Hello birds, hello sky, hello George

When it’s a warm afternoon and Haurie and Mitchell are at the crease but not on the free-to-air, there is nothing for it but to tuck the laptop under the arm and hasten to the pub to watch the cricket while pretending to work.


The main action when I sat down seemed to be lots of slow-mo replays of verbal exchanges between Sreensanth and Haurie. On Survivor, people are always talking to each other while trying to look like they’re not talking to each other – the more earnest the message the more casual and offhand the delivery, and it looked like that.

Then there was Harbhajan being pathetic in the field and suddenly Mitchell gawn, bowled. It was a worry because according to the board, once Hilfenhaus replaces Mitchell, the only person left is someone called “George”, and because I am very late to the program this just sounds to me like the team bag-carrier or someone they’ve rung in so hurriedly they only got a first name. He comes out after not too long and looks a very newly-hatched chick indeed. Incredibly fine, white, smooth skin for one thing – that can’t last for long, surely. Unless, when the rest of the team heads for the ice bath, he perhaps runs a tub of ass’s milk? Sprinkled with a few rose petals? Hee hee.

George: Mate, you’ve got to try it. Combined with the petals of the [insert name of rose, eg. "Charm of Paris", "Samantha", "Carefree Wonder"], you would not believe what it does for the complexion.

Other Member of the Australian Cricket Team: Ah…

George: It’s like silk, mate, like silk – go on, feel it…

OMACT: [strangled pause] Yeah, I’m not going to feel it, mate. Piss off.

I may just like George. We’ll see. Seeing him bowl later on he looked not just young but from a whole other era - gangly in an almost underfed way, unfortunate ears, like an Anzac.

5 mins to beer o’clock and I get my first sight of Katich of the season, unless you count his revelation as Mr October in the Men of Cricket calendar a few days ago, and that was a good moment too. Australia’s not in the best position, but it’s so cheering to see everyone again: "Hello birds, hello sky, hello Hussey, your jawbone is looking squarer than ever, ah, Watto, we meet again, I thought of another nickname for you over winter. It's Shane “Who Asked You?” Watson. Mind I don’t have to use it."

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.

Ne me quitte pas, Kooka

There are a few lines at the end of Jacques Brel's Ne me quitte pas that set a sort of high/low benchmark in grovelling desperation, a ne plus ultra of dirt-licking, dignity-dashing bargain-striking:

Let me become
the shadow of your shadow
the shadow of your hand
the shadow of your dog

I mean, "Let me become the shadow of your dog" – really? Wow. I'm not sure whether I'm impressed or appalled.

I do believe however that yesterday afternoon at the SCG I saw Nathan Hauritz strike that series of bargains with the ball he took off Mohammad Yousuf. And it worked! I don't think things went so well for Jacques somehow.

I mean, I love an athletic, razor-sharp display of strike-force fielding as much as the next person, and goodness me they worked hard and well in that department yesterday. But I don't think I have ever seen such raw need on the field as that displayed by Haurie wrangling that ball to the ground, with the rest of him scrambling desperately to keep up. "Don't leave me", indeed.

It was gawky, painful, doubtful… wonderful! Is this the story of Haurie all over? That's my girl!

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.

TNT!

I had just been reading up on oxytocin, the "cuddle hormone", and then I saw Adrian Barath make his century. Adorable! The leap of joy, the being swept up and spun around in Dinesh Ramdin's arms, the salute to the crowd and the team, but the clincher of his place in Cricket Love history was his lean into Ramdin's chest—it bordered on a nuzzle—to go in for a second cuddle. I was combing the interwebs for pictures of the cuddles in particular and thought I had found one, but it turns out it was Barath engaged in yet another delightful cuddle in another game entirely. He can't help himself, he's Adrian Boris "Mr Oxytocin" Barath.

Adrian Barath & Lendl Simmo, 29th January 2009 (WI vs England) (AP/AndresLeighton (c))

It was a long way from Peter Roebuck's polite (?) inquiry of Fazeer Mohammed on Day 1 as to whether Barath and Ramdin's background was middle class or, rather, perhaps, "peasant". Oh Peter. Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter. Oh Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter. What will I do with you?

A more palatable moment in Grandstand camp was when Ponting dropped Travis Dowlin off Mitchell Johnson, which yielded this clipped exchange:

Roebuck (I think): Uncharacteristic.
Maxwell: Most.

Quite!

And I was glad to see that Nathan Hauritz has not lost his flair.

A shame about, well, the rest.

Laird of the Lairs

I jumped up and down and clapped my hands and hooted when I saw Warnie leading the pack out onto the ground in the Australian Cricketers' Association XI v Australian XI T20 game last night. And hooted pretty much every time he was shown on screen—because of joy, of course, but also no small amount of hilarity.

Warnie, you are such a Lair. You are a Hilarious Lair. You are Laird of the Lairs. "Lair" is apparently an Australia-specific slang term, and I'm not surprised given people like Warnie wandering around.

Let me count the ways. I think he's been dyeing his eyelashes for a while, but is it possible a little eyebrow-waxing has entered the picture? On top of the blonde-tipping, yeah-yeahing, teeth-whitening, sun-bedding (would Warnie go the fake tan or the full carcinogen-rich approach? I suspect the latter—it could after all be a full-body nicotine stain…) and my flatmate read that striking shiny smoothness as assisted by the botulinum toxin: hardly unlikely.

I mock not, of course. I delight in.

Other things from the night:

Generation X Captain Warnie's recurring "Noice…" vs Generation Y Captain Clarke's recurring "Awesome…"

Healy on Lee Carseldine's tremendous 6 at the beginning of over 14: "Look at the contact, look at the carry, look at the camerawork…"

And who was that hollow-eyed young man from a Flannery O'Connor novel that bowled the last over? Nathan Rimmington, taking Movember's mission to raise awareness of male depression and wasting diseases to a whole new level.

Getty Images (c) 2009

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.

Give us This Day in Shane Warne

I got so excited last week at the preview snippets of Simon Katich in the Masterchef kitchen that I almost crushed the cat (no pun… or rude new slang expression… intended). Great Squealing tomorrow night, no doubt.

And may I mention the shades of Warney in the delightfully zaftig George Calombaris? Last entry I referred to the “Balkan Haut” type allegedly embodied by Katich, and George has elements of a type I invented for Warney called “Buddha Warrior”.

It combines on the one hand a bodyfat-rich bonhomie that smiles and shines like the sun, the golden “virtue that bestows”, as Nietzsche’s Zarathustra describes it,* radiant and magnetic in its radiance. And on the other hand the fire in the belly: a boundless roaring competitive flame, the instinct to fight, win and kill, snakey patience and foxy wiliness... “Buddha Warrior” is where these attributes intersect and are the same thing.

George’s palate is no doubt broader than Warney’s. The palate of the average 6 year-old is broader than Warney’s. But within his category he has still come up with some Warney-like goods. Last week’s “Honestly, it looks like spew”, obviously. He has also confessed to a love of ham and pineapple, and in the original season when faced with steak tartare, he offered: “I have to say, raw meat FREAKS ME RIGHT OUT”.

And without wanting to get all Wagyu about it, that body fat – Warne’s, George's – really is marvellous. Nothing excessive about it. It’s seal-like: sleek, firm and functional. Strong, plump hands... Got it? Okay then.

It may have become apparent why I need something like “This Day in Shane Warne” to keep me in order. I don’t expect it is a thrilling read, but the process of putting it together is a pleasingly mundane devotional ritual. I can relive the innings that I didn’t see or don’t remember, or did see and do remember, and turn up the odd treasure, like the poignant “You dickhead, what are you doing? What have you done?”

When I lived in a Vietnamese neighbourhood in Melbourne, you’d see little Buddha shrines in the shops with tins of Pringles and cans of Coke for the Buddha’s enjoyment. Let’s just say This Day in Shane Warne is a bit like my tin of Pringles and can of Coke. Or can of spaghetti and packet of Benson and Hedges.

As 18^th century French novelist Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon always says, “On s’ennuie quand on aime mediocrement.” Or: “Obsession: it’s just more fun!”

* “Tell me, pray: how came gold to the highest value? Because it is uncommon,
and unprofiting, and beaming, and soft in lustre; it always bestoweth itself […]
Insatiably striveth your soul for treasures and jewels, because your virtue is
insatiable in desiring to bestow. Ye constrain all things to flow towards you and
into you, so that they shall flow back again out of your fountain as the gifts of 
your love.” Honestly, I find Thus Spake Zarathustra pretty much unreadable, but
I have always liked the image of the “virtue that bestows.”

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"...

Winners but still losers. OK?

For a while there last night I thought the season had come full circle and I was going to have to suffer another Cardiff, i.e. long-running spate of prime English hopelessness expunged by late rally pulled out of collective arse (there’s a headline for you). Which would have set a tone for the future that… oooh, how would you describe it, ah yes, thank you very much James Anderson, "flattered" the winners.

But a couple of good wobbles in England's chase were a sufficiently convincing imitation of themselves to serve as a cautionary note to would-be amnesiacs.

I am getting a little concerned that meringue-based Continental biscuits are causing problems rather than solving - or salving - them. Nevertheless, I give you the James Hopes Memorial Brutti Ma Buoni biscuits:

(One of those wee figures on the screen is indeed Hopes)

Yes, it was pretty civilised here last night. Or that's my story as long as teapot mike is turned down.

Brief Cricket Love

Did you see Dorian Gray presenting the man-of the match award to Ricky Ponting this morning (Sydney time)?

He was described as a "NatWest private customer", presumably the winner of a competition or just the beneficiary of a bit of nepotism. To give an idea of the look, he might have been Stuart Broad's sister. Excellent contrast with hatful-o'-puppy-dog-tails Ponting.

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?

O Captain! My Captain!

(Ricky from the Useful Box archives, but obviously fitting now.)

A couple of days ago Terry Jenner called for Ricky’s head and waxed lyrical about Michael Clarke’s foreman material: “I was in England a month”, he said, (and) “Every press conference Michael Clarke did was superb.” “He’s never tired, never drained, never fatigued.”

Terry, you old fool. This is like being taken in by the preternatural resilience and sphericality of a pair of fake boobs. Look, good on Clarke for being such an enthusiastic study of Media Grooming 101 and thus relieving the rest of the team from what must be a very tedious chore for them, but his press performances are so bland and cliché-spacked he simply shifts the burden of tedium onto the rest of us.

I’m a Romantic: I have a soft spot for a flaw, even the odd wreck, and Ricky cemented his place in my heart when he disgraced himself at the Bourbon & Beefsteak in January ‘99 during my very first Summer of Cricket. That black eye was perfect, cartoon-like, and Ricky in general was — is — such a Ginger Meggs/Dennis the Menace-style figure, all scraped knees and pugnaciousness, that frowny look on his face at the crease like he might be busted any moment for stealing apples or breaking windows. Batting and bowling, his movements were all free, loose and boyish, I loved watching him. His fielding is still all boy but I think his batting body has matured and tightened up: the last time I saw him live he put me in mind of a little flamenco dancer the way he held his torso still and erect in a pose after a stroke.

Which brings us to Ricky's "smouldering" line in Cricket Love that I mentioned a couple of posts back. It’s already visible in the picture of Cricket Sad above, but this is more particularly what I had in mind:

I'm guessing this was taken during some after-match presentations, and there's nothing that's not wonderful here. A balm for the soul in these troubled times.

PS. So I guess I'm saying why I'll always love Ricky, sentimental old fool that I am, though not the same kind of old fool as TJ, and that I won't go out for Pup when I have Pig-Dog at home.

Fiddly while Rome burns

Or: When the going gets tough... the tough make complicated French biscuits.


For all the zen talk, I was thoroughly gloomed Saturday night and badly needed to split focus. Enter the macaron, a meringue biscuit with cult-like status, whose preparation attracts so much earnest discussion that in my mind it is now known as "palaver" biscuit. I am a sucker for insanely fiddly food items at the best of times, and these were the worst.

It wasn't enough alas to see me through the night. By tea on Saturday I was back on the couch, only instead of therapy I was having poison poured into my ear, à la King Hamlet. Reader, it broke me. I had to abandon play at 2am, bitterly conceding that the English had not only beaten Australia - that was ages ago - but me. It was a shell of a woman who yesterday sandwiched wee pink bikkies together with chocolate ganache.

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.

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.

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 second verse: same as the first

Well I take everything back about self-administered haircuts, because Mitchell Johnson's once-over with the clippers on the No. 2 setting seems to have worked a treat (a reverse Samsonism that indeed was always a favoured explanation of Warney's success with the ball once he lost the mullet).

And I very much enjoyed the starlet-on-the-red-carpet-back-over-the-shoulder-look he threw Collingwood after he bounced him: très femme fatale. A varation actually on the steaminess he created with Stuart Broad on Day 4 at Edgbaston.

Not that I saw this live. Another of my favourite books when I was little was Marion Holland's A Big Ball of String. A boy collects pieces of string into a Big Ball and then, when he is confined to bed with a cold, sets himself up so he can basically run the world from his bed by pulling on bits of string:
It probably says a lot about me that as an idea of a Good Time—or Dream Lifestyle—this still strikes me as just about unbeatable.

Anyway, I mention it because as the English prepared for their 2nd innings I hauled the smaller TV into the bedroom and set myself up in bed with extra pillows, laptop, weekend newspaper, pen and notebook and… fell asleep almost immediately. Lizard brain prodded me awake to see Mitchell Johnson being an aeroplane and England on 5/78. Well, now you're just spoiling me.

I greet the haunted look of the crumbly English cricketer like an old friend of course. As mentioned in relation to Captain Nasser, there's something about loss—especially of the gasp-makingly embarassing sort—that suits the English like a comfy pair of corduroy slippers and a smelly old dressing-gown they really ought to chuck into the fireplace but can't quite let go of.

Personally, I feel "Burn the smelly dressing gown" represents an improvement on the desperately vague homilies the English were getting from other sources:

Bowling coach Ottis Gibson: "Stand up as Men."
Everyone's coach Greg Matthews:
1. "Stand up."
2. "Have a look at the badge on your shirts."
3. "Get into it."

(I do love it though when Greg puts on his glasses, a thought Stuart MacGill echoed last night: he is transformed in the most unlikely fashion from haggard old ocker into the local pastor or headmaster.)