Monthly Archives: June 2005

Glinn McGrith & El Warno

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As revealed in a recent article on Baggygreen, Dennis Lillee is concerned about the future of Australia’s fast bowling stocks. The big question seems to be “where is the next generation.” Well as you may expect a blog as incisive and as full of revelation as this one does not happen without an abundant team of discreet minions buzzing throughout the cricketing world, infiltrating deep inside tours’ support personnel and into the close circles of cricketers’ friends. One of my little spies has a theory in regard to the next generation of Australian pace bowlers, and without giving anything away in terms of their identity or whereabouts I can safely say that the information they have at hand to base the theory on is reliable to say the least. The theory regards Glenn McGrath and an audaciously brave and shocking experiment that he is already in the early stages of implementing. If the experiment is a success (and my source is confident that it will be – McGrath’s planning and execution has always been one of his foremost attributes) it will see Glenn McGrath disappear from international cricket, in fact he will disappear from any earthly dwelling whatsoever. There will be rumours of a pig hunting incident, something going horribly wrong, a terrible shooting accident. Not so long after these rumours surface a bright young face will emerge out of the ranks of district cricket in Sydney and begin catching the Australian selectors’ collective eye as they scout for that next generation that Lillee fears a thiness within. He will rise quickly through the ranks and within a very short space of time, with barely a handful of state matches beneath his belt, he will be selected to play for Australia. From this point on there will be no looking back. People will keep saying, at least at first, that there’s something about him reminds them of the great Glenn McGrath. He will be unusually consistent with his accuracy. Perhaps he will be quick to mutter when the accuracy strays to the slightest degree. He will be mature beyond his years. In time though his greatness will rise so far above that even of McGrath’s that this speculation will soon be forgotten and he will become a true champion in his own right. Of course what will have happened here is that McGrath will have transformed himself into a completely new cricketer, a new being, he won’t just be reborn but will have done away with the identity of Glenn McGrath altogether (of course vestiges will remain – the new player will undoubtedly cite McGrath as a childhood influence). As McGrath now is able to repeat so accurately with such effective variation delivery after delivery he will succesfully repeat himself – a perfect, complex and deliberate metempsychosis. It has already begun my source says. One only needs to look at what’s happening to his hair. It was the hair (always look closely at the hair) that tipped my denizen of the cricket world off, and inspired further investigation. I can assure my readers that the investigation has been thorough and none of this is lightly transmitted to you the public. Please be careful how you treat this information.

McGrath’s long time bowling companion, Shane Warne of course is in on the act too – his concern with his hair and making himself young again has been much more public. Warney’s certainly in some sort of transitional phase – the hair, the life changes. But it’s nothing as monumental, nothing as deeply involved with the essence of being as McGrath’s experiment. McGrath’s work goes right to the soul of man and extends to the limits of the cosmos. I can’t see Warney being able to let go of his identity and become an entirely other cricketer. I imagine he will have to be simply a reinvented Warne, revitalised, a new man (god forbid a better man). His career beginning all over again from scratch. Watch for his first delivery in the Ashes, it will turn a mile from outside leg and clip the top of the off stump. The bastman will be utterly bewildered in exactly the same way that Mike Gatting was after Warney’s first ever delivery in Ashes tests 12 years ago. This one delivery will create a disturbance in the English psyche that will hinder their ability to play test cricket against Australia for at least the next 12 years. At that point Warne will have exactly doubled his test wkt count & his public scandal count – and he will have just split with his second wife with whom he will have three children. It is a different kind of repetition, a more brutal, more basic one perhaps, less subtle, more stupid – much more Warne-like. Exactly Warne-like. I do expect though, that when he returns from Spain for the Ashes he will speak nothing but Spanish, comprehend no English. That language is for the opposition.

Hayden-in-need-of-a-pillow

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The Ashes is going to be so hot! The first few overs of the washed out game the other night were so wildly exciting, such a heated, compelling contest, so deeply felt. It didn’t matter that the game was washed out, it was like enough had happened already, just the promise that was offered up of a game of such great immensity was enough. The Australian openers were back at their pounding best, taking Gough’s first over for 14 or so. The English were congregating at the bowler’s end trying to come up with a plan to stop them, it looked like they were panicing after just one over of the real Australia. But whatever plans came out of the snap meeting worked and England hauled the boys back in. Gough was taken out of the attack after 2 overs (In this day and age when its all about haircuts I was most disappointed that Gough so quickly lost the intimations of a mohican that he was sporting during his blistering 20 20 spell at the start of it all. He was smoking then, red in the face, steam shooting from his hair as it stood on end – since he lost the length, & he only lost about 1.2 cm, he’s been flat as a tack, flat as his shaved head – cricket is a game of the finest margins). Simon Jones bowled beautiful lines and to carefully set plans – it was exquisite bowling. Gilchrist was no match for this sort of application. As precisely as he bowled, Jones threw haphazardly and collected Hayden on the chest with an unnecessary throw in the very vague direction of the stumps. Unnecessary maybe but the action certainly didn’t lack in brilliant drama and consequence. It’s set a battle tone for the entire Ashes. Hayden was pounding his bat into the ground in fury, pounding his chest and waving his big arms. Jones was waving his hands about in apology as the English fielders converged on the injured beast to make sure it didn’t bound away to plot its revenge, or simply start tearing those sorry flailing hands from Jones’ body. The contests from here on in were just what you don’t need when you really need to go to bed. Harmison to Ponting from one end. Jones to Hayden-in-need-of-a-pillow at the other. It lasted a few overs before Jones claimed Hayden’s wkt and promptly began beating his own chest in victory. It was all damned fine Cricket. I expect blood in the Ashes – I want eyeballing, I want breathing down necks, I want the gloves to come off, I want the administration and the media to get over the idea that cricketer’s shouldn’t get angry and shouldn’t get into a good meaningful stoush. There was nothing untoward about the incident – it was all perfectly well directed towards building the intensity of the cricket to come. In the end the storms came to cool things down. What was so great about the washout was that it meant those tedious cricket writers had no opportunity to talk about how great the game was and write the Hayden-Jones incident off as gone and forgotten in the face of the pure cricket events that followed. The coming of the storms meant that the incident really took precedence over the cricket, it became bigger, inhabited the series – of course it always was just part of the cricket but now its been made clear. The game was rendered meaningless (as it already was in some way – both teams are in the final) so that pure intensities could come to the fore and feed into all that cricket still to come. So hot and sensible!

Ashraful of it

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Making your own luck

Riding your luck

We had a bit of luck

My luck is in

Strokes of luck

Cricket and fate have always sat in an intricate realtionship with each other. Which isn’t saying much as I guess fate, being one of those big cosmic concepts, kind of sits in an intricate relationship with everything, and it’s obvious that cricket, through endless series of intricacies is everything. But Mohammad Ashraful’s innings yesterday dealt deeply with such problems. The chance that he harnessed, the errant bundle of luck that he formed himself into (it wasn’t form, his was a misshapen innings to say the least). I think it was practically the first over that Ashraful faced when he lauched Brett Lee for 20 runs. A top edged six off a short ball – no control, could have gone anywhere, lucky to be alive. Caught at mid off, a wild slash making room for himself outside off stump – no ball called, dismissal stared in the face. Another top edge for six off a short ball. An awful flat bat thwack over mid-on with no timing and only just enough power to clear field and run away for 2 runs. On the last ball he actually played a good standard shot through the leg side for four. Only Lee could have bowled such an over. The luckish Ashraful had absorbed Lee’s power and and it fed the luck that he was allowing to consume him. With each delivery Ashraful intensified himself as luck. A mass of chance. Chance is perhaps a better word than luck here. I’m not even really sure if luck, as such, exists – I think cricket shows this. You can make luck, but then if you’re making it its not lucky anymore, its planned, its good play (this is why a cricketer being given not out by an umpire when they are clearly, technically, out does not trouble me – either it was part of their plan already or they will now have the chance to make something of it, which can be a very exciting prospect). Chance you take. At times, it is there for the taking. Ashraful took his chances, playing strokes of luck. Ashraful is interesting because what he actually does is bring chance with him to the crease, he doesn’t try and build a form from which to launch attacks and from there collect the vestiges of chance to ride upon. Ashraful bats backwards (he moves way outside off and plays Gillespie backwardly over leg stump). He brings chance with him to the crease, unleashes it, takes it, unleashes it, strokes of luck. And slowly settles down into something more solid. His is an acute understanding of fate. In terms of cricket shots he is all imprecision, but in terms of dealing abuses out upon fate and making luck his own (he is luck in a vaguely human form – perhaps he even looks more like luck than a human, he twitches, his head shakes) he is all precision – timing. He understands that there is a forecful element in Brett Lee’s bowling that also carries with it some chance for the batsmen who has the application to take it upon himself. Ashraful picks his moments. Chance & fate is a time thing. Ashraful is in his own time, a cosmic time, or he is the time of the cosmos, the future – he is the future of Bangladesh cricket. He needs to teach them how to find and take their chances. At the moment they are looking in all the wrong areas.

Chester-Lee-Street

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The game Australia are playing is a game of extreme measure and control. In the past week a lot has been said, jokingly, in desperate search for an answer to the strange problem that had arisen, about Australia lulling the English into a false sense of security. While I don’t buy this, and don’t believe for one moment that any of last weeks shananigans were planned, it is incontestable that there was something very lulling about the way Australia went about building its innings last night. It was careful, considered and patient batting. None of the brute domination that we are used to seeing, the beligerent power. Australia are starting from degree zero, slowly working up, making minor adjustments here and there – fitting their rhythms in with the rhythms of English conditions and English wickets. The total lack of panic that they have shown, the calmness they’ve presented must be worrying to the English camp. On last night’s performance they are getting close to tuned. Once the final, fine alterations are made Australia will be playing from a base that is already practically invincible, in full command with a total understanding of the environment and the forces that it is operating with. From here, at various points in time, timed with precision, we will see them launch back into the old intimidating style of abuse we are accustomed to. A carefully plotted route of drilling and launching. It will be phenomenal to watch. Lulling, and then a sudden sharp violence. A Kitano film.

reassurance

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Personally I don’t buy into the hysteria being spread by the likes of David Koch on Sunrise or in the faithless press. (The loss to Bangladesh was far from embarrassing – it was fantastic, couldn’t have been better. It was, surely, an aberration and an aberration in a truly irregular series of aberrations, but frankly it was just great). When it comes to cricket one should never let faith desert oneself with any degree of rapidity. Faith must be eroded away like a rock. The work the Australian team has put in over the last 20 years has lead to an immense form, the belief in which can not be let go of lightly. Still, I am well aware there are times when reassurance is required.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, in the lead up to his tour of the Forest of Cedar to battle the ogre Humbaba, Gilgamesh has a series of 5 terrible nightmares – mountains rise up and fall upon him, and pin him down. On waking from each he is comforted by Enkidu who convinces him to go on and to rid himself of the fear that has been set in him. I have no doubt that Jason Dizzy Gilgamesh Gillespie’s nightmares are about to come to end, his Enkidu has been working hard and Dizzy will smite Humbaba in the neck. Dizzy will no longer be restrained by the weight of the mountain or the difficulty of moving underground, he will lead the Australian team to the usual glorious victory.

toward the furthering of our emotional education

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at one level cricket is basically all about sensation – the modulations & articulations of emotion it makes you feel. Its a long time since we Australian followers or the Australian players have eperienced this dull morbid pain and the intesnity of the long face. Andrew Symonds and Dizzy Gillespie – as they have been with their haircuts – are our torch bearers in bringing this to the world. Symonds is the little boy made to sit outside at a childrens birthday party, Dizzy simply doesn’t understand why the powers of his epic legend have suddenly deserted him – there is probably the work of rival gods afoot here.

KP

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It feels like a song should play out over the PA everytime he touches the ball – some late 90s power pop tune of course. Perhaps, in the interests reinvigorating the one day from of the game, the ICC could even attribute some statistical incentive – a runs value – to getting the ball to KP. & they’d have to invent a new umpiring signal to designate that a KP had been hit. Some sort of hair moulding mime.