There has been no shortage of articles this past week after India's thrilling victory over Australia at the Gabba. Everyone from cab drivers to columnists seems to have an opinion on what went wrong and how to fix the problem.
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For Shane Warne, "there will be a big fallout" from this. Others have called for Tim Paine, Matthew Wade and other substandard performers to step down. So far, however, a diplomatic perspective has been absent.
I do not mean the diplomacy of governments - that is, the Savile Row-suited, official-passport-wielding professional diplomats that represent our nation abroad - but a sports diplomacy perspective. Meaning how we, the sporting public, relate to what is essentially our team, and how outsiders see Australia through the actions, behaviour and conduct of our team, just as how we see India through their team.
In short, what does the Australian cricket team represent to us, and others?
The contrast between the diplomacy of both countries during the recent series was stark. The racist behaviour of the crowd on the third day of the SCG Test and Indian pacer Mohammed Siraj's courage to stop the game and call it out; the silent, monastic defence of Ashwin and Vihari in the same Test under immense pressure in the face of a pathetic sledging attack.
Ashwin was called a "dickhead" by Paine, threated with "a broken rib" by a still unknown Australian fielder, and appeared to have his crease scuffed by Steve Smith.
At the end of the series, a joyous, happy Indian team couldn't have been more juxtaposed with a red-faced, exhausted and devastated Australian team.
In a game of very fine margins, it was the diplomatic stoicism of the Indians that won the game, for it is far easier to defeat a ferocious interlocutor when one is calm, in control and not easily rattled.
In the recent Test, it was clear who were the warriors, and who were the diplomats.
What Langer, Paine and co - we'll get to their masters in a second - fail to realise, and through no fault of their own, is that they are diplomats in tracksuits; national representatives that are no different from the thousands of diplomats that represent us at our 118 posts abroad.
The trouble is our sportspeople - despite being far more visible than our diplomats - have had zero diplomatic training.
They have no education in how to negotiate with a more graceful or terrifying opponent on and off the pitch, or how to minimise friction conducive to positive national outcomes (including winning), or even how to communicate more effectively, verbally and non-verbally.
Media training is no substitute for diplomacy, which is an "art form", to use the words of Sir Harold Nicolson.
Empathy is a key skill of the diplomat, and the blame for the Australian team's undiplomatic behaviour should not rest at the players' or the captain's feet. If sledging is a tactic, then it has to be sanctioned and coached, Mr Langer.
No doubt the players are suffocated by a bewildering array of sporting cotton wool - from psychologists, to marketing numpties, to the corporate creeps that somehow seem to hold the power over the most important and precious aspects of sport: the players. And, also in no doubt, the organisational culture of Cricket Australia is predicated on winning at all costs, a sporting dictum that is about as wise as turning up to a Karachi railway station wearing a Sachin Tendulkar jersey.
Just as with 20th-century diplomacy, Cricket Australia acts like some sort of cultish gatekeeper between us and our cricket team. And to be clear, they are very much our cricket team, both in public funding and cultural investment.
Like a ministry of foreign affairs, one cannot simply walk into Cricket Australia and demand to speak to someone about this great national embarrassment. Crises are handled in-house, and entirely in secret.
In the 21st century, with its emphasis on openness, transparency and progressive change, Cricket Australia is a cloistered, cobwebbed world alien to most.
That the sporting public is so estranged from our team is quite bizarre.
Traditional diplomacy - the passport-wielding type - faced exactly the same criticisms in the 1990s. The public was utterly estranged from its diplomats, no one knew what the heck these people did, and - in time - diplomacy was faced with a choice: reform or die.
Innovative experiments in public, cultural and sports diplomacy showed a willingness to listen, learn and adapt. Recruitment policies were changed to include more women, First Australians and less-advantaged people. And, in order to tap into the best of Australian ideas, partnerships were established with universities, businesses, think tanks and many others.
Australian diplomacy went from something a small, elite group of distant people did to a national effort, what is called the National Diplomatic System.
Cricket Australia would do well to remember that it is the nation's team, the people's team. They represent us, not those juicy sponsorship deals.
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When the world sees Tim Paine calling a brave sportsman that gave up five months of his life to visit our shores and play a game to entertain us a "dickhead", they see him as speaking on our behalf.
He makes us all, to borrow a term, look like dickheads.
It further embeds a negative perception of Australia in the minds of 1.4 billion Indians (or, in trade terms, you just pissed off 1.4 billion potential customers). This is the power of sport in the 21st century.
All would do well to remember that the pandemic has dramatically changed not only the world but our relationship with sport, especially its role, power and responsibility off the pitch.
There are green shoots in Cricket Australia, such as the reconciliation plan and the good work it has done for sporting equality. All of this can, however, be undone by some dreadful diplomacy.
It's not enough to say "we'll learn from it", or "there's no problem here," or "nothing to see here."
The problems the cabbies and columnists are talking about are endemic, cultural and will lead to more problems in the future. They will not be solved by more introspection but by throwing open the doors to a secret world that should be open to far greater public scrutiny.
Good diplomats have a "moral obligation to humanity".
Our cricketers would do well to "grow up", in the words of Kerry O'Keefe, drop the dickhead behaviour, and learn how to represent their country with diplomacy and not degradation.
The problem is easily sorted: give our diplomats in tracksuits some training in diplomacy.
The world is watching, and they don't like what they see.
- Dr Stuart Murray is an associate professor in international relations at Bond University, who has advised DFAT and the Australian Grand Prix Corporation on sports diplomacy. Matthew Barnard is a PhD student researching Australian culture and sport at Bond University and a 2018 Commonwealth Games diver for Australia.
