Relax, Australia: confected outrage about Sam Konstas hides the real issue

Australia: an apology. Earlier this week I wrote an article that compared one of that nation’s brightest sporting stars to a comedic figure with a short-lived pop celebrity lifespan, causing outrage among Australia’s media and elite cricketers. It was cheap, disrespectful and unfair. It is now time to make amends. Raygun, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I compared you to Sam Konstas.

Joke! Just a joke. It was all just a joke. In fact, it was a single line buried 1,400 words into a 1,700-word article about the future of Test cricket. Referring to the fevered public reaction to Konstas scoring an unorthodox half-century on his Test debut, I wrote: “There was a sense during the India series of Konstas being installed as a cricketing version of Raygun the Olympic breakdancer, a fun, gimmicky approximation of the real thing.”

This remark appears to have upset, if not the Australian people, who didn’t notice, then certain Australian media outlets. Fox Sports kicked off with an article headlined “Cricket’s Raygun” Poms in Bizarre Meltdown over Konstas. At which point the machine clicked into gear.

Channel Seven TV News broadcast a scandalised bulletin warning of “a pre-Ashes attack on Sam Konstas from the English media who have labelled him the Raygun of cricket”. This includes a section where the offending text is read out in a weird drawling AI voice, making it quite clear that what we’re dealing with here is some kind of fey, sneering English robo-eunuch.

Konstas-as-Raygun was put to Marnus Labuschagne, who does, to be fair, seem utterly horrified in the clip. “I mean … Jeez … That’s… The England media,” Marnus says, looking like someone has just told him the English media are mutilating dogs. Before long actual Australian Test captain Pat Cummins is being asked his opinion on this incendiary line. “I don’t even know where to take that … I don’t really care what the UK thinks,” Cummins shrugs, looking as ever, like the handsome and kindly captain of the intergalactic space fleet.

Naturally David Warner waded in next, as David Warner must wade in where wading in is any kind of feasible option (“Let It Go: Warner Fires Back at UK Press”). Nathan Lyon was grilled on breakfast TV by a host who seemed so personally disgusted by this thing she hadn’t read she was literally on the verge of vomiting all over Lyon’s shoes.

View image in fullscreen Sam Konstas had the confidence and nerve to take on India’s great fast bowler, Jasprit Bumrah, with bat and words, despite being only 19. Photograph: Mark Baker/AP

Finally, and insanely, the entire not-actually-a-thing was put to Konstas himself. This was reported in an article sub-titled “Konstas embraces Raygun comparison”, raising the tantalising prospect that it’s just his nickname now, he’s going by K-Gun, but was in reality him saying yeah I’ll take that but I don’t listen to the media. Which, as this chain of events shows, is probably a good idea.

Where does it go from here? Sadly no one has got a reaction quote from the real star (FURIOUS Raygun issues dance-off challenge to robo-eunuch Brit). Joe Root doing Raygun stump mic sledges in Perth might be the endgame. Konstas scoring an Ashes hundred and doing the kangaroo pose. Konstas scoring a hundred off 367 balls and celebrating with the helicopter-arms-into-windmill, thereby winning all sport for ever.

In reality it is probably worth accepting this is all based on a key misunderstanding. Anyone with half a brain will have noticed the Raygun line refers not to Konstas himself, but to the overblown public reaction to his debut, and the relevance of that to the state of Test cricket. Which, whisper it, pretty much destroys the basic premise at the first hurdle. Although happily most of those involved appear to fall comfortably below that half-a-brain threshold so no damage done.

Even on these misconstrued terms it is still a bad comparison. Konstas is not some crack-pipe cricketer of the new school. He got to this level as a more classical player, scoring heavily and steadily in the Sheffield Shield. The ramps and flicks were logical, a response to the extreme pressure applied by Jasprit Bumrah.

They showed astonishing nerve and skill. He’s 19 years old. My oldest son is the same age, loves cricket, gets Konstas, thinks he’s amazing. Imagine having the maturity to play like this at that age. And yes at this point the whole war of words shemozzle falls apart because, sorry, sorry, I actually just really want Konstas to do well, to be great at this, as you always do with young hyper-talented players.

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The bit in that article that annoyed more discerning people was the next sentence, which suggested there was a chance Konstas might have already got his highest Test score. The coda to this, and it is an irritable dad-ish kind of coda, is: if he carries on facing down the new ball like a drunken under-gardener swatting midges with a polo mallet.

Which he won’t surely. There are structural pressures on young cricketers to carry a certain kind of energy. Let’s face it, doing that to an Indian attack is evidence of an incredible advanced pension plan in action. But selfishly I want him to do well in the right way, the way I crave, and I suspect this is Australia’s issue too. I want him to play modern cricket in the pre-modern format, but also to be just like Ricky Ponting, to pile on mercilessly high-class Test runs, because then Test cricket has a brilliant teenager too, and Test cricket gets to thrive and survive a bit longer.

“The war of words has been LAUNCHED,” the Channel 7 report concluded, in a thrilling nuclear emergency style voice. But this isn’t really the war that counts. England and Australia are locked in the same death embrace over Tests, helping to squeeze everyone else out while simultaneously keeping this flame alive, one of the last lighted windows in the castle. Don’t leave us behind, Sam. Look, we’ve set the table. Indulge us, just for a while, in our strange old-world shapes and ghosts.

Otherwise this was only incidentally a good comparison. Good because the Channel 7 news report did a split-screen of Raygun dancing set next to Konstas reverse-flick-ramping Bumrah, and it did actually look quite similar. Good because Australia gushing over recklessly aggressive Test batting is arguably an offensive cultural appropriation of the Bazball form, analogous to Raygun’s appropriation of breakdancing’s street origins.

Mainly it was good because even that misapprehension speaks to something Australia is fascinatingly sensitive about. Raygun always seemed too divisive a figure at Paris 2024. Rather than laughing along at this have-a-go figure, some Australians appeared genuinely embarrassed, as though the world might assume they actually thought this was good, a sign of cultural isolation, like not knowing what chimichurri is or not having any good bands apart from Men At Work and INXS.

Australian sport, Australian winning, the Australian sense of itself didn’t get where it is today by going to the Olympics and acting like a flamin’ galah professor impostor in front of the other big boys.

Mainly it was a reminder that Australia is an otherworldly place at times, this vast and lovely paradise island floating out there in the Pacific, facing the east but tending also to its own 200-year identity.

And of course tough-talking sports columnist Robert “Crash” Craddock of the Courier-Mail was right this week. Australia, like Sam Konstas, is always in the Poms’ heads. It looks like a version of both the past and the future, but warmer, cleaner, less fixed. Of course we’re a bit obsessed.

Mainly this is all good because it shows people are interested. Even misguided, cartoonish energy is energy. Plus, it means they’re going to have to pick him now. Back it up chaps. Roll out the K-Gun.

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