from Andrew Miller’s roving reporter column @ baggygreen

“the curtain of this match was lowered moments before tea yesterday, when Shane Warne rolled into bowl and pinned VVS Laxman lbw with a perfect first-ball flipper. At that moment, a Bangalore crowd that had been waiting in vain for a Kolkata-esque miracle was forced to wake up and smell the cordite.”

Last summer in Sydney Steve Waugh played his final test match. At least it was his final match encased in the body that we know as Steve Waugh. During that match there was a moment when I swear I saw Steve’s entire spirit pass into the body of Damien Martyn. Marto took a hot chance at point just over his head. The way in which he threw the ball away over his shoulder, like nothing was anything, was precisely Steve Waugh. Too precise not to be Steve Waugh. It was not imitation or likeness or resemblance. It was an actual transformation. The Steve Waugh in Marto is still evident to this day, little shakes of the shoulders, the way he jogs between wickets like nothing is anything. Today in Bangalore Marto was welcomed to the crease by a pumped up, close in, Indian field, hot on the comeback trail. It was hot out there. Marto could have done with a glass of water. They were razzin him alright, razzin him right up. The ball was leaping and striking at angles unheard off. But the Steve Waugh in Marto stood face to face with the field, and pretty much told em that he wasn’t havin none of their nonsense. He focussed hard on understanding the turn & things very soon calmed down as Marto consolidated his position at the crease. In the recent past he has struggled to incorporate the form of Steve into his own being, but I think today he began to accept it, use it to his advantage, and let the Steve Waugh in him exert its power. By the end of the day Marto was smiling a lot. Internally the waugh machine was at work but outwardly, now, Marto was at ease with his new constitution. Steve would never smile like that. Steve would never smile. I’ve got a very good feeling about this innings of Marto’s(teve’s). 29 n.o. overnight.

From when he was a little boy Clarkey would tell his mum that he was going to play cricket for Australia. His mum would say, “That’s lovely dear, but what’s your back-up plan, you know, just in case it doesn’t work out?” – “Mum, you don’t understand – I am going to play cricket for Australia.”

Glenn McGrath has become the only test player ever to bowl Rahul Dravid out middle stump. It was only Dravid’s 4th ever test duck.

Last night on abc radio as Clarkey was constructing his fairy tale the commentators kept saying things like – “he has found his place”; “he belongs here”; “this is where he should be, this is where he is meant to be”. There was something about Clarkey’s coming to belong that was incredibly moving. It was so immediate and so magnified. Finding a position from which to flourish is a wonderful task for anyone I guess, in whatever way. It just wouldn’t usually be such a noticeable process, perhaps. I’m thinking of the Miyazaki film My Neighbor Totoro. The kids plant some magic acorns that Totoro has given them and nothing happens until one night Totoro leads the kids out to the garden bed, conducts some sort of magical dance, and a massive tree sprouts out of the earth. In the morning there’s no tree, but the acorns have sprouted. The kids say something like “It was a dream but it wasn’t a dream.” I bet thats how Clarkey feels now. He just frikkin flowered. A small boy’s dreams have been utterly realised, planted firmly in reality. It’s moving stuff. Moving and settling at the same time.

IRFAN PATHAN!! you can’t speak his name and retain any mildness of manner. Just try saying it without bursting into barracking.

I left work at 5.30. I could feel the cricket in the air. I knew the score – 1/118. Langer had his 50 and Katich was getting well set in the Ponting hole at no. 3. I could feel it all, the cricket was spreading across the globe and buffeting me. But I wasn’t a good enough receptor to be able to translate the cosmic affections I was feeling into visions of the action. I was working on it though, concentrating hard. The light-rail station at Fraser St had large white creases painted on it. I felt like staying on the tram and maintaining my focus. I could nearly see it. But my hunger for Foxtel was getting the better of me. I was chewing on my tram ticket. My thoughts became all PUB PUB PUB PUB FOX FOX PUB GO JUSTIN GO THE PASSION COME ON KATTA PUB FOX PARMAGIANA W. CHIPS & GRAVY GO THE KAT-LIKE FOOTWORK ATTACK THE SPIN PUB FOX KATTACK I was throwing up a lot of dust as I walked along the gravel paths in the park. I reached home and turned on the radio. I love the ABC Radio commentary. who needs fox or parmagiana when you’ve got the ABC. BUT THERE WAS NO CRICKET. I was desperate and lost. lost. I was in a void. The channel 9 sports news came just in time. It was all so attractive, Justin’s battles, taking the ball on the body, struggling, Katta’s driving his footwork against the spin is breathtaking, Lehmann’s dismissal – wildly attractive – the man is aberrantly attractive. When it finished I watched it all again on channel 7. I love how they stagger their sports reports. The water tastes like cricket today. The sunlight is filled with it. I’ve got to get to a pub.

PONTING – shattered thumb shattered soul. He won’t even arrive in India until before the third test. As Mcgrath fills the boots of Shane Watson, little Clarkey gets to step up for his test debut and fill the boots of el rick. We’ll miss Ponting’s savage front foot, it contains some of the most deadly venom in the world. He’ll be very hungry when he returns to lead the side in the second two tests of the series. Absent Impact rating – low.

TENDULKAR – this is a strange one. I don’t even know if its been confirmed that he will be missing the test, but everyone seems to know that he will. 10dulkar has 10nis elbow. Strange. He’s been bowling in the nets but not batting. He is in the squad and Ganguly has been saying he will have a big role to play whether he plays or not. A charismatic role I guess. He will sit in there in the sheds with the boys and emit wisdom and confidence. It’s all a little mysterious, and it will be messing with the minds of the opposition for sure. Absence Impact rating – high – his absence could be very affective. It is almost as though it has been engineered in an attempt to match the awesome power of Steve Waugh’s absence.

WAUGH – will definitely not be playing, though my hopes rose when Ponting shattered. There was a place for a captain again. But this series is Waugh’s destiny. To win this series was what his entire career was building up to, everything he did was done with a view to victory here, in this series. It was going to be his glorious swan song. His moment of supremacy. And it still will be. Steve Waugh will be haunting those Australian sheds and the players will feel a breeze brush past them now and then in the field that is unmistakable. In the end, even Steve’s retirement was a necessary act in achieving this victory and Steve would have had no trouble sacrificing himself for his fate. Steve Waugh will know, when Australia clinch series victory late on the fifth day of the final test, that he has once again led the team beyond old thresholds. It is no coincidence that Australia are going into this series without an embodied leader. Absence Impact rating – astronomical. His absence will be the decisive factor (in quite the opposite way that the absence of Alec Stewart and Nasser Hussein from the English team has led to the great renaissance in English cricket).

“a treacherous big turning pitch” o my frikkin god its going to be so great!!!!!

There is a lovely article by Gideon Haigh previewing the annointed test series currently posted on the baggygreen website. (If you hurry you’ll even get to see a picture of Warney barbecuing some chops in a Foster’s baste).

I really like Gideon’s work, of course I do. It’s the work of a man deeply invested in cricket. It is oh so very sensible. So sensible it saddens me. This is a very sensible article about the likelihood that with all the build up the Australia/India test series will be a let down. Gideon is like some sort of emotional safety net, putting a soft landing in place should the series turn out to be run of the mill. Gideon, a cricket rationalist, tempers our emotive responses to the game with a steady wisdom and careful taxonomies of likely results based on historical experience. I know he loves the emotion of it all, I know he feels cricket as intensely as the rest of us, but he reigns the joy in for fear of the despair that comes when things don’t meet over-blown expectations. He doesn’t allow cricket to fly ahead of itself, make its bold proclamations of abundant glory and bring on the lemonade flavoured seas. Like in Lagaan – that epochal film that displays cricket at full power, in full flight. & if Gideon’s seen it already he needs to watch it again and again, at the cinema, in with the crowd cheering Bhuvan on to the inevitable but terrifyingly improbable victory. (It’s a true story).

Whenever I go in to bat I am certain that this innings will be the innings in which I make my maiden century. It is never a dream, but an absolute conviction. When I run myself out for 6 going for an impossible second bye, then I feel betrayed and dirty, my frustration is infinite. Until I start looking ahead to being in the field and seeing the brilliant, desperate run outs that I will in turn get to effect. I bags being Andy Symonds. (But then, when I’m out there, its enough just to love being on the grass, in the sun, sleeping a bit here and there, watching figures drift around.)

There is another great article I need to point out, also on baggygreen today. Its all about how McGrath’s return to form (which will undoubtedly be confirmed within the first few overs he sends down in Bangalore) can be attributed to Shane Watson lending his size 12 boots to the Pigeon. Glenn found them light and easy to move in, he found his rhythm and he flew. Stepping up into the boots of the young generation, the old master flies again. Now that’s a story.

& do read Gideon too, he’s very smart.