Test Series the Blog has now concluded.

Stay tuned for details of the continued adventures of your host, Nick Whittock, at the commencement of the Australian tour of England in June 2005. Ashes to Ashes etc.

He just looks better & better every day, he’s like the Johnny Depp of cricket.

& one to represent nz making 199 runs from 90 overs.

It seems that nz even have a form of disappointment named after them, one that can be felt only in circumstances of extreme despair:

“This is definitely the lowlight of my career to date. Not being chosen in two teams on one day, it doesn’t get any worse than that,” Brett Lee expresses his New Zealand disappointment. (from baggygreen ‘quote me’ segment)

The Australian selectors are starving Brett Lee of cricket. They have placed a compleete ban on Lee taking part in form of cricket match prior to the ashes series which begins in July. The move has basicallee ensured that Australia will not lose the ashes. Lee is a starving tiger. He becomes leener and hungrier as every day of test cricket goes by. I can’t imagine he will be picked to play in the ashes until at leest the 3rd test. The vision I have is that Australia are trailing in the series 2-0. Then a leen, even haggard, desperate force will be unleeshed. The English will be fleeing the field rather than face up to the terrifying aspect that they feel is hunting them. Lee may not actually have to take any wkts. The wkts will be falling in the final balls of the overs leeding up to the Lee over.

Perhaps they should even stop feeding him his weet-bix.

If you followed all the above links you would have found Dhruvi’s page on Brett and perhaps even read the poem she wrote for him, well, here’s a song she penned for Clarkey (he needs it right now):

A song I made for Clarkey

Its after dark
There is a spark
I’m dreamin bout u
O my sweetie I luv you

Your hair like a dove
Your cheeks so red
Oh Clarkey my luv
Lookin at u i am red(Chorus)

You r so chubby
You r so cute
O’ u were my hubby
GOSH!!My heart wud be mute

I wanna take u home
Like a parcel
So we can be alone
Let there be no hastle
Take ur time….bebe

Your hair like a dove
Your cheeks so red
Oh Clarkey my luv
Lookin at u i am red

Its after dark
There is a spark
I’m dreamin bout u
O my sweetie I luv you

You’ve made me bonkers
You’ve middle-stumped me
O Mr.Heart Stealer
Dont u dump me….

Chorus

Andrew McLean has written an audacious article that contains multiple gems of imaginative displacement – cutting lines across immense fields of time & sport, he knows no boundaries.

Have you ever wondered what might have happened had Oscar Wilde been a cricket writer?

Or if Adam Gilchrist was a New Zealander?

Or if Simon Katich played rugby?

Find out here.

I cannot believe that Brett Lee is not playing in this test match. It seems to me that it is one of the most ill made decisions the selectors have made in many years. Maybe it was made so that he doesn’t set any legal precedents in NZ. I think the inevitable deaths would have been set already in the hearts & minds of the NZ players on seeing his name in an announced team. Maybe it was a move to save the test series. They are all running scared. Fleming admitted as much. Maybe there would have been a mass walk out in the NZ camp had Lee been selected. Do you think there is any correlation between Lee not playing and Australia only taking 3 wickets on the first day? Absolutely completely bloody ridiculous. He could have at least been released for this weekend’s Pura Cup game, so I could go and watch him do his thing at the SCG. Victoria wouldn’t stand a chance.

At least Katich finally has a position in which he can cement himself. If he gets a bat that is.
KW

Editorial:

Of course if the selectors weren’t being so damn safe & conservative they could always have left Katich out of the side again, played Gilchrist at 6 and gone in with the four pronged pace attack & Warne. Katich wouldn’t have minded, he is used to sinking deeper and deeper into the frustrated despair of having his talents overlooked and his dreams dangled horribly close. Now that Katich has made what will be a match winning hundred Lee’ll probably have to sit back and wait for an injury. Or start leaving inconspicuous items (a rollerskate here, something slippery there) at strategic positions about the hotel’s corridors so that accidents may occur.

Unless they leave out Clarke. He hasn’t scored any test runs in a while. Good lord, imagine the outcry.

Here’s a classic test match photograph – late in the day, the field tight and dense with shadows.

So the selectors went with the old line up and left Lee to bake the scones. There are some who who have been left desperately saddened, barely able to cope with the decision at all, and there are others who confidently predicted it would be this way. I fit comfortably into both categories.

Marshall deserved some good to come his way post his efforts with the hair in the famous 20 20 international.

Warnie tells it like it is.

It just so needs to be a poster on my bedroom wall.

Give the boys wide brimmed hats and a poncho each, fuck that’d be mean.

Kasprowicz, Lee, McGrath, Gillespie – what a posse. Their notoriety, the fear they instill in the hearts of the weak only makes their features ever more handsome to the brave pilgrims who thrive on coarse heroism and steely eyes.

Australia must play a four-pronged pace attack.