Anti-Podean

No really, I’ve had so much work in the first half of this year, and all my time off was spent watching The Wire. A strange few months.

I didn't mean to leave the 1-day series untouched: I had a whole spiel worked out in my head that culminated in baptising Shahid Afridi "The Organoleptic Shock". Plus a bit of a whinge that no one was making any connection between the limpness of that series and the abandonment of the round-robin format. You have the two coolest, craziest, strike-a-posiest cricket-playing nations in your backyard and you don’t make them play each other? That’s no way to run a ratings show.

Then after that, well I don’t have cable television, and – like the proverbial tree in the forest spliced with some personal solipsism – when I can’t see or hear the Australian cricket team through my television screen or radio transmitter I have trouble believing that they actually exist.

But in the depth of winter some distant rumblings of the summer game to come…

Exhibit A:

I saw my first Ashes television ad today, with the footage of Ashes cricket from different eras spliced together, and thought it did a good job of doing what it is supposed to do, which is generate a little excitement.

I appreciate it partly in contrast to last time. In 2006 there was a disturbing "underwhelm by all means" trend in advertising. NSW CityRail launched a big PR campaign with a series of billboards carrying words to the effect of: "CityRail. There's still a few problems, but we're working on it."

Then the launch of the campaign for the 2006-2007 Ashes series. Not that that series really needed to be advertised. Perhaps the powers that be decided that such was the level of anticipation, so goaded and girded and geared up for a grudge match was the Australian public, that the only responsible thing to do was to throw out a giant muffler in the form of the damp and confusing slogan:

The Ashes, a sporting contest over 100 years old and only interrupted by world wars, is definitely on. Oh good. No world war on the cards then.

Let's say they meant "on" in that belligerent sense: “You’re on, mate”. In which case, an instructive example of how qualifiers can weaken. Someone somewhere added a "definitely" to IT'S ON ('nuff said) and got: "Ooooooh, now you've made me really mad!"

Exhibit B:

Continuing the poorly-chosen-words theme, the SMH ran a cricket-focused front page picture and story the other week about Usman Khawaja's selection for the Australian Test Squad. With the headline: "Accomplished, calm, elegant - and a Muslim in Test squad". So let me get this straight: accomplished, calm, elegant… and now you're trying to tell me MUSLIM? And in a TEST SQUAD??!! Get out of here!!!

After reading the story, the headline was maybe a stab at the idea that there are a lot of other things as notable and interesting about Usman as the fact that he's a Muslim: the latter fact isn't really the story here. Which would have been a more convincing line if they hadn't made that the story there.

Exhibit C:

Channel 9 are showing some live cricket tonight: maybe those rumblings I hear as I put my ear to the cold winter ground are things that happen (deep breath now) on the other side (nnnnnh)… of… the world (whoo!). Dead rubber no. 2 of a 5-match ODI series against England, right? See, I do know something. I may have a look. I’m worried I won’t recognise any of them.

PS. Howard’s rejection. Gee, no one saw that coming. It seems the ACB/CA has spent the last 30 years painstakingly replacing, straw by straw, the stuffing Mr Packer knocked out of their shirts all those years ago. If they only had a brain.

Yes, but where's the biscuit?

I am not at all above one-day cricket, one of my most treasured possessions is my videotape of the whole 2nd innings of the second semi-final of Australia vs. South Africa in the 1999 World Cup, with which I have lured more than one unsuspecting (or suspecting, I suspect) male into my salon, and inflicted it on several nonplussed friends as I walked and talked them through the many highlights — Warney’s Gattingesque ball to Herschelle and hyperventilation after 3 quick wickets to bring Australia back into the game and himself back to cricket, the hair-raising last few overs with Reiffel piffing a boundary catch over the rope for a terrible 6, several near-run outs and of course Fleming’s dry-mouth last over and ten-pin underarm strike while Klusener and Donald’s brains exploded like fireworks and Hansie loomed in the back of the South African viewing area like Darth Vader.

What a night THAT was... but this week, Life got in the way of seeing any of the first match on Friday and Work has been pressing ever since, though the latter did mean I was up to see all of the second match out of the corner of my eye.

It’s true there now seems something a bit ungainly about the one-day form: neither the slow-down-your-biorythms-we’re-in-for-the-long-haul commitment of the Test nor the fasten-your-seat-belts-it's-going-to-be-a-bumpy-night hoo-ha of 20/20, it’s not “just right” à la Goldilocks but rather... oh, I don’t know, à la Hamlet. I won’t write it off just yet. I hate doing what everyone else is doing and everything cricket is obviously clouded by post-Ashes loss ennui.

I missed the old SBS panel and seeing the commentators at the ground, and I couldn’t pick the voice of the Australian in the box... a little bit Taylorish, but not.* I loved watching Johnson bat and I am waiting for Hopes to do something splendid so I can pronounce him brutti ma buoni and whip up a batch of the Italian biscuits of the same name. May as well continue a theme.

* It's Nostril Boy Mark Waugh, isn't it?