“A paata, for the uninitiated, is a pitch that makes bowlers weep”

“Bring on the mullet-haired fast men. Bring on the record-breaking spinners. This is Nagpur, the city of oranges. You can eat a Jaffa here. But serving one up will be an entirely different matter.“

Hayden & the Nagpur pitch

10dulkar makes his return to test cricket on a ground where he averages over 150 in the 100th test of his arch-nemesis Glenn McGrath. McGrath, along with being the only bowler in the world capable of making Sachin go into his shell, will become the only Australian fast bowler to have played 100 tests. Who knows what weather or flowers the battle will bring. The zeppelins had better steer clear.

O and lookout for restaurant chains too.

the players will be well served during the breaks in play in nagpur. 3rd test commences next tuesday!

KW
It was raining in Sydney yesterday too. I was wondering why I couldn`t find the test on the radio on that rainy afternoon.

Until then it was cricket tending towards its absolute form. An expression of total cricket. A Clausewitzian form of Cricket.

It was as if it had reached its point of dynamic equilibrium. So delicate and so vulnerable. So extreme. Like it had lost all control and would go on forever, existing in its own vortex. Maybe the vortex sucked all the weather in.

NW
Bloody vortex. You should have your own blog too.

Who is Clausewitz – is he a geologist? The way the weather pressures, erodes and forms cricket seems geological to me. Dizzy was a rock the other day.

KW
Clausewitz was a Prussian General who fought Napoleon. He wrote `On War` in the 1830`s. He has interesting ideas about absolute war in its absolute form, and the impossibility of reaching this form.

NW
Form is necessarily fluid and unabsolute. An absolute form would instantly crumble, so damn fragile- i think you already pointed this out. When they say a batsmen is in form what is actually meant is that he has reduced form to an extreme point of insignificance and is playing freely in a void. Like you said.

Hayden and Langer both talk about playing in the void, where everything shreds away. Except love. The partnership. Opening.

KW
The band Augie March also have some interesting ideas about cricket. I think their name is actually Cricket derived. Sounds a little like Douggie Marsh.

There is lots of cricket on their DVD.

NW
They have a dvd? You have it?

Augie March ? It’s a strange confabulation of Doug Walters and Rodney Marsh – I tried reading the Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow once but it was tooo boring and I don’t think it would have had anything to do with cricket. Too many characters doing far too little. On the other hand that sounds a lot like cricket doesn’t it?

I once played french cricket with the bassist from Augie March at Meredith. He twisted his ankle.

KW
The DVD is called Drones and Vapid Ditties. I purchased it when I saw them last time. The film clip for Century Son (a song about Cricket I think) is Augie March playing Cricket. And there is Big Day Out footage where Glenn dedicates The Keepa to Gilly. And a documentary where they talk about playing cricket in the parking lot of the studio while recording Sunset Studies.

NW
The song Vineyard is all about cricket. It is obviously based on a painting of a cricket picnic by Malevich.

Malevich was also very interested in supreme form & the void.

I will request the dvd for the library.

i’ve just found a new online cricket game – STICK CRICKET!

It is FANTASTIC. I don’t care if it rains forever and there is never another test played again ever. I smashed Irfan Pathan! for 12 runs off his first over.

(If you want an easier, daggier cricket game this one is a long time favourite – HIT THE ING SIGN.)

I finished work at 2pm today and got on a tram to go to Uni. I thought i could feel the cricket in the air again. Once more I was concentrating hard on making myself into an antenna tuned into the frequency that cricket transmits over. I though that the tension gripping my stomach and throat must have been about the tightness of the match. When a little burst of excitement ran through me I thought maybe that was the ebb of a wicket. But it must just have been the usual terror that fills me on my way to uni – the terrifying feeling that I might just not be able to handle the boredom that awaits me there. A real fear. In Chepauk it had been raining, and it was continuing to rain. The victory rains of the Lagaan match had come early. Not a ball was bowled. A crushing result. Desert rains washing the orange out of the mud too soon for anyone to enjoy its refreshment, even the birds were sad. Weather is big part of cricket, and just like any other element it can exhibit poor form and disastruous timing. Villainous bloody weather.

Dizzy Gillespie’s persistence on the centre wicket yesterday was repeated today as he waited around like a sad bird for the chance to bowl India out.

the trumpets may have been going wild while Sehwag was swinging his way to 150+ and later when Kaif, half dead on his feet, and Patel put India almost beyond reach, but it was watching the epic partnership between Martyn and nightwatchman turned dayguard Dizzy Gillespie that had me weeping. These guys watched every ball with the deep concentration the pitch and the tricksy bowlers demanded. Their patience and resilience was heart rending. Marto waited on every ball and played with fast and malleable hands at the last moment. Dizzy played with whatever he could muster – he must have been wearing that headband under his helmet, he mustve been. Time passed, 3 overs later 2 runs had been added. This was the sort of action that was being presented. The Keith Miller tape was coming loose from their arms. nothing adheres in this heat. Every ball from Harbhajan had excitement rising into my throat, gripping me & then dispersing as Marto’s bat came down late but sure. He had come to understand the pitch, he was coming to an understanding even of the pure enigma of Harbhajan Singh. With every ball he garnered more information. Suddenly he applied his learning and with a quiet explosion of form two tentative sweep shots found the boundary. They were tentative but considered. Tentative only in that they were absolutely safe & sure. Marto could have pulled out of them at any moment had he needed to. In the next over he came down the pitch to Kumble and sent a delivery deep into the stands behind the bowler to bring up his 100. He raised his arms casually above his head – the very picture of Steve Waugh. & then he punched the air with his fist like steve waugh never would. The transfusion was complete. The steel that once coursed through Steve’s veins was pumping freely now through Marto’s – his immune system had stopped fighting it, he had succesfully become a new entity. (Tyler Hamilton should use the Martyn case as proof of his innocence. The episode clearly demonstrates that it is possible for a person’s blood to change its makeup, to combine with another’s, through only cosmic influence – only forces of relation. I have no doubt that the foreign blood particles the testers found in Hamilton’s sample were those of his old dog Tugboat. Hamilton had taken these particles up within himself through a sentimentality so impressively forceful that upon the passing of the beloved Tugboat his very blood changed, re-membering itself to remember the dog Tyler had loved so dearly. Tugga in Martyn and Tugboat in Hamilton.) It was a tired cuddle that Martyn and Gillespie shared when the 100 came up. Marto rested his head against Dizzy’s chest and Dizzy draped his long arms around Marto. Marto was too spent to last much longer. And once Marto was gone Dizzy was never going to be able to continue. Not out of any sense of fidelity to his partner but just because the energy of the coupling was all that was keeping him going, he was never going to be able find anything from which to try and build new bonds with Clarkey or Lehmann, the headband can only do so much. Dizzy made 24 of 6000 balls. The partnership was 139 runs – the highest 5th wicket partnership vs India in India. India may well make a mockery of the epic partnership, Sehwag is already doing it, creaming McGrath for a four off the last ball of the day, but the test now could also be real close. Its been a ripper so far.

The orange patches on the pitch have turned white.

the great thing about listening to the test on the radio is – aside from the wonderful incessant commentary (on the television the commentators barely speak a lot of the time) – is that you can hear the crowd so clearly. This is a purely intensive commentary, that describes the game situation through its volume and layers – the drums are continuous but you really know when stuff is going down when the trumpets start up.

for those who thought the sahara branding on the Indian whites had little significance beyond that of the endorsement itself, here is a little quote that displays just how consistent it is with the atmosphere of a Chennai test.

“the drinks breaks look like desert caravans with their chairs, umbrellas and towels.”

it all adds up to intense dusty, windy heat – even the drinks breaks only serve to add to the sense that you are stuck in the desert.