I didn't mean to leave the 1-day series untouched: I had a whole spiel worked out in my head that culminated in baptising Shahid Afridi "The Organoleptic Shock". Plus a bit of a whinge that no one was making any connection between the limpness of that series and the abandonment of the round-robin format. You have the two coolest, craziest, strike-a-posiest cricket-playing nations in your backyard and you don’t make them play each other? That’s no way to run a ratings show.
Then after that, well I don’t have cable television, and – like the proverbial tree in the forest spliced with some personal solipsism – when I can’t see or hear the Australian cricket team through my television screen or radio transmitter I have trouble believing that they actually exist.
But in the depth of winter some distant rumblings of the summer game to come…
Exhibit A:
I saw my first Ashes television ad today, with the footage of Ashes cricket from different eras spliced together, and thought it did a good job of doing what it is supposed to do, which is generate a little excitement.
I appreciate it partly in contrast to last time. In 2006 there was a disturbing "underwhelm by all means" trend in advertising. NSW CityRail launched a big PR campaign with a series of billboards carrying words to the effect of: "CityRail. There's still a few problems, but we're working on it."
Then the launch of the campaign for the 2006-2007 Ashes series. Not that that series really needed to be advertised. Perhaps the powers that be decided that such was the level of anticipation, so goaded and girded and geared up for a grudge match was the Australian public, that the only responsible thing to do was to throw out a giant muffler in the form of the damp and confusing slogan:
The Ashes, a sporting contest over 100 years old and only interrupted by world wars, is definitely on. Oh good. No world war on the cards then.
Let's say they meant "on" in that belligerent sense: “You’re on, mate”. In which case, an instructive example of how qualifiers can weaken. Someone somewhere added a "definitely" to IT'S ON ('nuff said) and got: "Ooooooh, now you've made me really mad!"
Exhibit B:
Continuing the poorly-chosen-words theme, the SMH ran a cricket-focused front page picture and story the other week about Usman Khawaja's selection for the Australian Test Squad. With the headline: "Accomplished, calm, elegant - and a Muslim in Test squad". So let me get this straight: accomplished, calm, elegant… and now you're trying to tell me MUSLIM? And in a TEST SQUAD??!! Get out of here!!!
After reading the story, the headline was maybe a stab at the idea that there are a lot of other things as notable and interesting about Usman as the fact that he's a Muslim: the latter fact isn't really the story here. Which would have been a more convincing line if they hadn't made that the story there.
Exhibit C:
Channel 9 are showing some live cricket tonight: maybe those rumblings I hear as I put my ear to the cold winter ground are things that happen (deep breath now) on the other side (nnnnnh)… of… the world (whoo!). Dead rubber no. 2 of a 5-match ODI series against England, right? See, I do know something. I may have a look. I’m worried I won’t recognise any of them.
PS. Howard’s rejection. Gee, no one saw that coming. It seems the ACB/CA has spent the last 30 years painstakingly replacing, straw by straw, the stuffing Mr Packer knocked out of their shirts all those years ago. If they only had a brain.
