Monthly Archives: July 2005

Schwindlig

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The epic poem can now go on. It has begun with a small ode from one of my cricket sprites – this sweet little guy writes in German:

sie haben die Haar

von dem Schwindligen

gammelig gemacht,

denn er endlich

ein Pfostentor bekommen hat.

endlich ist er die Spielbahn

entlang, mit Jubel, gelaufen.

mit dem s?º?üen Schwindligen

haben alle getanzt.

Here is an English translation produced through the Promt Online German – English translator:

they have the hair

from the dizzy

gammelig done,

since he, finally

a post gate has agreed.

finally, it is the play road

along, with cheering, run.

with the sweet dizzy

if all have danced.

1st innings (England)

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Long before all this we saw England bat. They batted strangely like Australia were batting early in the tour. Plodding, cautious. I have no doubt Bangladesh would have beaten them last night. The difference between England now and Australia then is exactly that now & then. Australia’s painful efforts from early in the season can now be seen as an origin, a grounding, for what they are currently producing. England’s painful efforts are an obvious regression. Australia have built up to the Ashes! England have dropped off. Australia are totally occupying the vertical plane upon which they now play their cricket. England have to put up scaffolds and fast.

Early in the day Dizzy put down an easy chance. He hit rock bottom, the shame he felt matched the pain of his followers (I was imagining careers for him post cricket – it wasn’t so bad actually, I had him pegged for a role in Pizza – It didn’t seem to matter anymore if he never recovered his form, as long as he was going to be a stooge on Pizza.) In the next over Gilchrist put down an easy chance. It was going to be difficult, on a wkt as good as that one, to rectify things after letting chances like those 2 go. But England have never been good at taking their chances. It was Ponting’s brilliance that stripped the tender feelings of fate away from them. An exquisite run out, Ponting clearly on top of his game and the team following. Dizzy bowled a tight spell – not yet venomous but tight. Enkidu had lifted his spirits just when all seemed lost. He got wkts. He got severely scruffled. He’d forgotten about that scruffling and how damn good it feels. Just when Pietersen seemed to be going to send Gilgamesh back into a new series of nightmares, Dizzy rose to it & cleaned bowled the English Humbaba. God, though, Pietersen, seriously could be one of the game’s greats – If he can get a break here and there from the selectors, from the English press and the public, so long as they don’t turn on their hero too quickly when he has a down turn. The English need to learn faith. The faith of Enkidu in Gilgamesh. They danced together in the Forest of Cedar.

Ma(r)t(o)

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I only saw Marto batting for a few balls but I have never seen him so brutal. In the initial stages of his heyday, around about the time of the last Ashes! tour to England, Marto had developed this ability to become one of the players that surrounded him. The peak of his form was his protean formlessness. He could become Michael Bevan. A right hand batsmen playing the shot of a left hander to such a degree of precision that you could not tell them apart – the way he could manipulate his elements and twist the lines within which his arms operated was an incrdible talent. He would often take on the aspect of either Waugh twin. Even as recently as India you will probably remember he basically was Steve Waugh. It’s Marto’s formlessness that provides him with his strongest form. He learns pitches, gets to know grass and disappears into fields. He struggled when the New Zealander’s defined a distinct Martyn form for him a few years back, setting fields that said ‘this is how Damien Martyn bats’ these are his areas. It took him some time to shake the form that he found himself captured within. Since India he’s been shedding it. Last night marked the complete end point of Marto’s form. That wasn’t Marto out there, that was Matthew Hayden. Brutal. The finessing right hander had become the most brutal left handed batsmen the world has seen. He was still holding the bat like a right hander but the shots he was playing were elementally Hayden. Hayden in his heyday. Pre-pillow. Out of the 2 or so shots I saw I have been able to discern an entire series of massive and brilliant innings for the churning sea god we will, for want of a better nomenclature, still call Marto.

Decision made

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At long last, a decisive decider. I went to bed after the England innings because I got frustrated trying to watch Le Tour on sbs (lets hope they get their satellites into gear before the Ashes!) I woke up at about 2.30am and turned on the television to see where the game was at. The first thing I saw was Adam Gilchrist bouncing about in slow motion celebrating his century. I figured Australia were on top. They had launched (This catch by Kaspro may have been a wasted effort so far as preventing a 6 went, but it showed clearly that Australia were now inhabitating a higher strata). Turned out they needed about 12 runs off about 793 balls. Marto smashed a few fours and that was it, Shep danced on 2/222 for the very last time and a ball or two later he broke the stumps and wandered from the field, receiving loving hugs from the players as he went. Perfect moment to retire, Shep, put ya feet up and watch the Ashes! What a guy.

2 Pontings

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There are at least two Pontings. The put upon and the up. Charlie Brown and a Miyazaki peasant boy who has just lead a victorious campaign against a greedy state backed foe. When he’s in the latter mode (and this is undoubtedly closer to his equilibrium state) he and his team are pretty much indominatable. There was a moment in last night’s game in which we witnessed the passage from one Ponting to the other. Charlie Brown dove full length to collect a catch in his right hand only centimetres from the ground. He came up as a different animated character. In that instant he was transformed. He retained the new form as he batted, and the unbridled joy of the peasant boy grew stronger. His team will follow him.

A key question will be whether ecstatic Ponting will have the strength to carry Dizzy up with him. Can he also take on the molecules of Enkidu? Drag Dizzy out of the depths of these despair ridden nightmares. I can barely stand to watch Dizzy bowl at the moment, it hurts me so bad. It is a pain I am willing to endure though – however long it goes on. I will watch Dizzy bowl endless wicketless spells in the tests if Ihave too. He will comeback sooner or later – this may depend on Ponting. (There is another surely failsafe method of getting Dizzy back in form that has been suggested to me by one of my cricket sprites – force him to listen to interminable recordings of Nasser Hussain’s commentary – the anguish he would be injected with would make him terrifying to face, it would be a rampage filled with awful rage. This would obviously be an inhumane suggestion, and the ICC probably has legislation that forbids it, not to mention the UN – & Bono would probably organise a concert – but it could be very effective.)

rule changes 2

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A few years ago, in the nineties, I have some recollection of an Australian tour of – was it Sri Lanka? As a team building exercise on this tour, the Australian cricketers all had to draw, from out of a hat, a particular facial hair style. The player was then required to grow & wear this style throughout the tour. It was a great idea but from memory they all just ended up wearing slight variations on the goatee. The idea, still, has mileage.

International cricket is currently experiencing a golden age in hairstyles. This is a boon that cricket’s administrators should be capitalising on. The clear way ahead is to give the cricketing public the power to decide upon hairstyles for players, which the player would then be required to maintain for the duration of the tour, or until a new hairstyle is demanded. Point deductions and fines for players not making the appropriate efforts should be harshly applied. The International Hair Styling Authority has already submitted a body of styles to the ICC which I am calling for them to adopt as regulation cuts immediately. A two tiered voting system should be put in place whereby, at the conclusion of each match, the public selects one PowerHair player and then selects the PowerHairstyle which the player must have ready to be worn in time for the next match. Players should be tested for hairstyle performance advancing product – if the readings are too low the player should face bans.

rule changes

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Its time the ICC stop nibbling away at the edges of one-day cricket and get serious. If they really want to reinvigorate the game, make it once again interesting for the viewing public, they need to do more then just add 5 overs of fielding restriction and give it a dumb name like ‘powerplay’. They need to really get deep into the way the games played. Make some changes which will test the skills of the cricketers in new exciting and more acute ways. My idea is that they give every fielder a little bat (a brand new piece of equipment!) and change the rule on catching such that to be out the ball actually has to travel not only to one fielder but through two fielders before it can be caught and the batsman deemed out. A catch can only be made by a second fielder after the first fielder has hit the ball, with his little bat, off its trajectory, along new lines, into the hands of the 2nd man. They could perhaps even award some sort of points bonus which increases with the number of fielders the ball travels through. They could deduct 5 runs from the batsman’s score for each fielder after the 2nd that are involved in the elaborate catch – or something like that.

And they really need to bring audience voting into the game for the supersub. Evictions by sms poll. That’s what one day cricket needs.

overcast clearing later

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By far the most exciting part of Thursday’s game was the flicking over to sbs to watch the finish to stage 6 of Le Tour. I liked the idea that was being bandied around about the sun at Headingley and the role it plays in cricket there. The suggestion is that there are only ever two teams that play there – the overcast conditions vs when the sun comes out. Weather and cricket of course have a close and intricate relationship – cooked pitches and moisture laden balls moving in clandestine directions; players with cold hands or suffering from heat exhaustion. So I like this Headingley mythology which really brings this to the fore, where the sun gets man of the match awards. But really, Ponting’s boys were disappointing. It was very disappointing that they couldn’t use the talents of the weather better – England certainly harnessed the form of the sun very well – it was inspired recruiting. The weather also put in a big stage in Le Tour – Persistent Rain moving up the general classification after a powerful lead out by Slippery Corners.

cold out played

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During the 2003/4 summer’s tests in Australia, the entrance of the players to the field was greeted with the sounds of the coldplay song clocks. This at first seemed an incredibly dull and obscure choice to greet the commencement of a session of fine test cricket. By the end of the summer it had come to seem appropriate. I guess (I thought) more through sheer force of repetition than any symbolic or analogical relation. For this ashes series bloody coldplay are working their way into my experience of the tour in another way. They release this song just before the tour begins that, well, the first time I hear it I almost die from boredom right there on the spot. I hope I never have to hear the song again. As things get underway a thread begins to run through my blog of a movement from beneath the ground to more astral positions. A launching forth from out of a secret underground dwelling – a base. I do hear that damn coldplay song again & again, of course. I realise its a frikkin theme tune. Lights, birds (remember Dizzy is a bird and he’s been wrestling with mountains), bursting, flying from underground – there’s lots of noise and unbelievably spectacular goings on – If you could see it then you’d understand. Now I’m driven to go and buy the single and I feel I am betraying everything I could ever be.

03/04 – coldplay have a song turned into a cricket anthem by the official dj to Cricket Australia.

(Even before that, I remember now, that tiresome sickly yellow tune used to be Warney’s theme for the one-dayers.)

Ashes 05 – now they’ve gone and written a song that is making itself into a cricket anthem.

Maybe coldplay deserve more credit, maybe there really is something fundamentally cricket-like in the tedium their music induces and the patterns they work with. This is not a research project I want to take on so I am giving it away to whoever wants it – it’s all yours.