ah I love it! Test cricket, this evening, found a completely new emotional articulation. It was certainly an historical moment. Cricket is often hilarious but it has never been as greatly hilarious for such a sustained period as it was during the final session today. The demolition of New Zealand did come about, as it was bound to, and it came about at the hands of McGrath, as had been suggested it may – but who would have thought the Mutter-man magic would be cast through his bat! McGrath left aside the muttering as he took up, seriously, batting. When he brought up his 40, passing his previous highest test score of 39, the crowd rose to their feet, the Australian team rose to their feet, and every single one of them was just laughing laughing laughing. Mutter-man was laughing his own head off. Gilgamesh, drawing close to his own maiden test half century (tomorrow morning perhaps?), had already been laughing for a long time. (Even the New Zealanders must have been laughing somewhere deep inside – it must have had hold on them). I’m in a good mood for at least a week now – the whole of the country must be.
Good old channel 9 managed to leave the live telecast of the cricket for the news just in time to deny its eastern daylight savings time states from witnessing the immense joy that must have come about with the 50, but when I saw the score summary on the sports news – Clarke 141; Gilchrist 126; McGrath 54*, I just laughed and laughed and laughed all over again. Such a ridiculous text! A totally new test emotion.
I’m sorry. I just dont know what it is about New Zealand but even when they have a really good day, like today, they just dont offer much joy. maybe its just that ‘Jacob Oram’ doesn’t quite give the vocal apparatus the same thrill that ‘Irfan Pathan’ offers. Scott Styris. It just doesn’t work. & isn’t Chris Martin the name of some boring singer from some boring band whose song regulalrly gets played over the ground’s PA system as the cricketers come out onto the field at the start of the day? Thats about as interesting as it gets. They just dont transport me anywhere – where are all my links going to come from?
I guess Oram’s 100 would have been attractive but I didn’t get to see any of it. I did see some Channel 9 highlights of it and there was a brief sense of incredible power.
Today, there was one very exciting moment when Clarkey came down the wicket to Vettori and attempted to loft him for 6 over his head, edging the ball into his pad. The ball then deflected past the stumps, i think it went to slip or someting. That’s my highlights package.
In the ABC radio commentary box Kerry O’Keefe was talking about how dangerous Damien Martyn is once he finds himself “at peace with the pace in the pitch” – which was nice. Marto is a master at learning pitches and settling into them like a little leaf of grass.
All we have to hope for is the Australian fightback. I feel a bit bad about this but I really do hope the demolition still comes about. Perhaps some magic orbs cast aloft by the Mutter-man in the 2nd nz innings?
Or maybe nz can start gathering associations and poetic alliances to feed into cricket’s vital forces which are seeking renewal after the exhaustive action of the Indian series. The new series is just placidly begining.
the final test, for all its uncontrolled speed and fever, ended close to some sort of beautiful symmetry. 104, 203, 205, 93.
australia will demolish new zealand
Apologies for the lateness of these final few entries, the mumbai pitch was wreaking havoc well beyond the world of cricket – its difficulties had infiltrated the platform and I was unable to log in on freaky friday night and over the weekend. The following entries were composed on friday night, and contain deceptive tenses.
Clarke: 6.2 0 9 6
Dinesh Karthik floats with the serenity of Totoro. The happiness comes not only from his own point of view but comes from a powerful empathy with Parthiv Patel who can now feel the real relief of being freed from his period of torturous bondage as Indian wicketkeeper. Dinesh has saved his friend, and stowed him safely away on the cat bus.
It was also great to watch Nathan Hauritz being scruffled into the pitch by his team mates after taking his maiden test wicket with only his third test ball. He dissappeared in a massive ring of hair tussling hardened test players and came out after some time had passed looking like a mischevious little brownie. Onya lad!
I can never get enough of watching Jason ‘Dizzy’ Gilgamesh. As he carves himself from stone, all Dizzy needs is a bit of work on his beard (the forwards mullet), a braiding class at the CAE, and he is there. The epic poetry will look after itself. By my figurin’ Diz could just about have it all together in time for the ashes next winter. Imagine the blood draining out of the already bloodless faces of the poms when they’re confronted with this rocky, hewn aspect of the great Babylonian warrior king (2 thirds god, 1 third human) charging in & emitting elements at them.
After all the highlights, the 4th test finally got under way for about 5 overs. The test could have finished after those 5 overs as far as I’m concerned, enough happened in that time that one could easily be forgiven for thinking 5 days had passed. Every moment was spellbinding. McGrath was urgently restraining his muttering when the debutante Hauritz dropped Sehwag off the third ball of the innings. By the end of his next over McGrath had Sehwag clean bowled with a beautiful cutting delivery. Very next ball Dizzy was on his knees appealing with a flattened plam held aloft for an LBW decision that Umpire Dar could not refuse. He was shedding those volatile elements again! This brought about the recommencement of the Tendulkar-McGrath-Gillespie combat series – in which every move is breathtaking. There is nothing like that flurry of unrestrained action at the start of a test match, the desperation of settling in.
I love the Fox highlights. When there’s a break in the play or it rains they simply show extended highlights either of the session just gone or of an earlier match. The thing that is so brilliant about it is that they show a lot of nothing happening. There will be deliveries that strike the batsman on the pad and run away down to fine leg allowing the batsmen to take an easy legbye; deliveries that the batsman shoulders arms to, letting the ball go safely through to the keeper; they will show the batsman pushing into the covers, momentarily thinking about running but, well before a threshold of thrilling action could be crossed, calling no and returning to his crease; and they will show at least two slow motion replays of this delivery, from alternate angles. On channel 9 all you ever get is meaningless boundaries and wickets. Fox find the flow of the game and capture it, they provide a sense of the game’s pressure – as it builds, morphs and recedes. Its like watching timelapse footage of a rock weathering. 9s highlights are like watching fireworks on television – the constant explosion of lights with no dynamic sense is boring. Yesterday, as it rained in Mumbai, Fox played the highlights of the 2nd test in Chennai. A match that ended in a rained out draw (9 would never show highlights of a drawn match). The people at fox are aware how exciting this match was, the incredible build up to the enthralling, timeless partnership between Martyn & Gillespie, and the little appendix at the very end with Sehwag smashing Mutterman McGrath for boundaries everywhere – the fireworks and the muttering! A beautifully appropriate salvo paying respect to the test that by all necessity had to remain inconclusive – it could not find any way to finish.
Fox channel has a much finer awareness of inaction and the away-from-the action. Their crowd shots are often filmic, the scoreboard operator so slowly and with dreadful reluctance pulling down the ‘SACHIN’ panel and replacing it into storage. All that 9 ever gives us is chicks in bikinis. BUT 9 IS FREE! (but but what of the cost to the planet?)