The hottest contest in world cricket currently has to be that between Glenn McGrath’s test runs and Glenn McGrath’s test wickets. He is currently sitting on 453 runs and 446 wkts. Surely, even though wkts are coming from behind, runs must be the underdog.
I spent the good part of saturday in the Charles Dickens Tavern on Collins St. The screen here was all washed out. The cricketers blurred across the screen, their whites stretched thin and without faces. The cricketer’s were transparent faceless ghosts, there was nothing but shadow under their hats, and an occassional glinting tooth or white of the eye. This screen brought an element of horror to the game. Harbhajan would float into the crease soundlessly flapping and spit ferocious lines at the insubstantial batsmen. The hungry figure Aakash Chopra sat virtually upon the batsmen’s necks and sprang about gathering rebounds and deflections with a delirious precision that accounted for at least 95% of all fielding done on the day. I became acutely aware of how incredibly easy it is to be dismissed and the thought was terrifying.
Later that night Ano and i found ourselves outside the Oxford Scholar on Swanston St. It was closed for a private function but through the large untinted windows we had a perfect view of a large screen with perfect contrast and colour. The segment of play we witnessed standing in the street here differed from the first segment in some sort of relation to the screens upon which the play was televised. Now the cricket was all shenanigans. The Indian batting had been destroyed but the Indian crowd was still singing and dancing. Their sadness was evident but they were partying on anyway, all sorts of makeshift banners were springing up with hilarious, good humouredly self-deprecatory couplets scribbled on them. “East or West, India are the best” from earlier in the match had been altered by squeezing a small “2nd” in between ‘the’ & ‘best’ – and was being held aloft no less proudly for it. The Australian fielders were larking about, Warney and Haydos were in competition to see who could wear the most caps on their heads at once. And we were standing in the street watching through a window. During the ads I would become uncomfortable, thinking how desperate I must seem, but each time the telecast resumed I would forget these petty concerns once more and become happily absorbed in the circus.
from Andrew Miller’s roving reporter column @ baggygreen
“the curtain of this match was lowered moments before tea yesterday, when Shane Warne rolled into bowl and pinned VVS Laxman lbw with a perfect first-ball flipper. At that moment, a Bangalore crowd that had been waiting in vain for a Kolkata-esque miracle was forced to wake up and smell the cordite.”
Last summer in Sydney Steve Waugh played his final test match. At least it was his final match encased in the body that we know as Steve Waugh. During that match there was a moment when I swear I saw Steve’s entire spirit pass into the body of Damien Martyn. Marto took a hot chance at point just over his head. The way in which he threw the ball away over his shoulder, like nothing was anything, was precisely Steve Waugh. Too precise not to be Steve Waugh. It was not imitation or likeness or resemblance. It was an actual transformation. The Steve Waugh in Marto is still evident to this day, little shakes of the shoulders, the way he jogs between wickets like nothing is anything. Today in Bangalore Marto was welcomed to the crease by a pumped up, close in, Indian field, hot on the comeback trail. It was hot out there. Marto could have done with a glass of water. They were razzin him alright, razzin him right up. The ball was leaping and striking at angles unheard off. But the Steve Waugh in Marto stood face to face with the field, and pretty much told em that he wasn’t havin none of their nonsense. He focussed hard on understanding the turn & things very soon calmed down as Marto consolidated his position at the crease. In the recent past he has struggled to incorporate the form of Steve into his own being, but I think today he began to accept it, use it to his advantage, and let the Steve Waugh in him exert its power. By the end of the day Marto was smiling a lot. Internally the waugh machine was at work but outwardly, now, Marto was at ease with his new constitution. Steve would never smile like that. Steve would never smile. I’ve got a very good feeling about this innings of Marto’s(teve’s). 29 n.o. overnight.
From when he was a little boy Clarkey would tell his mum that he was going to play cricket for Australia. His mum would say, “That’s lovely dear, but what’s your back-up plan, you know, just in case it doesn’t work out?” – “Mum, you don’t understand – I am going to play cricket for Australia.”
Glenn McGrath has become the only test player ever to bowl Rahul Dravid out middle stump. It was only Dravid’s 4th ever test duck.
Last night on abc radio as Clarkey was constructing his fairy tale the commentators kept saying things like – “he has found his place”; “he belongs here”; “this is where he should be, this is where he is meant to be”. There was something about Clarkey’s coming to belong that was incredibly moving. It was so immediate and so magnified. Finding a position from which to flourish is a wonderful task for anyone I guess, in whatever way. It just wouldn’t usually be such a noticeable process, perhaps. I’m thinking of the Miyazaki film My Neighbor Totoro. The kids plant some magic acorns that Totoro has given them and nothing happens until one night Totoro leads the kids out to the garden bed, conducts some sort of magical dance, and a massive tree sprouts out of the earth. In the morning there’s no tree, but the acorns have sprouted. The kids say something like “It was a dream but it wasn’t a dream.” I bet thats how Clarkey feels now. He just frikkin flowered. A small boy’s dreams have been utterly realised, planted firmly in reality. It’s moving stuff. Moving and settling at the same time.
IRFAN PATHAN!! you can’t speak his name and retain any mildness of manner. Just try saying it without bursting into barracking.
I left work at 5.30. I could feel the cricket in the air. I knew the score – 1/118. Langer had his 50 and Katich was getting well set in the Ponting hole at no. 3. I could feel it all, the cricket was spreading across the globe and buffeting me. But I wasn’t a good enough receptor to be able to translate the cosmic affections I was feeling into visions of the action. I was working on it though, concentrating hard. The light-rail station at Fraser St had large white creases painted on it. I felt like staying on the tram and maintaining my focus. I could nearly see it. But my hunger for Foxtel was getting the better of me. I was chewing on my tram ticket. My thoughts became all PUB PUB PUB PUB FOX FOX PUB GO JUSTIN GO THE PASSION COME ON KATTA PUB FOX PARMAGIANA W. CHIPS & GRAVY GO THE KAT-LIKE FOOTWORK ATTACK THE SPIN PUB FOX KATTACK I was throwing up a lot of dust as I walked along the gravel paths in the park. I reached home and turned on the radio. I love the ABC Radio commentary. who needs fox or parmagiana when you’ve got the ABC. BUT THERE WAS NO CRICKET. I was desperate and lost. lost. I was in a void. The channel 9 sports news came just in time. It was all so attractive, Justin’s battles, taking the ball on the body, struggling, Katta’s driving his footwork against the spin is breathtaking, Lehmann’s dismissal – wildly attractive – the man is aberrantly attractive. When it finished I watched it all again on channel 7. I love how they stagger their sports reports. The water tastes like cricket today. The sunlight is filled with it. I’ve got to get to a pub.
PONTING – shattered thumb shattered soul. He won’t even arrive in India until before the third test. As Mcgrath fills the boots of Shane Watson, little Clarkey gets to step up for his test debut and fill the boots of el rick. We’ll miss Ponting’s savage front foot, it contains some of the most deadly venom in the world. He’ll be very hungry when he returns to lead the side in the second two tests of the series. Absent Impact rating – low.
TENDULKAR – this is a strange one. I don’t even know if its been confirmed that he will be missing the test, but everyone seems to know that he will. 10dulkar has 10nis elbow. Strange. He’s been bowling in the nets but not batting. He is in the squad and Ganguly has been saying he will have a big role to play whether he plays or not. A charismatic role I guess. He will sit in there in the sheds with the boys and emit wisdom and confidence. It’s all a little mysterious, and it will be messing with the minds of the opposition for sure. Absence Impact rating – high – his absence could be very affective. It is almost as though it has been engineered in an attempt to match the awesome power of Steve Waugh’s absence.
WAUGH – will definitely not be playing, though my hopes rose when Ponting shattered. There was a place for a captain again. But this series is Waugh’s destiny. To win this series was what his entire career was building up to, everything he did was done with a view to victory here, in this series. It was going to be his glorious swan song. His moment of supremacy. And it still will be. Steve Waugh will be haunting those Australian sheds and the players will feel a breeze brush past them now and then in the field that is unmistakable. In the end, even Steve’s retirement was a necessary act in achieving this victory and Steve would have had no trouble sacrificing himself for his fate. Steve Waugh will know, when Australia clinch series victory late on the fifth day of the final test, that he has once again led the team beyond old thresholds. It is no coincidence that Australia are going into this series without an embodied leader. Absence Impact rating – astronomical. His absence will be the decisive factor (in quite the opposite way that the absence of Alec Stewart and Nasser Hussein from the English team has led to the great renaissance in English cricket).