Aussie media slams Ponting and Co for mocking media session held in Mumbai

Aussie media slams Ponting's pack for mockery of open media session held in mumbai recently

Aussie media slams Ponting and Co for mocking media session held in Mumbai

Aussie media slams Ponting's pack for mockery of open media session held in mumbai recently

Members of the Australian media have slammed the Australian team for making a mockery of an open media session held in Mumbai on October 22.

The team had a competition among themselves as to who will dish out the most cliches in an answer.

"The boys tried to have a bit of fun with the media day. As I'm sure you can imagine with so many interviews you tend to get asked the same question over and over and we had a bit of a competition running to see who could work the most sporting cliches into one answer," coach Tim Nielsen wrote on his Cricket Australia blog.

Greg Baum, one of Australia's most respected columnists was not impressed. Baum writes for The Age in
Melbourne.

"That was a bit of a wrong-'un that the Australian cricket team sent down to the media in India. Whatever Australia was up to that day, it just wasn't cricket," wrote Baum.

Newcomer Shaun Marsh won the competition, something which prompted Nielsen to write: "Surprisingly big SOS (Shaun) Marsh won the competition with a particularly cliche filled interview with one Indian journalist he just took it one day at a time and kept his eye very firmly on the ball!" SOS is an abbreviation of Marsh's nickname Son of Swampy (father and former Australia batsman Geoff's nickname).

Columnist Baum brought up the fact how the Aussies have their fun in the very same country which contributes to their livelihood: "There's the one about 'welcoming the chance to experience new countries and engage with and learn from different cultures'. But for the Indian journalists, in India, any old tripe will do. This is India, where most of Australia's cricketers now make a royal living, India, where millions of fans dwell on every word, India, where it is OK to take, but not give." The Melbourne-based journo didn't spare the Aussie cricket administrators too: "There's the one about how they 'value all their stakeholder relationships, especially with their media partners'. How they must piss themselves laughing about that in the changeroom."

"Australians' cliche-ridden interviews to Indian press are just not cricket," screamed a headline in the Sydney Morning Herald whose writer Will Swanton took Shaun Marsh to task. "Bravo, Shaun Marsh! How about an SOS for some decency in a foreign country where hundreds of millions of people worship Australian cricketers and hang on to their every word?," Swanton wrote.

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