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