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.

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?