Eyes Wide Shut, or the Horrours of Headingley

I believe we were talking about how amazing matches go beyond the possible and comprehensible. To which we can now add the tolerable, palatable, and digestible. I guess we know now who has stepped into the Messianic Ashes All Rounder shoes of Andrew Flintoff. Spinning 73 runs out of that 11^th-wicket partnership was certainly a loaves and fishes-worthy trick. I for one look forward to the day when Ben Stokes presents whatever Australian Ninja Warrior has become in 10 years time or has a bucket of hissing cockroaches thrown over him in a ditch in the South African jungle.

The quandary for me all week has been reconciling the fact that this was a “great” match that I am “glad” to have watched with the fact that it was a “horrendous” match that I felt “sick” watching. At the start of the final over it was all I could do to squeak “Patty” from under a blanket like an expiring consumptive. Don’t tell me it has something to do with Cricket being the real winner. I’ll believe that when you find me an English person who believes that anyone or anything but England was the real winner of that game.

It was like a reverse sublime, where the impossibility of conceiving what was happening kept getting slapped around by the reality of it, quite literally toward the end. Wake up, wake up. Eyes wide open and shut at the same time. You could say that the Australian team’s ability to comprehend took too long to adjust to the reality, but it should never have had to in the first place. You can believe something is impossible, you can even know something is impossible, but the rule in sport is that you have to act as if it were possible. Ben Stokes certainly did. The problem isn’t about brains coping with the reality, but actions reflecting the possibility. Who cares what anyone thinks? I’ve always found Pascal’s wager distinctly unconvincing when it comes to believing in God, but it really works for sport. Act as though an England win is possible and you lose nothing if it turns out you’re wrong. Act as though an England win is impossible and boy will you suffer eternal damnation when you’re corrected.

There’s a lot less at stake for the spectator—nothing, really, when it comes down to it—so the tingling suspense between fear and hope with each dice throw of the ball can be felt as a kind of horrible pleasure (cf. the excellent analysis of King Cricket). Kant (and after Pascal, why not Kant?) thought pain was part of any really good pleasure because it’s the pain that makes you feel alive. Kant was a little bit of a bondage and discipline type, but I think the argument works. At some stage the experience tips into the sublime, the pleasure “mingled with Horrours, and sometimes almost with despair.” Yes.

The Man from Victoria

Moving from an aesthetic to a tactical quandary: who and where is the Great Australian All Rounder? There’s a satisfying combination of dash and heft in an all rounder, a combination Shane Watson tried and failed to achieve his whole career, and we seem to have trouble coming up with them. If you Google “great Australian all-rounders”, the first page throws up this fantastic bunch of non-sequiturs:

If you click on the link, you get a top ten that’s a bit shaky: Mitchell Johnson, Steve Waugh, and Shane Warne are the only players from the last 30 years (that’s again Shane Watson you hear howling in the distance). The judgement of the list’s compiler, Kovvali Teja, might leave something to be desired, but his SEO skills are really outstanding.

The Great Australian All Rounder of our times is Ellyse Perry of course, which isn’t much use to the team playing at Old Trafford in a couple of days. Meanwhile, it seems we must await the coming of the mysterious, and hugely gifted, Man from Victoria.

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Second test, Lords, Day 1

Thoughts this morning when I saw the overnight score of 1/337.
 
(in bed) 

1. Ha! 

2. Is this going to be boring? 

3. Will someone get in trouble at Lords for the pitch? I heard someone on the radio who had spoken to the groundskeeper say last night that some well laid plans had been stymied by rain, but, um, this is England. Allow for rain, you guys. 

(making breakfast) 

4. I wonder whether the Australian team could work out some kind of ‘retirement’ system so everyone could have a go, like in kids cricket. 

5. Oh, that’s match fixing, is it? 

6. I bet some kids (and parents) reckon it’s match fixing in kids cricket too. 

Thoughts last night
 
1. Anyone else noticed the role reversal between Chris Rogers and David Warner this series, with Warner anchoring a racy Rogers? 

2. How does Moeen Ali feel about everyone attributing his success to the fact that he is not nearly as good a spinner as Graeme Swann? Every time someone gets out ‘going after’ him, the commentators talk about how there was no need to take the risk because, unlike his predecessor, this guy will reliably send down some shit. I think I might say, ‘Oh yeah? Well, this “shitty” bowler is the leading English wicket taker of the series so far. AND I bat better than Swann and am less annoying. AND has it ever occurred to you that I am in fact Alessandro del Piero in cunning disguise?

<

No? Back to the leading wicket taker thing then.’ 

3. How many advertisement voice-over actors are hired for their ability to sound a bit like Richard Briers? QBE is the latest one, but this is something that has been going on for years, and from now on I’m taking notes. 

Watto

Yesterday, Peter Fitzsimons wrote a column in the SydneyMorning Herald in defence of Shane Watson: ‘Why the Hate for Shane Watson?’. I know, if only Shane Watson could write a column entitled ‘Why the Hate for Peter Fitzsimons?’, their mutual bewilderment could reflect back and forth for infinity in perpetual motion, solve the world’s energy crisis and leave the rest of us in peace. 

That aside, Fitzsimons hasn’t done his homework. He asks whether anyone can recall Watson ‘making a complete prat of himself by brattish behaviour’. Why yes, Peter, yes I can. And if he thinks it is remotely acceptable to ‘call for a lot of reviews’, for personal reasons, just in case THIS time it will work, I’m not sure he knows what cricket is or knows anything about anything. Shane Watson himself may even have wished PF had left that bit out (with friends like those...). I’m pretty sure even Shane Watson thinks he calls for those reviews for the sake of the team, because that’s the kind of fool he is. 

This is the thing: people hate Watto because they don’t like him. He can perform all he wants, but if people don’t like you, they will hang back when you succeed and pounce when you fail. And the law of the playground dictates that if they don’t like you then, alas, trying to be liked will only make things worse. It’s not pretty, but it’s a pantomime out there and there’s no disputing taste. None of the ‘haters’, including myself, know much about Shane Watson, they just know what they don't like. If I was going to try to explain, I might say that the whiff people get from Shane Watson is, in the gentlest terms, ‘immaturity’. Pushing it a little further, I might say ‘a weird admixture of sheepishness and arrogance’. Push it further than that and I’ll only get carried away. What's the point of heckling someone when they've already left the building? 

I would have liked to have compiled a montage of some of Shane Watson’s ‘moments in time’ to his own motivational soundtrack of choice, Whitney Houston’s One Moment In Time. If you have a listen and a watch it’s not so hard to do that montage in your head. Watto, you inspired some of my best work. We’ll always have ‘All Trojan horse, no Greeks.’

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.

Cardiff, Day 3

 
And this is the other reason why the Australian summer 5-nils mean nothing. 'Mean nothing' in the sense of being no indicator of our likelihood of success in the UK. The UK is a parallel universe. It looks normal, but is full of tiny and slightly sinister differences like the water down going the plughole in the opposite direction and Mitchell Johnson not having a moustache. It also has a propensity for nobbling our fast bowlers. I asked Mr Batsy if the problem getting wickets was a return of the mysterious ‘swing’ issues of 2005, but he said it was just an unsympathetic pitch. He also thinks the bowlers are not the problem, which I’m not so sure of, though circumstances are no doubt against them. I think people are giving Brad Haddin a very hard time about dropping Joe Root on 0. I thought it was a bloody sharp chance in the face of a lot of unpredictable bounce. A chance, sure, but not a fluff. Joe Root seems to have become England’s Steve Smith: a businesslike 14 year old.

The ads became too much for both of us at Batsy headquarters*, so we tuned into Grandstand digital, even though it’s half a second ahead of the action. I’m sure I’ve complained about this before, but why is the balance of the commentary team so heavily skewed towards Englishmen? Among the commentators ‘proper’, I counted Jim Maxwell versus Aggers, Bloers and one who I think is called Simon. Among the ‘expert’ commentators, I counted Glenn McGrath versus Michael Vaughan, Graeme Swann and Geoffrey Boycott and I’m not sure you really can count Glenn McGrath. Where’s everyone else? My notepad is just toilet block graffiti scrawl: “Vaughan - shut the f**k up”, “F**k off, Geoff (cf. Wake up, Jeff)” and, in response to some longwinded 'nice bit of Wensleydale'-type chatter: “F**k off about the cheeses”. Grandstand, I hope for more, I expect more.

* With the exception of the excellent Marshall’s battery ad, in which Warnie does Benny Hill and which makes me laugh like a drain every time.

I suppose Mitch has no moustache because there is no “Mune” to match Movember. At first I was concerned that he didn’t have it because it would have been too easy a target of derision if it all went wrong, and that would have been a bit of a vote of no confidence in himself. In a parallel universe, it’s natural to be concerned about which Mitchell Johnson has turned up.

There is never any question about which Shane Watson has turned up: he is always exactly the same. Robert Craddock reckoned on the Back Page this week that Shane Watson was picked over Mitchell Marsh because dropping Watson for Marsh if/when he fails is a better narrative than having to go back to Watson if/when Marsh fails. So Shane Watson is, once again, playing for his career, and one has to wonder how many times one can play for one’s career before there is no longer any meaningful distinction between one’s actual career and the one being played for every time. Spot the difference!

Come in sucker*

*Paul Keating to John Howard, sometime.

This is what might have been the headline of today's cricket column by Paul Keating, if he had one. I so wish Paul Keating had a cricket column. Ponting's on the cover of the Sydney Morning Herald today, but above him is Paul Keating chewing out the Labor Party for being obscurantist neanderthals practicing sicko populism. Sigh. Maybe he could be a writer for the slip cordon. Shane Warne would certainly have embraced the opportunity to tell someone he was going to do them slowly.

Ponting joined the Australian cricket team in the same year Labor began their 16-year reign in New South Wales, time will tell how long he'll outlast them. If he doesn't make runs I can't see the pressure for him to go letting up any.

I've written about my feelings about Ponting before, which is a reminder of how long this business has been going on. At this stage I'm just grateful of the shift in the conversation. I can cope with Clarke as captain, but the only reason I can see for Shane Watson being appointed vice-captain is that he looks like he'll stick around for a while and he's not a wicket-keeper. I wonder if Haddin would have had more of a chance if the current referral system hadn't been put in place?

ODI Retrospective floor sweepings

I gather there's a World Cup on, but free-to-air me wouldn't know about that yet and dammit if I don't still have baggage from the post-Test part of the summer. I know, such old news. Who do I think I am? A procrastinating obsessive is who: I have Thoughts that won't go away but which take me an age to get out. Some truths are in any case perennial.

1. There were days in January when you couldn't open a paper without a Hallelujah chorus issuing forth hailing the coming of Shane Watson, saviour of the honour of the Australian team and oil on the troubled waters of Ipswich. Congratulations Watto, your 5-year plan to become Freddie Flintoff is complete, you are our very own messianic all-rounder. I wish I liked you more. I accept you are MVP but could you ever be my BFF? (Hint: lose the WTF of the run-outs.)

2. I am glad Shaun Marsh distinguished himself with the bat, because it has given me a mental image of him to replace his showing as the Sexy Gardener in the 2009 Men of Cricket calendar:




Those are impressively air-brushed abs, but they don't quite divert my eyes from that... that "distressed" patch on the crotch. What am I supposed to infer from this jeans lesion? That the Lady of the Manor has been clawing at your groin? That there has been a constant Chafing of your Engorgement? That you have a phallus dentata? Like I said, there were some mental images that needed dispelling.

3. Speaking of images, is there a trope Peter Roebuck is more fond of than the Stages of Man? The passage from boy to man, obviously, but also coming to terms with the onset of decrepitude. There is no action that cannot be analysed as a negotiation of life's great Journey. Michael Clarke at the crease trying to strike a balance between defence and attack? "He has to find his Own Path."

4. This season has been a relatively lean one for look-alikes. Like everyone else I have been charmed by Brett Lee's return, and his boy-scout derring-do. And so:

I blame Shane Watson, obviously. When you are averaging around 50 and everyone around you is failing, are you a blessed stalwart of the top order or are you in fact its cursed hoodoo?

I also only just realised Justin Langer is Australia's batting coach. Just the other day - the first day of this Test - I was wondering what message they'd be getting in the change rooms and hoping it would be more along the Ian Chapell lines of "get it together or we're stuffed" than the Power of Passion lines of "you know you can do it, back yourself and think of the Baggy Green, etc etc". So: hmm.

P.S. Katich trained at my local oval yesterday. Must I be everywhere?

But if I didn't have little faith I would never have discovered the phrase "petty fidianism"

“The Real Mitchell Johnson”, if that is his real name, accused me in the comments yesterday of petty fidianism and look, I admit it. When Michael Slater quoted Latin sage Bon Jovi (“Good cheer”) before the start of this match – “you gotta keep the faith” – I was tempted to paraphrase Monty Python – “what are they gonna do, bleed on them?”

But why wouldn't I have little faith? There’s only so many times you can hear “It’ll be different this time, I can change”, only to come back in from putting the washing on the line to find the Australian team again blotto on the kitchen floor.

Even now, you would have thought a truly joyful bowling effort and a juicy first innings lead would ease the collywobbles in the Australian top order, but... what is it? but... but oh? BUT NO. Lord help me I am even developing feelings of thankfulness – real and not just grudging ones – for Shane “The Wodge” Watson.

But let's speak of other things:

Terry Alderman: welcome back Terry Alderman, your relentless indignation is like an old friend. He managed to maintain a rant about short deliveries and their uselessness in getting wickets right up to, through and out the other side of Peter Siddle getting a wicket with one. That’s top-shelf crabbiness. He followed it up with a good spray at the old chestnut of Drinks Breaks.

The KP sleaze bomb:
Here’s a curious thing. They did a little ring-side interview with Mitchell Johnson on Channel 9 toward the end of the day yesterday, and they asked him whether any of the wickets were particularly special. He said they all were, of course, but that he supposed Pietersen’s wicket gave him special pleasure because KP had been repeatedly asking him for his phone number and saying he wanted to be friends. I suppose this is a new form of sledging? I would give anything though that it weren’t and that Johnson was simply declaring his revulsion at the overture.

Because there are in fact suggestions afoot that Kevin Pietersen is waging a terrifying campaign of sleaze in the antipodes. The speeding in the yellow Lambourghini of course, and then in the last session yesterday he actually draped his arm around an umpire and it looked like Strauss came up to detach KP’s hand from the umpire’s shoulder. Dude, stop touching the umpire. It must be quite a stress on the whole team to keep KP’s sleaze fallout to a minimum radius.

Test 1 Day 4

When I said after day one that I had been dreading "total awfulness", I specifically meant, according to my notes, "toothless bowling, England spanking out boundaries". Should I have spelled that out and thus averted the dread's fulfillment?

I have been in bed with a cold the last couple of days and have a dim enough view of the world as it is. Shane Watson told Quentin Hull he thought Australia's bowling performance was "solid". Well, it was certainly back-to-back something. From my imperious position propped up among the pillows that something was "boring". Especially since it was all a rerun of the previous day with the two sides changing places, up to and including dropped outfield catches from hapless brown-haired fast bowlers. Is it Mitch or the pitch?

Play up young men! Amuse me! And so to bed.

A Batsy New Year

I met Tom Parker once. At the inaugural Festival of Cricket at Bowral, back in I think 2005, I signed up for the "Curators Clinic" and cadged a cigarette beforehand from a moustachioed bloke puffing away outside the tent… this bloke turning out of course to be Tom Parker. It was a very interesting session (except my inner 10-year old boy kept digging me in the ribs, going: "He said 'cooch'. Heh heh heh… He said 'cooch'. Heh heh heh…. He said 'cooch'. Heh… etc.") and ever since I look on the SCG groundstaff with a self-important and proprietorial air: "Oh sure, that'd be Tom, that roller dates back to 1923 you know, etc. etc"

I'm heading to the match tomorrow and the next day and it will be the 10th anniversary of the first time I went to an SCG Test Match. I remember the moment: emerging from the entrance passage between the Churchill and Doug Walters stands and being struck by the intense green of the oval at an unfamiliar flat angle and it all seeming very close, intimate and genteel. It put me in mind of this painting, Fernand Khnopff's Memories, a big favourite from the Symbolist Period of my adolescence:

Ah, Memories indeed: I also left at tea after a horrible fight with a boyfriend. Happy days!

All things being equal, I probably prefer to watch cricket on television. Well may I don a white burqa and religiously keep up the fluids, I still seem to skirt the edges of heat exhaustion by the end of the day each year. And the attempt to mitigate this effect takes one into very sternly priced categories of ticket indeed. Nota bene, Commentators Lamenting Test Cricket Attendances from the Paid Comfort of a Media Box.

But it's become a family tradition to dip a toe into the live atmosphere each year and I do like to put a Lovely Picnic together, the nature of which has also settled into something of a tradition over the years, this tradition being: "Traditionalist". Fruitcake. Egg Sandwiches. Lemonade. If the Famous Five wouldn't have eaten it, it doesn't go into the cooler bag. Oh yes, plus a box of Arnotts Barbecue Shapes. And that "lemonade", well, it's actually G&T in a lemonade bottle… But APART FROM THAT…

Christmas

I know at least two people who got a 2010 Men of Cricket calendar in their stocking this Christmas, one of them being me.

First impressions: I can't ignore the fact that 2010 is about half the size of 2009 while costing 50% more. But since this may well turn out to be the case, and it is charity, we'll let that raised eyebrow rest.

Stylistically, it has taken a leaf from the 2009 Coogee Rebels Cricket calendar, with mostly unclothed players looming in moody black-and-white against a black background. I rather miss the variety of locations and dress-styles of 2009, which conjured up an entertaining series of narrative scenarios. Like "The Gardner" in a steamy Danielle Steele novel, or "The Day I Jumped Into the Pool With All My Clothes On".

The hot issue of 2009 was "to wax or not to wax"? Katich and Hilfenhaus fly the flag again for the hairy man and run away with the whole show as far as I'm concerned. James Hopes is a portrait of confusion, sniffing his own hairy armpit while wearing 3-day facial growth and showing a little giveaway chest stubble. Nathan Hauritz: totally unsuited for this kind of gig, but displaying hair that defies the girly stereotype. Mitch: great tatt but a slightly constipated performance compared to his easy breezy 2009. Chest chair question cloaked in mystery due to being hunched over.

Boxing Day Test PS

Watson began irking me when he declared Flintoff his role model in the immediate aftermatch of Ashes 2005, combining tastelessness and sucky-ness in a way that he has since made all his own, and he has certainly picked up his hero's ability to relentlessly hog attention.

Of course I gurgled with delight in the 1st innings when Watto was run out in the 90s. When my viewing companion suggested I was being unpatriotic, I put it to him that if Watson kept getting out in the 90s he would be fulfilling both his duty as a batsman to the Australian team and my own requirement that he undergo maximum personal suffering. UnChristian, absolutely, but not unpatriotic. Obviously it couldn't last, however much Watson's 90s in the 2nd innings felt like it stretched an eternity.

Windies Test 3

I’ve been a bit off my cricket. It’s not a good sign when you miss the first day of a Test because you just hadn’t realised it had started, which is what I did with this last one. I might not have enjoyed seeing Simon Katich hole out on 99, but I could have been there and explained that Warnie did just the same thing. And even if I am a bowler’s girl, it was very poor form only half-watching Chris Gayle’s century because I was making dinner. For myself.

It picked up the last couple of days or so. So, things.

Grandstand commentators

I’ve got a certain amount of time for Justin Langer—he’s a famous cuddler—but I start to steal glances at my watch when he goes all shiny-eyed happy-clappy, which is a lot. Every ball, every state of play: an occasion to see the sunrise and live the dream, and if there’s space to fill there’s plenty of pride and joy in wearing the Baggy Green to go around.

It doesn’t stop at the boundary. Post-retirement, behold the terrifying Justin Langer “Power of One” World Tour of Duty, Passion and Self-Belief: getting his black belt, doing a marathon, the Kokoda Trail (here I muttered “Antarctica, surely” under my breath, and, close…), the North Pole. All the chestnuts of the cross.

Balance is of course offered by Terry “Backseat Driver” Alderman, whose default attitude to Australian goings-on on the field is disbelief mingled with disgust. It’s a bit like being at a school assembly where an interminable special guest address is succeeded by a lengthy harangue from the irritable deputy principal.

Unlikely lookalike #342

And speaking of poles and opposites, is it ridiculous to suggest that Doug Bollinger is the sunny half of a pair whose dark pole would be… Dwight Schrute?

Doug being the blond to Dwight’s brunette; the bogan to Dwight’s bumpkin-geek; upbeat, energetic and straightforward where Dwight is sneering and Machiavellian? But both strongly resembling root vegetables. Dougie Bollinger: another brutti ma buoni bowler from the Sunshine State. Do they export all the pretty ones to WA?

Swotto

Shane Watson, after all, “has the face of a dickhead”, according to my flatmate, although I admit this association could have been set up by me saying “dickhead” whenever Shane Watson’s face appeared on screen.

Test 5 Day 1 Expectoration

I have a miserable sneezy cold so I peered at the first day of this Test through a cloud of tissues and puffy eyes.

Drop dead diva

I have found in my heart a seam of viciousness wishing ill on Freddie's last test. I don't know, I'm just over it: it's not all about you, Mr F.

Having arranged myself on the sofa under a granny blanket with my eyes closed and the soothing voice of Phil Tufnell in the radio ear piece, I dozed through Matt Prior's entire innings, but rallied to see Flintoff speared by Johnson. It was spooky: I opened my eyes, turned my head to face the teev and Flintoff swished and was caught. Extremely satisfying for me, but he was absolutely, sputteringly livid – the rage (and the shot?) of a man who has fatally come to believe his own hype. It seems the problem may not be that he is a Flintoff impostor but that au contraire he believes rather too much that he is Andrew Flintoff.

Warney and me: hope after all?

My fantasies of conversing with Warney never quite surmount the hurdle of realism and so tend to be extremely awkward, but I do now detect some common ground in our love of a lookalike. I thought his get of Vince Vaughn for Jonathan Trott was good work, though his specification of Vince Vaughn "as Jeremy Grey in the film the Wedding Crashers" made me feel a bit sad for how much hotel cable television he has watched in his life.

Vince Vaughn is certainly a better get than my own hazy (sneezy) thoughts of Trott as a vague morph between Simon Taufel and Jacques Kallis. The latter was probably only because Trott was having a go at his fingernails the likes of which I haven't seen since high school and Jacques Kallis is practically interchangeable in my mind with Jaws from Moonraker.

Watson: why?

My only really topical mutter over the past 10 days has been "like I care" to some further article about oh, something about Shane Watson's experience of batting I didn't get more than a couple of sentences into because the man can't seem to think without moving his lips.

All well and good with the batting, but so incredible did it seem that Ponting would call upon him to bowl towards the end of yesterday that when he was quite visibly warming up on the field Christopher Martin-Jenkins expressly discounted the connection between him "doing some violent exercises" and the obvious interpretation, explaining them as "just for the pleasure of giving his body a stretch".

Oh, were it the case. Can anyone match him for momentum-busting? Has any greater gift to the opposing side ever been wheeled out? He is all Trojan Horse with no Greeks. I have scribbled down from the commentators' remarks once his spell commenced: "his contribution with the ball has been generous", "cheap runs", "Trott looks more composed, is growing in confidence", and a shot from Broad – Broad – was so dismissive it was described as "just Go Away". Oh, again, were it the case.

My brain was at breaking point when Ponting persisted with him after the new ball became available. If he'd kept it up for one more over I don't think I would have been able to look at RP for some time and it was damn lucky Siddle redeemed things somewhat. A learned colleague of mine has described Ponting's failing as a captain as a lack of a sense of rhythm, which is clear enough from his acting, but this is insane. Was it the "over rate" thing again? Is Watson going out with his sister? Does he have a sister?

Ricky, please: Socrates also had a snub nose, it does not mean you have to be obtuse.

Test 4 overture

Oh I like this game. What's this game called? Much better than the other one, please don't bring me that one again. And who's this fella Clark? New is he? Just became available? Worth holding onto perhaps?

In response to egg-wearing Anonymous who predicted Shane Watson's dismal failure, it occurred to me last night that Watson does approach the "Queensland gladiator" model of opener demonstrated by Hayden. But I still find it hard to feel convinced in my waters by someone who reminds me of one of those over-pumped strawberries and I can't see any cuddles any time soon with the man Greg Matthews last night called "Australia's hard man", ie Katich. He also appears to be under threat from Phil Hughes over on the grassy knoll: someone needs to teach that man how to compose his face in less murderous arrangements.

Test 3 Day 1 Mumble

I stayed up until 3.30 am watching the play after it finally started and then it seemed that they were doing well enough to manage on their own so I went to bed (plus it was THREE THIRTY). Kudos to the groundspeople, that outfield was whippet-like.

God is clearly trying to steer me back to a more charitable course when it comes to Shane Watson by making him an opener in this test. Because whatever I think in the abstract about the selection decision, and however Bizarro World Shane Watson and Simon Katich are as a couple, in the real world of sitting and watching him at the crease in this game, I can't want him to get out, I can't but want him to do well, I... I wish him well.

It was interesting viewing actually. Shane Watson looked like he was having the time of his life, and, well, if opening for Australia in an Ashes series in a must-win game isn't the "moment in time" he wanted I don't know what would be, so well should he wear a permanent grin.

And in the light of his public comments about Flintoff being his idol after 2005 I was intrigued to watch their... relationship? on the pitch. Basically it was Freddie on the one side looking florid and cranky and Shane on the other looking cheeky and troublesome - and being cheeky and troublesome I think, I caught the end of a replay where it looked like he had accidentally-on-purpose tripped Flintoff up a bit. A little bit Oedipal? I think it would be weird playing someone you've declared to be your idol, maybe even weirder to play someone who has declared you to be their idol, but then when I was growing up once you decided you liked someone that was the cue to avoid them at all costs and you would rather die than have them know so I might not be the best judge here.

I was going to take advantage of the rain to share a few of the wonders I found in my cricket Useful Box when searching for a picture of Freddie. I'll just leave it at the discovery of the first letter of Katich's 2005 dismissal "roar", which allows us to start a Sesame Street style word composition:

Reverse sweep

So it’s going to be like that, is it? Go on then, have your excitement. Just don’t start making a habit of it.

Gawd, how the English love a gritty stand, they get all this race-memory flashback to the Blitz. I suppose you can’t expect them to be stirred to full-throated identification with, say, sulkiness, hopelessness or please-don’t-look-at-me-I’m-not-actually-here-ness. Because that's what it was all about on Day 4, traumatisation to the point of dissociative personality disorder, pain so deep they actually seemed to be floating outside of their own bodies and looking down on themselves. “What, this old thing?” “Oh, that Ashes!”

And every ad break there was Ricky Ponting: “Tired? Stressed?…”

Some highlights from the previous few days...

Cricket Love

Haddin & North were wonderfully cuddly, but the stand-out for me was Hussey stroking Johnson’s face when he got I think Flintoff out. Oh my. Whoever is doing the slo-mo visuals at SBS/BBC knows their stuff. Cannot of course find a photo or video of it, because by contrast cricket photographers and other highlights-package people have their priorities totally wrong.

Lengthening shadows

At about the exact same time a friend texted me with “Doesn’t anybody in the Aus team shave anymore?” I was admiring Katich’s 5+ o’clock shadow as he came on to bowl. “Bristling” is just the vibe you want in a cricketer.

Geoffrey Boycott

I have a cricket book called The Strangers’ Gallery: Some foreign views of English Cricket (London: Lemon Tree Press, 1974), and in a piece called “Star Gazing”, purple-hued and comma-loving US convert Marvin Cohen says of Geoffrey Boycott:

You’re in the classical tradition, our nation’s true stylist. I see the classical age of the thirties, in the golden wonder of your form. Peerless! Today is not decadent. In you, old stability fortifies us. You’re an anachronism. Clean up the rot, of our tawdry age. Purge us. Restore our noble heritage. Boycott the present. Live, our only lineage.

Don’t you worry Martin, Geoffrey’s on it. The problem with the English cricket team? Too many support staff—would you believe there are people who carry the players’ luggage—and too many drinks breaks. Also: jewellery, natty socks—serious question marks.

And if you want a vivid definition of “old-fashioned test cricket”, here’s GB’s thoughts around the the time Australia were picking off the middle order on Day 5 in a very satisfying manner:

It’s just old-fashioned test cricket: one team getting on top of another team and… (a pause as the “producer” part of Boycott’s brain starts signalling frantically, but fruitlessly) … grinding them down.

To taste the sweet I face the pain

SBS has been doing little vox pops with the Australian cricket team between sessions, including one where they were asked about what motivational music they listened to. Amidst a lot of AC/DC, Mötley Crüe and “Eye of the Tiger”, was Shane Watson saying that “despite what you might think” his tastes would be, he was fond of a Whitney Houston song, “One Moment in Time”. No really, he said, you have to listen to the lyrics. No really YOU Shane Watson: Whitney Houston is exactly what I would have expected from you and those lyrics are really terrible.

Someone who I have now worked out is James Hopes declared cheerily that Celine Dion does it for him. He seemed so ugly and good-natured that I found this charming. Later when asked to name a food item like Shane Warne’s toasted cheese sandwiches that keeps him going during a Test match, he answered: “My X-box.”


The SBS team

Greg Matthews had me hooting on Day 2 when he started earnestly advising Monty Panesar through the television screen. It was sort of a reversal of when Miss Patricia on Romper Room would get out the magic mirror and say “… and I can see Timmy, and Catherine…” and she knew she couldn’t but the kids around the nation didn't. He finished his first point with a “my friend” that sounded just like Steve Vizard’s shonky Persian carpet seller on Full Frontal.

I actually kind of love GM's gaucheness and the way you feel he only has one “gear”. Like he’d be exactly the same and say exactly the same thing wherever he was, whoever he was talking to, no adjustments for audience knowledge, register, context, like a little toy figure you wind up and put down on different surfaces and it just keeps walking and making noises in its own way. He’s what the fug girls would call “secretly awesome”.

Damien Martyn: the word I think of is “fey”, in the sense (now I actually look at a dictionary) of “otherwordly” rather than “about to die”. In my head the word “fey” also had faint overtones of coyness/flirtatiousness, probably because I think the only time I have known someone to actually use the word is JFK to describe Jacqueline. It’s the eye thing and the soft-spokenness that’s almost like one of those devices to make people lean closer to hear you.

I’m already quite liking rather than just “not being bothered by” Stuart Magill.


Great words, bad, naughty reality

On Day 2 when Stuart Broad was not getting out Aggers said he had “all his father’s cussedness”. In the end cussedness was perhaps the word of the 1st test.

Philosophers sometimes have to think of a word to describe the way reality has a certain resistance to one’s expectations, desires, ideas, etc., indeed this is almost its defining quality. There are terms like “facticity”, “refractoriness”, Peirce’s “secondness”... Cussedness is all these things with the addition of “being determinedly and deliberately so” (like Keating’s “recalcitrance”) and “causing you to use bad language”. When the dictionary gives the second meaning of “cussed” as “cursed”, I understand it in the very worldly sense of “is sworn at”.

Here we go.

As I said to someone on Facebook this morning, I'm as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof, and have been all week. I'm nervous. More nervous (as I also said) about the old boys than the new boys because Ricky's just been so good temper-wise this year but I'm worried he'll throw it all out the window and regress at the first well-placed sledge...

Wrong player, but that kind of thing. I also felt uneasy when I heard that Ricky had been getting people to speak to the team about what the Ashes meant to them: this sounded very Steve Waugh to me (and I'm not sure how hearing Simon Katich say how the Ashes almost ruined his life twice is especially uplifting...) I do very much want Mr Katich ("Mr February") to do well. Maybe he & Ricky could shift some of their crankiness to Michael Clarke (I know Katich tried) to shake up his head prefect act—how did he become so insufferable?*

And Hussey: want him to do well too, worry he won't.

So those are the old boys, right? By contrast, I am all calm excitement at the prospect of seeing Mitchell Johnson, Stuart Clark (not *so* young, but I haven't seen him for a while), Siddle, Hilfenhaus and those nice new young batsmen.

In a bit of hopeful overinterpretation, I decided the decision to leave out Harmison was a sign the Poms were worried and superstitious about too much attention being given to his first ball. I.e. their confidence is so fragile that they're worried they'll fall apart if he sends down a blooper. I like that kind of worry in a Pom. I'll be willing it into existence.

*Speaking of crawlers, Shane Watson deserves never to play in an Ashes test again after publically declaring Flintoff to be his idol and role model after the 2005 Ashes. Flintoff was everyone's idol and role model after the 2005 Ashes, but that doesn't mean you SAY IT OUT LOUD.