Cricket in the age of mechanical reproduction

Jim Maxwell did an Ozzy Osbourne on Monday and bit the head off poor Tony Harrison, Chair of Cricket Tasmania, for not getting more people to Bellerive. Sometimes you can sort of hear Jim Maxwell steam up and froth a bit, and it’s often about ground-attendance related things (killjoy security staff is another red rag). Jim, even if I completely agreed with you, it’s not okay to froth at people, especially a guest, and remember, as Richie says, that you are also in my loungeroom.

But in any case, I’m a bit tired of this conversation.

In this particular case:

1. Tony was right. As he kept saying, his number-one problem was scheduling. This is a time of year when you tell good friends that you don’t know when you’ll see them next because there’s so much stuff on and stuff to do in the lead-up to Christmas. Yes, I could enrol in a time-management course. You ask too much. I do however think that Cricket Tasmania should have wheeled Ricky out on a non-working day and I hope they promoted it properly.

2. Kerry, watching all five days of cricket at the ground is a “tradition” in England because they desperately need the vitamin D.

More generally:

1. Attendance at the ground is no gauge of interest in Test cricket. Test cricket is broadcast on television. Plenty of people must be interested in watching it there or it could not be sold for high prices to commercial television.

2. If people anywhere prefer to watch it at home it is not because they’re soft anti-social cocooners. You get a lot more insight into the game and the theatre of what’s happening in the middle from television coverage. It offers more to both the aficionado and the novice. Being at the ground is a different kind of theatre, about pilgrimage and rituals and sacred ground and being part of a mass of humanity. It has a lot of ‘aura’, as Benjamin would say, but most of that is not about the actual game, it’s about wearing watermelons on your head with your friends, literally and figuratively speaking. When all that aura converges on a big game moment you have an unforgettable experience that’s all about the game, but those moments are only what they are because most days and most games are not like that.

3. Cricket at home is its own ritual. An early cricket memory is my family visiting an uncle and aunt in Mornington in the 70s, and us all sitting together quietly in a darkened room with the hot sun outside and a bright black and white TV set in the middle. We didn’t go there to watch the cricket, it just happened. I have no memory of what was happening on the screen and wouldn’t have understood it at the time anyway, but I remember well the quiet and concentration and sharing something with people we only saw once a year. I remember the aura, the “field of subtle, luminous radiation surrounding a person or object”.

“Cricket” also means a backdrop to summer time and down time, the murmur of the radio or television through the house as you wander about your business, dipping in and out of it, checking up on it from time to time if you’re out and about. It surrounds you like the weather, it’s a mood that fades in and out, it’s a constant but undemanding companion. That’s Test cricket, that’s part of its special beauty, mechanical reproduction doesn't dim that. Even being at the ground can be about the charm of dropping in and out: you come across a suburban or country game and pull over for a few overs. I always find myself a bit affronted by the requirements of punctuality and relentless attention in other sports.

4. Ok, I am a soft anti-social cocooner. I want a couch and a good beer and the chance to have a nap, cool quiet and time to think. As Lucinda Williams ponders, is it too much to ask? Am I going overboard with all that stuff?  Commentators don’t have to ponder, don't have to choose, they can enjoy the comforts of the home and the theatre of the ground at the same time. Now, I’m not saying that commentators, who have a guaranteed seat behind the wicket, good television and internet access, shelter from the elements (I include other people in that category), and private catering (with bonus gifts of strawberries and lobster), have lost touch with what going to a Test Match means to other people, namely losing all of that, but… oh, wait, I am. People in corporate boxes shouldn’t throw stones.

5. Three or five days is an enormous commitment, no other game asks you to take time off work. For this reason, most cricket is and has always been played in a limited format, counted in overs or wickets or runs – a weekend, a day or afternoon, an evening. Test cricket might be the “high” form of the game, and a wonderful thing it is, but it’s not the original or vernacular form, and arguably not its lifeblood. Historically, Test cricket is the spin-off from the limited forms of the game, not the other way around, stop with the moaning about the 'decline' of cricket into T20.

But thinking about conditions and policies at the ground and what I’d do or not.

1. Gimme shelter. As many sheltered areas as possible. We all wear anti breast cancer scarves on McGrath Day while courting skin cancer. I realise there are light and line of vision problems to overcome, but we can put people on the moon. Somewhere for unsheltered people to go when it rains, see comment on passes out below.

2. The security is fine, Jim. Baiting and barracking the security staff has become part of the fun at the ground and you only need one arsehole experience to be grateful they’re there.

3. Price and ticketing. You’ll have the day-off-work cost even if ground entry is free. But yes, I had to spend $130 to get a seat that would be sheltered from the sun all day on day 2 of the New Year’s test at the SCG and that’s a lot of money. It’s a lot less if you have a higher tolerance for physical discomfort, but I’ve done my time on the concourse.

There have to be passes out. You can’t go in and out at the SCG, though I think you can at the MCG. Cheaper test passes and more unreserved seating sections to allow for more floating spectator intake.

4. Drink. I don’t drink the light beer at the cricket (all that’s available at the SCG), but observation suggests that it just means guys buy two drinks at a time instead of one, which doubles the drink queues because the four-drink limit means one person can now only buy for two, and creates enormous toilet queues.

5. Food. I actually don’t know about the food. I started rhapsodising about the possibility of Bourke Street Bakery pies, food trucks and buying picnic packs with your ticket, then I heard how it sounded and imagined what that would look like. ‘Healthy’ options in these settings are generally miserable and even more overpriced than the junk options. A recent Sumo Salad experience left me poorer, hungrier and angrier than any Chiko Roll ever has. In the end, it might just be that bad food you wait too long for and pay too much for is part of the ritual of a day at the game, and the only way to get around that is to BYO. However: please provide vinegar for the chips and you might want to ask an American to explain hotdogs. This is a bog-standard, non-foodie Chicago hotdog:

I want what they're having.

And that’s all. Because I seem to have taken a morning off work to write about the cricket.

The man without scriptwriters

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Do you think the ‘iconic’ Ricky Ponting moments will be the swear-shouting at Duncan Fletcher during the 2005 Ashes and the ARROGANT PONTING MUST BE SACKED headline on the 2007-2008 India tour?

Steve Waugh had that last-ball century at the SCG, and Shane Warne was so blessed from a dramaturgical point of view, had so many ‘defining’ moments, even without the off-field play, that they defined his character – Hollywood, the Human Headline. But I worry that Ricky rather got the rough end of the narrative stick. He has been plunged willy-nilly into a great deal of drama, and been an astonishing performer, but he has possibly not made as much good theatre as he deserved on the field. It’s been said – I’m sure I’ve mentioned this – that Ricky’s captaincy lacked a sense of timing. Is that Ricky’s story? His lack of story?

I stand to be corrected. As of writing, I’ve deliberately avoided any research to refresh my memory. The pugnacious teenage prodigy is a good story, and even if I’m wrong about the above, I reckon “pugnacious” will still end up the dominant motif here. Ahem, Bourbon and Beefsteak. When people described Ponting this week as the most “competitive” of players, a real “competitor”, they mean “scrappy”. He gets into the truant schoolboy story book, no problem, “eternally scruffy and frowning” like William. I remember him blowing a kiss to his new wife when he made a triple century. That wasn't a bad moment, I asked a newsagent for their newspaper poster with the photo.

I also remember him just missing a double century in Hobart some time and just missing a series win in India. He saw out the Steve Waugh era and has seen in what I guess will be the Michael Clarke era. I know everyone has to come after someone and before someone else, but hasn’t he had to tie up more dag ends than most? It's telling that the big significance of Ricky going for me is that it's end of the Steve Waugh era, the last player on the national team who had played under Waugh.

If Michael Clarke suffers from his excessive good looks, I don’t think it is accidental that Ricky came to be tarred with the “ugly Australian” brush. I’ll always believe that people thought a little worse of Ricky during the 2005 Ashes because he didn’t look like Andrew Flintoff, and gave Anil Kumble way too much benefit of the doubt on that 2007-2008 India tour just for looking like Anil Kumble.*

Some people would say the “ugly Australian” era began with Steve Waugh, in both senses, but I think Waugh was redeemed in the public imagination by all that Hey True Blue and poetry in the dressing room stuff (“Clancy of the Overthrow”). Steve Waugh was an unemotional player, but in that respect a sentimental bloke. Ricky could be a hothead on the field, but was also unsentimental. Sometimes his eyes would flash black for a moment and you’d see the hot and unsentimental together. I don’t think I fully believed the lack of sentiment until I saw the bit of the retirement press conference when he said that not going to the Ashes was easy because he wasn’t good enough. It took me back to when he was asked whether Warnie had been naïve to take the diuretic, and he answered, “And stupid."

I'll be going through the clippings in the Useful Box this week to see what comes up that I've forgotten. More dag ends, more scraps. None of this is a criticism: I like a bit of a mess and I like a bit of a fight. The dominant motif after all is not "pugnacious", but "scrappy".

* That Bollyline affair made me so angry I wrote a letter to the Herald that wasn’t published (bit of a theme developing here), probably because it contained the following impossible sentence: “As a thirty-something woman who came to cricket late in life, what leaves the sourest taste in my mouth about this sport is the constant invocation of a ‘gentlemanly’ code of conduct which, when deciphered, seems to mean pretty much what it always has, namely an absolute horror of “fuss”, whether positive or negative, and a rather casual attitude towards racism.”

Second test

What now?

That's Laura Csortan, former Miss Australia. Maybe I need to improve my personal grooming. On the other hand, she's the troll.

I missed most of the first session of this Test because I was writing a Heckler for the Sydney Morning Herald. The Heckler editors sent a message via the Column 8 editors last Thursday that they didn't need any more Heckles of bike paths, oversized prams, rude waitstaff and mobile phone etiquette. What they did need, urgently, or so they said, were rants about "cosmology, architecture, literature and aggressive ducks". It just so happens that cosmology is one of my chief pet hates, so I got down to it. They haven't got back to me. My fault for buying into the grumpy old persons sections of the paper I suppose.

But I'll take the segue: as much as the grumpy old persons in the Grandstand box mutter about T20 cricket, they roll over like puppies when someone plays T20 cricket in the middle of a Test match. One of the South African commentators suggested Dave Warner's performance on the first day was like "clubbing baby seals". I'll say it was also like "tickling puppies' tummies". Mine included, what's not to enjoy?

At the other end of the spectrum, and the Test, was plenty of "real Test cricket". I tried to induce a wicket this afternoon with a nap, but it was like reverse Rip Van Winkle: when I woke up, nothing had changed. I'm glad to see Nathan Lyon doing well, because like many a spinner he looks like the kind to get sand kicked in his face, maybe by someone like Shane Watson. Peter Siddle reminded me that when I am on the treadmill and I think I'm pushing myself a bit, I am so not pushing myself, but that's why we watch them and not me.

There was a lot of talk on the radio about how "digging in" was part of the South African national character. I hope they meant something about velds, because if the English love a gritty stand because it reminds them of the Blitz, what special cultural symbol of intransigence do you think of in relation to South Africa?

Distractions

I've been seeing a bit of soccer, because my new friend's a member of Sydney FC. I am constantly reminded that one of the reasons I follow cricket is because it is slow enough for me to work out what is going on, but I still have my other skills to fall back on. To wit, my take on Alessandro Del Piero:

=

+

For these and other reasons, it's a lot easier to maintain focus when he has the ball.

1st test, shame about the rest

Channel 9 showed a montage of various cricket feats leading in to the first day of the first Test, with Richie meandering over the top. I couldn’t work out what the thread was – maybe notable Gabba moments, maybe notable AUS vs RSA moments… I made the mistake of wondering out loud and got back from my spectating companion: “Richie’s spank bank”. It was probably revenge for the unwelcome images I had foisted on said companion from my Men of Cricket calendars, specifically Shane Watson in aught but a towel.*

This is where I should mention that, along with the other things that happened this winter, I lost the cat (when my flatmate moved out), but gained a boyfriend. Those things probably go together: when I spend too much time watching Japanese cats on YouTube, the ads start sizing me up not only as a single female, but a potential customer of Christian dating sites. So unlike when I spend too much time watching the cricket and am called to grimy power-tool parties with the promise of bad beer. Or rather, called to bad beer with the promise of grimy power-tool parties. Just how dirty do your hands need to be before you can call yourself a man? 

As far as I can tell, there is no way to refer to a boyfriend (/SO/MM/OH/DH) in print and remain likeable, including to the individual in question. I'll milk it here and now, and then try never to speak of it again. 

My new friend is tough on Ricky. When I asked him what injury it was that Ricky had been picked despite of, he said, “Age.” When I said Ricky was hoping to be part of the 2013 Ashes team, he said, “I would also like to be part of the 2013 Ashes team.”** 

My appreciation of the fuller-figured man leaves him feeling a little inadequate, but he helpfully suggested a month or so ago that I check out "Fatcat" Ritchie. Yeah, no. I did however look up Arjuna Ranatunga on Google Image yesterday, and was told that a “related search” was “arjuna ranatunga fat”. Firstly, in the words of another Sri Lankan-born fellow, "Why are people so unkind?" Secondly, that seems a strange thing to be “searching” for.

The game? I'd like for Australia not to start an innings with a 3 for under 50. I didn't watch their first session, I didn't want to see another 3 for under 50. I thought maybe if I didn't watch it they wouldn't be 3 for under 50. I didn't check the score overnight, saying to myself, "I bet they're 3 for under 50". I'm sorry Ed Cowan, you seem very nice for a private school boy and well done, but I'd like to return to the 3 for under 50 thing, because it has to stop.

* But holy moley, he is lucky I don't paste these (SPOILER ALERT CLICK ONLY IF YOU DARE) Paul Freeman pics of SW I just found. Is this like Marilyn's early centrefold? "I'm only new on the scene and I figured this was a great way to get my face and a few other things out there." Insert "naked ambition" quip.

** Tangentially, I once asked a friend, in his mid-40s, at what point he stopped having the fantasy that he would play cricket for Australia. He basically said “What do you mean, ‘stopped’?” I find menfolk are often adamant that someone or other on the team must go, and I think this must be why. It's good old lizard brain, whispering: "There but for the obstinacy of Ricky go I." By the way, Paul Freeman pics of SW. Heh.

Are we there yet?

And just like that, he was gone. So long, Whitney Troll, and thanks for all the life advice.

Half heart

I've been trying to remember how many years it has been now that I've had a bit of a sinking feeling on the cusp of the cricket season. Didn't the South Africans win the series here 4 years ago? Is that when this mess started? Don't you hate it when the South Africans say they know how hard it is to win a series in Australia, not because they've tried and failed, but because they have vivid, glowing, minty-fresh memories of when they did it last time?

I'm ashamed of what a fair-weathered friend I've turned out to be in the lengthening shadow of Australia's decline. I know people who found Australia's cricketing supremacy a turn-off, I've read people say it was boring, but I absolutely loved it. It helps to be a naïf, in sporting terms. And it helps to be a female, who sees sportsmen as abstract characters rather than types remembered grimly from school. And I didn't know any different. Australia winning was an uncomplicated pleasure, and now... it's complicated. Grrr.

Strike a pose

I got the ABC cricket magazine today, Swotto on the cover, haven't gotten much further than that.

But here's something. A lookalike challenge, appropriately enough.

For many years, I was familiar with the folk below playing roles in the ABC's "Fielding Positions" map. They were, as I saw it, Ian Chappell on strike, Adam Gilchrist the non-striker, and Steve Waugh the bowler. Interesting game. Australian top XXII against itself?

 For the last couple of years, we've had this bunch:

I'll say that's Mitchell bowling, Alim Dar umpiring, but the others? Maaayyybeee Brad Haddin at the non-strikers end? Who's just lost his (helpfully labelled) leg stump?

But before Chappelli & co, we had this:

A couple of stiff fin-de-siècle fellows from before my time at the other end, I guess that's Steve Bucknor umpiring, and it seems to be a blond on strike. Kim Hughes? Jeff Thomson?

More questions: Why did they efface the umpire in the middle period? And wouldn't it be more helpful to use the behind-the-bowler perspective that the television viewer is most accustomed to rather than this behind-the-batsman view? Is this a secret ABC shunning of Packer's newfangled angles? A repudiation of the spectator in favour of the player? The old batsman-over-bowler bias?

Answers on the back of an envelope please to batsyblog@gmail.com

Lost in the jungle

Speaking of trolls, Mike Whitney has taken up residence in my neighbour's letterbox.

It's a bit spooky, and every time I open the front door, it's like he's telling me to weed the goddamn front lawn and write some Batsy. I know I shouldn't pander to trolls, but he's probably right.

It's been a big winter. I got Foxtel and an enormous flat-screen TV, just in time for a dismal one-day series against England. I think HD is made for sport - the hyper-reality makes everything look oddly fake in drama - but it doesn't do the sportsman's complexion any favours. In this photoshopped world, it's a long time since I saw a famous person's pores, but there's nowhere to hide when they put up the profile shots. I guess no one is supposed to care about that, except for George, and who cares about him any more? Seeing baseball on Foxtel has also confirmed my love of the Buddha Warrior type. I look forward to seeing these well-calibrated folk at the SCG.

In the T20, Watson continued to exasperate with his usefulness. Great final. Pat Cummins looks like a young Glenn McGrath, but also a lady who used to be in animated advertisement for hayfever medication. Her head would swell up until she was all nose and eyelashes, and Pat nails that look. I know, a sad reference without pictures, I searched to no avail.

Easy Tiger

I don't often read the Sports pages, but I'm a bit sorry about that now, because something excellent dropped out of them this morning, lurking in the Shaver Shop catalogue. The trouble people have to go to just because there isn't a masculine equivalent for "bikini line".

 

Parliament of soils

I couldn’t get back into the game after the rain delay yesterday, but I did enjoy, during same rain delay, a chat between Drew Morphett and Ravi Shastri. The topic of sledging came up among general reflections on the Test tour, and Shastri said that he encouraged young Indian players to welcome the sledging they might receive in Australia, as “it can only improve your vocabulary.” The highlight however was when Drew asked him if he could share any memorable sledging moments on air and Shastri demurred on the grounds that the exchanges involved “unparliamentary language”.

Spectacular turn of phrase. And not just a turn of phrase, I discovered: parliaments all over the world have officially deemed certain words or phrases to be “inappropriate for use in the House whilst it is in session”, by the same stroke creating a valuable resource for sledgers with sledging block.

Wiki provides a list of invective by country and date, with Canada featuring prominently for some reason (they do seem a bit strict) and New Zealand contributing some impressive antipodean colour. I take pleasure in imagining some of the following repartée:

Hilfenhaus: You, sir, came into the world by accident (Canada, 1886) and are lacking in intelligence (Canada, 1934).

Kohli: And you, sir, are a bag of wind (Canada, 1878) inspired by forty-rod whiskey (Canada, 1881).

MS Dhoni: Trained seal (Canada, 1961)

Michael Clarke: Highway bandit (Norway, 2009)

MS Dhoni: Pompous ass (Canada, 1967)

Michael Clarke: Piece of shit (Canada, 2011)

Haddin: You have the energy of a tired snail returning home from a funeral (New Zealand, 1963)

Laxman: Yeah? Your brains could revolve inside a peanut shell for a thousand years without touching the sides (New Zealand, 1949)

Tony Greig: 臭罌出臭草 (Hong Kong, 1996: "foul grass grows out of a foul ditch", )

Tom Parker: 仆街 (Hong Kong, 2009: literally "stumble on street", akin to the English "go die") 

In the light of recent switch hitting events, I particularly like the potential uses for girouette, meaning "weathervane" and banned from Quebec parliament in 2007.

Ashwin: You, sir, are a girouette (Québec 2007)

Dave Warner: Sticks and stones, you dim-witted saboteur (Canada, 1956)

Ashwin: Oh, fuddle duddle (Canada, 1971, euphemistic substitution for "fuck off"*).

Wiki says that in 1997, the terms “liar” and “dumbo” were ruled unacceptable in Australian parliament, but on the whole you can’t read the Wiki article on unparliamentary language without coming away with the impression that what is unparliamentary language in the rest of the world is Australian parliament’s meat and potatoes. More specifically the impression that Paul Keating’s advisors had standing instructions to alert him the moment an item was banned from Irish parliament so he could splice together tirades wholly from their cutting-room floor. To wit: brat, buffoon, chancer, communist, corner boy, coward, fascist, fatty, gurrier, guttersnipe, hypocrite, rat, scumbag, scurrilous speaker, yahoo. Either that or Irish parliament took PJK as its model of disorderliness.

* This is what Pierre Trudeau effectively claimed to have said when accused of mouthing the words "fuck off" at the opposition, and this incident would be a valuable defence for players against Channel 9's lip-reading exercises.

T20 x 2

T20 I

I only heard about the David Warner “shot that rang out across the world” on the car radio Friday morning. Switch-hitting, eh? I always thought Mickey Arthur sounded like the name of a baseball coach. I’m in the “for” camp, naturally, because I can’t resist a showman, the freakier the better, but I will be interested to see whether T20 gives the English language “switch hitting” as a viable alternative to the football-inspired “shifting the goalposts” and the… cross-country horse-riding-inspired “swapping horses midstream”.

I also heard that Jim Maxwell isn’t pleased about it, but he has been a bit cranky this season generally. He was practically apoplectic at the Gabba about a notice on the board warning spectators against pitch invasion. This kind of killjoy authoritarianism is apparently the root cause of the decline of Test cricket audiences, he was really angry. I think he’s grieving Roebuck, and maybe he feels he has to stand up for the Spirit of Cricket “for two”, but he was always the more conservative of the pair, and maybe Roebuck was in fact a moderating influence.*

*I was about to get around to asking “Whatever to happened to Glenn Mitchell?”, which I have been meaning to do all summer, and jeez, I completely missed this. Get better, Glenn, I miss you.

T20 II

Well, Aaron Finch, obviously. Even while he was batting I thought he had a strapping “New Zealand” heft about him and indeed he appears to be a delicious amalgam of all of the charms of the New Zealand cricket team, including, unexpectedly, Daniel Vettori’s glasses.

PS. I like this picture on his Wiki page. No, really, not that, it's a really good kinetic shot - that baseball aesthetic again - and I find that cricket photography rather struggles with the "action" shot.

PPS. If you read down his cricinfo page, you'll see he got chucked out of the cricket academy for not keeping his room tidy. Behave.

Padded up

Obviously I had no thoughts about the 3rd Test. Or the 4th Test. Or did I? Possible scenarios :

• No thoughts about the Tests
• So absorbed in Tests that distance of reflection impossible
• Thoughts about Tests, but too absorbed in life to put them down

Maybe a bit of all three. David Warner’s century was certainly fun, and I recommend watching David Warner bat with menfolk around, preferably with a couple of them under 15. But otherwise it was all a bit of a fizzer, non? All the runs, yes, but how many runs does one batsman really need?

People will remember the runs, but I give you some other things that have left their mark on the 2011-2012 test cricket season:

The Bupa ads.

You have to dislike an ad that is coy about what it is advertising, but the real source of irritation in the "What would you do if you met the healthier version of yourself?" scenarios for me is their emotional palette. Where is less-healthy You’s suspicion and resentment? Where is healthier You’s pity and disgust ? And if science fiction has taught me anything, it is that any story that begins with you meeting another version of yourself, ends in a frantic fight to the death. Perhaps we could have a follow-up series: young woman selves suddenly leap at each other’s throats over the cafe table, older woman selves suddenly start chasing each other around the park, middle-aged man selves suddenly stab each other in the gut.

The drinks-break Gatorade bottles

These have morphed from one enormous comic phallus wheeled out onto the ground, to two smaller ones strapped to the backs of guys on segues, both remaining however within the realm of an early Woody Allen sex comedy. I look forward to the day they jump a genre and we see the drinks carriers arrive via Gatorade-bottle-shaped Thunderball jetpacks.

This year’s KFC

Still in the realm of hospitality, there’s the 12th man who carries the drinks, and then there’s the 13th and 14th men, Mitchell Johnson and Cameron White, who have the hidden but crucial task of sitting in the dressing room Fresh Testing chicken sandwiches for the rest of the team.

PS

I woke up in the middle of the night with a crucial codicil to the last post about Michael Clarke. You can’t separate the good looks from the marketability. When the Australian public looks at Michael Clarke, they see the face that launches a thousand products, but this only because when a marketer looks at Michael Clarke, they see a model. If Clarke seems especially promiscuous from a commercial point of view, it is only because he is the captain who can be let loose on an unsuspecting television audience during normal programming time and ratings periods. They don’t show those Steve Waugh Johnnie Walker ads outside of cricket matches, you know. And the "face" of Swisse during prime time is Sonia Kruger, not Ricky Ponting. For all we know, Steve Waugh was desperate to hock himself on the market, but what product would you stand him next to and make it look better?