Flintoff’s name resonates somehow with the whole Ashes idea – flint, fire, fire out, flint off, left with the ashes, he’s left with the ashes, he’s gone and taken the ashes away with him… only one man can stop him now. EL REY (of hope) WARNO – and he will need the help of a certain volatile muttering.
A: McGrath’s regeneration continues. Body part by body part. During the Edgbaston test he took the opportunity to renew his legs, now he his working on his upper limbs. Dizzy’s awful, sad form slump begins to make sense if you think about how strenuous this process must be for McGrath. Physically regenerating a body part is no problem (that same old elbow one day, spanking new model elbow the next), but the new body is nothing without a force character in which to embed itself – the McGrith needs a structural charisma. It seems clear that Dizzy has sacrificed his mojo to the cause. McGrath will play at the Oval, but shortly after that he will disappear from the scene – mystery will surround the event. But Dizzy, in his new starring stooge role on Pizza, will have a full understanding and a certain pride. From out of 2 great Australian bowlers, one youthful force, greater than any that have gone before it, comes to tear up the cricket world with its pace, its control, and phenomenal ability to move the ball in manners that not even the master of the dark Welsh art of reverse swing, Simon Jones, could imagine. He will be tall with a blonde mullet and he will mutter.
“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.
“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.
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.
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.
oh my god how does one find the energy to write anything about last night’s final, the delirium of sleep deprivation combined with the emotional exhaustion, the wringing of anticipation from one end of the match to the other – and in the very end one is given a tie. Stomach tied in knots, heart bursting from a blank, empty emotion with no value either way or in any familiar direction. O my god what a seductive game – and we will never see its like again. This was the last of the old-school 50 over matches.
The McGrath and Lee opening partnership is so fantastic, I simply love it. When Lee bowls a cricket game goes astray, it loses its way, off the rails, out of control, it gets the speed wobbles basically. Which means there’s an opportunity for someone to take control. McGrath is the master of it. In a repeating binary pattern of 6 balls chaos 6 balls complete control the two of them are mesmerising. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful thing in cricket than McGrath’s spell last night, never seen a more beautiful thing than that map they show of where his deliveries have pitched. I thought Flintoff’s was exquisite (and Harmison, he’s just frikkin built to bowl – he’s a huge obstinate shape that appears not to be designed with any function in mind but to bowl) but McGrath just took the pitch daubing to a new level. I was sitting there on my couch with a cat on me (the cat watches the cricket purring away with her eye’s closed – it’s too much for the little sweet pea to absorb) clenching my fists in the air and shouting to myself – I love you so much Glenn McGrath! Oh my god Glenn! The cat wasn’t disturbed, she understood perfectly. It all made the last over so surreal and unbelievable – how could he send down such a dog of an over? After Australia had England 5/33 the game started drifting by like a dream, clouds passing behind a daydream, at times the match future would appear as in a vision. Even immediately after the 5th wkt fell scorecards were flashing into view that showed, after several very insubstantial partnerships at the top, one single great extended line that defied all logical progression yet was inevitable enough that one always knew England would come close in the end. The tail end of the dream was presenting itself early on, but there was no hint of McGrath bowling a nightmare final over such as he did. The emotion of the tie is an emotion of its own. It has no resemblance to happiness or to sadness, its not anger or frustration (how can you feel anything like that after you’ve been given such an incredible game of cricket?). The frustration comes on now that the tour schedule gives us the NatWest Callenge series. I can’t believe we have to put up with 3 more 50 over games (however much they fiddle about with new innovations in the rules) between Australia and England before we get close to the commencement of the Ashes. Surely after this epic game they could just cancel the Challenge. Who has any further need for one day cricket after this? (Who has the energy for it?) – This was the pinnacle man. Bring on the tests.
I worry about Dizzy.
As revealed in a recent article on Baggygreen, Dennis Lillee is concerned about the future of Australia’s fast bowling stocks. The big question seems to be “where is the next generation.” Well as you may expect a blog as incisive and as full of revelation as this one does not happen without an abundant team of discreet minions buzzing throughout the cricketing world, infiltrating deep inside tours’ support personnel and into the close circles of cricketers’ friends. One of my little spies has a theory in regard to the next generation of Australian pace bowlers, and without giving anything away in terms of their identity or whereabouts I can safely say that the information they have at hand to base the theory on is reliable to say the least. The theory regards Glenn McGrath and an audaciously brave and shocking experiment that he is already in the early stages of implementing. If the experiment is a success (and my source is confident that it will be – McGrath’s planning and execution has always been one of his foremost attributes) it will see Glenn McGrath disappear from international cricket, in fact he will disappear from any earthly dwelling whatsoever. There will be rumours of a pig hunting incident, something going horribly wrong, a terrible shooting accident. Not so long after these rumours surface a bright young face will emerge out of the ranks of district cricket in Sydney and begin catching the Australian selectors’ collective eye as they scout for that next generation that Lillee fears a thiness within. He will rise quickly through the ranks and within a very short space of time, with barely a handful of state matches beneath his belt, he will be selected to play for Australia. From this point on there will be no looking back. People will keep saying, at least at first, that there’s something about him reminds them of the great Glenn McGrath. He will be unusually consistent with his accuracy. Perhaps he will be quick to mutter when the accuracy strays to the slightest degree. He will be mature beyond his years. In time though his greatness will rise so far above that even of McGrath’s that this speculation will soon be forgotten and he will become a true champion in his own right. Of course what will have happened here is that McGrath will have transformed himself into a completely new cricketer, a new being, he won’t just be reborn but will have done away with the identity of Glenn McGrath altogether (of course vestiges will remain – the new player will undoubtedly cite McGrath as a childhood influence). As McGrath now is able to repeat so accurately with such effective variation delivery after delivery he will succesfully repeat himself – a perfect, complex and deliberate metempsychosis. It has already begun my source says. One only needs to look at what’s happening to his hair. It was the hair (always look closely at the hair) that tipped my denizen of the cricket world off, and inspired further investigation. I can assure my readers that the investigation has been thorough and none of this is lightly transmitted to you the public. Please be careful how you treat this information.
McGrath’s long time bowling companion, Shane Warne of course is in on the act too – his concern with his hair and making himself young again has been much more public. Warney’s certainly in some sort of transitional phase – the hair, the life changes. But it’s nothing as monumental, nothing as deeply involved with the essence of being as McGrath’s experiment. McGrath’s work goes right to the soul of man and extends to the limits of the cosmos. I can’t see Warney being able to let go of his identity and become an entirely other cricketer. I imagine he will have to be simply a reinvented Warne, revitalised, a new man (god forbid a better man). His career beginning all over again from scratch. Watch for his first delivery in the Ashes, it will turn a mile from outside leg and clip the top of the off stump. The bastman will be utterly bewildered in exactly the same way that Mike Gatting was after Warney’s first ever delivery in Ashes tests 12 years ago. This one delivery will create a disturbance in the English psyche that will hinder their ability to play test cricket against Australia for at least the next 12 years. At that point Warne will have exactly doubled his test wkt count & his public scandal count – and he will have just split with his second wife with whom he will have three children. It is a different kind of repetition, a more brutal, more basic one perhaps, less subtle, more stupid – much more Warne-like. Exactly Warne-like. I do expect though, that when he returns from Spain for the Ashes he will speak nothing but Spanish, comprehend no English. That language is for the opposition.