Forget Hotspot, what is going on with Short Leg?

More on that later.

Nigel Llong's decision? It seemed to be due to misplaced and exaggerated deference to Snicko and the on-field umpire. Llong was thrown by Snicko not backing up the suggestion of Hotspot, creating a doubt in his mind, the benefit of which he gave to the on-field umpire/Lyon. It shouldn't have happened: Snicko is more likely to give a false negative due to ambient noise than Hotspot is likely to give a false positive. On top of that, it's not clear that Llong should have even referred to Snicko after the positive reading of Hotspot: the directive of the ICC for the 2013/2014 Ashes tour was that Snicko should only be consulted if Hotspot shows no mark. That was then, I don't know what the directive is now. 

As I write someone from the New Zealand team is being ridiculously mild-mannered about the whole thing with Chris Rogers: no wonder their colour was beige.

Sexing the cherry

I find it hard to shake the impression the pink ball has something to do with Jane McGrath, so entrenched are those associations by now. In that respect, Pink Lady might come into its own as a suggested nickname, but otherwise I favour "gum ball", because it doesn't look like a colour that occurs in nature to me, or not on a fruit in any case.

Judi

Is doing well as both school boy and school master. He has a haughty way of raising his head and looking down his nose as a way of asking the question of the bowler when a review is in the offing, and also does a good lip purse.

Lookalike time

My take on Short Leg?

The WACA

(It feels a bit awkward to post at the same time as the unfolding events in Paris, but after a certain amount of time glued to the news it starts to feel a bit voyeuristic and there's nothing more to be gained, for the time being anyway. I decided I was better employed in my role as a cricket voyeur.)

Davey Warner after 20 years at the WACA crease.

You asked for a Test series, you got the Australian Batsmen Achieve their Personal Goals show. Rumour has it New Zealand actually won the toss but McCullum said to Smith “No, no, after you.”

When the New Zealanders finally got a second wicket at the end of the day, for a moment it looked it could have been a no-ball. When the foot landed safely behind the line I said “Oh, thank God” out loud and Mr Batsy thought this was probably echoing the thoughts of Usman Khawaja.

New (or newish) Grandstand voices

Dirk Nannes is settling in nicely as one of the few ex-cricketer “expert” commentators on Grandstand not to be basically cranky (Mr Batsy’s wail of “Oh no, it’s Terry Alderman” yesterday could be heard from the other end of the house). I think it’s because he never represented Australia at Test level. Once you get that cap, it leave a mark, there will always be residual wounds, knots and itches and how you work those out (whether you work those out) will determine what kind of commentator you will be. Some carry them on their shoulders and are cranks (Alderman, Boycott, Lawson), some wear them like a red nose and are clowns (O’Keeffe, Fleming). The TV ones seem more well-adjusted on the whole than the radio ones, presumably because (1) they rub shoulders with other ex-players, a group therapy that takes the edge off and means no one can carry the “No one understands” chip or put up the “I know better than anyone else” hand; (2) they have usually had more successful careers; (3) their target audience contains fewer grumpy old men.

Dirk is so easygoing and likeable that he managed to use the expression “ipso facto” yesterday and still sound like he was down at the pub. That’s a trick Ed Cowan can only dream of.

Simon Katich. What can I say? My old flatmate gave the definitive verdict on Simon Katich on another reality show over six years ago: “He’s very Straight, isn’t he?” Nothing has changed. It seems an iceman on the field is a wooden man in the commentary box. The thrill of the hawk-eyed menace on the field ultimately relies on an certain internal stillness and rigidity of focus, and that’s what comes out on air. “You’d never see this field placing on the old WACA” was his idée fixe yesterday, said alas more times than it needed to be. (I still love you, Kat.)

This summer’s ads

Doesn’t Mitchell Johnson make it look easy in the protein powder ad? Not the lifting weights, the being on camera. Sportspeople are generally awful as models and actors but the camera loves him and he seems completely at home. Contrast Steve Smith in the Commonwealth Bank ad trying to be himself and make small talk. It’s like a bad date.

Modestly onwards

All I know about this series is:

1. Burns and Khawaja are in the squad. 

I have seen this headline with a helpfully illustrative photo 4 or 5 times over the last week or so. I do not know how it can be a headline story that many times, but there it is. I wish them well.

2. McCullum and Smith: Worst. Trashtalkers. Ever.

McCullum: Rowr.
Warner: Grr.
McCullum: Rowr: the Sequel.
Smith: Um, grr.

This also seems to have been fleshed out into the limpest of "sagas". They're reaching, aren't they? I'm surprised no one has waved Chris Cairns under McCullum's nose, but that would just be rude, and these guys just aren't. Which is why it all seems very pumped up.

And Judi, Judi, Judi*, YOUR HAIR.

I've always thought a lot less happens in sport than there is media space to fill, so pretty much anything will do as a scoop. I look forward to something happening today, though I have also started wondering whether sport is like music: what was playing during your formative years always has a special intensity that later stuff won't ever live up to. You start going "it's not like it was before, they all look the same..." I've now been watching for long enough to have a "golden age" to look back on. It's an optical illusion, newness and shininess is in the eye of the beholder, but I suspect I'm going to have to accept a certain loss of magic.

* Steve Smith = Judi Dench IS A THING. If Ramiz Raja is with you, you are at the right party.

T20 x 2

T20 I

I only heard about the David Warner “shot that rang out across the world” on the car radio Friday morning. Switch-hitting, eh? I always thought Mickey Arthur sounded like the name of a baseball coach. I’m in the “for” camp, naturally, because I can’t resist a showman, the freakier the better, but I will be interested to see whether T20 gives the English language “switch hitting” as a viable alternative to the football-inspired “shifting the goalposts” and the… cross-country horse-riding-inspired “swapping horses midstream”.

I also heard that Jim Maxwell isn’t pleased about it, but he has been a bit cranky this season generally. He was practically apoplectic at the Gabba about a notice on the board warning spectators against pitch invasion. This kind of killjoy authoritarianism is apparently the root cause of the decline of Test cricket audiences, he was really angry. I think he’s grieving Roebuck, and maybe he feels he has to stand up for the Spirit of Cricket “for two”, but he was always the more conservative of the pair, and maybe Roebuck was in fact a moderating influence.*

*I was about to get around to asking “Whatever to happened to Glenn Mitchell?”, which I have been meaning to do all summer, and jeez, I completely missed this. Get better, Glenn, I miss you.

T20 II

Well, Aaron Finch, obviously. Even while he was batting I thought he had a strapping “New Zealand” heft about him and indeed he appears to be a delicious amalgam of all of the charms of the New Zealand cricket team, including, unexpectedly, Daniel Vettori’s glasses.

PS. I like this picture on his Wiki page. No, really, not that, it's a really good kinetic shot - that baseball aesthetic again - and I find that cricket photography rather struggles with the "action" shot.

PPS. If you read down his cricinfo page, you'll see he got chucked out of the cricket academy for not keeping his room tidy. Behave.

Sous le pitch, la plage

Well, there are mystery spinners, mercurial fast bowlers and batsmen maudits. Philip Hughes. Gosh, we talked about inner turmoil last summer, and when Hughes and Warner were batting it was a black hole down one end and a wide sandy expanse up the other. It was painful when Hughes got out, but it’s just stressful to watch him play. That kind of hell paved with good intentions is too close to home. It’s not the enthralling kind of stressful of watching Nathan Lyons on strike when Australia are 9 down and need 30 to win. Dave Warner again at the non-striker’s end, a picture of phlegm, casually leaning on his bat, filing his nails. Then he’d come on strike and everyone would run away, I don’t think I’ve seen a batsman left alone with the bowler and wicketkeeper like that before.

Warner Cricket Love: Warner pats his seniors. He did it to Ponting twice during a drinks break in their batting spell and to Haddin when he came out to the crease, little taps on the arm or back. I think you’d have to have a pretty special personality to get away with that. He also gave Haddin a lovely high hug around the neck when he made 100.

For a while it seemed like Warner would never live down/live up to that 29-run over, but it probably bothered the rest of us more than it bothered him, the man doesn’t seem to have an “inner”. He reminds me of the other Warner in some ways – certainly in his bowling action and there’s something in his post-match interview style as well, but maybe they just share a rhinoceros hide. (Nb. Poor old Warnie’s hide, the toasted cheese sandwich finally rose up against him.)

Dancing boys

Well I wasn't wrong about New Zealand bringing their traditional dash. Holy moley they punch above their weight in impossible good looks and general Uprightness. Daniel Vettori is old news to me, but I'd overlooked Brendon McCullum. Dean Brownlie! Doug "Bounce Me and I'll Flash my Dimples at You" Bracewell! And I don't mind a man who comes back for seconds, thank you very much Mr Easy Ryder. I'm glad they've nevertheless kept a spot open for a "Goofy-Looking Guy called Chris".

My friend Rachel and I used to amuse ourselves casting members of the New Zealand cricket team in 19th-century novels. Chris "Darcy" Cairns. Daniel "Slightly Diffident but is it Because he has a Sad Secret?" Vettori. Adam "Natural Son by Creole Temptress" Parore.

A couple of things.

Day 1: Hilarious first over. All that sawdust. More cowbells!
Day 2: When Vettori reached 96, I wrote a note: "out on 99?". Close. Somewhere Shane Warne whispered one of his spells into the winds and made it happen.

And then somehow or other at the end of the first day I found myself with a ticket to Hobart next weekend. It happened in a bit of a flurry but there it is, I'll be touching down early morning of Day 3. Bellerive's the only major cricket ground in Australia I haven't visited, and maybe Ricky will do something.

Obviously I am "Intrepid Maiden Lady Traveller" from an early 20th-century novel. Bring me my Baedeker!