B1 + B2 = A1

Banana skin 1, banana skin 2, job done. There is a nice symmetry to Australia beating both of the unbeaten teams to win the Cricket World Cup, though "nice" probably isn't the word being used in either India or New Zealand at the moment. Need it be said that once a-goddamn-gain I "felt" for the losing side? At least they had some time to get used to the idea, which perhaps was the problem, maybe I was just depressed about a game that seemed finished a long way before the end. The New Zealand team just looked a long way from home, disoriented and alone, a transplant that didn't take.

Every person with a microphone after the game was obsessed with prodding Australian cricketers about whether and how much they would be drinking that night: "Are you THIRSTY?" "Are you THIRSTY?" "I bet you're THIRSTY" "Gunna do some CELEBRATING tonight?" "Gunna HAVE A FEW?" It ended up being a bit leering, like a Bob and Cheryl Ugly nudgey-wink. Or like they were going to cut away to a beer ad.*

* Note added 31/3: Obviously not just me who noticed this then. And obviously a beer ad. Maybe I should use social media for its God-given purpose. In Warnie's defence, I don't remember this being a Warnie thing. Mark Nichols was doing it on the podium, everyone was doing it. Warnie isn't even much of a beer drinker. Having seen the photos of six-packs on the pitch in the photos this morning, this was indeed about sponsors.

Apropos post-match celebrations, when New Zealand won the semi-final against South Africa and faced their own microphones on the pitch, they made reference to the celebrations they would be having without any prompting and I thought: this isn't over yet, you're celebrating too soon and letting off steam that you will need later. Don't say I didn't warn you!

The Hair Part

I was worried about Sachin's hair when he was presenting on the podium - a hint of Elvis impersonator, a hint of Tom Jones perm - but the evidence suggests he is just rediscovering his youth, which is rather sweet:

The Parting Part

Someone on the radio said that Australians and English people don't appreciate what the World Cup means because we already have the Ashes, ie we have a ne plus ultra contest, something of supreme importance that nothing else measures up to. He suggested that the World Cup was for other countries what the Ashes is for us. I don't know whether that's true about other countries, it's true for me that winning the Ashes is more important than winning the World Cup. Specifically, winning it in England. So bring on July and in the meantime I am doing pretty well in an NRL tipping comp.


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El Caballo Blanco

Here comes New Zealand, riding white horses across the Tasman Sea, bats held aloft and hair gently ruffled by the breeze. I used to cast New Zealand cricketers as characters in a Jane Austen novel (including Chris Cairns as Darcy, which... hmmm, but then every Austen novel has its Wickham), but perhaps Knights of the Round Table is the better model.

I thought the undefeated New Zealand and the undefeated India might be destined to meet in a finals joust, but we put an end to that. It was pointed out to me that although India had won every one of their last 10 (or something) games, they’d lost all of their last 10 (or something) games against Australia. We are their Kryptonite. Or their banana skin (as our colour suggests).

I was at that game:

This was taken a moment before the shot I posted on Twitter, and I post the vision again because it is pretty but also because I can’t work out who the Australian cricketer is on the big screen. I would have said Bailey at a glance, but he’s not in the side. I can’t work it out, suggestions welcome (click on pic for hi-res view).
 

I was very excited to go to the game, it all happened at the last minute when Mr Batsy’s sister had a spare. It was a mixed and generally jovial crowd, lots of “Shucks, we CAN all just get along” and “Awww, we so multicultural” moments. My favourite was the group of men all in India shirts and the small boy sitting in the middle of them in all his Australia gear. When Kohli got out, the India supporters went quiet, when Dhoni got out, they left – immediately. The sea of blue shirts became a sea of blue seats. They are a tough love crowd.

Indian fans might have a reputation for being noisy, but there is nothing like a certain type of Australian fan for being vocal. We sat in front of a row of blokes I will call the “Slips Cordon” who conducted a loud running commentary of the game, cracked funnies and sledged all and sundry. They had some good ones - suggesting Watson was playing for a draw, for example - some bad ones - a conversation about delivering a lady of their acquaintance “balls from both ends” - and they were basically fun, but it is a sort of figurative version of spreading your legs across a bus seat, casually commandeering the game experience of all within a certain radius. I’ve had experiences where the guys commandeering were not so entertaining and the feeling of being trapped and powerless is hellish.

It’s funny when you see a game live and "unpackaged", the logical highlights of the game can be overlooked and random aspects stand out. I have almost no memory of Smith reaching his 100. It snuck up very quickly - he got from 90 to 100 with a 6 and a 4 - and I was probably focused on something like finding the lime wedges in the cooler bag to put into the special lemonade, and then saw everyone jumping up and got with the program a bit late. On the other hand, Johnson’s 23 off 9 at the end of our innings, elbowing out Haddin, stands out as a great feat.

One of the reasons I probably missed Smith’s 100 is because for all that I love Dame Judi and am glad to see Finch make some runs, I have totally jumped on the “who cares, bring on Mad Dog Maxwell” train with Faulkner as its caboose. It seems to me that these two have supplanted Warner and Finch as Australia’s batting sweethearts. This is partly because Warner & Finch have not really fired in this World cup and they’ll get love back when they do. The ones who really suffer in this scenario are the someone someones between the openers and the Big Show & Finisher acts.

Things are getting a bit out of hand with me and James Faulkner. James “F**k Off” Faulkner initially had a very different meaning, but things have now come round beyond full circle into serious overcompensation territory. I titter on the inside like a schoolgirl when I see his picture come up and I believe I blew him a kiss on Thursday night. Not the one-handed kiss-and-blow-the-fairy-dust type, a two-handed suction-based Italian-style jobbie, like Pavarotti thanking his audience or an olde-timey mobster with a napkin tucked into his collar expressing appreciation to the restaurant owner for the linguine with clams. Know what kind I mean? Which is a bit weird. Cue Carrie Bradshaw voice-over: “I couldn’t help but wonder... when it came to James and me, were we just two crazy kids, or was I a fat Italian mafioso and he a plate of pasta?”

I suspect there’ll be words on Monday about New Zealand and the Spirit of the Game regardless of who wins. Who did the Knights of the Round Table fight? In one astonishing synopsis of the tale of Knight Daniel von demblühenden Tal on Wikipedia, a “much-neglected Arthurian epic”, he has to contend with an evil dwarf and a “horde of bellyless monsters” (?) against a background of screaming mechanical dragons and war elephants. It’s not Mists of Avalon. I will take any kind of epic tomorrow, tasteful or not.

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It's time to go...

Oh South Africa, South Africa. As Hanse Cronje said to Ian Chappell on the podium after the 1999 semi final, “It’s a cruel game”. In what is clearly becoming a habit, I felt for South Africa. They wanted it so, so badly, their intensity throughout the game was so palpable and they must have woken up in cold sweats all last night with flashbacks of moments when they might have saved one run, or two, taken another wicket, or two... But I can’t hide the fact that I wanted them to win to save them for an even more dramatic humiliation in a potential AUS-RSA final, so my bleeding heart was a little disingenuous.

I’m not sure whether South Africa’s “choking” reputation comes from a genuine historical tendency or whether it’s just that the 1999 choke was so monumental, such a Choke for the Ages that it is by itself equivalent to 100 separate chokes. South Africa have never made it to a World Cup Final, but neither have New Zealand, and the New Zealand team is not seen as a bunch of chokers but as plucky and dashing, heads always high.

Why do current teams feel responsible for the failures of past teams? It’s like a country’s team is a Ship of Theseus that keeps its identity even though over time every part of it has been replaced. Obviously it's the eye of the beholder, the projections and expectations of the millions of onlookers whose turnover is much slower. It doesn’t help that when they look at the South African team at the moment they run a good chance of beholding Allan Donald.

Hanse was livid in 1999, he walked away from Ian Chappell mid-sentence when Chappelli was winding up his commiserations. The batsmen didn’t have a chance to collapse in tears at the end of that match because the pitch was invaded and everyone had to run off. De Villiers looked sad and haunted, hugely conscious of letting everyone back home down. The presenter said he was sure those people would appreciate that the team had done their best and De Villiers winced.

You know it’s a New Zealand commentator when after a soaring, thunderous triumph, he suggests we could all open a bottle “or maybe make a pot of tea.”

Time, gentlemen (on Pocock and co.)

When “Monkeygate” happened, in which the person on the receiving end of a racial slur was hung out to dry and there were calls for the sacking of the captain that reported it to match officials, I seriously had to track down a copy of Tom Brown’s School Days and read it to understand what the hell was going on.

And there it was, Death before Dobbing:

In fact, the solemn assembly, a levy of the School, had been held, at which the captain of the School had got up, and after premising that several instances had occurred of matters having been reported to the masters; that this was against public morality and School tradition; that a levy of the sixth had been held on the subject, and they had resolved that the practice must be stopped at once; and given out that any boy, in whatever form, who should thenceforth appeal to a master, without having first gone to some prepostor and laid the case before him, should be thrashed publicly, and sent to Coventry.

What school does Tom Brown go to? Rugby. If you wonder why I hate the “gentleman’s” tradition in any code, well, this, this, a thousand times this. It’s one thing to sweep things under the carpet, it’s the open proclamation of the moral superiority of sweeping things under the carpet that blows my mind. A letter writer to the Herald yesterday actually wailed “what have we come to?” He wasn’t bemoaning a plague of political correctness, he was suggesting that reporting an incident to a referee instead of dealing with it on the field or “in house” was by itself a sign of moral degradation.

I can’t tell you how weird this all looks from where I sit. Weird and at the same time stinkingly familiar as a howl of wounded privilege. The horror of being like everyone else, of having to do things like everyone else, of being judged by everyone else. Report a wrongdoing? Follow a rule? I know, it's so obvious. One of us is the alien and one of us is at home in this world. Which one is it? I’d like to think it’s time, gentlemen. Or: party’s over, dickheads.

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I'm Freddie Flintoff...

In a parallel universe to the CWC, I think Andrew Flintoff could be crowned 'King of the Jungle' in South Africa on the first Australian series of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here. His competition is former AFL star Barry Hall and former (and current) reality TV star Chrissie Swann.

A cursory swipe of the net suggests I might be in the minority on this one, so here is my reasoning:
1. He's coming fresh off a star-turn in a high-rating all-ages show (BBL04).
2. The all-ages thing: he potentially appeals to all demographics, young and old, male and female.
3. He has not shown any unattractive personality traits under pressure, cf. Barry Hall's general micromanagement and picking on Anna, and Chrissie's behind-the-back sniping with Joel.
4. He has been both entertaining and philosophical and pulled off a strategic masterstroke by confiding to camera last week that playing for a 'little thing' like England seemed insignificant compared to playing for charity. Too far?

In some ways he's been like a series mole. He appeared two weeks into the season as an 'intruder' when the group was already set in its roles and most of them didn't know who he was. So he was sort of undercover and his BBL personality would only come out in the 'Tok Tokkie' (TM) pieces to camera, like he was filing reports, and in the meetings with the presenters, where he broke down the host/player barrier by developing a running gag with Dr Chris that culminated with him getting the vet to drink a mouthful of some vile 'Tucker Trial' (TM) concoction.

I can't look at him without seeing the Messiah of the 2005 Ashes, a very traumatic series for me. He was the Lion and the Lamb, the Countenance Divine that shone forth upon their clouded hills (literally: when the crowd sang "Jerusalem" at Lords on the final day, an enormous close-up of his face appeared in the video montage at the ground when they reached that line). He didn't quite manage a Second Coming, and this third incarnation as Droll Lancastrian might end up being the most durable. I couldn't get on board with the general Freddie love-in during BBL, I found it a bit cultural-cringey ("You like us, you really like us!") and over-reliant on the 'funny accent' factor.

I won't say I've 'come round'  to the love-in level in this series, but I'm happy to go along with the ride. I was impressed by his no-fuss discussion of depression and his gesture of solidarity with balding men by shaving just the top of his head and 'naming names' ("Shane Warne, roog; Michael Vaughan, roog...") - could there be a new Movember here? And his live commentary while eating a cockroach was a bravura performance.

But last week I thought Maureen was going to take it out.

It's time to go... England, plus a tale of two SCGs

For a few minutes I actually felt a bit sorry for England last night when they were failing against Bangladesh. I know, who’s that girl? What was she thinking? I have a terrible bleeding heart, but England? I put it down to the fact that I think of people like Buttler who’ve played in the Big Bash, and Broad for that matter, as a bit less English than the rest. I would have said the same of Morgan once upon a time, but he has so thoroughly assumed the mantle (= smelly old dressing gown) of the Glum English Captain I can no longer distinguish him from the rest. Plus I think Jordan’s run-out call was pretty rough. I snapped out of it before the end and normal prejudice resumed (thank you, Kathy Lette, I’ll have my keyboard back now). And prejudice aside, England have just been terrible, end of story, there is no bad luck or injustice in them not making the finals. Au contraire. Bangladesh, you guys rock and your cuddle mosh was an ode to joy. Thy enchantments bind together indeed.

I watched the game against Sri Lanka on Sunday and I’m a bit appalled at how little I remember about it, even though I thought it was a good game at the time. Something something MAXWELL GOES OFF something something SANGA TAKES US ON something something something we won. Some fitness stuff on both sides. In that regard, I have to say I don’t see Michael Clarke on this team even if fitness wasn’t an issue. It’s purely a 'vibe' call – what, you want me to look at performance? – but he seems out of place among all of the T20 natives. The question might be moot in any case.

I enjoyed seeing Xavier Doherty, mainly because a 10-year-old friend got a lovely photo with him at an ODI in the tri-series so he gets the ‘I know him, he’s nice to kids’ tick of approval. That’s one of the perks of being in the Members' Reserve and that’s my segue to that story.

By the end of the first week of 2015 I had written three letters of complaint. In return I received a) a full refund, b) three tickets in the Members' Reserve as guests of the SCG trust for the first ODI in the Tri-Series against England and c) a personal email from Adam Spencer. Never mind the reasons for the complaints. I had my reasons.

I have sometimes thought that a drawback of sitting in the old members' stands at the SCG is not being able to see the old members' stands at the SCG. When you can see the sunset and skyline behind them at an evening game, it’s really an iconic Sydney moment. In terms of advantages, well, yes, I can see that it would also be pleasant to sit IN the nice heritage buildings during a game, as I’ve done myself not during a game. Apart from that I’ve mainly seen the upsides in terms of position, position, position and full-strength beer. Those were more innocent times.

The experience started at home with close scrutiny of the SCG dress code. I even rang them to clear up an ambiguity in their specifications regarding sandals (yes for women, absolutely not for men (“if we see toes, the answer is no”)). I cannot tell you how much comfort and guidance I found in the Members’ Look Book, settling on a combination of the practicality of page 3 with the attitude of page 7.

You go through the gates and there is the actual World Cup with which you can have your picture taken. Taking your seats in the Ladies Stand, you see it has not only olde worlde charm but the mod con of large flat screen TVs showing the full Channel 9 coverage. You receive little ‘reserved’ stickers to attach to your seats so you don’t lose them when you go to get some full-strength beer. The players are warming up in front of you.

It goes on. While I was surprised to find the same old junk at the food counter inside the stand, with mark up of about $1, you serve yourself from a sort of heated display stand. I stood before rows of buckets of hot chips I could reach out and touch and looked uncertainly at the girl behind the counter, “Can I... I... help myself?”, I asked with cautious wonder, like a Victorian waif brought in from the cold who doesn’t dare believe her luck. “Help yourself and meet me at the cash register” she said, a little flirtatiously. She’s smiling, relaxed, she asks me how my day has been, not the first or last to do so.

During the innings break, we took a wander. The SCG museum was open, a great collection, something for all ages and just the right size for the length of the intermission. We went into the new stand and saw a counter where you could help yourself to free sunscreen from big pump packs. There were flasher catering options there – craft beer and we saw more than one person walk by with fresh prawns. As we left and strolled among gardens and statues, children gambolling on the tennis courts, it hit me: this is a utopia, a vision of a perfect society. Space, time, amenity. Luxe, calme, volupté. No unsightly men’s toes. As if to underline the point, in the charming pink 50s bathroom I entered a stall with a single line of graffiti on the back of the door: “Make love and listen to the music”. In another stall, another lone exhortation: “Eat more pussy.”

It was a bit like one of those episodes of Star Trek where they land on a planet with green lawns and free love and blissful people in togas, but there’s a secret catch like the death penalty for walking on the grass. Here it’s more of a toe thing – seriously, as we came in we walked past a man who’d been stopped and who was testily insisting his shoes were indeed “enclosed” despite the side vents; you knew it would not end well – but really it’s the uncomfortable awareness that the utopia depends on exclusion and is priced to that end. And what other criteria for exclusion could you use, a personality test? This is how clubs work. And it’s not like the people in the members’ stands were all awful old boys or in Look Book outfits. Most people seemed ordinary and nice, just like you and me! The most bothering thing was the access members’ kiddies get to the players. There are a couple of ‘family’ bays next to the members' stands which I now realise are placed there for this reason, so that some pleb kids at least can be included in the players’ walk around the fence to sign autographs and have photos taken after the game. But how do the parents on the other side of the ground explain why the players don’t come over?

There’s an irony in the fact that as compensation for a shabby experience on the Other Side of the ground, I was offered an experience that highlighted just how shabby the other side is. I looked over to the stand I’d been in for the New Year’s Test and thought of the bunker-like food areas around the back, the concrete, the queues, the sweaty shuffling and jostling like some Eastern Bloc propaganda film. Could I bear to go back there? I could of course, the very next week for a BBL game and there was no undue suffering. But I did look at the sun setting over the members stand in a different light, like a shimmering Shangri-La, and I didn’t feel sorry for the people there who couldn’t see it.

CWC Opener, AUS vs ENG @ MCG

Just what is it that makes English fielding stuff ups so different, so appealing? Is it the polite despair or the Benny Hill music? Or are these just my partisan projections? I woke up from a nap at a good time to catch the Australians accelerating and the English coming apart: an outfield catch that fell between two fools and two of the fluffiest of fluffed run-out chances.

It’s been a long nap. There has been stuff, like seeing the first ODI in the tri-series from the members’ stands at the SCG, a story I’d like to tell another time, and seeing the most incredible fairy-tale Sydney derby in there BBL where the Sixers won by making 56 runs off the last 3 overs. I even played a little park cricket and was surprised to find that out of batting, bowling and fielding, I am least horrible at batting (“strong bottom hand, reminiscent of Gilchrist”). This is partly because my batting failures take less time out of the game than the others. I am the worst wicket keeper, specialising in a “leg before” “method” of stopping the ball that is poor in both design and execution, and my “spin” comes out of the side of my hand square of the wicket.

Back to yesterday. George Bailey must just throw his hands up in the air when he hears Geoffrey Boycott of all people singing the praises of Glenn Maxwell at his expense. “Wider range of shots”, said Geoff. Indeed, but we didn’t think you were into that sort of thing. It can’t be any fun batting just ahead of Maxwell, walking on to the sound of small children praying for you to get out. He is just such a nice boy, with no chance against a wild-eyed loner standing at the gates of Oblivion. Of course, the real problem is Watson upstream clinging for dear life to his handful of right-arm fast-mediums.

The hair part

I was looking at Moeen Ali’s beard and saying to myself, that looks more Amish than Muslim to me. So I went off to investigate and well, I think I’m right, I think it is more Amish than Muslim. If there is one thing I have learned from Islamic Perspective of theBeard, it is that for the beard to its job, which is to beautify, enhance respectability and underline masculinity, it must be kept in good trim (their italics, not mine). In contrast, the Amish heed Leviticus 19:27, which says that just as “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.” No man-scaping, Levites. And stop cutting off your ears!

Bell has been getting in on the beard action as well and has somehow managed to pull one off that is neither Amish, Muslim nor even hipster, but... professorial? I can’t quite put my finger on it, it is sort of moulded around his jaw while being more than stubble. Bell is my favourite model of English “polite despair”, his crispness when he gets out is a joy to behold. Sometimes he turns on his heels immediately, sometimes there’s a short, still stare at the ground before he tucks his bat under his arm and walks off, all stoicism. Love it.

I’m not really excited yet by this competition. Having complained about the ODIs coming too early in the season I now feel these ones are coming a bit late, my attention span is being stretched thin. We’ll see.

Slogfest

I was at the SCG yesterday. Slogfest is not so much how I would describe Australia’s batting performance as how I would describe the experience of spending a day at the cricket: it’s festive but it’s also a bit of a slog. I go pretty well in the first session, fresh with the beauty of the ground and the fun of a day out, sunscreen newly applied and up to the job. Lunch provides the perk of egg sandwiches, but also brings out the cryptic crossword as an admission of my flagging attention span. 

Somewhere between lunch and tea the sun crept up and over the edge of our bay, prompting a retreat to higher ground. We were not the only ones, it was like a Johnny Cashsong as we saw people in front of us move to the already abandoned row behind them, then realise pretty quickly that one row wouldn’t cut it. They’d turn and scan the upper echelons of the bay behind them, alas already full with the wiser and quicker. We found three seats together at the front of the bay behind, then realised they were vacant because a handrail almost perfectly blocked out the sight of pitch from the seated position, as if to protect its identity. We end up moving to the next stand. 

By the third session I was in such a fog of heat and fatigue that it took me a few minutes to realise that the digital stream of Grandstand from my iphone was about three balls behind the live action. For a brief moment I wondered if the Grandstand stream was ahead.

This brings me to a philosophical statement made by a little girl behind us during the first session, chatting with (I presume) her Dad: “It’s not live if you’re wearing sunglasses.” This actually slots in to a couple of philosophical debates, one in the history and philosophy of science and another at the more romantic end of phenomenology. If you’d like to learn more about either those, you can send a self-addressed stamped email to bastyblog at gmail.com Certainly a lot of people claim it’s cheating to listen to the radio commentary when watching the game at the ground.

Re: Grandstand, if there’s a young man using the words “conversely”, “emotive” and “counter-intuitive” on the radio, that young man is Ed Cowan. It’s a bit of dirty talk for the SCG members. I’m no one to talk, but then I ain’t the one talking. For the record I don’t mind a bit of counter-intuition but I don’t think I’d say conversely out loud and “emotive” makes me cringe.

Favourite ground moment was a group of policemen who were making their way around the boundary rope single file and who’d all stop and crouch down when the ball was bowled. The problem was that Ashwin was bowling, you could tell they were expecting more time to make headway between balls and were taken by surprise when it came so soon, so the crouching started getting tardy and ragged.

Long story short, I was a mess by the end of the day. It's fun, and it's hard work.

BBL04

I’ve been dipping in and out of the BBL, I make no claim to originality with my favourite moments there: the Maxwell leave, George “f**k me” Bailey and DJ Sammy cheering same George Bailey from the non-striker end when Bailey went off with the bat to make the required 210. What I loved about the Maxwell leave was the look he gave back to the bowler: “You mean we’ve started? That wasn’t a practice ball?”

Now Maxwell has his beard again I've decided he looks like one of those convicts who would escape with another convict so they could eat him down the track. And I've decided Nathan Rimmington is the convict who gets eaten.

Boxing day blues

I spent most of Boxing Day telling myself it was the best day of the year and the only day I felt completely comfortable doing nothing until about 5 pm when all the nothing flipped over into nihilism and self-loathing. I could only raise myself from the couch to lower myself into a bath, where I spent most of the rest of the evening. Nihilism, mmm. People say the spirituality has gone out of Christmas but I think it still packs a fair existential punch, especially with the kicker of New Year.

The cricket. Last Tuesday I looked up from the articles about Joe Burns and said: "Ed Cowan must be spewing." In a brainy, urbane sort of way, of course. On reflection, however, it is probably Chris Rogers that Ed would see as occupying his crease: the brainy mature opener in a balancing act with Warner. 

Joe Burns gives me two birds in one: he looks a bit like Ashton Agar and needs to mind his hair. Take away my lookalikes and hair talk and there's not much left to this blog.

Grumpy old men, verse 54
Jim Maxwell, Terry Alderman and Geoff Lawson have had a grand old time this series getting worked up about people who walk across sight screens. Terry threw down quite a gauntlet to Ticketek by saying tickets should not be sold in those areas to people who are not knowledgeable about cricket. Perhaps it could work like the Australian citizenship test. Never mind that these people are often ground staff. Jim was plunged into cognitive dissonance at one point when the problem turned out to be a stray beach ball, he had to reconcile his irritation at sight-screen interference with his competing irritation at overbearing crowd control policies regarding such things as beach balls. He actually showed a little forbearance.

Geoff Lawson had an unexpected spray at Quentin Hull for calling Steve Smith a "stand-in captain". The qualification "stand-in" makes him livid, Steve Smith is captain full stop. Okay, Geoff, but are you saying Steve Smith would not step down if Michael Clarke came back? So how would you distinguish someone in that position from other captains? Meanwhile Quentin Hull dealt with the stand-in-or not-stand in by finding a wrinkle in the time continuum: "You think you're getting a glimpse into the future but maybe it's just now come a little earlier than expected".

As I write Henry is making me uncomfortable by talking about "wear areas" on cricketer's boxes.

Wealthy entities being dickheads just because they can:
- The Nine network not not coughing up for HD bandwidth on Channel 9 (though it somehow manages for GEM). Would it have happened on Kerry Packer's watch?
- Cricket Australia randomly cutting off my free family radio streaming to show me an ad for paid streaming (why would I be interested?) or switching over to Channel 9 commentary.

Ads
- McDonalds appears to be advertising a new ice cream by graphically depicting what it will look like smashed and melting.
- NSW transport appears to be trying to encourage people to have a "Plan B" instead of driving home after drinking by making every possible "Plan B" look as unattractive and unlikely as possible.
- I will never not hate the Bunnings ads.

Judi, Judi, Judi!

The new Australian cricket captain received a blazer on the field, but the full secret CA regalia is more elaborate.

1. The headline on the back page of the Herald today was "Stick with Smith", which I believe could be called "backhand support". Dame Judi has always and ever had the full support of this household. I have not always been able to get behind his hair styling, but even that seems to have grown up in the last few weeks. It was probably his hair that had him once touted as the new Warnie (that was back when we still said that, before the long slow descent to earth).

2. Based on day 1, it turns out there is such a thing as a "bowling collapse". I don't understand how Brisbane can be more oppressive than Sharjah but the evidence is there. I'm glad they've picked themselves up. 

3.

Who would you have said this poor-res photo is of? It was in the TV section today and my first thought was "What is Arnold Schwarnegger doing with Sydney Thunder*? How did I not hear anything about this?" but it turns out it is Nathan Hauritz. That's not an association I ever thought I'd make. It's a long way from Charleston girl. Anyway, I'm glad he's baaack.

* Truthfully, I wondered what Arnie was doing with the Melbourne Stars, because I assumed the photo would be of someone involved in the game being previewed and that's the green team playing tonight. This on top of the resolution confirms the impression that someone simply threw an image at this article at the last minute. "Quick! Green! Cricketer! Hang on, is this Arnie? Hauritz. Okay."

4. More on non-lookalikes. It's not a pre-Christmas cricket match without bad memorabilia and here's a sample from yesterday:

a) Warnie. Doesn't look like that. Shouldn't look like Jeff Thompson. The below seems to tell part of the story, but also suggests further Frankenstein shenanigans, to the point where one wonders if it's more about photo rights than flattery.

b) Sachin. Doesn't deserve this. Shouldn't be wearing clown pants. This is obviously nothing to do with flattery, I thought his bum was back to front. But what is it then?

Olympique Lyonnais

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Well, God bless Nathan Lyon. I felt for him. He got 5 wickets in the first innings and then the collective goldfish did a circuit of the bowl, fixed him with a googly stare and said: “Who are you? Remind me again why you're here?” Then the collective elephant whispered: “If you don’t win this for us you will will mess up the whole 'we're doing it for Phil/he's doing it for us' thing. You will have dishonoured the memory of Phillip Hughes and all we have achieved in this game in his name. No pressure.”

Nathan has done the responsible thing, hair-wise, severing all connections with the past. Warnie however has made me a liar and reintroduced his hair to bleaching agents somewhere between Macksville and Adelaide. I can hardly complain at the return to sanity, though I was sort of looking forward to some on-going flabbergastion.

Poor Virat Kohli. 

Back in 2001 on a proto-Batsy website I suggested that if we were teaching human emotions through cricket, V.V.S. Laxman was an object lesson in Dismay when he was caught out in Kolkata. I don’t remember now how Laxman looked, but I suspect it was something like Kohli, who was a veritable powerpoint presentation in Distraught with an edge of Nausea. 

For a team who famously reject the DRS, India sure get a lot of dud decisions. They can only resort to the ancient and totally ineffectual technology of the Stare. To be fair they are very good at it.

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Test 1, Day 1, Adelaide

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Well, God bless Davey Warner. I have described him as an emotional counterpoint to Phillip Hughes and boy was he that today. Pure sunshine, always a joy when he’s... I’ve been sifting through the descriptors. ‘In form’ is stepping too far back, ‘on song’ seems like something you build up to, they don’t work for Warner’s immediacy. He’s easy and explosive, soothing and entertaining, today every boundary cleared some of the cloud, a salve to the collective wound.

On Grandstand, Rahul Dravid talked about the ego adjustment he had to make when batting with Virender Sehwag, because the crowd would cheer the singles that brought his partner back on strike. Rogers has always seemed happy to fade into the background when Warner is... being Warner, though perhaps not quite so far back as the pavilion. But despite the ‘meh’ of his 9 and Watson’s 14, and even with one batsman retired hurt, 2 for 258 looked refreshingly respectable given our long track record of crumply starts. Not the best finish to the day, but still.

I forgot about “oooh” when considering the possible responses to the first bouncer. I thought the general not knowing what would happen would translate into a general not knowing what to do and mean not doing anything at all, a strangled silence. But it was “oooh” and a clap. Is that what we always used to do anyway? I can’t remember.

Warney thinks that with the diversion and seriousness of recent events I will either not notice or not mention his new brown hair. He severely underestimates me. I see you, Shane Keith Warne. I have seen and wondered at a great number of your hairstyles, but this one confounds me like no other. It is mystifying enough when a brunette man makes this move, a hair’s breadth away from the comb-over in its charm. But when your story is that you are a blond, why wouldn’t you stick to it and let it carry you into or over the greys? With the immense resources at his disposal, the greatest of which is the aforementioned track record as a blond, this just feels so low rent. Maybe he was bored.

I’d like to formally request an easing up on the Phillip Hughes video montages. They make me teary against my will and leave me feeling a bit... used. Hands off my heartstrings, please, I can take them from here.

Phillip Hughes

It’s been hard for a bunch of reasons to get something down about Phillip Hughes’ death. All there is in the beginning and all there is in the end is the shock and sadness. All the stuff in the middle - tweets, bats, analysis, this - is filler. It’s like there’s a little gap in the universe that opens up when someone dies, not just the person-shaped hole they leave, but the breach of faith in the universe for doing such a thing. The filling never gets to the ‘bottom’ of it. But I’m no different to anyone else in trying. Here is my handful of dirt.

The big question seems to have been why the reaction has been so strong and I can think of a lot of reasons. It started for me with the very graphic, public nature of the injury that caused his death. I happened to be on the SMH website early that Tuesday afternoon because I’d heard a helicopter hovering over Coogee that morning and - good on me - wondered if something bad had happened. “Warning: graphic images” is a bit like “Don’t push this red button”. The one I most wished I hadn’t seen was the one the Herald ran on its cover the next day. That has sort of set the emotional baseline for the past week, a general unsettledness that’s probably more physical or animal than emotional, like a flock of birds scattering at a loud noise or projectile.

The second time I saw that photo I (deliberately) looked at everyone else rather than Phillip Hughes, and I could see the kind of ‘tableau’ of concern, like a war photo or a Renaissance painting, the qualities that the Herald felt made the picture about more than ghoulishness. The ‘looking at everyone else’ is a big part of the sadness. When I see pictures of Phillip Hughes, I still mainly feel a blank incomprehension that there will be no more Phillip Hughes. It’s sadness, but in the form of an intellectual revolt. It’s more when I see the grief of people close to him, wholly comprehensible, that I get teary or upset - teammates at the hospital, tweets from colleagues, yesterday’s funeral speeches. And surely a great deal of the sadness is sadness for Phillip Hughes’ family in particular: sad for them in empathy, and sad ‘for’ them like an offering to them, hoping that if they know how sad everyone is it will be some comfort to them.

There are a lot of other things: the amplifying effect of social media, his youth, his status as hero and superhero in virtue of being an elite sportsperson, the fact of dying in what is supposed to be a game. None of these have much to do with Phillip Hughes himself, and the core of it for me has been that it was Phillip Hughes. If I feel so much in response to Phillip Hughes’ death it’s because I felt so much for him while he was alive. But that feeling was not of falling in love with a happy-go-lucky country boy.

I certainly see the country boy much more now that I’ve seen the funeral - God bless daggy country church services. I have no argument with cheeky, smiling, laughing Phillip Hughes. That’s the person who belongs to the people who knew and loved him. That’s the person. It’s not the persona I saw at the crease, the member of my imaginary cricket menagerie. Phil Hughes only appears in my archive as a troubled figure, fretful and fretted for. That’s ‘my’ Phil, it’s who I remember, and however unreal he is, it’s who I feel for and who I’ll miss and why his death has a heaviness it would not have if it had been someone else.

It’s like he had an ability to elicit emotion, to make people care. Mr Batsy tells me Michael Slater had something of this too, you saw him and worried about him. It’s the background of pathos that magnifies the tragedy. But it’s ridiculous to separate this from the circumstances: the horrendous on again-off again relationship with the selectors, the mythology of Phillip Hughes that was well under way in his life time. The domestic prodigy who had either never been given the chance he deserved or who had been way overindulged. Whether or not this was to do with personal qualities, people felt strongly about the “case” of Phillip Hughes, I can’t think of anyone else whose selection or non-selection aroused that kind of intensity of debate. I have no insight into Phillip Hughes’ batting skills and flaws, but I had no trouble picking up the drama, to the point that I wonder how much of my perception of Phil was a projection of my own performance anxieties.

The death of anyone young involves the sadness of unrealised potential, but with Phillip Hughes this is compounded by the sense of unresolved issues. I’m very fond of ‘my’ Phil Hughes, but I'm sure he would have preferred not to be seen the way I saw him and that’s part of what’s so unfair.

The ODI of Things

A 5-match ODI series against South Africa, you say? Two of the top ODI teams in the world, you say? Yes, okay then.

1. 

I hope it’s becoming clear why in this house we call James “F**k Off” Faulkner, James “F**k Off” Faulkner. The vultures are circling, the coyotes closing in, the end is nigh and James stands up, waves a fire stick and shouts “Just f**k off! Gawn, git!”

They say he’s the Finisher and compare him to Michael Bevan, but... seriously? I can’t think of two more different players, temperamentally or in manner of “finishing”. I know what they called McGrath, but the Metronome always meant Bevan to me. He’d be thrown into the shit half way through the 50 overs and it was like he had a little punch card in his head that distributed the necessary runs over the available overs, 1s and 2s, 1s and 2s, a little flash here and there but nothing too flash so they don’t see what’s happening. And you’d turn around, and they’d turn around and everyone would go, hang on, what happened, where was all that shit again? Whereas James drops in at the death and punches a hole through the problem and everyone sits up and takes notice. I also call him “All Stops” in my head, as in what you have to pull out.

They both show you though that for all its reputation as fizzy, it’s coolness of head that makes or breaks you in the limited-over form of the game. But we already knew that from the second semi-final against South Africa in the 1999 World Cup. I see you, Allan Donald.

2. 

And I see you, Wayne Dillon Parnell. Sounds like a soccer player, looks like a soccer player. I have always pooh-poohed the tut-tutting of, eg, tattoos or earrings on sports players, but when it comes to the “man bun undercut” with a side of “hipster beard”, I cannot, as the Fug Girls say. The core problem with a haircut like that must be that every time you stuff up, people will blame your hair. He fluffed a fielding move on Friday, leaping on a ball that somehow bounced off him and away to the boundary, and my immediate thought was, “Well, what do you expect with hair like that?”

But here’s a thought:

Dale Steyn, of course, like all good psychos, cuts his own hair.

3. 

Okay, so the last two games were pretty good, but before that I was struggling. I knocked off three recorded episodes of Say Yes to the Dress (two original flavour, one Atlanta) in the second innings of the third ODI. Even when the outcome was still undecided, the game could not stand up to the charms of Debbie, Flo, guru Randy and a whole lotta ruching.

In the end I am just not in the mood for ODIs at this time of year. They are for the fun, wind-down part of the season after the solemnity of the Tests, and certainly only the solemnity of the Tests can launch the season. Cricket sells itself on the idea of celebrating ritual and shoes have to be put on in the right order. As far as I am concerned, these are practice games for the World Cup, the season hasn’t started, I’m not ready, you can’t make me. I completely understand why this series had to be scheduled in this way, but in return you the Scheduler must completely understand why I didn’t buy tickets. It’s nothing personal.

I do Dubai

Eunice [Burns, played by Madeleine] Kahn

Poor first test Australia v Pakistan, it was so hard to get into you. There was so much going against you: the unreality of the off season, the unreality of a deserted stadium, no well-defined rivalry between the teams (at least from the Australian end), an apparently dead track, a big first innings total that seemed to suck out the likelihood of a good result or any result, Dean Jones. 

It happened eventually, right at the end, because of the drama of all the ‘almost’ chances and because I realised how unfair it was that I was yawning at a game in which Pakistan had rolled Australia twice on that 'dead' track, had 2 centuries in each innings, one of which was made off 80 balls, two of which were made by a dropped veteran returning to save his country’s honour, plus a feisty spinner who took 7 wickets for 116 runs. It obviously wasn’t you, it was me.

Poor Pakistan. Of all the reputations a team could have, the combo of ‘flaky’ + ‘shady’ has to be the worst. Your successes are suspected of being insubstantial, your failures of being intentional. On top of that, you have to play in exile in those glittering, ghost town grounds. Is it patronising to hope this is the start of better things? Will I come to regret that sentiment?

Note to Pakistani spectators: I like your headgear and fluffy toys, but they are not helping with the ‘flaky’ bit.

PS. This is my century too. 100 posts! Thanks for coming!