in my utopia the ahmedabad rockets play test matches
icl
Reply
Tag Archives: Marto
waca 1 reversal
man i wanted to be at the waca today, the rickety stands and all the grass, the tones of green on the square were 2nd to none. the tonal modulation of the cricket pretty much matched it. giles looked frikkin great as 12th man – he’ll do a sterling job. pietersen looked brilliant with his little fighter pilot tache. the perfect maybe dashing maybe slightly dopey ghibli villain.
the match began amid endless chatter about about pitches not being what they used to, a call for the old consistency of variable pitches across the world as opposed to the new consistency of pitches. typical traits. always on the first morning at the waca. never enough slips in the cordon for channel 9. the start of the match was almost identical to the start at the gabba, langer off the mark playing off his toes and falling over and then lots of loose but safe shots through gaps or over the cordon for 4. australia let loose and going wild. then hoggard produced a near perfect ball to dismiss hayden & then ponting in the form off his life v harmison out of the form of his life but with one ball the reversal the series needed and harmy’s joy was unrestrained. it was as though the series started all over again again.
after these two wkts the game tightened up immensely. tight bowling, considered fighting batting. the day went on. wkts came out of the blue, just when australia looked to be cementing solid partnerships. no particularly great deliveries or poor shots but wkts all the same. i think langer let panesar bowl him just to make some sort of point about previous english selection – a sacrifice for the good of the game. he vaguely kind of pretended to try and keep it out. panesar was a joy to watch he had a bit of dance in his delivery and he ejects the ball on a nice trajectory. and the wkt comes he’s got a heap o dance in him then. symonds was a one over wonder and god its great to have him back too. harmison bowled a great spell to the tail.
with panesar in and harmison in form the english team is almost far too likeable. i guess the batsmen are still poms and lack any charm (barring KP of course), but as a bowling side i reckon theyre tops.
but if id been at the waca i would have missed the highlights reel of martos career that they played during the cricket show. i couldve watched it forever. hope theres a dvd.
TRIBUTE – marto forever
a fine stroke by marto retiring without the fanfare he’s never enjoyed of a swan song at the waca, fine timing such that everyone will forever remember that great adelaide test of the 06/07 ashes series as marto’s last test. retiring after the perfect innings. i love a good one shot innings and really there’s been none more perfect than marto’s on that final day at adelaide v flintoff. marto, cheers for the mems
mate.
marto : slow motion highlights reel in sepiatone
roll on heavy roller
roll on slowly on
roll marto be
a slow cool boundary soon or
once
timing
is dispersed the whole field imparting
marto place
yourself in here vistas will open up for you big you
envy the shots he gets to feel in his hands
once cutting up the face
of a square
cut whore 4eva nail
polish manoeuvres barely visible
i cannot see marto steve w
takes on a whole new meaning after retirement
barely visible healthy
eating baby trepidation and style
he is a marigold man grass over grass
blades imparting
all force imparting timing
on his chest cricket flowers orange off the back foot
drives through the
snow covers
everything where the world should be looking
read all posts in category marto
marto poems : sonny rollins, ]untitled[, border-gavaskar trophy 03/04 : gabba, ponting v marto, damien martyn
v fine : day 1 poems
harmison
a variety of bird phrases
infiltrate the stillness
occupying the moments
leading up to the
gabba opener hi
5 ends and the kfc ads begin
fuck the montages anthems
and huddles just bowl the
frikkin ball and
get searching for rhythm
ponting v marto
i see length
before anyone else
can marto sees width i envy
those vistas and the shots
he gets to feel in his hands
i experience only the swing
of the bat
there is no feeling
in my pullshot or
vicious front foot
AC/Gilchrist
i stood there and watched them celebrate
that day was the beginning
of the process
it all began there
a single cause to
devote life to
this missile tracking
technology will not bother me
the foundation of the narrative was laid
long before there
was anything to
seek revenge for
——–
20 out of 20
Oh what irresistible fun the 20 20 match turned out to be the other night. What an inane giggly joy it brought about and sustained (for at least 23 or 24 overs out of the 40). How splendid the Australians looked in their grey or gun metal or … hell the uniforms were SILVER. The intense moment of joy when one realises it actually says MARTO on the back of Marto‘s shirt, or PUNTER on Punter‘s… the intrigue of trying to discover who SARFRAZ really is, or the daytime identity of the cleverly disguised MR CRICKET…
I think it’s the same or a similiar joy (as least quantatively) to the one Punter antcipates so earnestly in the field (the joy of the sharp piece of fielding, the direct hit or the impossibly quick snare). This adrenalin filled anticipation was made palpable by the superb socio/psychological experiment carried out by Channel 9 whereby the team’s captains were wired for sound and briefly at points throughout the commentary were asked to answer questions from the commentating team. Ponting was prowling about like a hungry tiger bouncing up and down and walking backwards and forwards and in cirlces, waiting for the ball to be delivered and something great to happen, talking at 160 km/hr.
The only disappointment of the evening was that Ice Cold 3000 didn’t get to play. It was unfathomable really, the high drama of 20 20 would seem perfect for a player with Nel’s professional theatrical experience. He should have at least had a mic, and a camera following whatever sneaky, dastardly tricks he was getting up to while everyone else was thoroughly distracted by the game.
music review (singles) : incomplete
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’.
Ma(r)t(o)
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.
Wrap up
The test is passing by at a pace. Time is being condensed. 5 days squash into 2. Holes are torn in the fabric. It all begins with the hole left by Steve Waugh – it is no coincidence that he will win the player of the series, in his absence Damien Martyn will accept the award. Jason ‘Dizzy‘ Gilgamesh contains all the history of the earth within his singular being, he is all of history. A dizzying whirlwind of being. At once mythological and firmly grounded in the actual. Clarke’s schoolyard dreams continue to manifest themselves into harsh reality. His imaginary history floats itself over the years, the distance wraps itself around Mumbai and asserts itself in the real. The lines of time are all converging on a single point (Donnie Darko watches on knowingly), the world begins anew tomorrow. This particular series, the series of all series, is drawing to a conclusion.