How could I forget the streakers??????

I thought this was a forgotten practice. I think the fact that there were two in one day signifies the fine health of test cricket.

Have you thought that the streaker that Chappell is whacking looks suspiciously like Billy Bowden?

Shaoib has been a spectacular dissappointment this test match. Every Australian batsmen has played him like it was me who was bowling at them. There was a great line in the paper yesterday saying that the Rawalpindi Express has borne more resemblance to City Rail.

KW

Appendix: Shoaib is a superstar.

I was there yesterday (day 3). It was a repeat performance of Melbourne in terms of the weather. It was hardly raining. Not even drizzling. You could sit out in it and not get wet. But the occassional errant drop meant that play could not start. The covers came off and then went straight back on. But play finally got under way.

Gilchrist cut loose. Someone forgot to tell him that he was playing in a
test match. We were on square at the Paddington end. On the pull shot for the left hander. I feared for my safety everytime Gilchrist was on strike. I doubted my ability to catch the ball. Given the way it was hit it would likely have caused serious burns on my hands – requiring skin grafts – given the energy that was transferred into that ball on contact with Gilly’s bat. Warney had already almost killed a child by slamming the ball on a low trajectory into the crowd while warming up.

The other highlight of the day, I think surpassing Pontings 200, was McGrath’s promotion to 10, his beautiful batsmanesque push through the leg side for 4 due to the incomprehensible Pakistani off side field setting, and then his beautiful, perfect, inevitable failure – he is after all and must be number 11. I had left by this time to go to work.

Day 2 was warm and sleepy and flawless. Ponting and Marto didn’t hit a single ball in the air. They just pushed and placed and timed through their entire partnership. They just accumulated. No one noticed them scoring runs, they just did. I was expecting Ponting to unleash his shots at any moment. But he was batting far too perfectly to do that. The sleepiness showed on the crowd, who managed to tie a string of the 3-mobile thundersticks together that stretched almost the entire length of the ground, from the Dally Messenger to the Brewongle stands.

Day 1 seems so long ago that all that I remember is Salman’s 100. MacGill must have bowled well, but from our seats, it was impossible to detect the nuances of his performance. The scorecard was amusing – all the wickets credited to Macs and Mcs.

KW

There was a cover drive played by Justin Langer during Australia’s little second innings that made me think of Le Corbusier. Well, that is, it brought to mind a small article I’d read in an old Vogue Living magazine about the Swiss architect (that’s the extent of my architecture & design research so far) and the compact little hut that he built across the bay from Monte Carlo – Le Cabanon (The Shed). This shed is remarkable for its functional simplicity, an extreme example of Le Corbusier’s vision of a house as a ‘machine for living’. VOGUE LIVING – “Le Corbusier called his creation a ‘tiny cell on a human scale’ in which ‘not a single centimetre was wasted’ … the genius of functionalism sweeping aside insurmountable space restrictions to create an extraordinarily compact dwelling”.

Justin is of course a machine for batting but this particular shot had all that simplicity about it, not a single millimetre of movement was wasted or in excess. It was all perfect balance and angles. Justin has stripped back batting to its essentials, the functional minimalism is extraordinarily attractive. Justin often holds a shot after he has played it for some time. He retains the structure that he has produced, his shed, for as long as the game allows – he will just stand there with his front foot stretched forward, his elbow high and his bat held aloft, his head in perfect alignment. He is austere. Kind of monkish.

The dwelling of the batsman, or perhaps it is the foundation of the batsman as a dwelling, is the crease. The crease becomes the basic element in modern architecture. See Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House. It is a series of creases. Look at any architectural plans and it’s all only creases in various articulations.

Adam Gilchrist spends his days floating about creases.

There is something in this photo of Pinting that suggests a similar stern and impassioned joy as that of one of Hayao’s heroes upon the successful completion of an epic quest.

With anime so much of the character is displayed in the hair and the angles that it makes with its support structure. Watson has something good going on here. There’s only a little lock or two visible but it is very expressive.

The other thing I would have liked to have seen today was the by all accounts terrible decision of the third umpire when Watson played a clear catch back to the bowler. I saw one quick replay on the news and it was pretty obvious to me that it was out. I’m told that doubt only came to exist as the technology blew the image of the ball hitting the bat up and up and up until the distortion was such that it was perhaps possible that the ball was touching the ground after the it had left the bat. The difference between umpires and technology is that technology can be stupid. An umpire is never stupid, sometimes he makes a poor decision, just as the batsmen sometimes plays a poor shot, or the bowler sends down a pie. The umpire’s failing is only an athlete’s lapse. Technology’s failing is that it is able to be moronically stupid. It is so slow of wit. As Kerry O’Keefe was wisely saying in the abc box, give me a pair of black slacks and a white shirt and I’ll save us all a lot of time.

I was at work all day today so I didn’t get to see any of Gilchrist’s magnificence, but I was assured of the intensity of this magnificence by the fact that a friend called me at work to tell me about it, twice. It was an innnings that needed to be shared, possibly the most attractively vicious innings in the history of world cricket. A vicious production of a pure gift to the earth. Apparently Ponting made a double century.

An innings that needed to be shared, that demanded friendship, that created an atmosphere of camaraderie throughout the world. The bonds of attraction formed and exploited today at the scg, those bonds between the bowlers and Gilchrist – it is likely that Danish found bowling to Gilchrist irresistible – the bonds between Ronting what’s his name and Gilchrist, the crowd in bondage, all these bonds whose power reverberated from an intensive point at the scg and dispersed globally to touch the population, these are the bonds of community, of love and joy that cricket exists to produce. When the Gilchist part is functioning like this the dirigible is so shiny & efficent.

An interesting thing I’ve noticed looking at the Pakistan player’s profiles is the names of the teams that they play for back in the Pakistan domestic and grade competitions. They seem to play for commercial teams or laboratories – Shoaib’s major teams for instance are listed as: Agriculture Development Bank of Pakistan, Pakistan International Airlines, Rawalpindi, Somerset, Khan Research Labs, Durham, Pakistan. I really like that he plays for an airline. The sooner provincialism and nationalism are superceded as the basis for the constitution of cricket teams the better. It should be like cycling. I’d love to see the Euskaltel-Euskadi cricket team up against 3 mobile.

3 Mobile are well on top of Team Pepsi after the second day of the test. The highlight today was that there was a streaker. It seems to have been ages since we had a decent streaker interrupt the cricket. And this one was a ripper, apparently (of course Channel 9 have a policy of not showing footage of streakers as it is feared it may encourage the practice, but O’Keefe’s commentary on ABC local radio was fantastic) he made it all the way to the pitch and somersaulted the stumps before being run down by security. O’Keefe was recounting how, as he had vaulted past the batsman Ponting had given him a look of disdain, delivered, in O’Keefe’s words – “regardless of his appendage” which it seemed Kerry was quite impressed by. I think he felt Ponting should have given him more credit. Of course the whole event sparked sentimental reminiscences of the time Greg Chappell had whacked a streaker on his bare flesh with his Gray-Nicolls. Later in the afternoon another streaker tried his boozy legs out at the dash across the turf but didn’t make it too far and really it was a foolish attempt that could only end in disappointment in the light of the glory that the initial bare run achieved.

For those people who may be new to the game or have just forgotten what he looks like here are some old pictures of Matthew Hayden from when he was once more perceptible. He’s been a hard man to track down lately.

Today S.C.G MacGill made yet another return to test cricket after yet another prolonged period in the wilderness. He made this return on the ground after which he is named, and today the ground was kind to him – eventually. It took MacGill until just before tea to pick up his first wkt. Yasir caught by McGrath at mid-on. Upon taking the wkt MacGill walked slowly, with his head bowed, over to McGrath and buried his face in the mutterman’s chest. There he wept – it was as if he were sobbing words along the lines of, ‘I have another test wkt, finally I have claimed it, I had feared I would never feel this again, thank you pigeon, thank you terribly.’ After this MacGill really hit his straps. The last over he bowled before tea was the best over I have ever seen him bowl. His deliveries were coursing along peculiar lines, the ball was moving with a great resistance against the directions it was being forced to take. Warnie may be an incredibly precise bowler but he bowls according to a pure physics, it always seems quite logical where the ball is going to and where it ends up. Warnie’s balls make sense – they adhere to the law. Muralitharan on the other hand creates his own physics, a lawless, impure physics. Terrifying for a batsmen (and some match referees) to witness. MacGill is no Murali but today it was more like he was bowling floating & drifting freaky doosras every ball than just his regular leg spin.

Today’s other highlight was the Salman Butt ton.

Also, Dizzy’s first over today was the best first over of any bowler in any test ever. He narrowly beat the bat with the first two deliveries, found a thick edge with the third. The ball flew gently to Warne at first slip at a distinctly catchable height. Warne grassed it. The next ball found a thick edge and flew gently to Gilchrist’s right. Gilchrist didn’t have to move much but still managed to grass it. I have never seen Dizzy look so sad and forlorn. I think he may have even muttered. Gilgamesh had produced a perfect start to his spell and his trusty cordon had let him down. At the end of the over Dizzy trudged slowly off to fine leg with that full on I don’t want to play anymore look about him.

Speaking of run-ups it seems opportune to mention Kasprowicz. He is a master of the short run. I don’t say any of this to suggest Shoaib should shorten, only to say that each bowler finds the run that suits them the most. If anything I think Shoaib should lengthen his run, hurdle the fence even. I just need to point out that Kasprowicz is a bowler who has attained absolute perfection in his run-up. It is short and explosive, he accelerates rapidly and keeps accelerating until he reaches the delivery stride, at which point there is nothing else his body can do, nowhere else for the acceleration to go, except to enter the delivery stride. It is a perfect physical logic. The whole thing lasts a second or two and its just this pureness of delivery from the start of the run to the ball meeting the batsman. His perfect run and stride is absorbed into the ball and it continues the stream and the acceleration, and it continues to leap about appropriately. There is never anything else that could possibly be happening when Kasprowicz bowls than Kasprowicz bowling – cricket and its strange actions becomes suddenly inevitable and absolutely necessary, there is no hint that this creature could exist for any other reason or to attend to any other task. A fittingness that Shoaib could find by lengthening his run.