TNT!

I had just been reading up on oxytocin, the "cuddle hormone", and then I saw Adrian Barath make his century. Adorable! The leap of joy, the being swept up and spun around in Dinesh Ramdin's arms, the salute to the crowd and the team, but the clincher of his place in Cricket Love history was his lean into Ramdin's chest—it bordered on a nuzzle—to go in for a second cuddle. I was combing the interwebs for pictures of the cuddles in particular and thought I had found one, but it turns out it was Barath engaged in yet another delightful cuddle in another game entirely. He can't help himself, he's Adrian Boris "Mr Oxytocin" Barath.

Adrian Barath & Lendl Simmo, 29th January 2009 (WI vs England) (AP/AndresLeighton (c))

It was a long way from Peter Roebuck's polite (?) inquiry of Fazeer Mohammed on Day 1 as to whether Barath and Ramdin's background was middle class or, rather, perhaps, "peasant". Oh Peter. Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter. Oh Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter. What will I do with you?

A more palatable moment in Grandstand camp was when Ponting dropped Travis Dowlin off Mitchell Johnson, which yielded this clipped exchange:

Roebuck (I think): Uncharacteristic.
Maxwell: Most.

Quite!

And I was glad to see that Nathan Hauritz has not lost his flair.

A shame about, well, the rest.

O Captain! My Captain!

(Ricky from the Useful Box archives, but obviously fitting now.)

A couple of days ago Terry Jenner called for Ricky’s head and waxed lyrical about Michael Clarke’s foreman material: “I was in England a month”, he said, (and) “Every press conference Michael Clarke did was superb.” “He’s never tired, never drained, never fatigued.”

Terry, you old fool. This is like being taken in by the preternatural resilience and sphericality of a pair of fake boobs. Look, good on Clarke for being such an enthusiastic study of Media Grooming 101 and thus relieving the rest of the team from what must be a very tedious chore for them, but his press performances are so bland and cliché-spacked he simply shifts the burden of tedium onto the rest of us.

I’m a Romantic: I have a soft spot for a flaw, even the odd wreck, and Ricky cemented his place in my heart when he disgraced himself at the Bourbon & Beefsteak in January ‘99 during my very first Summer of Cricket. That black eye was perfect, cartoon-like, and Ricky in general was — is — such a Ginger Meggs/Dennis the Menace-style figure, all scraped knees and pugnaciousness, that frowny look on his face at the crease like he might be busted any moment for stealing apples or breaking windows. Batting and bowling, his movements were all free, loose and boyish, I loved watching him. His fielding is still all boy but I think his batting body has matured and tightened up: the last time I saw him live he put me in mind of a little flamenco dancer the way he held his torso still and erect in a pose after a stroke.

Which brings us to Ricky's "smouldering" line in Cricket Love that I mentioned a couple of posts back. It’s already visible in the picture of Cricket Sad above, but this is more particularly what I had in mind:

I'm guessing this was taken during some after-match presentations, and there's nothing that's not wonderful here. A balm for the soul in these troubled times.

PS. So I guess I'm saying why I'll always love Ricky, sentimental old fool that I am, though not the same kind of old fool as TJ, and that I won't go out for Pup when I have Pig-Dog at home.

Get your leather on*

* As spake in Yeah Yeah Yeah's "Zero" which SBS has started playing during the cricket, an improvement on the previous dire anthems.

So much Cricket Love, so little time.

When a Short Batsman Loves a Tall Bowler

At the end of the Headingley test, Simon "Robocop" Katich showed he's not above a cuddle after all and Mitchell Johnson that he was worth the climb.

Katich is in fact only 7cm shorter than Johnson (1.82 m to Johnson's 1.89), but the scene reminded me of this one from the Cricket Love Archive between the 1.78 m Ricky Ponting and the 1.95 m Glenn McGrath (probably from the last Ashes in England, no later than August 2005 in any case).

Ricky actually does an excellent line in a more smouldering form of cricket love apart from the happy puppy style here, but that will have to be for another time.

And just to show that natura non facit saltus but that Katich most certainly does, here's a segue from the archive between the two scenes:

Happy day!

They call me naughty Lola

(Action Images 21/12/2008)

So, the win was good, though I think we certainly were spoilt with that first innings and second innings start, because when we didn't get the next 5 wickets in, say, half an hour, it was all pouting in the loungeroom, like, OMG are you serious? Borring! Helloo?

A highlight for me was the after-match presentations when the predictable sniggers at Billy "Chicken Man" Bowden gave way to shrieks of delight as Asad Rauf sidled up to the podium. The only way I can describe the look is to stress that he was wearing not sunnies but shades and that his clothes were, I strongly suspect, threads.

It was a mere formality to confirm that he hailed from the land of Imran Khan and this may simply be another case where I am late to the party as I have since found a reference where he is summed up as "just one cool motherf****r".

I am pleased of course to find that he holds his own in the cricket love stakes, and in fact seems a bit of a softie (see eg. here and here). But then who wouldn't melt in the capable arms of the Hon. Steve Bucknor, OJ, seen here on his last day of duties?

(Hamish Blair/Getty Images 22/03/09)

Business End

Dammit, I keep meaning to elaborate my theory about English wilty-ness, which I had to curtail last time because work beckoned and it's staring me down again like a pet watching me eat.

Ironically, one of my current work colleagues is a Frenchman who has been asking me for cricket updates ever since I explained to him a couple of weeks ago why I was up so late. Our cultures are united in their traditional disdain for the English of course and his response to my last bulletin was: "Bravo pour la leçon de cricket donnée aux Anglais", which I think is fairly transparent.

Test 4 second verse: same as the first

Well I take everything back about self-administered haircuts, because Mitchell Johnson's once-over with the clippers on the No. 2 setting seems to have worked a treat (a reverse Samsonism that indeed was always a favoured explanation of Warney's success with the ball once he lost the mullet).

And I very much enjoyed the starlet-on-the-red-carpet-back-over-the-shoulder-look he threw Collingwood after he bounced him: très femme fatale. A varation actually on the steaminess he created with Stuart Broad on Day 4 at Edgbaston.

Not that I saw this live. Another of my favourite books when I was little was Marion Holland's A Big Ball of String. A boy collects pieces of string into a Big Ball and then, when he is confined to bed with a cold, sets himself up so he can basically run the world from his bed by pulling on bits of string:
It probably says a lot about me that as an idea of a Good Time—or Dream Lifestyle—this still strikes me as just about unbeatable.

Anyway, I mention it because as the English prepared for their 2nd innings I hauled the smaller TV into the bedroom and set myself up in bed with extra pillows, laptop, weekend newspaper, pen and notebook and… fell asleep almost immediately. Lizard brain prodded me awake to see Mitchell Johnson being an aeroplane and England on 5/78. Well, now you're just spoiling me.

I greet the haunted look of the crumbly English cricketer like an old friend of course. As mentioned in relation to Captain Nasser, there's something about loss—especially of the gasp-makingly embarassing sort—that suits the English like a comfy pair of corduroy slippers and a smelly old dressing-gown they really ought to chuck into the fireplace but can't quite let go of.

Personally, I feel "Burn the smelly dressing gown" represents an improvement on the desperately vague homilies the English were getting from other sources:

Bowling coach Ottis Gibson: "Stand up as Men."
Everyone's coach Greg Matthews:
1. "Stand up."
2. "Have a look at the badge on your shirts."
3. "Get into it."

(I do love it though when Greg puts on his glasses, a thought Stuart MacGill echoed last night: he is transformed in the most unlikely fashion from haggard old ocker into the local pastor or headmaster.)

Look, what's that over there?

Test 3 Day 2 too painful to talk about. God, aghast at handiwork, has sent rain, without quite grasping the mathematics of possible outcomes from a 5-match series (omniscience? could try harder).

So, distractions it is. Curios from the Useful Box:

Curio 1

(NB. clicking on the image makes it bigger)

This is a piece by Ben Dorries from the Daily Telegraph the day after The Day the Music Died, ie 22 December 2006. I thought it wasn't at all a bad stab given how perilous this kind of thing can be (Marcus North was also named as a squad member in a side-bar). The accompanying article, discussing spinner options, suggests "Nathan Hauritz won't rate a mention", but who can blame him since he barely rates a mention now, doomed to be beige in the eyes of his beholders.

So, what did happen to Rogers, Jaques, Casson...? I ought to know, but I have an atrocious attention/memory span when it comes to the wider talent pool and rely on the kindness of strangers to tell me.

Nb. This was a much funner curio before the series sank into its current phase of gloomed oh-what-might-have-been-ness.

Curio 2

This is completely irrelevant (so much the better!), but is a personal Cricket Love favourite from the Daily Telegraph of 11 February 2003 (picture: Phil Hillyard):


I just adore the menswear-catalogue or even knitting-pattern-cover bonhomie here.

Shoaib: Ah-HO-ho-ho
Brett: Ah-HA-ha-ha
Shoaib: What am I laughing at Brett, ah-ho-ho-HO
Brett: It's a menswear thing Shoaib, you wouldn't understand... ah-ha-ha-HA
Shoaib: But it's definitely something over there, right? Ah-HO-HO-Ha!
Brett: As mine is over there. You're actually quite the natural at this. Ah-HA-ho-ha!
Shoaib: Ah-ho-HO-ho-ho ho! But of course. I am Shoaib Akhtar.

There is something to be said here about the tinkle-tinkle of gay laughter vs. the tinkle-tinkle of rain, or perhaps rainbow-like smiling-through-the-tears... damned if I know what it is though.

The Go-To Girl

Because my technical insight into cricket is approximately nil, my appreciation of the game is rather like a pre-Modern worldview that relies on resemblances, resonances and random conjunctions to work out what’s going on. That’s my way of explaining my love of a lookalike.

So, I’ve worked out, probably long after everyone else, the exact element in Hauritz’s bowling action that gives the “girly” impression. It’s that flared left hand as he releases the ball:


It's the full-body equivalent of cocking a pinky finger when lifting a teacup to your mouth, and when it comes to flared hands, these people got there first:

But the Charleston connection was really worth pursuing. I mean, look at this:




Who'da thunk it? Ironically here it’s everything but the left hand that matches, but it made me realise that it’s also the pigeon toes and general Charlestonesque gawkiness that’s part of the overall effect of Hauritz's action. Mind you, a spinner's action is not always pretty: Stuart Magill used to look like a crow with a broken wing trying to take off.

I feel for Hauritz: it’s a game where physiognomy counts for a lot (how much does the squareness of Kumble’s jaw enter into perceptions of his honourable character? not to mention Flintoff, about whom more another time), and in an unusually hairy team he looks like he doesn’t shave yet, and amidst an unusually (for an Australian cricket team) good-looking lot, he’s rather plain—a man-child without being a boy-wonder.

But can he Charleston, or what?

Day 3 Cricket love

Briefly - Greg Matthews on public displays of affection in his time: "Marsh was too big to get your arms around and Greg Chappell wasn't worth the climb."