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.

The prettiest bloke to watch

Oh, Special K.

This blog started with a picture of Katich's roar, and together we've been through his bristling 5 o'clock shadows, seen the Hard Man clicking his heels and pondered the quality of Balkan Haut over crêpe layer cake.

And there they were at the press conference - the bristle, the roar, the "deliciously dangerous" of the Balkan Haut.  Half-way through, Katich said "I know I'm not the prettiest bloke to watch", and everyone chuckled, through probably not for the same reason I practically fell off my chair. It was over before I had the chance to put up my hand and ask "How is it you are so dreamy?"

Peter Roebuck wrote of Katich in his postmortem today, "Hairy, cussed and wilful, he has been a man apart." I have stated my position on "cussedness" previously, but I love that he chose to lead with "hairy", and strongly suspect him of owning a cache of Men in Cricket calendars.

All summer I felt someone needed to have a little chat with the Australian cricket team and administrators about Aristotle and Bergson and the distinction between potentiality and actuality. That actuality comes before potentiality, however counter-intuitive that might seem. That things are only possible after they are real. And that, as a result, claims to excellence based on potential wear very thin if you are not actually performing.

I did not expect to have to go on to explain the converse, namely the weirdness of claiming someone is not excellent, based on their potential, when they are actually performing.

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?

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.

Panna cotta-shaped

They had to express the Spirit of Christmas in two courses, and I’m not sure why Katich’s collapsed panna cotta—whose overall effect was, in his own words, “Depressing. And disappointing.”—didn’t count as a rather astute and modern interpretation of the theme.

But it didn’t, so Katich is the first Celebrity Masterchef semi-finalist to go, but not without leaving us with an appropriate analogy the next time a batting order goes disastrously wobbly.

Katich Krêpe King

I had an inkling Mr Katich would take out his Masterchef heat, because there's been a trend of the quartz-precision athletic types doing well. It wasn't too noisy a show in the end, partly because I was sitting under the quiet pall of sheepishness that comes from scarfing down a McValue meal. There was praise in our loungeroom for his plating and his running, and in the end my flatmate gave the best verdict: "He's very Straight, isn't he?" It was after an especially wooden piece-to-camera, and we reflected that most blokes, whatever their actual predilections, can still work a tiny admixture of camp into their manner, an little swing, an element of, well, style. Most blokes. Not Simon. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I gather (I am no judge) his technique at the crease is also largely untouched by gainliness. But whatever works, right?

The showing was low on the violence front. There was a small yelp of "Don't stab it!" when he was attempting, a little roughly I thought, to unmould his crêpe cake with the aid of a knife. And though he watched his salmon "like a hawk" (his words), he still managed to overcook it: stabbing may have been the better diagnostic move in this case. His face was mostly set in an expression of bemusement, with the exception of one break-out moment when first confronted with the crêpe layer cake:

And since there's a history of shutter-sequence analysis of Katich's reactions here, this was actually a 1-2-1 sequence of:

1. Appalledness at the cake;

2. Look to the judges to confirm reality of situation;

3. Back to cake with heightened appalledness.

I can feel a Simon Katich Memorial Lemon Curd Crêpe Layer Cake coming on, because that's exactly the kind of dish I go in for. I gather Simon has also been playing some cricket. Must look into that.

Which one will die?

There was a sharp intake of breath in the loungeroom last week on reading that Simon Katich will be a contestant on Celebrity Masterchef. Oh stop it. Stop that right now. How much can a koala bear?

I’ve had a bit of a thing for Mr Katich ("S. M. Katich", as K. J. O’Keeffe would say) for a while, which Thing was cemented by his pleasing display of hirsuteness as Mr February in the McGrath Foundation "I Only Buy It for the Charity" Men Of Cricket Calendar, which Hirsuteness (yes, I can keep this up all day) was also clearly appreciated by the ladies in attendance at this year’s Allan Border Medal, who voted him best in the calendar show, pipping even Mr Dimples Mitch Johnson to the post.

But his on-field persona is about as far from the domestic sphere as you can get, if "trained assassin" is as far from the domestic sphere as you can get. In another one of those vox pops they had on SBS during the (snif) Ashes, the players were asked what was the funniest thing they had ever read about themselves, and Katich referred to a piece that described the way he watched the ball when batting: instead of going for the usual "like a hawk", it said "like he wants to stab it".

Not just balls, either: on at least a couple of occasions, Greg Matthews, doing run-downs on Australian "body-language" in the field, summed up Katich’s presence as "just wants to kill ya". "Look up and there's the Kat at silly point, looking like he wants to kill ya."

Then there was that off-field throttle incident... My cricket friend Sue says Katich has something called "Balkan Haut" (Sp? She pronounced it "hort", and I’ve interpreted it as the French haut = "high", but given the lack of evidence on the interwebs I’m starting to wonder if she actually said "Balkan Hawk"...). When she heard about the Katich-Clarke altercation, she was all "well, of course, it’s the Balkan Haut", which is apparently a cultural trait that manifests itself as a sort of imperious... stabbiness.

So how would that translate in Celebrity Masterchef terms? Virtuoso knife skills? Razor-shaved garlic à la Goodfellas? Stupendous pressed "pork"-belly dish that is then revealed to be fillet o' George Calombaris?

On top of it all, I read today in the Herald’s food section that Simon Katich has no sense of smell! Curiouser and curiouser. What an unexpected bundle of properties this man is turning out to be. It just shows that you can't tell everything about a person from staring at them for days and days while they play cricket. Who knew?

It says on the Celebrity Masterchef site that Katich is in Heat 4 with Wendy Harmer and Alex Perry. Turn it up, I say! Also whenever you try to click on or message Katich on the site you are directed to Eamon Sullivan. My money is on Eamon or Alex to be the first to "go"...

Say die

It got very quiet on the couch last night. 10-and-a-half-year old cricket fan is not only at a sensitive age, but is still getting used to this "failure" part of the game. Ouchy. It seemed important to see it through, so see it through I did, and it did feel a bit like a long lesson in pain and all its varieties and stages.

Mostly it felt like homesickness. There came a point where I had to abandon the radio commentary - there were just too many English voices humming with satisfaction (entirely understandably) and Phil Tufnell's bedtime stories were no longer soothing but lonely-making. I badly wanted the company of "my" team: where's Kerry? Where's Flemo and Roey and Henry? I want my mum! Mike Holding was a blessed focal point of deadpan rectitude, he wasn't having a bar of anything and this was a great source of comfort.

When we took to the field again I pulled back and only half watched for a while because I couldn't bear being party to any hustle-bustle "positive" body language. Not just because of emotional weariness, but... well actually yes, emotional weariness, but of a more general kind, from the cumulative effect of too many "just gotta back ourselves"/"never say die" lines trotted out in the last 12 months. In my mind's eye it is Clarke who says this and to his credit Ponting has seemed to be evolving past it.

A few years ago New Zealand had a really good tour here and I thought they made great use of the freedom and invulnerability that comes from accepting the possibility - likelihood even - of loss. It's a virtue born of necessity of course, but Australia has suffered, and lost, from the lack of it, and I think the best Australia can do here is to make that peace and psyche out the English with their zen calm. That was and is the course I took/am taking in any case.

And bless Katich. By the end of the day/night I was chuckling out loud at his "fast bowler" face and tongue-poking stuck on top of his left-arm Chinamen.

Get your leather on*

* As spake in Yeah Yeah Yeah's "Zero" which SBS has started playing during the cricket, an improvement on the previous dire anthems.

So much Cricket Love, so little time.

When a Short Batsman Loves a Tall Bowler

At the end of the Headingley test, Simon "Robocop" Katich showed he's not above a cuddle after all and Mitchell Johnson that he was worth the climb.

Katich is in fact only 7cm shorter than Johnson (1.82 m to Johnson's 1.89), but the scene reminded me of this one from the Cricket Love Archive between the 1.78 m Ricky Ponting and the 1.95 m Glenn McGrath (probably from the last Ashes in England, no later than August 2005 in any case).

Ricky actually does an excellent line in a more smouldering form of cricket love apart from the happy puppy style here, but that will have to be for another time.

And just to show that natura non facit saltus but that Katich most certainly does, here's a segue from the archive between the two scenes:

Happy day!

They call me naughty Lola

(Action Images 21/12/2008)

So, the win was good, though I think we certainly were spoilt with that first innings and second innings start, because when we didn't get the next 5 wickets in, say, half an hour, it was all pouting in the loungeroom, like, OMG are you serious? Borring! Helloo?

A highlight for me was the after-match presentations when the predictable sniggers at Billy "Chicken Man" Bowden gave way to shrieks of delight as Asad Rauf sidled up to the podium. The only way I can describe the look is to stress that he was wearing not sunnies but shades and that his clothes were, I strongly suspect, threads.

It was a mere formality to confirm that he hailed from the land of Imran Khan and this may simply be another case where I am late to the party as I have since found a reference where he is summed up as "just one cool motherf****r".

I am pleased of course to find that he holds his own in the cricket love stakes, and in fact seems a bit of a softie (see eg. here and here). But then who wouldn't melt in the capable arms of the Hon. Steve Bucknor, OJ, seen here on his last day of duties?

(Hamish Blair/Getty Images 22/03/09)

Business End

Dammit, I keep meaning to elaborate my theory about English wilty-ness, which I had to curtail last time because work beckoned and it's staring me down again like a pet watching me eat.

Ironically, one of my current work colleagues is a Frenchman who has been asking me for cricket updates ever since I explained to him a couple of weeks ago why I was up so late. Our cultures are united in their traditional disdain for the English of course and his response to my last bulletin was: "Bravo pour la leçon de cricket donnée aux Anglais", which I think is fairly transparent.

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.