Paul Lewis: The boo boys are roo boys

One of the bigger laughs recently was the Australian cricket team's outrage at crowd behaviour, missiles and security guards.

Now no one condones yobbo behaviour or throwing anything (even choice language) at players in any sport. Such people are generally not what the cricket fraternity calls "cricket people" but are those there to yob it up, have a drink and generally party on.

As far as I am concerned, they can take the mindless drop-kicks who throw things at cricketers and send them through the nearest recycling plant where they can come back as aluminium pull-tabs on cans. At least they'd be useful and still have a role to play in doing what they like best.

OK, that's all the disclaimers out of the way. Let's cut to the chase. They started it.

The Australians are from the same country that introduced, in this part of the world, the wonderful habit of booing opposition fielders when they stopped a boundary.

I think it was the late 80s when I first noticed Australian crowds - I think at the MCG - booing New Zealand fielders.

The booing or, as I prefer to call it, emissions of gas from the mouths of morons, grew to the extent that Australian crowds began barracking rugby kickers as they addressed a kick at goal. New Zealand is often behind Australia in such things and, sure enough, we imported the habits and now some Kiwis ape their cretinous cousins.

Who turned sledging into an art form? Gee, that'd be those Aussies. Who said they liked to hit the batsman? That'd be fast bowler Jeff Thomson. Who nominates his bunny every tour? I could go on ...

New Zealand cricketers have been pelted with fruit when they fielded on the boundary in India and Pakistan. All Blacks from the 1970s can tell stories about being pelted with naartjes, the Afrikaans word for mandarins.

Sometimes - imagine this - New Zealand cricketers get the razz from Australian crowds.

No, sportspeople getting the raspberry - or naartje - from hostile crowds is nothing new.

Peter Cook, the famed comic and half of the legendary duo with Dudley Moore, once told how he - a fervent Tottenham Hotspur fan - was accosted by some Spurs fans intent on doing mischief. Cook - even though well-known and protesting his support for Spurs - still got a kicking and decided to lie down quietly through it.

Soccer violence, riots, ice hockey crowds who erupt in fights, NBA basketballers and baseball stars who lose it after being baited by crowds - nothing new there.

Aussie cricketers can't have it both ways. They can't help to breed insidious infiltration of common sense and good manners, then complain when it hits them on the back of the neck or if a security guard alleges masturbation.

We are all to blame for the descent in crowd behaviour - players, fans and the media. In cricket, one-dayers are essential for the dollars and are promoted with an emphasis on national rivalry, personal rivalries and every rivalry under the sun to drag in those who want a gladiatorial contest with gladiatorial fervour while drinking with gladiatorial gusto.

So we can hardly complain when passions rise up and bite us.

I suppose complaining about it does make some people aware and may hinder repeats.

But I wonder if the man I heard on Radiosport thinks so? He told a story of how a group of Aussie supporters in Wellington was talked to briefly by one of the Australian players at a key part of the match. One of those supporters scaled the fence shortly afterwards, ran onto the playing surface and held up the game. The caller's inference was that this may have been deliberate by the Australians.

Can't see it. Too conspiracy theory for me. The Aussies wouldn't enlist the support of a crowd to further their ends in a game of cricket. Would they?

- HERALD ON SUNDAY