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.

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!