B1 + B2 = A1

Banana skin 1, banana skin 2, job done. There is a nice symmetry to Australia beating both of the unbeaten teams to win the Cricket World Cup, though "nice" probably isn't the word being used in either India or New Zealand at the moment. Need it be said that once a-goddamn-gain I "felt" for the losing side? At least they had some time to get used to the idea, which perhaps was the problem, maybe I was just depressed about a game that seemed finished a long way before the end. The New Zealand team just looked a long way from home, disoriented and alone, a transplant that didn't take.

Every person with a microphone after the game was obsessed with prodding Australian cricketers about whether and how much they would be drinking that night: "Are you THIRSTY?" "Are you THIRSTY?" "I bet you're THIRSTY" "Gunna do some CELEBRATING tonight?" "Gunna HAVE A FEW?" It ended up being a bit leering, like a Bob and Cheryl Ugly nudgey-wink. Or like they were going to cut away to a beer ad.*

* Note added 31/3: Obviously not just me who noticed this then. And obviously a beer ad. Maybe I should use social media for its God-given purpose. In Warnie's defence, I don't remember this being a Warnie thing. Mark Nichols was doing it on the podium, everyone was doing it. Warnie isn't even much of a beer drinker. Having seen the photos of six-packs on the pitch in the photos this morning, this was indeed about sponsors.

Apropos post-match celebrations, when New Zealand won the semi-final against South Africa and faced their own microphones on the pitch, they made reference to the celebrations they would be having without any prompting and I thought: this isn't over yet, you're celebrating too soon and letting off steam that you will need later. Don't say I didn't warn you!

The Hair Part

I was worried about Sachin's hair when he was presenting on the podium - a hint of Elvis impersonator, a hint of Tom Jones perm - but the evidence suggests he is just rediscovering his youth, which is rather sweet:

The Parting Part

Someone on the radio said that Australians and English people don't appreciate what the World Cup means because we already have the Ashes, ie we have a ne plus ultra contest, something of supreme importance that nothing else measures up to. He suggested that the World Cup was for other countries what the Ashes is for us. I don't know whether that's true about other countries, it's true for me that winning the Ashes is more important than winning the World Cup. Specifically, winning it in England. So bring on July and in the meantime I am doing pretty well in an NRL tipping comp.


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El Caballo Blanco

Here comes New Zealand, riding white horses across the Tasman Sea, bats held aloft and hair gently ruffled by the breeze. I used to cast New Zealand cricketers as characters in a Jane Austen novel (including Chris Cairns as Darcy, which... hmmm, but then every Austen novel has its Wickham), but perhaps Knights of the Round Table is the better model.

I thought the undefeated New Zealand and the undefeated India might be destined to meet in a finals joust, but we put an end to that. It was pointed out to me that although India had won every one of their last 10 (or something) games, they’d lost all of their last 10 (or something) games against Australia. We are their Kryptonite. Or their banana skin (as our colour suggests).

I was at that game:

This was taken a moment before the shot I posted on Twitter, and I post the vision again because it is pretty but also because I can’t work out who the Australian cricketer is on the big screen. I would have said Bailey at a glance, but he’s not in the side. I can’t work it out, suggestions welcome (click on pic for hi-res view).
 

I was very excited to go to the game, it all happened at the last minute when Mr Batsy’s sister had a spare. It was a mixed and generally jovial crowd, lots of “Shucks, we CAN all just get along” and “Awww, we so multicultural” moments. My favourite was the group of men all in India shirts and the small boy sitting in the middle of them in all his Australia gear. When Kohli got out, the India supporters went quiet, when Dhoni got out, they left – immediately. The sea of blue shirts became a sea of blue seats. They are a tough love crowd.

Indian fans might have a reputation for being noisy, but there is nothing like a certain type of Australian fan for being vocal. We sat in front of a row of blokes I will call the “Slips Cordon” who conducted a loud running commentary of the game, cracked funnies and sledged all and sundry. They had some good ones - suggesting Watson was playing for a draw, for example - some bad ones - a conversation about delivering a lady of their acquaintance “balls from both ends” - and they were basically fun, but it is a sort of figurative version of spreading your legs across a bus seat, casually commandeering the game experience of all within a certain radius. I’ve had experiences where the guys commandeering were not so entertaining and the feeling of being trapped and powerless is hellish.

It’s funny when you see a game live and "unpackaged", the logical highlights of the game can be overlooked and random aspects stand out. I have almost no memory of Smith reaching his 100. It snuck up very quickly - he got from 90 to 100 with a 6 and a 4 - and I was probably focused on something like finding the lime wedges in the cooler bag to put into the special lemonade, and then saw everyone jumping up and got with the program a bit late. On the other hand, Johnson’s 23 off 9 at the end of our innings, elbowing out Haddin, stands out as a great feat.

One of the reasons I probably missed Smith’s 100 is because for all that I love Dame Judi and am glad to see Finch make some runs, I have totally jumped on the “who cares, bring on Mad Dog Maxwell” train with Faulkner as its caboose. It seems to me that these two have supplanted Warner and Finch as Australia’s batting sweethearts. This is partly because Warner & Finch have not really fired in this World cup and they’ll get love back when they do. The ones who really suffer in this scenario are the someone someones between the openers and the Big Show & Finisher acts.

Things are getting a bit out of hand with me and James Faulkner. James “F**k Off” Faulkner initially had a very different meaning, but things have now come round beyond full circle into serious overcompensation territory. I titter on the inside like a schoolgirl when I see his picture come up and I believe I blew him a kiss on Thursday night. Not the one-handed kiss-and-blow-the-fairy-dust type, a two-handed suction-based Italian-style jobbie, like Pavarotti thanking his audience or an olde-timey mobster with a napkin tucked into his collar expressing appreciation to the restaurant owner for the linguine with clams. Know what kind I mean? Which is a bit weird. Cue Carrie Bradshaw voice-over: “I couldn’t help but wonder... when it came to James and me, were we just two crazy kids, or was I a fat Italian mafioso and he a plate of pasta?”

I suspect there’ll be words on Monday about New Zealand and the Spirit of the Game regardless of who wins. Who did the Knights of the Round Table fight? In one astonishing synopsis of the tale of Knight Daniel von demblühenden Tal on Wikipedia, a “much-neglected Arthurian epic”, he has to contend with an evil dwarf and a “horde of bellyless monsters” (?) against a background of screaming mechanical dragons and war elephants. It’s not Mists of Avalon. I will take any kind of epic tomorrow, tasteful or not.

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It's time to go...

Oh South Africa, South Africa. As Hanse Cronje said to Ian Chappell on the podium after the 1999 semi final, “It’s a cruel game”. In what is clearly becoming a habit, I felt for South Africa. They wanted it so, so badly, their intensity throughout the game was so palpable and they must have woken up in cold sweats all last night with flashbacks of moments when they might have saved one run, or two, taken another wicket, or two... But I can’t hide the fact that I wanted them to win to save them for an even more dramatic humiliation in a potential AUS-RSA final, so my bleeding heart was a little disingenuous.

I’m not sure whether South Africa’s “choking” reputation comes from a genuine historical tendency or whether it’s just that the 1999 choke was so monumental, such a Choke for the Ages that it is by itself equivalent to 100 separate chokes. South Africa have never made it to a World Cup Final, but neither have New Zealand, and the New Zealand team is not seen as a bunch of chokers but as plucky and dashing, heads always high.

Why do current teams feel responsible for the failures of past teams? It’s like a country’s team is a Ship of Theseus that keeps its identity even though over time every part of it has been replaced. Obviously it's the eye of the beholder, the projections and expectations of the millions of onlookers whose turnover is much slower. It doesn’t help that when they look at the South African team at the moment they run a good chance of beholding Allan Donald.

Hanse was livid in 1999, he walked away from Ian Chappell mid-sentence when Chappelli was winding up his commiserations. The batsmen didn’t have a chance to collapse in tears at the end of that match because the pitch was invaded and everyone had to run off. De Villiers looked sad and haunted, hugely conscious of letting everyone back home down. The presenter said he was sure those people would appreciate that the team had done their best and De Villiers winced.

You know it’s a New Zealand commentator when after a soaring, thunderous triumph, he suggests we could all open a bottle “or maybe make a pot of tea.”

Time, gentlemen (on Pocock and co.)

When “Monkeygate” happened, in which the person on the receiving end of a racial slur was hung out to dry and there were calls for the sacking of the captain that reported it to match officials, I seriously had to track down a copy of Tom Brown’s School Days and read it to understand what the hell was going on.

And there it was, Death before Dobbing:

In fact, the solemn assembly, a levy of the School, had been held, at which the captain of the School had got up, and after premising that several instances had occurred of matters having been reported to the masters; that this was against public morality and School tradition; that a levy of the sixth had been held on the subject, and they had resolved that the practice must be stopped at once; and given out that any boy, in whatever form, who should thenceforth appeal to a master, without having first gone to some prepostor and laid the case before him, should be thrashed publicly, and sent to Coventry.

What school does Tom Brown go to? Rugby. If you wonder why I hate the “gentleman’s” tradition in any code, well, this, this, a thousand times this. It’s one thing to sweep things under the carpet, it’s the open proclamation of the moral superiority of sweeping things under the carpet that blows my mind. A letter writer to the Herald yesterday actually wailed “what have we come to?” He wasn’t bemoaning a plague of political correctness, he was suggesting that reporting an incident to a referee instead of dealing with it on the field or “in house” was by itself a sign of moral degradation.

I can’t tell you how weird this all looks from where I sit. Weird and at the same time stinkingly familiar as a howl of wounded privilege. The horror of being like everyone else, of having to do things like everyone else, of being judged by everyone else. Report a wrongdoing? Follow a rule? I know, it's so obvious. One of us is the alien and one of us is at home in this world. Which one is it? I’d like to think it’s time, gentlemen. Or: party’s over, dickheads.

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I'm Freddie Flintoff...

In a parallel universe to the CWC, I think Andrew Flintoff could be crowned 'King of the Jungle' in South Africa on the first Australian series of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here. His competition is former AFL star Barry Hall and former (and current) reality TV star Chrissie Swann.

A cursory swipe of the net suggests I might be in the minority on this one, so here is my reasoning:
1. He's coming fresh off a star-turn in a high-rating all-ages show (BBL04).
2. The all-ages thing: he potentially appeals to all demographics, young and old, male and female.
3. He has not shown any unattractive personality traits under pressure, cf. Barry Hall's general micromanagement and picking on Anna, and Chrissie's behind-the-back sniping with Joel.
4. He has been both entertaining and philosophical and pulled off a strategic masterstroke by confiding to camera last week that playing for a 'little thing' like England seemed insignificant compared to playing for charity. Too far?

In some ways he's been like a series mole. He appeared two weeks into the season as an 'intruder' when the group was already set in its roles and most of them didn't know who he was. So he was sort of undercover and his BBL personality would only come out in the 'Tok Tokkie' (TM) pieces to camera, like he was filing reports, and in the meetings with the presenters, where he broke down the host/player barrier by developing a running gag with Dr Chris that culminated with him getting the vet to drink a mouthful of some vile 'Tucker Trial' (TM) concoction.

I can't look at him without seeing the Messiah of the 2005 Ashes, a very traumatic series for me. He was the Lion and the Lamb, the Countenance Divine that shone forth upon their clouded hills (literally: when the crowd sang "Jerusalem" at Lords on the final day, an enormous close-up of his face appeared in the video montage at the ground when they reached that line). He didn't quite manage a Second Coming, and this third incarnation as Droll Lancastrian might end up being the most durable. I couldn't get on board with the general Freddie love-in during BBL, I found it a bit cultural-cringey ("You like us, you really like us!") and over-reliant on the 'funny accent' factor.

I won't say I've 'come round'  to the love-in level in this series, but I'm happy to go along with the ride. I was impressed by his no-fuss discussion of depression and his gesture of solidarity with balding men by shaving just the top of his head and 'naming names' ("Shane Warne, roog; Michael Vaughan, roog...") - could there be a new Movember here? And his live commentary while eating a cockroach was a bravura performance.

But last week I thought Maureen was going to take it out.

It's time to go... England, plus a tale of two SCGs

For a few minutes I actually felt a bit sorry for England last night when they were failing against Bangladesh. I know, who’s that girl? What was she thinking? I have a terrible bleeding heart, but England? I put it down to the fact that I think of people like Buttler who’ve played in the Big Bash, and Broad for that matter, as a bit less English than the rest. I would have said the same of Morgan once upon a time, but he has so thoroughly assumed the mantle (= smelly old dressing gown) of the Glum English Captain I can no longer distinguish him from the rest. Plus I think Jordan’s run-out call was pretty rough. I snapped out of it before the end and normal prejudice resumed (thank you, Kathy Lette, I’ll have my keyboard back now). And prejudice aside, England have just been terrible, end of story, there is no bad luck or injustice in them not making the finals. Au contraire. Bangladesh, you guys rock and your cuddle mosh was an ode to joy. Thy enchantments bind together indeed.

I watched the game against Sri Lanka on Sunday and I’m a bit appalled at how little I remember about it, even though I thought it was a good game at the time. Something something MAXWELL GOES OFF something something SANGA TAKES US ON something something something we won. Some fitness stuff on both sides. In that regard, I have to say I don’t see Michael Clarke on this team even if fitness wasn’t an issue. It’s purely a 'vibe' call – what, you want me to look at performance? – but he seems out of place among all of the T20 natives. The question might be moot in any case.

I enjoyed seeing Xavier Doherty, mainly because a 10-year-old friend got a lovely photo with him at an ODI in the tri-series so he gets the ‘I know him, he’s nice to kids’ tick of approval. That’s one of the perks of being in the Members' Reserve and that’s my segue to that story.

By the end of the first week of 2015 I had written three letters of complaint. In return I received a) a full refund, b) three tickets in the Members' Reserve as guests of the SCG trust for the first ODI in the Tri-Series against England and c) a personal email from Adam Spencer. Never mind the reasons for the complaints. I had my reasons.

I have sometimes thought that a drawback of sitting in the old members' stands at the SCG is not being able to see the old members' stands at the SCG. When you can see the sunset and skyline behind them at an evening game, it’s really an iconic Sydney moment. In terms of advantages, well, yes, I can see that it would also be pleasant to sit IN the nice heritage buildings during a game, as I’ve done myself not during a game. Apart from that I’ve mainly seen the upsides in terms of position, position, position and full-strength beer. Those were more innocent times.

The experience started at home with close scrutiny of the SCG dress code. I even rang them to clear up an ambiguity in their specifications regarding sandals (yes for women, absolutely not for men (“if we see toes, the answer is no”)). I cannot tell you how much comfort and guidance I found in the Members’ Look Book, settling on a combination of the practicality of page 3 with the attitude of page 7.

You go through the gates and there is the actual World Cup with which you can have your picture taken. Taking your seats in the Ladies Stand, you see it has not only olde worlde charm but the mod con of large flat screen TVs showing the full Channel 9 coverage. You receive little ‘reserved’ stickers to attach to your seats so you don’t lose them when you go to get some full-strength beer. The players are warming up in front of you.

It goes on. While I was surprised to find the same old junk at the food counter inside the stand, with mark up of about $1, you serve yourself from a sort of heated display stand. I stood before rows of buckets of hot chips I could reach out and touch and looked uncertainly at the girl behind the counter, “Can I... I... help myself?”, I asked with cautious wonder, like a Victorian waif brought in from the cold who doesn’t dare believe her luck. “Help yourself and meet me at the cash register” she said, a little flirtatiously. She’s smiling, relaxed, she asks me how my day has been, not the first or last to do so.

During the innings break, we took a wander. The SCG museum was open, a great collection, something for all ages and just the right size for the length of the intermission. We went into the new stand and saw a counter where you could help yourself to free sunscreen from big pump packs. There were flasher catering options there – craft beer and we saw more than one person walk by with fresh prawns. As we left and strolled among gardens and statues, children gambolling on the tennis courts, it hit me: this is a utopia, a vision of a perfect society. Space, time, amenity. Luxe, calme, volupté. No unsightly men’s toes. As if to underline the point, in the charming pink 50s bathroom I entered a stall with a single line of graffiti on the back of the door: “Make love and listen to the music”. In another stall, another lone exhortation: “Eat more pussy.”

It was a bit like one of those episodes of Star Trek where they land on a planet with green lawns and free love and blissful people in togas, but there’s a secret catch like the death penalty for walking on the grass. Here it’s more of a toe thing – seriously, as we came in we walked past a man who’d been stopped and who was testily insisting his shoes were indeed “enclosed” despite the side vents; you knew it would not end well – but really it’s the uncomfortable awareness that the utopia depends on exclusion and is priced to that end. And what other criteria for exclusion could you use, a personality test? This is how clubs work. And it’s not like the people in the members’ stands were all awful old boys or in Look Book outfits. Most people seemed ordinary and nice, just like you and me! The most bothering thing was the access members’ kiddies get to the players. There are a couple of ‘family’ bays next to the members' stands which I now realise are placed there for this reason, so that some pleb kids at least can be included in the players’ walk around the fence to sign autographs and have photos taken after the game. But how do the parents on the other side of the ground explain why the players don’t come over?

There’s an irony in the fact that as compensation for a shabby experience on the Other Side of the ground, I was offered an experience that highlighted just how shabby the other side is. I looked over to the stand I’d been in for the New Year’s Test and thought of the bunker-like food areas around the back, the concrete, the queues, the sweaty shuffling and jostling like some Eastern Bloc propaganda film. Could I bear to go back there? I could of course, the very next week for a BBL game and there was no undue suffering. But I did look at the sun setting over the members stand in a different light, like a shimmering Shangri-La, and I didn’t feel sorry for the people there who couldn’t see it.