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.
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 excitement builds. The tension builds. The quotes come flying.
Of late, this is my favourite –
“Look, there’s always lots of talk about targeting players,” he said. “It’s the greatest load of rubbish of all time. The only enemy is really the cricket ball that comes down at you. Whatever is said and whatever is analysed doesn’t matter. What we have to do is bat and everything else will look after itself.”
It negates itself. And in negating itself confirms itself. It’s beautiful.
But who is this shadowy figure? (Clearly there was a Spanish interpreter on hand at the press conference.)
I am making noises in anticipation.
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.
At long last, a decisive decider. I went to bed after the England innings because I got frustrated trying to watch Le Tour on sbs (lets hope they get their satellites into gear before the Ashes!) I woke up at about 2.30am and turned on the television to see where the game was at. The first thing I saw was Adam Gilchrist bouncing about in slow motion celebrating his century. I figured Australia were on top. They had launched (This catch by Kaspro may have been a wasted effort so far as preventing a 6 went, but it showed clearly that Australia were now inhabitating a higher strata). Turned out they needed about 12 runs off about 793 balls. Marto smashed a few fours and that was it, Shep danced on 2/222 for the very last time and a ball or two later he broke the stumps and wandered from the field, receiving loving hugs from the players as he went. Perfect moment to retire, Shep, put ya feet up and watch the Ashes! What a guy.
The Ashes is going to be so hot! The first few overs of the washed out game the other night were so wildly exciting, such a heated, compelling contest, so deeply felt. It didn’t matter that the game was washed out, it was like enough had happened already, just the promise that was offered up of a game of such great immensity was enough. The Australian openers were back at their pounding best, taking Gough’s first over for 14 or so. The English were congregating at the bowler’s end trying to come up with a plan to stop them, it looked like they were panicing after just one over of the real Australia. But whatever plans came out of the snap meeting worked and England hauled the boys back in. Gough was taken out of the attack after 2 overs (In this day and age when its all about haircuts I was most disappointed that Gough so quickly lost the intimations of a mohican that he was sporting during his blistering 20 20 spell at the start of it all. He was smoking then, red in the face, steam shooting from his hair as it stood on end – since he lost the length, & he only lost about 1.2 cm, he’s been flat as a tack, flat as his shaved head – cricket is a game of the finest margins). Simon Jones bowled beautiful lines and to carefully set plans – it was exquisite bowling. Gilchrist was no match for this sort of application. As precisely as he bowled, Jones threw haphazardly and collected Hayden on the chest with an unnecessary throw in the very vague direction of the stumps. Unnecessary maybe but the action certainly didn’t lack in brilliant drama and consequence. It’s set a battle tone for the entire Ashes. Hayden was pounding his bat into the ground in fury, pounding his chest and waving his big arms. Jones was waving his hands about in apology as the English fielders converged on the injured beast to make sure it didn’t bound away to plot its revenge, or simply start tearing those sorry flailing hands from Jones’ body. The contests from here on in were just what you don’t need when you really need to go to bed. Harmison to Ponting from one end. Jones to Hayden-in-need-of-a-pillow at the other. It lasted a few overs before Jones claimed Hayden’s wkt and promptly began beating his own chest in victory. It was all damned fine Cricket. I expect blood in the Ashes – I want eyeballing, I want breathing down necks, I want the gloves to come off, I want the administration and the media to get over the idea that cricketer’s shouldn’t get angry and shouldn’t get into a good meaningful stoush. There was nothing untoward about the incident – it was all perfectly well directed towards building the intensity of the cricket to come. In the end the storms came to cool things down. What was so great about the washout was that it meant those tedious cricket writers had no opportunity to talk about how great the game was and write the Hayden-Jones incident off as gone and forgotten in the face of the pure cricket events that followed. The coming of the storms meant that the incident really took precedence over the cricket, it became bigger, inhabited the series – of course it always was just part of the cricket but now its been made clear. The game was rendered meaningless (as it already was in some way – both teams are in the final) so that pure intensities could come to the fore and feed into all that cricket still to come. So hot and sensible!