Tag Archives: Justin

the end of the world as we know it day 2

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theres nothing i hate more than a huddle. england love them everyday in everyway. theres nothing that expresses less about a team as a functioning unit. prescribed moment of bonding. england though are working another display of comraderie towards a similar level of hateful absurdity. today mcgrath bowled a delivery to flintoff that ripped back and beat the inside edge of his bat – cut im in half. collingwood came down the wkt and the two batsmen touched gloves. gideon haighs been counting englands glove touches – cook had 4 before hed even scored a run.

two great moments of commentary

1. today i listened to the radio. at one point okeeffe described flintoff as follows : eye like a dead fish

hes as strong as an ox

thats why they call him rhino

turns out okeeffe was actually referencing darren gough who when asked why his nicknames rhino said because im strong as an ox.

makes for an interesting series of substitutions and combinations in the signifying chain. dead fish…flintoff-ox-rhino-gough-flintoff…dead strong, dead eye, fish-ox-rhino, flintough-goff-flintough-goff

2. i think it was jonathan agnew who painted a portrait of justin langer standing at third slip :

arms crossed and his legs crossed

the kind of thoughful stance

a man adopts when hes dropped

a couple of catches

day 19 poem – player profile for the profiterole mountain

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eastwood : the man with no name

among those who are poor

and belong to the country

drives across the s

and spreads the dust

to reveal an unmistakabl

e form justin langer

leads his mule out the desert the boy

has shed

his poncho i imagine his eyes

are streaming down m face

check out what the ashes poet in residence has been up to over the new year here

the end of the world as we know it day 1

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The hardest thing is not going to be able to walk out with Haydos again in a Test match – Justin Langer

“There are Warne and McGrath cakes in the press box,” reports Andrew, licking his lips. “And a Justin Langer profiterole mountain.” Bang goes another New Year’s resolution from our man on the spot – cricinfo ball by ball

didnt get to see any of the play today but i did get to see the cakes

pietersen 4eva

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watch the big guy fit himself into the crease. the awkward crouch and the late adjustments, but once he’s got it right he’s unstoppable. once he’s fit himself into his bobbing twitching form.

i dont think anyone remembers that timberlake scored 100 this morning – that was a short passing excess. just to bring sexy back and dispel the crack mythologies.

pietersen = rain. his value to england is perfectly equivalent – this is not a metaphor. he is a rain god.

regardless of the the outcome of the match it is clear that the series is alive.

day 1 : langer v flintoff v australia

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the figure of hayden walking onto the pitch with the bat raised above his head one hand grasping the handle of the bat the other the toe, stretching his shoulders. an immense and stirring image to lead up to the first delivery of the 2006/7 ashes series.

but hayden proved insignificant. the day started off frenetically as rhythms, forms and settled periods of control were sought. harmison was bowling vicious lengths but along aberrant lines. langer was the first to find control and despite not quite finding perfect touch he owned the game for the first session. hayden disappeared completely with the score on 70 odd, a wkt which did nothing other than allow another immense figure to begin his challenge to langer’s supremacy. though flintoff’s celebration was powerful there was a sense that the roar was nothing but histrionics – flintoff himself appeared acutely aware that hayden was insignificant. flintoff v langer was the great epic narrative truly sprouting from the carefully tended soil of the gabba. it could have been decisive. as it turned out flintoff got his man but it was too late and flintoff’s efforts were too solitary. flintoff v australia. the wkt came too early for langer to claim any epic status for his innings. the way he batted today had a bitterness to it rarely seen. great batsman he is he badly wants to be achilles – i get the sense he’s building to a big finish to his career, something absolutely spectacular, there’s some careful diabolical plotting going on in justin’s sage head.

the rest of the day belonged to australia and ponting. controlled, patient, superbly executed, loving batting. dreary bowling. ashley giles becomes more boring with each test wkt he takes. england rarely appealed. before taking the new ball flintoff let the shadow from the grandstand grow until it was crossing the pitch at exactly the point the ball would be leaving his hand. flintoff understands light and shade and how it effects the ability to pick up the ball but was unable to find the precise lines and lengths he was hitting earlier in the day. the second new ball seemed innocuous.

the decider

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Before the test commenced, after the sepia toned slow motion replays of agonised cricketers’ faces and cricketers’ faces laden joy, Dean Jones called it the grand final of all test matches in the last 100 years. Last night as Hayden (if that’s who it was out there, playing with all the patient care in the world) and Langer worked so diligently away at giving Australia the platform they have not had all series, it was fitting cricket for the occassion. Time stretches so frikkin thin. Every moment is filled with a massive expectation that something, dreadful or wonderful, will occur. Yet the ball by ball commentary goes on like this:

x.1 nothing happens

x.2 nothing happens

x.3 nothing happens

x.4 nothing happens

x.5 nothing happens

x.6 nothing happens

y.1 nothing happnes

y.2 nothing much happens

y.3 nothing happens

y.4 nothing happens

y.5 nothing happens

y.6 nothing happens

z.1 nothing happens

z.2 Langer sends the ball deep into the vast skies

z.3 Langer sends the ball deep into the vast skies

z.4 nothing happens

z.5 nothing happens

z.6 nothing happens

The crowd is silent or bubbles away or is singing tunes from all across time; hymns, yellow submarine, or original compositions whose repetition is wonderfully appropriate to cricket, birds or pop music with their incessant refrains:

barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army …

There is the occasional beat of leather on willow. Strangled shouts and shouts.

Over it the commentators riff, each with their own particular phrasing of popular cliches. Jazz interpreters. Benaud is a traditionalist, his phrases are well metered, clean and delivered with a calm conventional purity. Grieg on the other hand stutters away, repeats bars, gets stuck on the end of a sentence, halts, and goes again – he’s like Sonny Rollins trying to work his way from one phrase to the next or if he’s getting excited perhaps he sounds more like Coltrane cracking his phrases into pieces. Mark Nicholas delivers slogans. His air time is sparsely populated but with epigrammatic gems, short crystals of sound delivered with a powerful confidence. Each is a pefectly formulated hook that you may expect to enter into a sequence of repetitions and variations but is then followed only by air time. Until the next crystal forms.

Concurrent with the cricket, on channel 10, there was a football final being played. Football is one huge event compacted into 100 or so minutes. There is little demarcation within this event. It rarely ceases happening. Time is one great mass. The crowd is wild noise, the commenators don’t even breathe. The test match is also a singular event. But it is stretched out over 5 days. Time is stretched so frikkin thin. And it is heavily, distinctly divided. Ball by ball. Non event after non event, from time to time there is a minor happening or even a drama – the game turns on all of these. Flintoff comes on to bowl and my organs are so widely distributed that I can feel a small patch of sweet residual Russian Autumn sunlight on the left side of my heart. Living a test match like this the involved cricket viewer is thinly dispersed. Perhaps never to recover – how am I to recollect myself after the Ashes? I am no phoenix.

music review (singles) : incomplete

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The selection comittee has met and decided that Australia must retain the same batting line up that has appeared in the previous 4 tests. Hayden must play. It would be cheating the narrative of the series if changes were to be made. Those that have dug their burrows must be the ones given the chance to dig themselves out. The responsibility must be borne squarely on these shoulders. They will be the desperate ones.

The desperation is very clear in the passion with which the Australian top 5 deliver their latest single ‘incomplete’ – the most powerful song to hit the charts since Robbie Williams’ heyday. While the lyrics of the song contain a certain sense of having given up hope, a resignation that now, with Steve Waugh long gone, the Ashes too are lost, the delivery of the song contains a searing emotion, a searing heart, that can only be built out of pure hope or even exact knowledge that it is within them to fill the empty spaces that are filling them up with holes – there is little room to doubt, in this impassioned and rawly honest self appraisal of where the Australian batting line up finds itself, that they will finally deliver that final telling blow. On the back of this song, the backstreet boys reaffirm their position as one of the greatest boybands in the world.

The second track on the ‘incompleete’ single contains the line – ‘lets not talk about a possible ending’.

atmospheric pressure

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One of the very striking things about watching the cricket from England is hearing the incredible noise of the crowd, and the trajectories it takes in moving away from noise and into song. Thinking back to Edgbaston, where the crowd noise was at its most pronounced, there was an exemplary moment. Langer and Clarke were building a solid partnership and things were on the improve for Australia. It was nearing the middle of the Afternoon session, the middle of the cricket day. The crowd was quiet, noises were sporadic and isolated. The crowd had no syntax. Giles came on to bowl and Langer went on the attack – nothing out of hand but the crowd sensed something. The noise built abruptly, the trajectory of the crowd-force intersected with that of the game and it suddenly stopped drifting. The crowd sensed soemthing could be about to happen. Within the space of a few balls, and without any really discernible cause, the crowd noise moved from lonely unintelligent shouts to committed song – the crowd became a unified mass, harmonised and absolutely sensible. They were singing up a wkt. It was still early in Giles’ spell when he produced one of the best balls he’s ever bowled, perfectly pitched and turning fast. Clarke hadn’t a chance. The general metaphor places a value on the crowd = to that of a 12th English player. It seems more complex than that – the crowd is more like an element of the weather. They influence atmopsheric pressure. It wouldn’t be stretching it credit the crowds with the phenomena of reverse swing that we have been seeing the English bowlers use so effectively – the crowd clearly creates the perfect atmopsheric conditions for this. It also wouldn’t be out of the realms of possibility to suggest that the crowd was is some way responsible for the rain that fell on Old Trafford giving Australia the opportunity to escape from inevitable ignominy. Immense, concentrated pockets of atmospheric intensity will always produce unforseeable and at times unwanted effects. The crowd, however passionately united in desire, however tuneful, will always be wildly producing aleatoric effects. The twelfth man provides drinks and equipment changes. Quantitively the value to the team may be similar, but the two qualities are in no way analogous.

Some enjoy silence:

“The most beautiful thing about the finish last night was the absolute silence of the Barmy Army after Harmison bowled a spectacularly easy over for a tailender to bat out. It was so quiet in the ground that you could have heard a ball take Marto’s inside edge. It is a lovely sound, the sound of a shattered Barmy Army.” From my Sydney correspondent.