Tag Archives: Matty

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.

what you wish for

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What a day. The MCG was the happiest place in the world. As Hayden felt his way through his shot continuum, bringing up an immensely touching hundred (Hayden bats like a cellist, the tones not demarcated by frets, playing with great feeling, building crescendoes and stuff) his fishing buddy launched a brutal assault on the protean bowling attack, at the final second of opportunity kick starting a long and heroic test career. And then there were more of those great wkts of his.

he’s only got one shot

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Matthew Hayden is again constructing another supreme innings. I’m finding that he is pretty much, since the departure of Marto, my favourite batsman to watch these days. Hayden’s batting is unique in that he really does only have one shot. In park cricket there are lots of batsmen that will have this specification attributed to them by the team on the other end of their quickfire 50 built from hoiks to the leg. But Hayden’s one shot is an all encompassing one shot – it is a single shot with which through subtle late variations can send the ball to any area of the ground. Whereas your run of the mill superstar batsman’s array of shots tend to be well demarcated – Ponting’s on drive, his off drive, his pull and cut; Langer’s cover drive, square drive and pull shot – (all clearly different shots) Hayden’s array of ‘shots’ all issue from the same movement with only a carefully timed articulation of the wrists or arms or both to vary the angle of despatch of the ball. Rather than segregated distinct shots Hayden produces an inclusive movement that contains a continuum of forces and angles. His leave becomes a front foot defence becomes a drive (on or off, cover, square) becomes a cut or pull. When he is executing the single movement well he is the smoothest of cricketers. Watching this movement produces an hypnotic energy that stimulates a power that can perhaps be called love but is more important than that.

binaries

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ABdV’s innings today was like the evil twin to Hayden’s yesterday. Where Hayden rigorously left the ball alone outside off stump, ABdV would play and miss with similar application. I don’t think he deliberately let a ball go through to the keeper all day. Where Hayden would plunder the ball entering his refined strike zone to the long off or cover boundary, ABdV would slash at anything marginally outside off stump and edge it over or through the slip cordon for four. He was eventually out trying to cut a ball that hit his pads in front of off stump.

The two archetypes that would constitute the ABdV innings if it were to be digitised would be something like this:

1. Symonds to de Villiers, no run, a beauty! short of length outside off stump, moving away off the seam, gets beaten.

0. Lee to de Villiers, FOUR, short and wide outside off stump, de Villiers cuts hard, gets the top edge, just over Warne at first slip to the thirdman fence.

65 and 61 respectively, Hayden and ABdV then, themselves, become two equal yet opposing binary values defining the test match.

Nelodrama

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Hayden’s innings was a masterpiece. It reached its pinnacle during the spell from Ntini immediately following lunch. The ball by ball commentary read like this:

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, FOUR, good shot! pitched up outside off stump, drives well past the short cover to the fence.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, FOUR, good shot! pitched up outside off stump, drives well past the short cover to the fence.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, FOUR, good shot! pitched up outside off stump, drives well past the short cover to the fence.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, FOUR, good shot! pitched up outside off stump, drives well past the short cover to the fence.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, FOUR, good shot! pitched up outside off stump, drives well past the short cover to the fence.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, no run, left alone outside off stump.

Ntini to Hayden, FOUR, good shot! pitched up outside off stump, drives well past the short cover to the fence.

and on like that interminably. A binary innings. Both teams were in complete control. The South African bowlers (not just Ntini) with a stacked field covering the off drive were relentlessly pitching up outside off stump. Hayden was rigorous in his leaving. His patience was impeccable, waiting for that aberrant delivery which would from time to time enter his strike zone and disappear to the boundary. Two relentless modulations making up an utterly mesmerising innings. It was sad and a terrible shock when Hayden eventually played loosely at a ball that was clearly just a little too wide and edged to slip.

Urn Malley had been dreaming of Hayden and Ponting being still at the crease together as the evening came in, as the shadows lengthened and the sun’s angle made the persistent yet weary South Africans look like they were starting to blend with the gleaming golden grass. Golden exhausted fielders at the end of an epic day’s partnership.

Dreams shattered by the melodrama that is Andre Nel.

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’.

last ditch

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On Monday morning after the conclusion to the test I sat on the tram in a daze. I had taken my book from my satchel and was planning to read it but I just sat there with it in my hands as I thought about the cricket. My breathing was all over the place. I was basically sighing or maybe even panting – there was exhaustion and tension and exhiliration all involved in the make up of my gasping. And I hadn’t even satyed up to watch the England innings. I only heard about the score on the morning news. These magnificent last ditch efforts by the Australians (or should I attribute them more precisely – El Warno and Lee) are all well and good but just not quite good enough. Its tantalising stuff.

Its a shame there’s been so much whingeing from the Australian camp about substitues (ok, it’s a pretty iffy tactic of the Poms but it should be pursued quietly along the proper channels) and the umpires (certainly the umpiring’s been poor but only in the same way that Hayden’s form has been poor, or poor old Dizzy – misfiring players get replaced by other players, not by computer animated simulations.) Its not the outbursts on the field that are a problem, that’s heat of the battle stuff, the frustration after having worked so hard takes over, as is reasonable. Its in the days between matches that losing teams need to keep their gripes tightly quiet, to speak is to be a sore loser and displays in some sense an acceptance of the fact that they are not cut out for copping sweet blows and going on to really challenge a dominant opposition.

faith, hope

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“Noel Coward once said that he could handle the despair; it was the hope he couldn’t stand.” From Gideon Haigh’s Ashes Diary.

I quite like the hope. I don’t think my hopes can possibly be disappointed from here on in. If I’m hoping for great cricket matches then I can’t be happier with the way my hopes have already been met. The thing that was becoming an issue for me was faith. The faith that no matter how good England are (and they are amazingly good – especially their bowling attack) my boys will not let England win these Ashes. Some sort of faith that England don’t quite deserve it yet (the current Australian team certainly doesn’t deserve to lose) and that justice will be done. Obviously this faith has been wavering. Hayden hasn’t produced the immensity of batting that I was sure he was going to – none of the batsmen had until Ponting on Monday. Gillespie has found nothing to provide fuel to faith. I was sure El Warno was going to complete that century on Sunday, I had complete faith in him, yet I was let down once again. My faith was strong after Edgbaston even though Australia had lost. The fight they provided was more than I had ever expected. I took this as an entirely good omen. After the first four and a half days of the Old Trafford test faith was gone, I was sure I would awaken to the news that Australia had been bowled out in the second last over. Close things were going England’s way – they had done everything to deserve it. Everything, it turned out, except win. Ponting’s quest was one of immaculate application. Faith is restored. My feeling after Edgbaston was that England wouldn’t win another test this series. Obviously that idea had been dismissed long ago. It is now back in force. Faith has been putting on this wonderfully exhilirating binary dance – a series of zeroes and 1s. May this spectacular light show go on, from this point on it will be superficial. The overall faith in the boys is as solid now as it ever was.

Clarkie is still to unleash his full powers (waiting for the right moment, the ultimate test, when everything is on the line).

Hayden is still due to annihilate.

El Warno may never score a test century but his greatness is unquestionable – he is forever redeemed.

McGrath has a new foot – his rejuvenation has begun, piece by piece (Brett Lee was given the grisly hand me down – it’s good to keep a high quality spare).

Ponting has graduated.

Perhaps Dizzy can even become a new master of reverse swing – he has 8 days.