Tag Archives: one dayers

there’s gold in my box

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The most interesting part of todays vb series showdown was waiting and listening for Boony’s little gruff, crackly comments. I found him quite hard to decipher (was he slurring?) but I loved the little electronic beeping that went on prior to a pronouncement. At one point it sounded as though he was saying – ‘theres gold in my box’ – assuredly true but he must have been slurring, a vb Boon doll wouldn’t say that would it? The only thing I was exactly clear on Boony saying was ‘today’s code word is bat’. He said this 8 times and it was all a bit like, ok Davo I heard you the first time. Meanwhile, there were reports coming in from other Boon doll foster families that he’d been telling them how much he enjoyed nachos when the tv wasn’t even on. Which must have been frankly terrifying.

I know that the conspiracy theories are out there – that the Boon doll army is going to come to life and take over the world during the second final. I myself have often dreamt of the Boon figurine standing quietly on the coffee table suddenly starting to shake uncontrollably and eventually bursting into flames and burning the entire block of flats down. It seems a reasonable paranoia to hold.

But the relief came with such personable well humoured gems such as ‘they’re playing totem tennis’ – I guess in reference to the Sri Lankan batting effort. Heals and that Nicholas fellow were wearing Boon moustaches in the commentary box which helped everyone relax.

one last quibble about the one day rule changes

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The issue of the supersub has been solved. That leaves the ineffectual powerplays to sort out. The argument has largely been that the occurence of the powerplays should be up to the batting captain rather than the bowling. That’s just some lame reversal. Its so bleedingly clear that the powerplays should occur purely at random. A chance draw. Sometime between the 10th over and the 45th coldplay songs will blare out over the ground PA, sirens will wail, lights will flash. The powerplay is announced. Imagine the excitement for everybody just not knowing when they might occur, the flurry of activity when all of a sudden one comes about – just when the fielding side most needed it, or just when they were looking comfortable. Suddenly, by chance, everything is disrupted. And then another one.

Please petition the ICC – its such an obvious winner of an idea.

1st innings (England)

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Long before all this we saw England bat. They batted strangely like Australia were batting early in the tour. Plodding, cautious. I have no doubt Bangladesh would have beaten them last night. The difference between England now and Australia then is exactly that now & then. Australia’s painful efforts from early in the season can now be seen as an origin, a grounding, for what they are currently producing. England’s painful efforts are an obvious regression. Australia have built up to the Ashes! England have dropped off. Australia are totally occupying the vertical plane upon which they now play their cricket. England have to put up scaffolds and fast.

Early in the day Dizzy put down an easy chance. He hit rock bottom, the shame he felt matched the pain of his followers (I was imagining careers for him post cricket – it wasn’t so bad actually, I had him pegged for a role in Pizza – It didn’t seem to matter anymore if he never recovered his form, as long as he was going to be a stooge on Pizza.) In the next over Gilchrist put down an easy chance. It was going to be difficult, on a wkt as good as that one, to rectify things after letting chances like those 2 go. But England have never been good at taking their chances. It was Ponting’s brilliance that stripped the tender feelings of fate away from them. An exquisite run out, Ponting clearly on top of his game and the team following. Dizzy bowled a tight spell – not yet venomous but tight. Enkidu had lifted his spirits just when all seemed lost. He got wkts. He got severely scruffled. He’d forgotten about that scruffling and how damn good it feels. Just when Pietersen seemed to be going to send Gilgamesh back into a new series of nightmares, Dizzy rose to it & cleaned bowled the English Humbaba. God, though, Pietersen, seriously could be one of the game’s greats – If he can get a break here and there from the selectors, from the English press and the public, so long as they don’t turn on their hero too quickly when he has a down turn. The English need to learn faith. The faith of Enkidu in Gilgamesh. They danced together in the Forest of Cedar.

Ma(r)t(o)

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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.

Decision made

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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.

2 Pontings

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There are at least two Pontings. The put upon and the up. Charlie Brown and a Miyazaki peasant boy who has just lead a victorious campaign against a greedy state backed foe. When he’s in the latter mode (and this is undoubtedly closer to his equilibrium state) he and his team are pretty much indominatable. There was a moment in last night’s game in which we witnessed the passage from one Ponting to the other. Charlie Brown dove full length to collect a catch in his right hand only centimetres from the ground. He came up as a different animated character. In that instant he was transformed. He retained the new form as he batted, and the unbridled joy of the peasant boy grew stronger. His team will follow him.

A key question will be whether ecstatic Ponting will have the strength to carry Dizzy up with him. Can he also take on the molecules of Enkidu? Drag Dizzy out of the depths of these despair ridden nightmares. I can barely stand to watch Dizzy bowl at the moment, it hurts me so bad. It is a pain I am willing to endure though – however long it goes on. I will watch Dizzy bowl endless wicketless spells in the tests if Ihave too. He will comeback sooner or later – this may depend on Ponting. (There is another surely failsafe method of getting Dizzy back in form that has been suggested to me by one of my cricket sprites – force him to listen to interminable recordings of Nasser Hussain’s commentary – the anguish he would be injected with would make him terrifying to face, it would be a rampage filled with awful rage. This would obviously be an inhumane suggestion, and the ICC probably has legislation that forbids it, not to mention the UN – & Bono would probably organise a concert – but it could be very effective.)

rule changes

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Its time the ICC stop nibbling away at the edges of one-day cricket and get serious. If they really want to reinvigorate the game, make it once again interesting for the viewing public, they need to do more then just add 5 overs of fielding restriction and give it a dumb name like ‘powerplay’. They need to really get deep into the way the games played. Make some changes which will test the skills of the cricketers in new exciting and more acute ways. My idea is that they give every fielder a little bat (a brand new piece of equipment!) and change the rule on catching such that to be out the ball actually has to travel not only to one fielder but through two fielders before it can be caught and the batsman deemed out. A catch can only be made by a second fielder after the first fielder has hit the ball, with his little bat, off its trajectory, along new lines, into the hands of the 2nd man. They could perhaps even award some sort of points bonus which increases with the number of fielders the ball travels through. They could deduct 5 runs from the batsman’s score for each fielder after the 2nd that are involved in the elaborate catch – or something like that.

And they really need to bring audience voting into the game for the supersub. Evictions by sms poll. That’s what one day cricket needs.

overcast clearing later

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By far the most exciting part of Thursday’s game was the flicking over to sbs to watch the finish to stage 6 of Le Tour. I liked the idea that was being bandied around about the sun at Headingley and the role it plays in cricket there. The suggestion is that there are only ever two teams that play there – the overcast conditions vs when the sun comes out. Weather and cricket of course have a close and intricate relationship – cooked pitches and moisture laden balls moving in clandestine directions; players with cold hands or suffering from heat exhaustion. So I like this Headingley mythology which really brings this to the fore, where the sun gets man of the match awards. But really, Ponting’s boys were disappointing. It was very disappointing that they couldn’t use the talents of the weather better – England certainly harnessed the form of the sun very well – it was inspired recruiting. The weather also put in a big stage in Le Tour – Persistent Rain moving up the general classification after a powerful lead out by Slippery Corners.

the end of one day cricket as we know it

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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.

Hayden-in-need-of-a-pillow

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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!