good chirp, but for so long we’ve celebrated the bowlers who can cause damage with thunderbolts. Aggression is a tool and Australia not only need that tool but they are the best users of that tool.

They are at a stage where they simply don’t have the talent that they used to, but they will never loose the attitude, that bloody Australian attitude. It makes cricket that much more enjoyable and sure, there’s a line but when you are competing that line becomes blurred. All power to the Aussies and to anyone else who wants to play an aggressive, maybe overly aggressive brand of cricket. I love it.