Boxing day blues

I spent most of Boxing Day telling myself it was the best day of the year and the only day I felt completely comfortable doing nothing until about 5 pm when all the nothing flipped over into nihilism and self-loathing. I could only raise myself from the couch to lower myself into a bath, where I spent most of the rest of the evening. Nihilism, mmm. People say the spirituality has gone out of Christmas but I think it still packs a fair existential punch, especially with the kicker of New Year.

The cricket. Last Tuesday I looked up from the articles about Joe Burns and said: "Ed Cowan must be spewing." In a brainy, urbane sort of way, of course. On reflection, however, it is probably Chris Rogers that Ed would see as occupying his crease: the brainy mature opener in a balancing act with Warner. 

Joe Burns gives me two birds in one: he looks a bit like Ashton Agar and needs to mind his hair. Take away my lookalikes and hair talk and there's not much left to this blog.

Grumpy old men, verse 54
Jim Maxwell, Terry Alderman and Geoff Lawson have had a grand old time this series getting worked up about people who walk across sight screens. Terry threw down quite a gauntlet to Ticketek by saying tickets should not be sold in those areas to people who are not knowledgeable about cricket. Perhaps it could work like the Australian citizenship test. Never mind that these people are often ground staff. Jim was plunged into cognitive dissonance at one point when the problem turned out to be a stray beach ball, he had to reconcile his irritation at sight-screen interference with his competing irritation at overbearing crowd control policies regarding such things as beach balls. He actually showed a little forbearance.

Geoff Lawson had an unexpected spray at Quentin Hull for calling Steve Smith a "stand-in captain". The qualification "stand-in" makes him livid, Steve Smith is captain full stop. Okay, Geoff, but are you saying Steve Smith would not step down if Michael Clarke came back? So how would you distinguish someone in that position from other captains? Meanwhile Quentin Hull dealt with the stand-in-or not-stand in by finding a wrinkle in the time continuum: "You think you're getting a glimpse into the future but maybe it's just now come a little earlier than expected".

As I write Henry is making me uncomfortable by talking about "wear areas" on cricketer's boxes.

Wealthy entities being dickheads just because they can:
- The Nine network not not coughing up for HD bandwidth on Channel 9 (though it somehow manages for GEM). Would it have happened on Kerry Packer's watch?
- Cricket Australia randomly cutting off my free family radio streaming to show me an ad for paid streaming (why would I be interested?) or switching over to Channel 9 commentary.

Ads
- McDonalds appears to be advertising a new ice cream by graphically depicting what it will look like smashed and melting.
- NSW transport appears to be trying to encourage people to have a "Plan B" instead of driving home after drinking by making every possible "Plan B" look as unattractive and unlikely as possible.
- I will never not hate the Bunnings ads.

Judi, Judi, Judi!

The new Australian cricket captain received a blazer on the field, but the full secret CA regalia is more elaborate.

1. The headline on the back page of the Herald today was "Stick with Smith", which I believe could be called "backhand support". Dame Judi has always and ever had the full support of this household. I have not always been able to get behind his hair styling, but even that seems to have grown up in the last few weeks. It was probably his hair that had him once touted as the new Warnie (that was back when we still said that, before the long slow descent to earth).

2. Based on day 1, it turns out there is such a thing as a "bowling collapse". I don't understand how Brisbane can be more oppressive than Sharjah but the evidence is there. I'm glad they've picked themselves up. 

3.

Who would you have said this poor-res photo is of? It was in the TV section today and my first thought was "What is Arnold Schwarnegger doing with Sydney Thunder*? How did I not hear anything about this?" but it turns out it is Nathan Hauritz. That's not an association I ever thought I'd make. It's a long way from Charleston girl. Anyway, I'm glad he's baaack.

* Truthfully, I wondered what Arnie was doing with the Melbourne Stars, because I assumed the photo would be of someone involved in the game being previewed and that's the green team playing tonight. This on top of the resolution confirms the impression that someone simply threw an image at this article at the last minute. "Quick! Green! Cricketer! Hang on, is this Arnie? Hauritz. Okay."

4. More on non-lookalikes. It's not a pre-Christmas cricket match without bad memorabilia and here's a sample from yesterday:

a) Warnie. Doesn't look like that. Shouldn't look like Jeff Thompson. The below seems to tell part of the story, but also suggests further Frankenstein shenanigans, to the point where one wonders if it's more about photo rights than flattery.

b) Sachin. Doesn't deserve this. Shouldn't be wearing clown pants. This is obviously nothing to do with flattery, I thought his bum was back to front. But what is it then?

Olympique Lyonnais

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Well, God bless Nathan Lyon. I felt for him. He got 5 wickets in the first innings and then the collective goldfish did a circuit of the bowl, fixed him with a googly stare and said: “Who are you? Remind me again why you're here?” Then the collective elephant whispered: “If you don’t win this for us you will will mess up the whole 'we're doing it for Phil/he's doing it for us' thing. You will have dishonoured the memory of Phillip Hughes and all we have achieved in this game in his name. No pressure.”

Nathan has done the responsible thing, hair-wise, severing all connections with the past. Warnie however has made me a liar and reintroduced his hair to bleaching agents somewhere between Macksville and Adelaide. I can hardly complain at the return to sanity, though I was sort of looking forward to some on-going flabbergastion.

Poor Virat Kohli. 

Back in 2001 on a proto-Batsy website I suggested that if we were teaching human emotions through cricket, V.V.S. Laxman was an object lesson in Dismay when he was caught out in Kolkata. I don’t remember now how Laxman looked, but I suspect it was something like Kohli, who was a veritable powerpoint presentation in Distraught with an edge of Nausea. 

For a team who famously reject the DRS, India sure get a lot of dud decisions. They can only resort to the ancient and totally ineffectual technology of the Stare. To be fair they are very good at it.

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Test 1, Day 1, Adelaide

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Well, God bless Davey Warner. I have described him as an emotional counterpoint to Phillip Hughes and boy was he that today. Pure sunshine, always a joy when he’s... I’ve been sifting through the descriptors. ‘In form’ is stepping too far back, ‘on song’ seems like something you build up to, they don’t work for Warner’s immediacy. He’s easy and explosive, soothing and entertaining, today every boundary cleared some of the cloud, a salve to the collective wound.

On Grandstand, Rahul Dravid talked about the ego adjustment he had to make when batting with Virender Sehwag, because the crowd would cheer the singles that brought his partner back on strike. Rogers has always seemed happy to fade into the background when Warner is... being Warner, though perhaps not quite so far back as the pavilion. But despite the ‘meh’ of his 9 and Watson’s 14, and even with one batsman retired hurt, 2 for 258 looked refreshingly respectable given our long track record of crumply starts. Not the best finish to the day, but still.

I forgot about “oooh” when considering the possible responses to the first bouncer. I thought the general not knowing what would happen would translate into a general not knowing what to do and mean not doing anything at all, a strangled silence. But it was “oooh” and a clap. Is that what we always used to do anyway? I can’t remember.

Warney thinks that with the diversion and seriousness of recent events I will either not notice or not mention his new brown hair. He severely underestimates me. I see you, Shane Keith Warne. I have seen and wondered at a great number of your hairstyles, but this one confounds me like no other. It is mystifying enough when a brunette man makes this move, a hair’s breadth away from the comb-over in its charm. But when your story is that you are a blond, why wouldn’t you stick to it and let it carry you into or over the greys? With the immense resources at his disposal, the greatest of which is the aforementioned track record as a blond, this just feels so low rent. Maybe he was bored.

I’d like to formally request an easing up on the Phillip Hughes video montages. They make me teary against my will and leave me feeling a bit... used. Hands off my heartstrings, please, I can take them from here.

Phillip Hughes

It’s been hard for a bunch of reasons to get something down about Phillip Hughes’ death. All there is in the beginning and all there is in the end is the shock and sadness. All the stuff in the middle - tweets, bats, analysis, this - is filler. It’s like there’s a little gap in the universe that opens up when someone dies, not just the person-shaped hole they leave, but the breach of faith in the universe for doing such a thing. The filling never gets to the ‘bottom’ of it. But I’m no different to anyone else in trying. Here is my handful of dirt.

The big question seems to have been why the reaction has been so strong and I can think of a lot of reasons. It started for me with the very graphic, public nature of the injury that caused his death. I happened to be on the SMH website early that Tuesday afternoon because I’d heard a helicopter hovering over Coogee that morning and - good on me - wondered if something bad had happened. “Warning: graphic images” is a bit like “Don’t push this red button”. The one I most wished I hadn’t seen was the one the Herald ran on its cover the next day. That has sort of set the emotional baseline for the past week, a general unsettledness that’s probably more physical or animal than emotional, like a flock of birds scattering at a loud noise or projectile.

The second time I saw that photo I (deliberately) looked at everyone else rather than Phillip Hughes, and I could see the kind of ‘tableau’ of concern, like a war photo or a Renaissance painting, the qualities that the Herald felt made the picture about more than ghoulishness. The ‘looking at everyone else’ is a big part of the sadness. When I see pictures of Phillip Hughes, I still mainly feel a blank incomprehension that there will be no more Phillip Hughes. It’s sadness, but in the form of an intellectual revolt. It’s more when I see the grief of people close to him, wholly comprehensible, that I get teary or upset - teammates at the hospital, tweets from colleagues, yesterday’s funeral speeches. And surely a great deal of the sadness is sadness for Phillip Hughes’ family in particular: sad for them in empathy, and sad ‘for’ them like an offering to them, hoping that if they know how sad everyone is it will be some comfort to them.

There are a lot of other things: the amplifying effect of social media, his youth, his status as hero and superhero in virtue of being an elite sportsperson, the fact of dying in what is supposed to be a game. None of these have much to do with Phillip Hughes himself, and the core of it for me has been that it was Phillip Hughes. If I feel so much in response to Phillip Hughes’ death it’s because I felt so much for him while he was alive. But that feeling was not of falling in love with a happy-go-lucky country boy.

I certainly see the country boy much more now that I’ve seen the funeral - God bless daggy country church services. I have no argument with cheeky, smiling, laughing Phillip Hughes. That’s the person who belongs to the people who knew and loved him. That’s the person. It’s not the persona I saw at the crease, the member of my imaginary cricket menagerie. Phil Hughes only appears in my archive as a troubled figure, fretful and fretted for. That’s ‘my’ Phil, it’s who I remember, and however unreal he is, it’s who I feel for and who I’ll miss and why his death has a heaviness it would not have if it had been someone else.

It’s like he had an ability to elicit emotion, to make people care. Mr Batsy tells me Michael Slater had something of this too, you saw him and worried about him. It’s the background of pathos that magnifies the tragedy. But it’s ridiculous to separate this from the circumstances: the horrendous on again-off again relationship with the selectors, the mythology of Phillip Hughes that was well under way in his life time. The domestic prodigy who had either never been given the chance he deserved or who had been way overindulged. Whether or not this was to do with personal qualities, people felt strongly about the “case” of Phillip Hughes, I can’t think of anyone else whose selection or non-selection aroused that kind of intensity of debate. I have no insight into Phillip Hughes’ batting skills and flaws, but I had no trouble picking up the drama, to the point that I wonder how much of my perception of Phil was a projection of my own performance anxieties.

The death of anyone young involves the sadness of unrealised potential, but with Phillip Hughes this is compounded by the sense of unresolved issues. I’m very fond of ‘my’ Phil Hughes, but I'm sure he would have preferred not to be seen the way I saw him and that’s part of what’s so unfair.