My fine research team also sprung this gem upon me. It is a desperate pity that the pictures don’t seem to be working on this site but the writing is so evocative you will be sure to conjure up some vivid surrogates with your brain. The fearsome aspect of the sherlockian lob-bowler keeps me awake at night.
Channel 9’s memorabilia is reaching incredible new heights. This is their latest addition to the cricket artefact market – the Shane Warne & Steve Waugh ‘Champs’.
Along the same lines my great team of researchers – there are hundreds of them, all busily working away behind the scenes of this blog – recently discovered this incredible site where you can view Takeshi Kitano teapots (you may have to scroll down a bit). It is clear that while Channel 9 may be reaching high there is still so much more they could do.
The VB series has been passing like days, transition from innings to innings like day into evening and then night falls, a few days later its a new day. One team or the other winning with relative ease and not too much to capture the imagination. Perhaps last night’s game was the most interesting because of the storms, the lightning. The game was reduced to a situation not unlike Twenty 20 and for me it was so much more exciting that this circumstance had come about due to natural forces. One of the issues I have with xx xx is that the excitement is built into the structure before anything happens. The great excitement of cricket, even one day cricket, is in waiting for the excitement to come about, and experiencing all the articulations of excitement that there are or will potentially be.
The tournament has provided some small bursts – the Afridi innings in Hobart, the carving up of McGrath and Lee; Symonds’ hair – seriously laying down a challenge to Dizzy as the best hair in world cricket (what matter his form when his hair is this good & he is still the best fielder to watch ever); Kaspro’s challenge to Symonds’ title of best fielder to watch ever in last night’s game; the storm last night which meant Channel 9 in an inspired piece of emergency programming played ‘One perfect day’ about Steve Waugh’s unforgettable last ball century in his pseudo last test at the scg at the end of the last ashes series, I just wept and wept all through it – it was such a perfect day.
Peter Beattie (QLD) dreams the dreams of the common man.
everyball is so important. it seems exhilirating to begin with like processed cheese slices it soon becomes diffcult to care
There is a quite amusing, if very English, wrap up of the year’s cricket online here. The highlight is undoubtedly letter E:
E is for Eggs
The year’s most shocking revelation came when Glenn McGrath admitted that he likes his fried eggs positioned bang in the middle of his toast, which must be white. There must be no overhanging egg white and the toast must be cut into quarters. Leading Australian psychiatrists described this level of precision as “perfectly normal”, while their British equivalents called it “barmy as a can of peas and no mistake”. More comforting for British fans, though, was the knowledge that there were now two such people in the world. Previously we had thought there was only one, a notorious wicketkeeper who wore the same floppy cap every day for 20 years, ate Weetabix only if it had been soaked in milk for 12 minutes and blindfolded people who wanted to visit his house. Are there many others still at large?
It is a dream of mine to see cricket sides made up of mercenary players from all corners of the globe roaming the world and taking on entire nations in first class cricket matches. Preferably these teams should be lead by Shane Warne. Yesterday’s match has spawned offspring already – like beach balls from the crowd along the concourse of the Great Southern Stand, so the buccaneer cricket matches come.
The event at the MCG yesterday was undeniably great – it was loaded with wonderful heart and goodwill. But the cricket match was disappointing. I think the reason it was disappointing is to do with the way the teams were demarcated. Rather than being Asia v The rest of the world it should really have been The world v The rest of the world. The teams should have been selected 10 minutes prior to the start of the game by the two captains. All the players should have gathered together at the centre of the ground, a bat thrown in the air and Ganguly should have called ‘hills’ or ‘valleys‘, the landing of the bat determining who would choose first. For instance:
GANGULY: Brian.
PONTING: Then, Gilly.
GANGULY: Ok, Kumar.
PONTING: Murali!
GANGULY: Then I’ll take Warnie.
PONTING: Virender, you’re with us.
GANGULY: Rahul. You are my god, you must be on my team.
PONTING: Cairnsie.
GANGULY: Zaheer.
PONTING: Anil Kumble.
GANGULY: Daniel.
PONTING: Sanath, with us.
GANGULY: Matty Hayden.
PONTING: Next one… um, Yousuf, cool.
GANGULY: Mr Gayle, you are on my team.
PONTING: Flemo.
GANGULY: Razza.
PONTING: Chaminda.
GANGULY: Sorry Rick, McGrath’s all yours – Goughie.
Having a world team competing in a cricket match is also good for the cricket writers who get to pen sentences that include grand fragments such as this- ‘the world was breathing more comfortably when Sourav Ganguly, the captain, drove to Gough at mid-off.’
At one point hundreds of small beach balls burst out of one section of the crowd and spread quickly throughout the Great Southern Stand.
Earlier a naked lady spent an extended period flying and zooming over the heads of the same spectators, dipping into the mass here and there only to launch immediately back into the lower stratas of the atmosphere once more, swooping & dipping in graceful arcs.
How could I forget the streakers??????
I thought this was a forgotten practice. I think the fact that there were two in one day signifies the fine health of test cricket.
Have you thought that the streaker that Chappell is whacking looks suspiciously like Billy Bowden?
Shaoib has been a spectacular dissappointment this test match. Every Australian batsmen has played him like it was me who was bowling at them. There was a great line in the paper yesterday saying that the Rawalpindi Express has borne more resemblance to City Rail.
Appendix: Shoaib is a superstar.
I was there yesterday (day 3). It was a repeat performance of Melbourne in terms of the weather. It was hardly raining. Not even drizzling. You could sit out in it and not get wet. But the occassional errant drop meant that play could not start. The covers came off and then went straight back on. But play finally got under way.
Gilchrist cut loose. Someone forgot to tell him that he was playing in a
test match. We were on square at the Paddington end. On the pull shot for the left hander. I feared for my safety everytime Gilchrist was on strike. I doubted my ability to catch the ball. Given the way it was hit it would likely have caused serious burns on my hands – requiring skin grafts – given the energy that was transferred into that ball on contact with Gilly’s bat. Warney had already almost killed a child by slamming the ball on a low trajectory into the crowd while warming up.
The other highlight of the day, I think surpassing Pontings 200, was McGrath’s promotion to 10, his beautiful batsmanesque push through the leg side for 4 due to the incomprehensible Pakistani off side field setting, and then his beautiful, perfect, inevitable failure – he is after all and must be number 11. I had left by this time to go to work.
Day 2 was warm and sleepy and flawless. Ponting and Marto didn’t hit a single ball in the air. They just pushed and placed and timed through their entire partnership. They just accumulated. No one noticed them scoring runs, they just did. I was expecting Ponting to unleash his shots at any moment. But he was batting far too perfectly to do that. The sleepiness showed on the crowd, who managed to tie a string of the 3-mobile thundersticks together that stretched almost the entire length of the ground, from the Dally Messenger to the Brewongle stands.
Day 1 seems so long ago that all that I remember is Salman’s 100. MacGill must have bowled well, but from our seats, it was impossible to detect the nuances of his performance. The scorecard was amusing – all the wickets credited to Macs and Mcs.