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?

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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.