In case you were wondering how I felt

Parallel story: when I am dodging work to watch the cricket I try to kill more than one bird, in this case making an apple pie during the first session.

There's been a lot of "5-nil" talk in the lead up to this series. To which I say: no amount of crowing “5-nil” will convince me that anything but an away series win will properly avenge the Ashes of 2005. And it will especially not avenge the tragesty* that was the 2011-12 home series loss, which no one seems to talk about. I tell you, the vision of Graeme Swann doing the “sprinkler” in front of the Barmy Army at the SCG is not easily forgotten, let alone forgiven.

The 2006-2007 series, the original “5-nil”, only represented “job done” for one person, Shane Warne, which we know because he called it a day. The pleasure of the 2006-2007 whitewash was the Shane Warne narrative that ran through it and ran through him. Not the wins per se, but the sheer force of will that won the Adelaide Test and the showmanship that produced the 700th wicket. It perfectly encapsulated the command of the elements and the story that characterised his whole career. 

It represented an appropriate counterpoint to 2005 because the great spectacle of that series, more than the losses per se, was the Agony of Warne trying to win the Ashes all by himself when all was collapsing around him. For sheer defiance in the face of the odds, for the attempt to be not only every bowler but every batsman, it was probably an even greater demonstration of will than 2006-2007, and all the greater for being unsuccessful.

Now, however, Test cricket seems to have settled into a too-comfortable pattern of we win here, you win there, I’m OK, you’re OK, trophies going back and forth like a game of pass-the-parcel where every child gets a prize. It’s not okay, I tell you. A while ago people said Australia crushing the English here at home was getting “boring” and I said never, never will I tire of the Melancholy of Nasser, but I think now that was because it came on top of beating them on their home territory - take that and that. Without that added edge, as part of a regular pattern… yes, it is potentially boring. And even if not, don’t pretend 5-nil is good enough.

*James Hooper came out with this portmanteau on an episode of the Back Page a while ago and it has stuck.

This

Yes. Combined age 451, combined chromosomal arms 56. A dick cannot of a Y chromosome an X chromosome make.

1. I’ll say firstly that we have to make allowances for Chappell and Lawry. Every cricketer who took the risk of helping Kerry Packer create the World Series was promised a job for life, so these two will not go anywhere until they die or damn well want to.

2. At the other end of the spectrum, I have never understood or accepted the presence of Mark Nicholas and you can see from the photo that he knows he does not belong there too. The anchor spot is the obvious entry point for a woman into this line up and should happen immediately.

3. Michael Clarke. Simultaneously bores and enrages me. I think this is the polarisation of the impression he used to make on me at press conferences: bland and irritating. He was so perfect at the media thing so this seems a logical continuation and yet not. So not. Apart from anything else we didn’t get a break from him. He went straight from captaining to the commentary box! We needed a rest. Everyone else leaves a decent gap. Don’t be so eager. Stop reminding us of how commercial a proposition you are. He won’t go, of course.

4. Warnie. Has the novelty worn off? His lack of self-censorship and strategic nous was refreshing at the start. Now he mostly appears as the har har larrikin** interspersed with pronouncements from on high about individual players that become media stories. There is no correlation between Warnie’s magnificence as a cricketer (see above) and his presence on the small screen. Warnie is big, but the pictures are small. He won’t go, of course.

5. Healy. Such a nice face. Can we keep him, Mum?

6. Michael Slater and Mark Taylor. Nothing personal, but it is hard to see their presence as necessary.

Funnily enough one of the aims of WSC was to attract more women and migrants to the game. Nine also recently televised parts the Women’s Ashes series, though unfortunately not the most telegenic moment of Elyse Perry’s 200. The tide in this area is turning very quickly. However stodgy the Nine commentary team is, I can’t see the line-up lasting too much longer. They might be hanging out for Elyse Perry to retire, but that might be a while.

** You know the irony about that whole “Gunna have a beer? Eh? Eh?” incident? Warnie is not really a beer drinker, as far as I can gather from the too-many biographies I have read. Too challenging for his palate, I guess. I would imagine he is a bourbon and coke man, maybe scotch and soda, the odd red wine. Not a big drinker in general I think. Most of the pictures of Warnie "drinking" alcohol show him pouring it over his head or attempting to fit his mouth around the whole rim of a glass, in the manner of, respectively, a toddler and a 12 year old. This didn’t stop the 99 Not Out beer designed for him by Moa from being a really excellent beer and by far the best value beer on the market when they started remaindering it.

In case you were wondering about the pie:

I think it speaks for itself.

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.

Padded up

Obviously I had no thoughts about the 3rd Test. Or the 4th Test. Or did I? Possible scenarios :

• No thoughts about the Tests
• So absorbed in Tests that distance of reflection impossible
• Thoughts about Tests, but too absorbed in life to put them down

Maybe a bit of all three. David Warner’s century was certainly fun, and I recommend watching David Warner bat with menfolk around, preferably with a couple of them under 15. But otherwise it was all a bit of a fizzer, non? All the runs, yes, but how many runs does one batsman really need?

People will remember the runs, but I give you some other things that have left their mark on the 2011-2012 test cricket season:

The Bupa ads.

You have to dislike an ad that is coy about what it is advertising, but the real source of irritation in the "What would you do if you met the healthier version of yourself?" scenarios for me is their emotional palette. Where is less-healthy You’s suspicion and resentment? Where is healthier You’s pity and disgust ? And if science fiction has taught me anything, it is that any story that begins with you meeting another version of yourself, ends in a frantic fight to the death. Perhaps we could have a follow-up series: young woman selves suddenly leap at each other’s throats over the cafe table, older woman selves suddenly start chasing each other around the park, middle-aged man selves suddenly stab each other in the gut.

The drinks-break Gatorade bottles

These have morphed from one enormous comic phallus wheeled out onto the ground, to two smaller ones strapped to the backs of guys on segues, both remaining however within the realm of an early Woody Allen sex comedy. I look forward to the day they jump a genre and we see the drinks carriers arrive via Gatorade-bottle-shaped Thunderball jetpacks.

This year’s KFC

Still in the realm of hospitality, there’s the 12th man who carries the drinks, and then there’s the 13th and 14th men, Mitchell Johnson and Cameron White, who have the hidden but crucial task of sitting in the dressing room Fresh Testing chicken sandwiches for the rest of the team.

PS

I woke up in the middle of the night with a crucial codicil to the last post about Michael Clarke. You can’t separate the good looks from the marketability. When the Australian public looks at Michael Clarke, they see the face that launches a thousand products, but this only because when a marketer looks at Michael Clarke, they see a model. If Clarke seems especially promiscuous from a commercial point of view, it is only because he is the captain who can be let loose on an unsuspecting television audience during normal programming time and ratings periods. They don’t show those Steve Waugh Johnnie Walker ads outside of cricket matches, you know. And the "face" of Swisse during prime time is Sonia Kruger, not Ricky Ponting. For all we know, Steve Waugh was desperate to hock himself on the market, but what product would you stand him next to and make it look better?