ODI Retrospective floor sweepings

I gather there's a World Cup on, but free-to-air me wouldn't know about that yet and dammit if I don't still have baggage from the post-Test part of the summer. I know, such old news. Who do I think I am? A procrastinating obsessive is who: I have Thoughts that won't go away but which take me an age to get out. Some truths are in any case perennial.

1. There were days in January when you couldn't open a paper without a Hallelujah chorus issuing forth hailing the coming of Shane Watson, saviour of the honour of the Australian team and oil on the troubled waters of Ipswich. Congratulations Watto, your 5-year plan to become Freddie Flintoff is complete, you are our very own messianic all-rounder. I wish I liked you more. I accept you are MVP but could you ever be my BFF? (Hint: lose the WTF of the run-outs.)

2. I am glad Shaun Marsh distinguished himself with the bat, because it has given me a mental image of him to replace his showing as the Sexy Gardener in the 2009 Men of Cricket calendar:




Those are impressively air-brushed abs, but they don't quite divert my eyes from that... that "distressed" patch on the crotch. What am I supposed to infer from this jeans lesion? That the Lady of the Manor has been clawing at your groin? That there has been a constant Chafing of your Engorgement? That you have a phallus dentata? Like I said, there were some mental images that needed dispelling.

3. Speaking of images, is there a trope Peter Roebuck is more fond of than the Stages of Man? The passage from boy to man, obviously, but also coming to terms with the onset of decrepitude. There is no action that cannot be analysed as a negotiation of life's great Journey. Michael Clarke at the crease trying to strike a balance between defence and attack? "He has to find his Own Path."

4. This season has been a relatively lean one for look-alikes. Like everyone else I have been charmed by Brett Lee's return, and his boy-scout derring-do. And so:

Post-scripts to the aestas horribilis

A 3-week lie-down is probably about right after the aestas horribilis that was. But now there are a few relics from the summer that need themselves to be put to bed.

RIP No. 1: Warnie*

The television show, of course. The saddest thing about it’s last scheduled appearance was that all through the replacement programming (Two-and-a-Half Men repeats, don't ask me how I know), they kept the original Warnie-heavy advertising for hair replacement and fast food (I swear it was on in the next room and I overheard it, don't ask me how I know), and Warnie even had to pop up in an inserted segment to announce the winner of a competition attached to the show.

It was a show that was difficult to watch, like poor Warnie had become his own bunny frozen in the headlights. He is a great naif (my uncle compared him to Candide, which just shows you the sort of stock I am from), but I don't know that that's a great asset as an interviewer, unless you actually are a child, or actually Norman Gunston. The presence of Alicia Goring only showed up how much poise, smarts and naturalness was lacking everywhere else.

* I used to spell this "Warney", and one of the problems with that was that it could drift into adjectival territory – "I'm feeling a bit Warney" – and then you have Warne himself being Warney rather than being the model for other things being Warney, and hence a parody of himself, which... might not be so far from the truth sometimes.

RIP No. 2: Marcus North

Poor old Marcus North. In a summer when No. One. Could. Stop. Talking. about the decisions of the selectors and all possible permutations of the Australian team line-up, Marcus North was dropped and would appear to be still falling in a bottomless vacuum, such has been the absence of resonance, ripple or even screaming. The universe just reformed itself around the gap and put on a blank face. I never loved Marcus North but nevertheless, ouch.

RIP No. 3: The Series

It has taken me 20 years of using email to work out how to use message filters. Which means all my Australian Cricket Family newsletters now go into one folder where they can accumulate unopened all together rather than scattered unopened through my Inbox. This has made it possible to have a run-down of the summer through a clutch of newsletter headlines like The Complete Works of Shakespeare in One Hour.

Now, I have tried everything I can think of in terms of file formats and resolution to make this screen grab legible when pasted here. It’s not, but it should be when it’s clicked on so it opens in its own window.

So do that, and let that be the end of the matter.