Right: Keith Miller is often spoken of as one of Australia's greatest cricket players. He was once asked in an interview about the pressure a test cricketer could feel. Miller, a former Battle of Britain bomber pilot, replied that "pressure is a Messerschmitt up your a**e, playing cricket is not".
Background information (The following is an abbreviated version of the material contained in the Wikipedia entry titled 'Sledging (cricket)'. The full text of this entry can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sledging_%28cricket%29#In_popular_culture Sledging is a term used in cricket to describe the practice of players seeking to gain an advantage by insulting or verbally intimidating the opposing player. The purpose is to try to weaken the opponent's concentration, thereby causing him to make mistakes or underperform. It can be effective because the batsman stands within hearing range of the bowler and certain close fielders; and vice-versa. The insults may be direct or feature in conversations among fielders designed to be overheard. There is debate in the cricketing world as to whether this constitutes poor sportsmanship or good-humoured banter. Sledging is often mistaken for abuse, and whilst comments aimed as sledges do sometimes cross the line into personal abuse, this is not usually the case. Sledging is usually simply an often humorous, sometimes insulting attempt at distraction. Former Australian captain Steve Waugh referred to the practice as 'mental disintegration'. There is disagreement over the exact derivation of the term; however, it is believed to have first been used in Australia. Although the practice of trying to distract opponents by verbal abuse is common to virtually all sports, "sledging" per se relates to cricket. Other sports sometimes have their own terminology for verbal abuse: for example, basketball calls it trash talk and in ice hockey it is called chirping. An exception is Gaelic football. Down Gaelic footballer Brendan Coulter has admitted to being targeted by sledging while on the field of play. Verbal intimidation has long been an integral part of boxing, in which during the preliminaries (such as weigh-ins) and the fights themselves the boxers frequently verbally abuse each other and threaten dire consequences. This is usually intended to hype up the fight to attract more media attention and bigger crowds. Muhammad Ali was renowned for loudly rapping in which round he would despatch his opponent, but the most famous sledging was his more serious "What's my name?" roared at his fallen opponent, who had dared still call him Cassius Clay. |