Tag Archives: time

lacuna

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weve put together a series of measures to ensure that those people who want to watch the cricket are not disrupted by those who are simply there to have a good time …

imagined or predicted tests

the version of the epic of gilgamesh clara reads with modern loves full of lacuna

ands made up from all sorts of tablets giving versions of the text

the repeating lines with a word changed here and there have thick action

thiss countered by continual sudden moments of nothing no tablets complete and all tablets together are incomplete …

giving lacuna

edgbaston was full of lacuna already all cricket moves with the thick action of repetition for all broadcast matches this thicknesss multiplied by replay technology

it rained a lot on the 1st day

it rained all day saturday

[it rained] a lot on the 1st day

it rained all day saturday …

it rained alot on the 1st day …

it rained all day saturday

clara was …

clara was on the go monday

q ask me what i think of ponting

a dunno ve never ponted

keys

we ricky pont

we ricky ponted

we ricky ponting

when theres a lacuna in a test match only times lost no action

no actions lost only potential quantity of action small pieces of actionre missing from the epic of gilgamesh but mostly times not lost its taken up by the accumulation of versions …

imagined or predicted test action could be substituted for …

during lacuna clara likes to insert appropriate segments of play from past concurrent and imagined or predicted tests despite the interruption upon the taking of the field we ricky ponting find the situation of play has moved on [accordingly] …

despite the interruption…

upon the taking of the field we ricky ponting find the situation of play has moved on accordingly weve put together a series of measures to ensure that those people who want to watch the cricket are not disrupted by those who are simply there to have a good time

timesnt good or bad but occupied

ask me what i think of clarkeing

dunnove never clarked

waca 2 v adelaide v

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the lead up to the commencement of todays play felt hauntingly similar to the lead up to the 5th day at adelaide. australia needed wkts quick, one or two big partnerships could take the game away from them. at 11.43am on day 5 in adelaide strauss was given out caught at short leg and an english collapse ensued. replays showed that strauss had been hard done by, the ball coming straight off the pad with no involvement from the bat. at 11.43am in perth today strauss was given out caught behind. there was certainly a sound like ball hitting bat but replays showed that the two never met. from this point on england struggled.

in cricket time is never continuous. segments of time repeat themselves or appear out of sequence. many remember before the historic ashes series in 05 that mcgrath predicted a 5-0 result to australia. mcgrath predicted the same result previous to this series. there have been those who have laughed at for his tired prophetic attempts. but there is another possibility. in fact mcgrath only ever predicted the 5-0 result for the current ashes series. the moment of the prediction entered a purely cricket appropriate slippage and appeared prior to the 05 series. 05 5-0 is purely an error of memory. when the prediciton was repeated prior to the current series it was in fact being stated for the first time, the originary moment. 05 5-0 was one of those replays where for a moment you think you’re watching the live action and your heart feeling that a wkt has fallen enters your mouth for a moment .

takeshi kitano once made a film about baseball called boiling point (in english language world release anyway – in japanese release its called 3-4x 10 gatsu, which is something like the 3rd and 4th of october). discontinuity of time and narrative in this film is audaciously played out. film critic casio abe in his book takeshi kitano v beat takeshi discusses the films construction in terms of a theory of baseball. a distribution of characters and situations. at a very simple level a theory of cricket would seem to posit similar ideas. cricket is of course far more complex than baseball. kitano’s film i think is far more complex than baseball and in fact it is likely he uses baseball only as a culturally recognisable tool. if he had suggested a film about cricket it would have been far too obscure for any japanese production house. through this work kitano makes baseball into cricket.

pietersens range continues to expand wildly – rain god, new planet, anime fighter pilot… degas subject – the way he trips down the wkt and pirouettes v mcgrath.

mcgarth

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my loyal readers you may remember a scoop that was broken by one of my superlowkey cricket infiltrators back in 05 regarding glenn mcgrath and the transformation he was preparing himself to undergo immediately the right moment arrived. Further research into this unusual, perhaps slightly unreasonable, tactic of mcgraths reveals that it is not a new strategy, but in fact a process that has been going on since the beginning of time. As in the contemporary moment we await the morphing of glenn mcgrath into glinn mcgrith, there was a historical moment in which another cricketer passed into the mcgrath state. And before that a whole metempsychotic series of precedents to what is most easily referred to as glenn mcgrath. There is a character in popular japanese mythology known as gankutsuou, or the king of the caves. This figure is the immortal energy of purified revenge that embodies itself in chosen beings unleashing series of vengeful action. When gankutsuou leaves the cave & possesses its next fast bowler everything becomes vast & the rhythms of the cloud shapes are made significant by its power.

before glenn mcgrath there was garth mckenzie. if the anagrammatic closeness of the names and the matching smile lines around the eyes are not fully convincing, documentary evidence exists in which passers-by declare themselves to have witnessed the moment gankutsuou inhabited the garth. This line appears in garths player profile – nothing seemed to ruffle him, although when stirred he [was] possessed [by] a wicked bouncer.

adelaide oval forever – day 1

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after seemingly endless sleepless nights anticipating the return of test match cricket to the tv screen the adelaide test commenced amidst a discourse on tradition and scoreboards that never change the 3 old stands at the oval are the exact same stands as when richie benaud first played there in 1650 though he conceeds they may have a few spots of new paint on them. this kind of talk always steeps that adelaide oval test in tones of sentimentality. upon the traditional cricket ground a traditional test match is being played. england are off to a sedate start. in delightful contrast (benaud) to the unchanging stands are the subtle and infinite variations of warne and stuart clark.

you can get it dreamin

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the long sleep between ashes series (from one day to the next) goes on soundly. there a slight stirrings, and there are dreams: of encounters with dream teams that crumble in a heap; vivid dreams set in pakistan full of hi jinx and subterfuge and with glorious endings; of golden dream boys dropped from the team; of brett lee shopping or singing; of a one day series in new zealand that defies even the logic of dreams with its frenetic nightmarish movement; of a batsman who can never be dismissed; and the greatest dream of all, an immense figure from the past returning to haunt the cricket world with a new prominence.

urn malley, like his fellow dreamers, searches for the fragments of time that have entered the dreams from the future. he looks for the patterns & associations that his sleeping mind discerns out of his compacted past, and sees the next ashes series playing itself out already

night night

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After months of nights of going to bed when there was still hope or when all hope was gone. Months of waking in the morning to discover just how fickle cricket is. All hope dashed or resurfacing. Now there is an 18 month night to endure. All there is to hope for is good dreams. Resurgences of forms from the day in strange series and aberrant patterns. Ha, things won’t be so different.

the decider

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Before the test commenced, after the sepia toned slow motion replays of agonised cricketers’ faces and cricketers’ faces laden joy, Dean Jones called it the grand final of all test matches in the last 100 years. Last night as Hayden (if that’s who it was out there, playing with all the patient care in the world) and Langer worked so diligently away at giving Australia the platform they have not had all series, it was fitting cricket for the occassion. Time stretches so frikkin thin. Every moment is filled with a massive expectation that something, dreadful or wonderful, will occur. Yet the ball by ball commentary goes on like this:

x.1 nothing happens

x.2 nothing happens

x.3 nothing happens

x.4 nothing happens

x.5 nothing happens

x.6 nothing happens

y.1 nothing happnes

y.2 nothing much happens

y.3 nothing happens

y.4 nothing happens

y.5 nothing happens

y.6 nothing happens

z.1 nothing happens

z.2 Langer sends the ball deep into the vast skies

z.3 Langer sends the ball deep into the vast skies

z.4 nothing happens

z.5 nothing happens

z.6 nothing happens

The crowd is silent or bubbles away or is singing tunes from all across time; hymns, yellow submarine, or original compositions whose repetition is wonderfully appropriate to cricket, birds or pop music with their incessant refrains:

barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army …

There is the occasional beat of leather on willow. Strangled shouts and shouts.

Over it the commentators riff, each with their own particular phrasing of popular cliches. Jazz interpreters. Benaud is a traditionalist, his phrases are well metered, clean and delivered with a calm conventional purity. Grieg on the other hand stutters away, repeats bars, gets stuck on the end of a sentence, halts, and goes again – he’s like Sonny Rollins trying to work his way from one phrase to the next or if he’s getting excited perhaps he sounds more like Coltrane cracking his phrases into pieces. Mark Nicholas delivers slogans. His air time is sparsely populated but with epigrammatic gems, short crystals of sound delivered with a powerful confidence. Each is a pefectly formulated hook that you may expect to enter into a sequence of repetitions and variations but is then followed only by air time. Until the next crystal forms.

Concurrent with the cricket, on channel 10, there was a football final being played. Football is one huge event compacted into 100 or so minutes. There is little demarcation within this event. It rarely ceases happening. Time is one great mass. The crowd is wild noise, the commenators don’t even breathe. The test match is also a singular event. But it is stretched out over 5 days. Time is stretched so frikkin thin. And it is heavily, distinctly divided. Ball by ball. Non event after non event, from time to time there is a minor happening or even a drama – the game turns on all of these. Flintoff comes on to bowl and my organs are so widely distributed that I can feel a small patch of sweet residual Russian Autumn sunlight on the left side of my heart. Living a test match like this the involved cricket viewer is thinly dispersed. Perhaps never to recover – how am I to recollect myself after the Ashes? I am no phoenix.

the golden pigeon

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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.