With some of the reportage that’s going round I think I really need to get a metaphor watch happening – this one from Peter Roebuck is outstanding:
On Ponting’s decision to bowl:
“Hoping to see the ball biting into a supposedly damp surface and thumping into the keeper’s gloves, Ponting must have been aghast to find it proceeding like an old-timer down a country lane. ”
Matthew Hayden’s single ball innings was everything it had promised to be – sure it was a little truncated but the total lack of regard for anything but big runs was a great taster for the innings to come. It was a short high impact teaser preview for a bloody epic.
“Like a gang of pikey chancers, they couldn’t believe their luck at sneaking into the warehouse behind the guard dog’s back, but instead of making off with the goods in a calm and orderly fashion, they decided to whoop and yell and holler, and got themselves evicted anyway.”
The devastating freak accident to McGrath (slipping out to reinvent himself already?), Ponting’s generous decision at the toss (whatever, you guys do what you want, we don’t care), a pitch that McGrath could have made a test century on (oh the agony of lost opportunity!)- yet England make 407. All in one day, to be sure it was exciting but opportunites don’t come much more golden than England had them today, really they should have been 4/407 at stumps, going on to 550ish by tea tomorrow. As a general tendency it seems that the quicker you score your runs the bigger your scores need to be – along with the time you provide to yourself to complete a victory you provide time for counterattacks from the opposition, who also have the same amount of time up their billowing sleeves.
Trescothick was playing such a wonderful innings (I don’t think I’ve ever seen Trescothick play an innings before), such simple movements, barely moving at all but striking the ball with perfection. He was totally putting the Australian bowlers to the sword. Until, on 90, he gave it all away with an awful hanging of the bat’s edge in the path of a widish delivery from Kasprowicz. It was almost sad. English cricket is entirely wasteful. When McGrath went down it was not like all prohecy suddenly went out the window, but the chance that it provided to England was pronounced. England obviously couldn’t get a grip on the thick Spanish accent.
The problem that one has to deal with after a bit of a mean & cruel post like my last one is that one really should be putting full support behind the loser, hoping with urgency that he will rise above himself and his oppressors and bring down their government. In the film Kung Fu Hustle for example I badly needed the perennial loser to undergo the freeing of his chi so that he could become The One, I needed him to unleash the full force of the Buddhist Palm technique and defeat the Beast and his Axe Gang backers. But I don’t feel any of this for England, I want them to never win the Ashes again basically. In justifying this I think it’s to do with the manner of loser we are dealing with. The loser in Kung Fu Hustle, when given the opportunity, grasps it with both palms and fully exploits it. The Beast lands a heavy blow and sends him sailing far into the stratosphere, so high in fact that he meets a Buddha on a cloud up there, The One takes the moment to pay his respects to the Buddha, accepts the blessing, and returns to Earth to bury the Beast once and for all. It’s that thing about taking your chances. Making your own luck. I’ve described earlier how Nasser Hussain represents another form of loser, that which has the world at their feet but lets it slip by, lets the opportunities fade. In Road Runner cartoons the viewer never, despite the incessant terrible fortunes of Wile E Coyote, wants Coyote to get Road Runner. This is because poor fortune doesn’t really play a part – there are always moments when Coyote has Road Runner within his grasp. But then there is always a pause – to ready the knife and fork, tie the napkin around the neck, or even just raise the arms a little higher and make victory-at-long-last all the more sweetly dramatic. At which point RR disappears underground, entering a tunnel, the entrance to which Coyote doesn’t make – and so he bites earth again. Nasser’s spirit haunts England still. In this article, Ashley Giles exhibits a paranoia that may not be ill founded – he feels that there are past England players undermining the efforts of the team in a bid to make sure they fail, for if they were to succeed the sad past would only seem all the more sad – the old guys would feel insufficent.
In the press the English lead up to the second test has been all ex players finding fault with and offering unwelcome tired advice to the current squad. On the other hand the Australian opening pair has exhibited a great flair for imagery and bristling atmosphere. Justin’s description of the English batsmen being in coffins (or MRI scanners) constructed by McGrath and Warne is chilling. But in terms of imparting a sense of cool foreboding, Hayden’s statement that he just doesn’t care about England was simply fantastic.
“In the run-up to the game, there had been a lot written about England, and IÄôm not trying to be arrogant when I say this, but I donÄôt really care about them. We know that if we are playing to the best of our ability then England will not come close to us.”
It caused a lot of fuss on the cricket blogs about the place but really, if Road Runner’s running at peak then WEC just isn’t going to come close is he? I love it. The general tidings are for a big Justin & Matty partnership. It would be especially great to see a century from Matty in this mode. What an incredible thing it would be to behold. The carefree century. Not in a joyous, high-spirited way but careless in that dark, brutal nihilistic sense. An absolutely reckless, uncaring, irresponsible mass of runs. Matty’s complete self-interest can only be understood when it is considered that the self-interest involves a deep, immanent interest in runs. A single huge desire for runs and nothing else. Matty assumes this desire into his being and puts himself in the precarious position of being nothing without runs. A big innings in this state would look and feel like a searing desperate violence – ‘Beat’ Takeshi in Blood and Bones. Its kind of awful but awesome – certainly compelling. It would be a wonderfully disturbing thing to see on a cricket field. I want it bad.
The most telling blow we will see in this Ashes series has been dealt, and so early on. Alec Stewart has made an appearance in the press providing advice to the English batsmen on playing El Warno – play the ball not the haircut. What hope for England with this sort of advice coming from a cricketer of such anti-calibre? Stewart grossly underestimates El Warno if he thinks the hair can be ignored. The English batsmen need to be taking everything into account. They would be better served perhaps if they ignored the ball – this is the very site where all the terror issues from – and concentrate on nothing but the hair. Surely, then, the intimidation they feel would be less? Even after the first test, right up until tonight, I still felt England could salvage something out of the series, there was no doubt they were stronger- as soon as Alec Stewart steps in it is surely all over.
Another example of this phenomenon – the phenomenon of the perennial loser – was to be seen in the reports coming in from day 4 of the first test of Nasser Hussain executing a rain dance behind the pavillion. Of course the exact moment his body began shimmying would have been the moment the clouds parted and the sun broke through. Nasser is Wile E Coyote.
Last night I was sure the rain was appropriately declaring a rest day in the cricket to honour Lance Armstrong’s final ride in the maillot jeune and his 7th straight le tour victory. Undistracted coverage for sbs would have been fine, Australia had given themselves plenty of time. The Australian’s wouldn’t have begrudged Lance his day. The two greatnesses have coincided for many years, the Australians are not strangers to the problems of yellow, the respect is huge and mutual – the Australians gathered together on the balcony to pay tribute to Lance, who earlier had toasted Glenn McGrath’s performance from the comfort of his bike. As it turned out the weather didn’t quite come through for Lance – his final ride was a wet one into Paris and the cricket started up just in time to conflict with the final few kilometres of le tour. Australia did their best to minimise the impact, it took them only 40 mins of game time to finish off the last 5 wkts. McGrath was doing that thing he does late at night where the wkts just keep replaying themsleves. In the end, over the course of the test match, McGrath dismissed every single English player, except the great KP. One day le P will be the saviour of English cricket, one day he will win the Ashes for his team (not this year though).
(Do those cute little stubbie holders the Australian’s keep their celebratory vino‘s warm in have their names on the back?)
McGrath’s always been written up as a machine. It’s time he was given the credit he’s due – the man is a frikkin TIME machine! McGrath’s interesting relation to time is well documented: his uncanny ability to remember every single one of his now 504 test dismissals; his prohecies and their inevitable fulfillment; the transformation that has been heralded in this blog. All these tell us something about the engagement McGrath has with his times. He is intensely involved. He inhabits his time fully (much the same as he inhabits the Lords’ pitch) and can move freely along the loops that make up the McGrath-space continuum (or, as it is true he makes the space his own as well, Mcgrath is the Lord’s pitch, then we can call it the McGrath-McGrath continuum).
It seems to be that it is upon nearing and reaching landmark figures that McGrath reveals his talents most clearly. In the season of 2000/1 he predicted he would dismiss first Campbell then Lara for his 299 and 300th wkts respectively. He did this, in consecutive balls, and then for his 301st wkt completed a hat trick, dismissing Adams with the next ball – surpassing prohecy. In taking his 500th test wkt McGrath has revealed a different, perhaps more profound, version of his machinic ability to synthesize time. Maybe it was the lateness of the hour and the surreal air cricket takes on when its being transmitted from the other side of the world at 2.00 am, but it seemed to me, just as a routine action repeats & repeats in a dream that is struggling to get its narrative going, that McGrath was taking the same wkt over and over again. He reached 500 and simultaneously reached 501, 502, 503, 504. Maybe that is an exaggeration but at least 3 of these wkts were indiscernible from one another. McGrath had captured a moment of time and was freeing it to play out its scene over and over again. But his boots had changed colour (if dizzy is a stalliongull, Glenn is now a ponypigeon). It couldn’t have been the same moment. It was the same moment but slightly displaced. McGrath, contrary to popular conception is no metronome. His repeating beats are filled with all the vagaries of time travel, the differences reinvigorate the sameness and make the repetiton volatile. Rather than redundancy McGrath gives us incredbile effectivess and movement – he moves us deeply. I am in the lucky situation of having a mobile phone number very similar to Glenn’s, and was privileged to receive, on Friday, a text that read ‘go glen – luv mum’ – It was very cute that his own mum had spelt his name wrong, and all in all a touching tribute to the great pigeon, lord of Lords, lord of time.
I’m a bit behind the times here. I have to go all the way back to the first day. In test match time this it is like eons have passed. I remember watching Australia bat. While all around were deploring their lack of application, their irresponsibilty and the lack of respect they were displaying for England’s bowlers, I was finding it telling. It was the first innings of the Ashes and Australia were playing completely nihilistically. They didn’t care how many runs they were going to score, they just going to go head-on at everything that was thown at them. It was extraordinary cricket. If there is dedicated planning and considered thought behind utterly nihilistic actions can it still be nihilism? It was clear to me that Australia knew the day was going to consist of all out violence, coming from the English bowlers. It was clear that Australia’s very conscious decision was to never take a step back from this. They were simply going to counter it with their own violent batting. It was of no concern to them if they lost wkts in the process, they knew this would happen. They also knew that however many runs they scored, they would still be right in the test match – there’s always a new day in sight. The important thing was absolutely to show no respect whatsoever for England’s quicks – to make it clear that the Australian batsmen knew they could bury England without a care. It’s only one innings and they probably won’t play another like it for a while, but it carried such a strong statement – you can get us out for under 200 we really don’t care, whatever we get, we’ll work with that, it will be enough. Thus the savagery of day 1. The beautiful irresponsibility of Australia and their contempt for all of England’s concerted effort in paying Australia a compelling, brilliant violence. El Warno’s innings was absurd – it was by far in a way the greatest innings he has ever played.
blood’s been spilt, 17 wkts have fallen, the Ashes are underway (McGrath and the Lord’s wicket do get along don’t they). I loved the footage of little Ricky Ponting in the field with the big band-aid on his cheek. Looking like the small boy who’s just attained some symbolic thing that he’s sure gives him street cred. The pride in the wound.
A few weeks ago I saw the movie Volcano High. I was struck by a resemblance, perhaps it was just something in the bleachbetween the shit hot hero, of VH and golden boy MC. Perhaps it goes a bit beyond the hair. Kim, the VH protagonist has massive powers, he may be young but his powers exceed even those of the most feared teacher’s. It seems all Kim needs is to learn a little finesse. Such great power can not be unleashed lightly, without rigorous attention to the impact the unleashing could have upon the world. In the movie this attentiveness is what Kim is learning. All throughout VH Kim is getting involved in minor scraps with other students at VH. Though he is impeccably capable of defeating every comer, and despite wanting so badly to show what he is capable of in order to impress the captain of the Kendo team with whom he is smitten, Kim is continually, at the crucial point in the combat, reminded by a voice or a flashback that he must exercise restraint, that the reckless wielding of such great power as his can only lead to death. Kim is represented in one revelatory flashback as the boy whose powers make him sad. Kim is disciplined and without fail he fails to capitalise on the unbeatable position he has worked his way into. He lets his opponents beat him into the mud, in front of the girl of his dreams he willingly offers himself up to disgrace. But he has shown enough of his talents that there are those in the film that realise his greatness – the girl of course thinks he’s alright all along. Clarkey’s had 2 big innings in test cricket. His debut match in India and his home ground debut at the Gabba against nz. That is to say he’s put himself in positions where prodigious greatness has been well within his grasp. But of a night there have been whispers in his head. Whoa back there son, think of the game, don’t let it all go too early, protect your power, think of the ones around you & whatyou will destroy. So MC has satisified himself with small cameos and disappointing shots down deep fielders throats just when he looked to be striking the ball so cleanly. Displaying promise but not going on with it. In the end of VH Kim finally unleashes his full and now perfectly focussed powers upon the brilliant yet evil replacement teacher who is terrorising the school. An immense conflict ensues in the rain, Kim harnesses all the power the storm has to offer and leaves his opponent for dead, gets the girl… It will be interesting to see what happens in the Ashes if things are a little damp & a big innings from Clarkey is desperately required.
Everyone loves Volcano High in much the same way as everyone loves Clarkey. Buried but irresistible forces take to the sky – this is what happens in instances of volcanoes – during the Ashes, hearts long won already will be won once and for all.