Windie Willows

CLR Jame's gravestone, Tunapuna

I’m not sure I can bear a whole summer of How Do You Solve a Problem Like the West Indies? All day every day on the radio, there was a relentless talkfest on the subject with some cricket game going on in the background. Oh, the furrowing of brows, the bewildered headshakes, the well-meaning suggestions, the raising of suspicions, the advancement of theories, the weighings-in and weighings up, all gently taken apart and put down by an extremely patient Fazeer Mohammed, who may be my new hero. By way of intermission there was How Do You Solve a Problem Like Bellerive?

The two problems aren’t unrelated. The irresistible call of the West Indies Problem is due of course to the great height from which the West Indies has fallen: how did, how could the most compelling and dominant of cricket “franchises” come to this? That much is explicitly stated. I wonder though whether the obsessive quality of the rumination is because alongside the spectre of the past glory of West Indian test cricket is the spectre of a future decline of Test cricket in general, conveniently symbolised by Bellerive.

I’m not sure the decline of West Indian cricket is reversible. Fazeer Mohammed made the comparison with the World Series cricket crisis. Before the cricket establishment came to an accommodation with Kerry Packer, you had a second-rate test side because the best players were poached for World Series cricket. Many of those poached players were West Indian. If that accommodation had never been reached and if the cultural shift in the attitude of the establishment towards players had not happened, the situation of cricket in general could have become like West Indian cricket today, where test cricket is the second tier because it has been abandoned by the most valuable players, because they were not treated as particularly valuable. I take this to be Fazeer Mohammed’s point: West Indian cricket simply is world cricket without that evolution. And then a vicious circle sets in because when the talent is drawn away from test cricket, the interest is drawn away too, and when the interest in test cricket falls away, the talent falls away too. I think it might have gone too far down that road to recover.

But does it matter? T20 can only become the most popular form if most people prefer it, and if most people prefer it, most people are happy and if most people are happy, well, isn’t that our purpose as a society? In a capitalist democracy, no one can hear Jim Maxwell scream. For all we know humanity is irreparably poorer for the decline of vaudeville in the face of cinema. But how would we know? And if we knew, how could we care? I’m not sure you can run a tastes good vs good for you argument in the matter of entertainment.

I keep wondering what CLR James would say. His West Indies fit the idea of the colony that is more conservative than its colonist, which in turn fits Fazeer’s suggestion that the West Indies cricket establishment is behind the rest of the world in terms of industrial relations, for want of a better word. CLR James defended sport against his Marxist colleagues who saw sport in general as an opium of the people. Would he defend T20 against cricket colleagues who see it as an opium of the people relative to Test cricket?

The World Series cricket comparison is especially useful when it comes to those (that’s you, Nannes) who basically say Chris Gayle just wants to put up his feet on a Chesterfield stuffed with cash. Because I’m pretty sure that’s what they would have said about Lillee and Chappell and clearly then, as now, there is much more to it than that.

Forget Hotspot, what is going on with Short Leg?

More on that later.

Nigel Llong's decision? It seemed to be due to misplaced and exaggerated deference to Snicko and the on-field umpire. Llong was thrown by Snicko not backing up the suggestion of Hotspot, creating a doubt in his mind, the benefit of which he gave to the on-field umpire/Lyon. It shouldn't have happened: Snicko is more likely to give a false negative due to ambient noise than Hotspot is likely to give a false positive. On top of that, it's not clear that Llong should have even referred to Snicko after the positive reading of Hotspot: the directive of the ICC for the 2013/2014 Ashes tour was that Snicko should only be consulted if Hotspot shows no mark. That was then, I don't know what the directive is now. 

As I write someone from the New Zealand team is being ridiculously mild-mannered about the whole thing with Chris Rogers: no wonder their colour was beige.

Sexing the cherry

I find it hard to shake the impression the pink ball has something to do with Jane McGrath, so entrenched are those associations by now. In that respect, Pink Lady might come into its own as a suggested nickname, but otherwise I favour "gum ball", because it doesn't look like a colour that occurs in nature to me, or not on a fruit in any case.

Judi

Is doing well as both school boy and school master. He has a haughty way of raising his head and looking down his nose as a way of asking the question of the bowler when a review is in the offing, and also does a good lip purse.

Lookalike time

My take on Short Leg?

Mo Jo

Mitch casts a spell.

Mitchell Johnson's retirement lets me pick up exactly where I left off last time, when I marvelled at his talents as a model. Now I'm being invited to step back and appraise his contribution as a whole, I'm just going to say the same thing writ large: I think I'll remember Mitchell Johnson as the only player to have brought genuine glamour to the team since Shane Warne. It's not the same thing as good looks, although I am partial to a dimple. It's being able to create a sort of haze that draws and holds the eyes, that casts a spell over the onlooker, the spectator, the batsman.

As with Warnie, the appreciation of the glamour is mixed with ambivalence. In Warnie's case it had to do with reservations about Warnie the person, or so I am told. In Johnson's case, it was the old "mercurial" flicker. It was one of the ways he made you watch him – you'd hold your breath during his run-up and scrutinise the release, the trajectory, trying to work out which Mitch had turned up that day. Warnie had the hide of a rhinoceros, whatever was happening on or off the field, he banished question marks from your mind as he did from his own. Mitchell was skittish like a racing horse and so visibly tormented when things weren't going well. I ranked him no.1 in the "inner turmoil" (and outer turmoil) stakes during a bad patch in 2011 . The fact that he seemed to be one of the nicest people on earth just made it more agonising, but when it all came together... ahhh. Pure joy, great theatre.

I liked watching him bat almost more than watching him bowl, and I liked watching him bat almost more than watching anyone else bat - relaxed, clean, handsome. I just liked watching him.

Johnson made his debut on the Test team the summer after Warnie left. Who will be the next homme fatal?

Dirk Nannes

... has dropped rather on my "likeability" meter. I didn't hear his comment that the Australian team not rushing after Taylor to congratulate him was "horrendous" behaviour, I only heard his follow-up when he said it was trivial "in itself" but significant against a background of Australian lack of sportsmanship. The problem with taking "backgrounds" into account is that's also how prejudice works, and bad relationships for that matter. You see someone's actions only through the lens of what you already think and expect of them, and so that's all you see. In any case, whether he is right or wrong, he is certainly not saying anything new, which is why I turned off the radio when they started reading out love letters from listeners saying how glad they were that "someone" had "finally" said what he said. "Everyone" has "always" said what he said.

Mixed messages

All the ads during the cricket are for hardware stores except for the ad for the Windies test series that says don't be the guy at the hardware store.

The WACA

(It feels a bit awkward to post at the same time as the unfolding events in Paris, but after a certain amount of time glued to the news it starts to feel a bit voyeuristic and there's nothing more to be gained, for the time being anyway. I decided I was better employed in my role as a cricket voyeur.)

Davey Warner after 20 years at the WACA crease.

You asked for a Test series, you got the Australian Batsmen Achieve their Personal Goals show. Rumour has it New Zealand actually won the toss but McCullum said to Smith “No, no, after you.”

When the New Zealanders finally got a second wicket at the end of the day, for a moment it looked it could have been a no-ball. When the foot landed safely behind the line I said “Oh, thank God” out loud and Mr Batsy thought this was probably echoing the thoughts of Usman Khawaja.

New (or newish) Grandstand voices

Dirk Nannes is settling in nicely as one of the few ex-cricketer “expert” commentators on Grandstand not to be basically cranky (Mr Batsy’s wail of “Oh no, it’s Terry Alderman” yesterday could be heard from the other end of the house). I think it’s because he never represented Australia at Test level. Once you get that cap, it leave a mark, there will always be residual wounds, knots and itches and how you work those out (whether you work those out) will determine what kind of commentator you will be. Some carry them on their shoulders and are cranks (Alderman, Boycott, Lawson), some wear them like a red nose and are clowns (O’Keeffe, Fleming). The TV ones seem more well-adjusted on the whole than the radio ones, presumably because (1) they rub shoulders with other ex-players, a group therapy that takes the edge off and means no one can carry the “No one understands” chip or put up the “I know better than anyone else” hand; (2) they have usually had more successful careers; (3) their target audience contains fewer grumpy old men.

Dirk is so easygoing and likeable that he managed to use the expression “ipso facto” yesterday and still sound like he was down at the pub. That’s a trick Ed Cowan can only dream of.

Simon Katich. What can I say? My old flatmate gave the definitive verdict on Simon Katich on another reality show over six years ago: “He’s very Straight, isn’t he?” Nothing has changed. It seems an iceman on the field is a wooden man in the commentary box. The thrill of the hawk-eyed menace on the field ultimately relies on an certain internal stillness and rigidity of focus, and that’s what comes out on air. “You’d never see this field placing on the old WACA” was his idée fixe yesterday, said alas more times than it needed to be. (I still love you, Kat.)

This summer’s ads

Doesn’t Mitchell Johnson make it look easy in the protein powder ad? Not the lifting weights, the being on camera. Sportspeople are generally awful as models and actors but the camera loves him and he seems completely at home. Contrast Steve Smith in the Commonwealth Bank ad trying to be himself and make small talk. It’s like a bad date.

Star Spangled manner

From the Cricket All Stars Twitter feed: "Shane Warne, sachin tendulkar and Shaun Pollock". I guess that second guy is just some New Yorker getting a selfie.

I visited the cricinfo site this afternoon to check whether, as I suspected, the New Zealand team were a little less good-looking than in previous years, further accounting for the general lack of frisson in Brisbane. It’s a bit hard to tell from the official head shots, with their traditional anti-aesthetic. I had not noticed that Brownlie is a startled melange of Michael Slater and Damien Martyn. Complete with bed head (I hope it's bed head).

Anyway, I stumbled on the fact that the Cricket All Stars game was going on in Houston, Texas, so I turned on the television and boy, I was talking about good-old-days nostalgia, no lack of frisson in Houston. Such incredible fun, even before getting to the big guns got I warm and runny over Wasim Akram! Marais Erasmus! A miked-up Sehwag singing a little Indian song! Pollock winking! Fun, fizz, legends with the friendly sheen of middle age and the froth of T20. Who says Test cricket isn't boring? I know, I know, it’s too rich a mix: all smiles, zero tension and foie gras on truffle on fillet steak on duck-fat potatoes… not every day can be a holiday in the South-West of France. Really you need some edge for true frisson, but that just brings us back to the fact that the Gabba Test had no edge either.

The All Stars bowling attacks on both sides was naturally spinner-heavy, naturally heavy full stop, Warnie looks to have lowered his centre of gravity somewhat to be match-fit. But they hit plenty of sixes for a bunch of oldies, and apparently those Minute Maid Park sixes are well over 100 metres.

I never reported back on my visit to Lords, which was great right up to the very end, when the hitherto likeable tour guide hoped the whole thing “hadn’t been too boring for the ladies”. This despite the fact that I had known THE ANSWERS TO ALL THE QUESTIONS, starting with the fact that the first international cricket match was between the US and Canada in the 1850s.

You know you're in America when an 8-year old in the crowd answers the question “What got you into cricket?” with “Cricket keeps you energised… " Then – "You’re a Brian Lara fan?" – “Yes, ma’am". Bless, America.

Brief note x 2

One-sided games are only fun if it is us crushing England (anyone crushing England). Otherwise I find it a but depressing (that was a typo but SEE WHAT I DID THERE?). We are reminded once again that New Zealand are much better one-day cricket players than first-class cricket players, and it has nothing to do with sledging or not sledging. One of the Channel 9 commentators said it was like the bowlers "were bowling the highlights reel".

If you Google Image "one-sided", you get a lot of stuff about one-sided relationships and a little bit - this is a warning - about "one-sided" underpants for men. I have resisted poaching a picture of those as a header. Sort of a warning, sort of an irresistible temptation if you're anything like me. But you may regret it. But now you'll have to look.

Modestly onwards

All I know about this series is:

1. Burns and Khawaja are in the squad. 

I have seen this headline with a helpfully illustrative photo 4 or 5 times over the last week or so. I do not know how it can be a headline story that many times, but there it is. I wish them well.

2. McCullum and Smith: Worst. Trashtalkers. Ever.

McCullum: Rowr.
Warner: Grr.
McCullum: Rowr: the Sequel.
Smith: Um, grr.

This also seems to have been fleshed out into the limpest of "sagas". They're reaching, aren't they? I'm surprised no one has waved Chris Cairns under McCullum's nose, but that would just be rude, and these guys just aren't. Which is why it all seems very pumped up.

And Judi, Judi, Judi*, YOUR HAIR.

I've always thought a lot less happens in sport than there is media space to fill, so pretty much anything will do as a scoop. I look forward to something happening today, though I have also started wondering whether sport is like music: what was playing during your formative years always has a special intensity that later stuff won't ever live up to. You start going "it's not like it was before, they all look the same..." I've now been watching for long enough to have a "golden age" to look back on. It's an optical illusion, newness and shininess is in the eye of the beholder, but I suspect I'm going to have to accept a certain loss of magic.

* Steve Smith = Judi Dench IS A THING. If Ramiz Raja is with you, you are at the right party.

Don’t make me come over there

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Oh, go on then. Two more sleeps before I get on a plane and sort them out. Hovering over Lords like Mary Poppins, I realise a lot of these UK grounds are Sesame Wheat shaped. I guess that’s the way the cookie crumbles (boom boom).

The only written note I have from the Fifth Test is a quote from Geoffrey Boycott at the start of England’s second innings, after being made to follow on. Nathan Lyon had just tried something tricksy with Alastair Cook, who wasn’t having any of it. Normally Geoffrey addresses his remarks to the anchoring commentator, but this time he was so overcome with glee he spoke directly to the batsman: “Come, on Alastair, bore him to death all day, make him work for a wicket.” That's entertainment, Geoffrey-style. We might have put on a better show if we hadn't tried to be so entertaining, non-Geoffrey-style, but it's always the way with the Australian team. When they win it's through aggression, when they lose it's through aggression, they figure it's a 50/50 bet but they should probably spread their bets a little more.

When the end was nigh on the fourth day, Michael Clarke was relaxed and smiling in the slips like an office worker at 4 pm on his last day making jokes about stealing stationery and what he won’t miss. I'm going to call that “inappropriate”. I’ve never had a problem with the way Australia celebrate a win, but you don’t celebrate before you’ve won a game and you don’t celebrate when everyone is unhappy because you lost the f***ing series in an incredibly irritating way. And what player, let alone a captain, has ever shown jollies about retiring? Grandstand played an interview Jim Maxwell did with Clarke after he announced his retirement and he weirdly deflected really obvious and predictable questions about his best memories and highlights from his career – “just focused on this game, mate, really haven’t thought about it.” It makes me wonder whether, in the immortal words of Jennifer Aniston, “there’s a sensitivity chip that’s missing”. Maybe after all this time the Australian public never liked Michael because they smelled an affective bypass – which is to say because they couldn’t smell him at all.

No doubt there'll be a Letter from Lords at some point. For now, away! Those bottomless carpet bags look like a good carry-on option.

A heckler claim

The real Michael Clarke

Michael Clarke. Why didn’t we like him? I don’t know him, so I can’t say it is because he is not very likeable as a person, but maybe I didn’t like him because I never felt like I knew him. He always had a guarded, studied feel when he spoke, whether being smooth or defensive. However prickly Ricky Ponting or Steve Waugh could be, they conveyed thereness, transparency, “I’m giving it to you straight, mate”. That’s a persona too, of course, and I suspect Michael Clarke really is a guarded, studied person, in which case he is as upfront as anyone else. Which brings us back after all to his likeability as a person. Person or persona, we just didn’t like that person or persona.

He seemed very serious, which isn’t a celebrated Australian trait (cf. Adam Goodes): intense, driven and ambitious. All elite athletes are all of these things, as a matter of fact and necessity, he seemed to be so as a matter of principle and choice, as a personal creed. If he turned out to be a Scientologist, you might not be completely surprised. I read an article or interview about Michael Clarke years ago that referred to a motivational tract he had on the wall in front of his treadmill that went something like, “When you think you’ve practiced as much as you can and have pushed yourself as far as you can, remember someone else will have done more and gone further and they’ll be on the other team”. I don’t know why this seemed more New-Agey than any locker-room speech or Eye of the Tiger, but it felt lonely and private and something that maybe shouldn’t be shared. Michael Clarke: too open?

I stand by my earlier diagnosis of the problem as Too GoodLooking + Too Well-Behaved + Too Marketable, which is consistent with my even earlier diagnosis of being like a pair of fake breasts. It’s a shame so much of this seems to come down to not being a blokey bloke’s bloke – I believe leaving your team mates to be with your girlfriend is still illegal in some Australian states – which is such a tired, easy character. Bob Hawke was a born-to-rule Rhodes Scholar but everyone’s mate. Paul Keating grew up in Bankstown but developed an unacceptable interest in Mahler and antique French clocks, which no level of mongrel on the field could ever overcome. Shane Warne is an engineer’s son who went to Mentone Grammar (albeit on an athletics scholarship). Michael Clarke is a Liverpool boy who developed an unacceptable interest in wine, underwear and being a good boyfriend, which no level of mongrel on the field could ever overcome.

I don’t warm to him for superficial reasons – New-Ageiness – and substantial ones – Symonds and Katich – but I think I have talked myself out of the idea that the problem is “fakeness” or lack of transparency. It’s probably the opposite: he’s too upfront about who he is – clean, modern and aspirational, which shows some integrity when he must have known he was supposed to be everyone’s maaaaaate. 

Tonight

However shocking it was to be 3 for 10 in Trent Bridge, by the time we were 6 for 29, I felt misty-eyed for the halcyon days of merely 3 for 10. And as depressing as our series losses in 2009 and 2013 were, the disappointment of what were relatively narrow defeats seems so gratifying now compared to the humiliation of the current gaping one. Humiliation and boredom: ironically, the series feels close to being a waste of time precisely because of the briefness of the games. I will still hold out on 2005 as a worse defeat than this one, mainly because I felt Shane Warne’s pain as my own. There is no valiant champion of this series whose superhuman efforts are all for naught. But that also made 2005 a better series. I don't know what to look forward to tonight: win or lose, it's lose/lose.

Spot the difference II

Root catches Rogers I - Benevolent Universe

 

Root catches Rogers II - Indifferent Universe

Everything was going so well, I had it all worked out. Forget the first innings, this is our first innings. We’ve got 60 in the bank, not 331 taken away. We’ve got a day 2 and 3 pitch, we’ll just pile on the hundreds like at Lords and make it one of those “only one innings required” games. Sorted. I was riveted by Rogers and Warner as they started off, or rather I was attempting to rivet them to the spot with my eyes. I was trying to do the “watch what is happening rather than what happens” thing, partly so I didn’t just cringe at the expected blow every ball. We had a lot of luck, which seemed only fair, and everything seemed to be going to my plan, then Chris Rogers got out. As the third umpire pondered a close no-ball at length (a “noey”, Heals called it the other day), surely a million silent petitions went up. “God, thanks for sending that poltergeist to Cook and Bell and for everything else, just give us this last one bit of luck and I promise we’ll take it from here and won’t ask for anything else ever.” God said “Okay, just this last one and then that’s it. I’m outtie.” And then that was it. The universe staged a mocking replay of Rogers getting out and in this game of “Spot the Difference” the difference was no more Mr Nice Universe.

Is England in fact another India for Australian cricket? It has long been standard wisdom that however all-conquering we are elsewhere, Indian pitches contain kryptonite that saps our powers and it is a completely different ball game. Australia and India seem to have a kind of truce. India lose here, shrug and say, “Yeah, but we’ll win at home and that’s all that matters”. We lose there and glumly say, “Yeah, but what can you do? Indian pitches.” Despite the fact that there has been a clear pattern of us winning the Ashes here but losing in England (apart from that time when we also lost here) for the last ten years, and despite the fact that swing was identified as a problem ten years ago, the main response seems to be to throw a couple of county cricketers at the batting order and hope for the best. Hopefully they do more than that, but when we head over to England the mood, from the outside at least, seems to ride on the spirit of the most recent victory at home instead of the most recent loss over there, in a way that never happens when we go to India.

I don’t see why any of this is the “nail in coffin” for Clarke. Sure, it’s another personal batting failure to take into consideration, but how is everyone else’s batting failure his fault? When there’s a bowling failure you can raise questions about captaining decisions like bowling rotations and field positions, but is he supposed to have some magic dust advice to blow into the ears of batsmen before they head out? Is he supposed to ride to the crease on a white horse and sweep our innings off its feet? It’s nice when that happens and people go fuzzy about “captain’s knocks”, but surely this is more of a coaching than a captaincy issue. Will we actually see Lehmann… squirm?

Conversely, how lucky is Duckface to be the putative leader of this team? Before this series someone from inside the English camp said that Cook had his problems but with the appropriate support structures around him he was just fine. Like a flat foot needs orthotics? It’s not exactly praise of the foot. Cook started to look nervous last night when a boundary brought the deficit down to a mere 275. “Why is the camera looking at me? Was that a danger sign? Am I supposed to be doing something?” It’s like he stands outside of himself and tries to arrange himself in captainy shapes and make captainy motions. He is immensely flattered and probably immensely relieved by this performance, surely no more success has ever come to a less convincing captain.

I’d rather see us all out for under 300 than see the English chase a humiliatingly low total. And I’m not sure what we could do at the Oval that would be any consolation. When was the last time we faced a dead rubber as the losing side of an Ashes series? I can feel a creeping gloom approaching, a rising damp. Is this what it feels like to be English?

Trent Bridge whodunnit

I’ve only really experienced catastrophic collapses second-hand: England all out for 51 against the West Indies, West Indies all out for 87 against Australia, Australia all out for [can’t remember beyond 9/21] against South Africa… and I’ve wondered how it was to experience it first hand. Turns out it’s a combination of disbelief, frowning and comfort eating. I was finishing up some stuff in the kitchen when the game started, so had the radio on and the ACF streaming on the laptop, and the streaming was seriously about 2 balls behind the radio, so Aggers and Bloers would start screaming and I’d have to stare at what seemed like an endless age of innocence before the meteor struck. It seemed impossible it would continue and it seemed impossible it would not continue, because it was like landing in the middle of an English schoolboy’s daydream, and while the daydream is preposterous, he is calling all the shots. I sat back and made popcorn.

I have mentioned before that I have a very poor sense of causality in sport and see it essentially in terms of colour and movement like a tiny baby. So as far as my judgement goes, what happened last night may as well have been caused by a poltergeist as any skill, design or lack thereof in batting, bowling and fielding. I can barely watch people hold valuable fragile objects because whether they will drop it or not seems almost random to me, as if anyone at any time could have a petit mal seizure and lose their grip or be knocked over by a surprise albatross (YOU NEVER KNOW); as if the object itself could decide to wriggle free. I’d say that this attitude is derived from my own clumsiness, except I’m pretty sure the clumsiness is derived from the attitude. If I’m sceptical about my ability to avoid or control inanimate objects at will, why bother trying? So I’m both fascinated by the skills with objects sportspeople demonstrate but also unable to really see those skills and hence believe in them fully. I tend to understand causality backwards: we won, therefore we played well, we were just lucky that playing well led to a win. After all, if we’d lost we wouldn’t call it playing well any more. After 15 years watching cricket I only realised last game that when I watch the ball I am only watching for what happens – runs/no runs, out/not out – rather than what is happening. It explains a lot about my lack of progress in the "understanding" area.

Anyhoo, I’ll be touching down in Heathrow a couple of days after this series ends and this is starting to look more and more like being lowered into the lions’ den. Can we make it out from here? Once upon a time I thought of Australia as good at come backs when all seemed lost, but maybe that was when it was possible to wake up in one of Shane Warne’s daydreams instead of this one.

Edgbaston

The BBC have developed an app that makes your phone vibrate whenever a wicket falls. I guess there were some pretty aroused Brits around yesterday, that Australian middle order collapse may even have brought some ladies home.

The question it raised for me was: sure, Nevill can keep, but can he bat like Haddin? After the familiar clatter of wickets I was ready for Brad “Sandbags” Haddins to step up and stick around for a while, but it was Nevill and he passed like a light cloud. I associate Haddin with no-nonsense professionalism. Keeping, batting, sledging, it’s a job that has to be done and there’s no reason to be fretful or sentimental about it. And because it’s just a job there’s no question about priorities when real life intervenes. But I think Cricket Australia may have out-Haddined Haddin himself with its ‘nothing personal’. Ouch.

I was looking forward to this game when I saw Johnny Bairstow and Finn in the line-up, as they are both figures of great fun in this house. Bairstow is “Cranky Johnny” or “Heeeeeere’s” Johnny, from I can’t remember when, but for all I know he’s been off on a yoga retreat while out of the team and has found inner peace and love with the universe. We’ll see when he puts on his helmet. Steve Finn is “Lesser Spandau” in my mind because… I see him on the far right of a band photo in Smash Hits, Spandau Ballet’s second keyboardist on their 4th album, with the floppy fringe and an asymmetrical zipped white leather jacket. I suppose I should call him Greater Spandau now. Or Intermediate Spandau, let’s not get carried away.

We figured Warner called for the review because with Watto gone the team had an extra up its sleeve. SR Watson, gone but never forgotten.

Ads of note

Advanced Hair. I thank him for his illustration of the meaning of a ‘shock’ of hair, but how come “Tom of Finland” speaks like a Londoner?

Second test, Lords, Day 1

Thoughts this morning when I saw the overnight score of 1/337.
 
(in bed) 

1. Ha! 

2. Is this going to be boring? 

3. Will someone get in trouble at Lords for the pitch? I heard someone on the radio who had spoken to the groundskeeper say last night that some well laid plans had been stymied by rain, but, um, this is England. Allow for rain, you guys. 

(making breakfast) 

4. I wonder whether the Australian team could work out some kind of ‘retirement’ system so everyone could have a go, like in kids cricket. 

5. Oh, that’s match fixing, is it? 

6. I bet some kids (and parents) reckon it’s match fixing in kids cricket too. 

Thoughts last night
 
1. Anyone else noticed the role reversal between Chris Rogers and David Warner this series, with Warner anchoring a racy Rogers? 

2. How does Moeen Ali feel about everyone attributing his success to the fact that he is not nearly as good a spinner as Graeme Swann? Every time someone gets out ‘going after’ him, the commentators talk about how there was no need to take the risk because, unlike his predecessor, this guy will reliably send down some shit. I think I might say, ‘Oh yeah? Well, this “shitty” bowler is the leading English wicket taker of the series so far. AND I bat better than Swann and am less annoying. AND has it ever occurred to you that I am in fact Alessandro del Piero in cunning disguise?

<

No? Back to the leading wicket taker thing then.’ 

3. How many advertisement voice-over actors are hired for their ability to sound a bit like Richard Briers? QBE is the latest one, but this is something that has been going on for years, and from now on I’m taking notes. 

Watto

Yesterday, Peter Fitzsimons wrote a column in the SydneyMorning Herald in defence of Shane Watson: ‘Why the Hate for Shane Watson?’. I know, if only Shane Watson could write a column entitled ‘Why the Hate for Peter Fitzsimons?’, their mutual bewilderment could reflect back and forth for infinity in perpetual motion, solve the world’s energy crisis and leave the rest of us in peace. 

That aside, Fitzsimons hasn’t done his homework. He asks whether anyone can recall Watson ‘making a complete prat of himself by brattish behaviour’. Why yes, Peter, yes I can. And if he thinks it is remotely acceptable to ‘call for a lot of reviews’, for personal reasons, just in case THIS time it will work, I’m not sure he knows what cricket is or knows anything about anything. Shane Watson himself may even have wished PF had left that bit out (with friends like those...). I’m pretty sure even Shane Watson thinks he calls for those reviews for the sake of the team, because that’s the kind of fool he is. 

This is the thing: people hate Watto because they don’t like him. He can perform all he wants, but if people don’t like you, they will hang back when you succeed and pounce when you fail. And the law of the playground dictates that if they don’t like you then, alas, trying to be liked will only make things worse. It’s not pretty, but it’s a pantomime out there and there’s no disputing taste. None of the ‘haters’, including myself, know much about Shane Watson, they just know what they don't like. If I was going to try to explain, I might say that the whiff people get from Shane Watson is, in the gentlest terms, ‘immaturity’. Pushing it a little further, I might say ‘a weird admixture of sheepishness and arrogance’. Push it further than that and I’ll only get carried away. What's the point of heckling someone when they've already left the building? 

I would have liked to have compiled a montage of some of Shane Watson’s ‘moments in time’ to his own motivational soundtrack of choice, Whitney Houston’s One Moment In Time. If you have a listen and a watch it’s not so hard to do that montage in your head. Watto, you inspired some of my best work. We’ll always have ‘All Trojan horse, no Greeks.’

Taking the biscuit

Sophia Gardens, Cardiff

It had been nagging at me from the first time they showed the Cardiff ground from the air. That shape, I recognised it. It was a biscuit shape, but not just any biscuit. I could see it in my mind’s eye: a square cracker with cut off corners, a little bit wholemeal. I’m pleased to be able to tell you that that biscuit is none other than Arnott’s Sesame Wheat, a member of the Arnott’s Cheeseboard Cracker Assortment, which is where I probably came across it. I can now sleep easy.

Goodbye, Watto?
Shane Watson can take comfort in the fact that a new form of dismissal will be erected in his memory: LBWFR - Leg Before Wicket Failed Review. It even looks a bit Welsh. When he got out, Mr Batsy said surely that had to be it and how happy he felt despite the game being a disaster, but I felt suddenly, strangely bereft. Shane and I have been in this thing together from the very beginning: lookalikes, hair analysis and bagging Shane Watson is the stuff this blog is made of. In the sitcom in my head, he is the Newman to my Seinfeld: ‘Hello, Watto’. In the last year or so the Problem of Shane has suddenly become a subject of public discussion and I’ve been all, “I didn’t like him first. You should have seen his early stuff.”

After writing yesterday about a career that seems to have been almost entirely made up of playing for his career, I wondered whether that made him lucky or unlucky. Unlucky, because that’s a horrible situation to be in for most of your career, lucky because you’re only in that situation time and time again because you’ve somehow managed to hang on. How many times has Shane Watson actually been dropped for reasons other than injury? I can remember Marsh making the call last summer (only to be un-called by Mark Waugh) and ‘Homeworkgate’… when else? Obviously he’s been productive and useful enough to get there and stay there, pulling something out of the hat just when it seemed to be all over. I’m not quite at the point of speaking about him in the past tense, we’ll obviously call for a review when the finger is raised.

Plus that’s an Ugly Christmas Jumper

So. Lookalikes, tick. Watto, tick. Hair? Easy. Ricky's back for Swisse Ultivite for Men and needs to be told that’s not a toupee on his head, it’s a merkin.

Cardiff, Day 3

 
And this is the other reason why the Australian summer 5-nils mean nothing. 'Mean nothing' in the sense of being no indicator of our likelihood of success in the UK. The UK is a parallel universe. It looks normal, but is full of tiny and slightly sinister differences like the water down going the plughole in the opposite direction and Mitchell Johnson not having a moustache. It also has a propensity for nobbling our fast bowlers. I asked Mr Batsy if the problem getting wickets was a return of the mysterious ‘swing’ issues of 2005, but he said it was just an unsympathetic pitch. He also thinks the bowlers are not the problem, which I’m not so sure of, though circumstances are no doubt against them. I think people are giving Brad Haddin a very hard time about dropping Joe Root on 0. I thought it was a bloody sharp chance in the face of a lot of unpredictable bounce. A chance, sure, but not a fluff. Joe Root seems to have become England’s Steve Smith: a businesslike 14 year old.

The ads became too much for both of us at Batsy headquarters*, so we tuned into Grandstand digital, even though it’s half a second ahead of the action. I’m sure I’ve complained about this before, but why is the balance of the commentary team so heavily skewed towards Englishmen? Among the commentators ‘proper’, I counted Jim Maxwell versus Aggers, Bloers and one who I think is called Simon. Among the ‘expert’ commentators, I counted Glenn McGrath versus Michael Vaughan, Graeme Swann and Geoffrey Boycott and I’m not sure you really can count Glenn McGrath. Where’s everyone else? My notepad is just toilet block graffiti scrawl: “Vaughan - shut the f**k up”, “F**k off, Geoff (cf. Wake up, Jeff)” and, in response to some longwinded 'nice bit of Wensleydale'-type chatter: “F**k off about the cheeses”. Grandstand, I hope for more, I expect more.

* With the exception of the excellent Marshall’s battery ad, in which Warnie does Benny Hill and which makes me laugh like a drain every time.

I suppose Mitch has no moustache because there is no “Mune” to match Movember. At first I was concerned that he didn’t have it because it would have been too easy a target of derision if it all went wrong, and that would have been a bit of a vote of no confidence in himself. In a parallel universe, it’s natural to be concerned about which Mitchell Johnson has turned up.

There is never any question about which Shane Watson has turned up: he is always exactly the same. Robert Craddock reckoned on the Back Page this week that Shane Watson was picked over Mitchell Marsh because dropping Watson for Marsh if/when he fails is a better narrative than having to go back to Watson if/when Marsh fails. So Shane Watson is, once again, playing for his career, and one has to wonder how many times one can play for one’s career before there is no longer any meaningful distinction between one’s actual career and the one being played for every time. Spot the difference!

Scarlett O'Hara tries to watch Origin, Ashes, fails

ACF streaming froze on this, mesmerised.

I’d like to thank the Australian cricket team for getting their first wicket before the start of Origin III and the next two in the half time break. And I’d like to thank Queensland for making Origin III so comprehensively one sided they all but eliminated the conflict of interest by the beginning of the second half. Every time I checked back on the game between overs, ‘just in case’, it was to see Jonathan Thurston converting another try.

The Welsh threw in the twist of a weather delay, and I’ve no idea if that helped or hindered. The start of the viewing evening was a confusion of wrangling technology and deciding whose pre-game faff was more dispensable. Origin played it straight: dressing rooms, edifying tale of the making of Jonathon Thurston, In His Own Words. Cardiff pulled out an unholy hybrid of a male choir and a barbershop quartet that did Great Southern Land and Down Under and that sounds so much more interesting than it was. Davey Warner smirked from the dressing room and Steven Smith wasn’t even looking and that was about right. Perhaps it was the all-embracing atmosphere of ‘damp’, but I’m just not sure Cardiff knows how to put on a show.

I can’t say the decision to stream the Ashes through the ACF site on the laptop while Origin played on the big screen really worked. The ‘stream’ was more like pouring chunks of curdled milk and I couldn’t concentrate on or enjoy anything, though the ‘not enjoying’ part of Origin probably had other causes. Once Origin was over (or ‘over’) I still found the cricket hard to get into, partly because of Joe Root making a spectacle of himself and partly because those NAB business loan ads are sapping my will to live. It’s a cliff top restaurant on the Amalfi coast, or so we are led to assume. There is nothing ‘secret’ about its success. It’s a tourist magnet, it can serve and charge anything it wants and it’s not leaving that damn harbour. The coy power couple, the smirking waitress, I hate it all, what’s to like. Long story short: it was a fretful, sulky evening, it was all about me, I put myself to bed at midnight with vague ideas of getting up again for the last half hour or so but knew I wouldn’t. Tomorrow’s another day.

St John's Wort

I’ve been watching season 3 of Mad Men and it’s a good warm up for the Ashes because boy does it put the boot into the English. No likeable character was ever called St John.

As far as I am concerned, we don’t hold the Ashes until we win it in England. The 2010/2011 home loss has never been atoned for and two 5-0 home thumpings still haven’t hit the damned spot of 2005. After 2005, the 2006-2007 thumping was the very least we could do to make things up to Warnie. His own 4/49 in Adelaide Oval was satisfying indeed, but then we had the 2009 loss in the UK and the horror of 2010/2011 and the THIRD LOSS IN A ROW of 2013. Thanks once again for 5-0 in 2013-2014, and I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but I think this recap of the sequence of events makes it clear why we are NOT THERE YET.* We need to humiliate them at home. We need to shit where they eat, my friends. 

  
Oh, 2005, ten whole years ago. Why did it hurt so much? I want to say it hurt so much because it gave Them so much pleasure. That certainly was a revolting sight – Jerusalem! double decker buses! OBEs! – but they could easily say it gave them so much pleasure because it hurt us so much and then we are back to where we started.

It gave them so much pleasure because they hadn’t won a series since 1987, they’d endured EIGHT losses in a row, 4 at home and 4 away, we were the best in the world, no one liked us and we lost it. When I say ‘we lost it’, I am referring of course to Ponting blowing his top at Duncan Fletcher on his way back to the pavilion after being run out at Trent Bridge. That was the iconic image of that series, more than the 'Gladiators' image of Flintoff cuddling Brett Lee on the pitch at Edgbaston.

They were good games, and close games, which always makes losing more painful. But the great drama and ultimate trauma of 2005 was the Blond on Blond battle of Flintoff v Warne, one leading his country, the other desperately dragging it along. Flintoff straddled that series like a colossus, but Warnie… Warnie! He took 40 wickets (I really must italicise: forty wickets. Flintoff took 24). He made two hundred and forty-nine runs (more than Katich, significantly more than Gilchrist and Martyn). He worked so hard, he wanted it so much, he tried to do it all himself and it was astonishing and heartbreaking to watch. I remember being upset leading in to the series because with his divorce and another sex scandal it seemed to me that the off field stuff had finally got the better of him and that he was never going to be remembered for what he should be remembered for. This was wrong of course, it seemed to invigorate him, and that was remarkable in itself.

So, as I said above, 5-0 the next series was really the least we could do in return, especially since he also did quite a bit of that one himself. This is still all about 2005 for me. We need to do more to make up for it and we need to do it for Warnie.

* Style guides always say you should avoid using italics for emphasis, but they don’t say anything about ALL CAPS.

Hate watching

THE THRILL OF IT ALL

So it turns out the first day of the Ashes happens on the same night as State of Origin III:Judgement Day. On the one hand this feels like two Christmases coming at once, on the other it’s like juggling two families on Christmas day. When I thought the cricket started at 7 pm AEST (I am very bad at counting), things were sweet: Ashes First Ball and almost an hour of the first session to soak up the vibe before popping over to SOOJD First Impact, some fiddling round in the middle before comfortably watching the final 20 minutes or so of Origin during the Ashes lunch break. But the cricket starts at 8 pm, which is a big ole mess. Ashes First Ball and a couple of overs while they sing the anthem at Suncorp, back to SOOJD for First Impact… then it will be like an episode of Happy Days when Richie schedules two dates on the same night and has to keep taking toilet breaks or making phone calls to rush back and forth between the two.

I have been watching more League in the last few years because when I ordered a boyfriend online I asked for one who could teach me how to watch NRL. One of our early dates was a live screening of Origin 1 hosted by the Fire Up guys. Initially I didn’t understand the references to “Origin Footy”: “It’s what you’d expect from Origin Footy”, etc. It turns out “Origin Footy” means Footy with Hatred, and the easiest way to explain it would have been to tell me “It’s like when they talk about Ashes Cricket”. I have now tapped into the deep vein of loathing for Queenslanders I never knew existed within all self-respecting New South Welshpersons. I wake up on three wintry days a blue-blooded cockroach. It works out better than in the novel. Combine that with the Cricket with Hatred and it adds up to a great deal of frothing at the mouth come the 8th of July.