Category Archives: aussies

Jun 18 2013
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Australia’s Mission to Moscow

Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment was not as good as the original, but carried a few of the cast, some decent jokes, and had the recruits out on the streets fighting with Bobcat Goldthwait. Police Academy 7: Mission To Moscow had pretty much nothing at all. It seems that just putting words Police Academy into the title couldn’t recreate any of the magic from the earlier films.

There was a feeling for a while that no matter which XI cricketers you put in the Australian team, it wouldn’t matter. Just having XI players playing for Australia would lift them to a devastating standard of cricket. They’d fight until the end, they’d come together, and they’d do their country proud. It was a myth. Propaganda. Australian hearts aren’t bigger than normal hearts. They don’t pump supernatural sporting blood.

This current team has mortal blood in them. That could not have been highlighted more than when Australia were one wicket down against Sri Lanka, and needed a match-winning partnership and their batsmen were Phillip Hughes and Glenn Maxwell.

Trumper and Hill. Ponsford and Bradman. Simpson and Chappell. Taylor and Boon. Hayden and Ponting. Australia have had some pretty special top orders. Hughes and Maxwell won’t be added to that list.

It is unfair to even mention them near that list. This is just an ODI. And an odd ODI where Australia had to chase the total in 29.1 overs to make the next stage of the tournament. It’s not the normal batting order, and unlike most of the combinations above, it’s not a Test match.

But if you wanted to see how far Australia had fallen, Maxwell running down the wicket like a madman and Hughes batting as though the inside edge was the middle of his bat were a pretty good example.

Hughes averages 44 in first-class cricket, and Maxwell 37. Both respectable for a young opener and a batting allrounder. But they’re not as impressive off paper.

Maxwell clearly has an amazing eye, and some confidence. Maxwell is a man who can flat-bat Lasith Malinga through mid-off for four. Contrary to popular thinking, and even if they were wrong, there is a reason he was a million dollar man in the IPL. But he does swing madly across the line in a way that makes you think he’s perhaps not a batsman, but a bowler with a good eye. The answer to any question in Australian cricket at the moment is Glenn Maxwell, and that is a concern.

The problem is that while Maxwell can make a good 30-odd in quick time, he doesn’t really think his way through innings. He had Sri Lanka hopping, he had them worrying, he’d already scored a boundary in the over against Malinga, he didn’t need to back away and expose his stumps to the one man in cricket who was most likely to hit them.

Hughes’ technique has been repaired more times than Shane Watson. Yet, every time it is repaired it comes back with a new fault. Even with that, it seems his biggest problem is his confidence. No amount of tweaking, coaching or manipulation of his technique can ever bring back the confidence he had when he was a young batsman. I doubt there is a bowler in world cricket who wouldn’t fancy himself with Hughes at the other end.

Hughes is a man who made back-to-back hundreds against Steyn, Ntini and Morkel. And yet faced with a fairly innocuous ball outside off stump he played a shot that could have only resulted in a caught behind, play and miss or, at best, a single to third man.

You could argue that Hughes is a weird pick for the ODI side, but his List A average is 48. You could argue that Maxwell is not an ODI No. 3, but the boy can pinch hit. There are reasons they are there. They’re not blokes Australia found on the street. They’re the best they can find.

The chase of 254 in 29.1 overs was never going to be easy, or even, all that possible.

But it’s not just that they didn’t make it, it’s just that they stopped four wickets down. Their fifth wicket was 11 runs off 27 balls as Mitchell Marsh scratched and Adam Voges consolidated. Only Matthew Wade from that point on made any attempt at the total they needed to make the semis.

Maybe it’s romantic and unrealistic, but it is likely previous Australian sides would have just kept running into the fire. Swinging away wildly. Chasing until there was no hope left. This team either didn’t have that in them, or couldn’t do it.

The main bit of fight they showed was a last wicket partnership that made Sri Lankan fans nervous for a while.

This has been a dodgy start for Australia’s summer in the UK. Their opening batsman is currently suspended. Their one superstar is still injured. They lost two and shared one in this tournament. Their team environment is not great. The only bright spot today was when Ricky Ponting was in their dressing room.

Unfortunately for Australia, Ponting was not coming back, he was just performing a walk on. The old cast aren’t getting back together. The old magic will not be regained. They are stuck with what they have.

The Australia one-day team is currently very close to Police Academy 7. There are a couple of faces you sort of know, and none are the quality of the originals. And just like Police Academy, as the series got worse, the more you saw of George “GW” Bailey, the legendary character actor.

It’s not the players’ fault. Unlike a film series, you can’t simply stop playing sport just because your team isn’t as good as it used to be.

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Feb 23 2013
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Moises Henriques is not the new Keith Miller

The search for the new Shane Warne (Steven Smith, Cameron White) and the new Glenn McGrath (Stuart Clark, Steve Magoffin, Peter George, Josh Hazelwood, Jackson Bird, Trent Copeland) is a recent development. These are merely fads – a modern world looking for quick fixes.

Generation after generation, Australia have been trying to clone another kind of player. A Royal Australian World War II fighter pilot, full back for Victoria, the best thing to ever come out of the suburb Sunshine and Michael Parkinson’s first man crush, Keith Miller.

Australian cricket has never quite found a player since who can bat top order and be a consistent wicket-taking bowler. Not Ricky Ponting bowling, not even Mark Waugh bowling, but a constant bowler who can take two to three wickets a Test, bowl proper spells, while giving them balance, variety and insurance.

Bowlers who can bat a bit have always been around for Australia, and they ruined the art of wicketkeepers who are batsmen. But a batsman who can bowl, really bowl, that is a mostly mythical creature. The cricket gods don’t bowl down many players that can average over 35 with the bat in the top six, and fewer than 35 with the ball while averaging something near two wickets a match.

In recent times, Australia had Steve Waugh, who was handy in good conditions, had a decent bowling average, but took fewer than 100 Test wickets due to many reasons. Michael Bevan tried for a moment, and even had a batting average higher than his bowling average. But his batting average of 29 and the fact he never really wanted to bowl ended with him leaving cricket.

Then there was Shane Watson. A teenage top-order player who could bowl at 145ks. The Australian selectors did well not to pick him at 15. Big things were hoped of Watson, but all those hopes on his broad frame seemed to collapse repeatedly. Currently he is not bowling, but soon he may be bowling again, before an injury that forces him from bowling, that will lead to him to wonder if he will ever bowl again, followed by a bowling stint in the IPL. The person who changes his profile from batsman to allrounder is probably the most tired in cricket.

In the mid 2000s Watson’s body was like the Pakistan top order against the new ball, and so the search moved on. Before he had even played for New South Wales, you could hear whispers or just read articles about Moises Henriques. He was, the next Keith Ross Miller. Henriques bowled a decent pace, was smart enough to captain the Australian Under-19 side. And batted top order.

His second first-class game, when he was still a teenager, he took 5 for 17. It wasn’t whispers any more. The New South Wales media could have talked up Henriques at this point if they were discussing the merits of arm guards. Not that it all went well, like many young allrounders Henriques’ early career was odd. Not bowling and batting at four one game, in at eight and bowling 20 overs in an innings the next.

Mostly he was playing limited-overs cricket. Not often starring, but doing enough as a young man with either bat or ball to grab some attention. If you looked at his career as a series of small highlights, you’d think there was a real player there. The talent was there, even if the consistency and big performances often weren’t.

After nine first-class games, he played limited-overs cricket for Australia. He bowled okay, made no impact with the bat, and was sent back to domestic cricket to develop his game.

Now this is the bit in the superstar’s career where he goes back, fixes his game, and gets picked soon after and by the age of 26 he is a fixture of his national team. Henriques went back, and didn’t really improve. In 39 first-class games he’s taken only one more five-wicket haul. And despite his bowling average of 27, he only takes two wickets a game. Which as a batting allrounder is okay, but his batting average in first-class cricket is 30.

Australia ignored him, but New South Wales persevered.

Dan Christian went. John Hastings went. Ed Cowan went. Peter Forrest went. Phil Hughes went. And even Usman Khawaja went. All young New South Welshmen who left for opportunities, new or more, while Henriques didn’t make a first-class hundred for his state.

First class wise, his batting was rooted in the handy half-century. His bowling seemed to lose all venom as he veered into bowling straight medium deliveries that even club cricketers don’t fear. In List A he became a rare wicket-taker who could be fairly economical. As a batsman he barely made a mark at all.

Outside of Australian domestic cricket, Henriques was famous for being the man who gave us Kieron Pollard at the first Champions League. In his last 12 balls, Pollard faced ten from Henriques. One a wide, and one dot ball, but also the three fours and five sixes that took him from 7 off 7 and left him at 54 off 18. Pollard could not have made any more mess from Henriques if he had a chainsaw and some plastic matting.

That was about the time the hype stopped. Anyone who saw that match, or heard about that match, or even saw the face of someone who watched that match knew that Henriques would take some time to recover. Occasionally he would appear in the IPL or county cricket. It was rarely pretty.

Then this year Henriques was being talked about again. This time it wasn’t as an all-round superstar, no one could make that claim anymore. But they could say that despite his record, and an average of eight with five county matches for Glamorgan in 2012, he finally seemed to be coming of age: improving, understanding his game, becoming a player not a potential.

The best way to prove this was to start the Shield season with 161* against Bird, James Faulkner, Luke Butterworth and even Jason Krejza. He backed that up with three more fifties in his next five games. Bowling wise he didn’t do much work, but still took 14 wickets at 18.

It still took luck. Had Shane Watson planned to bowl, Henriques would probably not have been in India. Had Andrew McDonald been fit, Henriques would probably not been in India. Had Steve Smith or Glenn Maxwell bowled well in the warm-up matches, he would not have been in this side.

The man who was once thrust into Australian colours based purely on potential, now had made it on the back of actual performances and luck. Henriques is now no longer seen as a top-six player. But at No. 7 in his first Test match, he batted like one.

R Ashwin had tortured the Australian top order, but Henriques did not look outgunned. He was solid as rock on the back foot, safe as he needed to be on the front, never allowed himself to get bogged down and put away the bad balls when he had to. It had the composure, discipline and authority that few players younger than 30 have brought to the Australian team in these Argus times.

Even with a dirty low down slog-sweep to end the innings, compared to Usman Khawaja’s headline grabbing 37 and Rob Quiney’s composed 9, Henriques’ innings was a proper Test innings. Those innings were in the safety of home conditions, not in the mysterious subcontinent. If Channel Nine still have the cricket rights next year, someone over there might be making a “68 reasons to love Moises Henriques” poster in a few months time.

Who knows if this is just a lucky one-off from a man who has been given a tour by chance, or the making of proper Australian Test player. It is now clear that Henriques is not the special talent that can join the batting allrounder’s Valhalla.

At this point in Australian cricket, hoping for a Keith Miller would be optimistic. However, they will happily accept any assured away performances from a 26-year old in his first Test. That said, if Henriques does take 5 for 12 in the first innings of this match, the title of the new Keith Miller will be a lot closer.

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Jan 31 2013
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Warne’s Simple Plan

“Cricket is a simple game

.”

Shane Warne, 2013.

No, it really isn’t. It’s probably one of the most complicated games ever invented. It has an infinite amount of strategies involved in it. It combines chess, golf and psychological torture, is physically unnatural and is played on a surface that lives, breathes and changes.

I doubt many people tell Shane Warne he is wrong on matters of cricket. The man is a legend, has the arrogance of 12 heavyweight champions, and over 700 Test wickets to back it up. When it comes to cricket strategy, his brain is a sentient supercomputer.

So when he writes a review of Australian Cricket, you’d be a fool to not at least look at it.

The problem is, Shane Warne is not a super tactician off the field. As he as spent the best part of the past twenty years proving to us.

He’s good, he won the first IPL for Rajasthan with canny captaincy, bargain basement picks and himself as el supremo. But three IPLs and two Big Bashes later, Rajasthan have never been in the final (or even the semi-finals), and the Melbourne Stars have not qualified for the Champions League.

Considering that Warne plays outside the salary cap, the Stars have a $700,000 head start on every other Big Bash team. Forget that it makes the competition fundamentally unfair – even with that advantage the Stars have not set the competition alight.

Of course Warne is not the dictator of these teams. He is however, often the captain, coach, cheerleader, GM and most important person at both teams. If you are a new franchise, and you buy Warne, you are not buying 4 overs of leg spin a match. You are buying a way of cricket.

Warne is much like the charismatic millionaire self-help guru. His plans work for him, and will work for you too. Forgetting that the people that read his suggestions and follow his advice have one fatal flaw. They aren’t Shane Warne.

His review of Australian cricket is nice, and it’s definitely not always wrong, but the Australian team is not a franchise that he can sway by his talent or his personality.

His review can be boiled down into two key points.

1) The people he likes would do a far better job than the current lot.

2) Cricket people with smarts and international experience are the only answer.

The first point is best ignored. Warne is nicer to his friends than any many alive. And him selecting a crew of his old playing or drinking buddies is what he does. It wasn’t that long ago he picked Darren Berry in a list of the best 50 cricketers he ever played with or against. Even as Darren Berry’s biggest fan I find that a big call.

More importantly, every single name Warne has used is a former international cricketer. It’s not an accident. Warne trusts people who have been to the top. He’s not the only one; Justin Langer’s run as batting coach coincided with the Australian batting line up failing at every turn. Now, you can’t just blame him for that, but if it wasn’t Langer in the job, and some computer batting guru, the fans and press would have wanted his head. Instead, Langer was promoted.

Personally I think the best person should get the job, not just the best person who happened to be the most talented 5, 10, 15 years before. A lifetime of watching films has told me that some actors become brilliant directors, and some actors direct stinkers.

But we’re talking cricket here, not film, and definitely not rugby (in Australian cricket the word rugby is now substituted for Pat Howard at all times). Cricket is like nothing else on earth, so only cricket people can get it. People who live, breathe and taste cricket. People with cricket brains.

The cricket brain is a special thing. You only had to see Taylor, Boof or Flem out there at their best to know that an instinctive cricket brain is a majestic dragon that cannot be replicated by computers or research.

So is there a lack of cricket brains in the Australian set up?

Mickey Arthur played 110 first class matches, and averaged 33 with the bat. Players like that only make it if they have pictures of their selector in a compromising position, or are really smart. John Inverarity only played 6 Tests, yet they way people talk about how he went about his cricket, it wouldn’t surprise me if his cricket brain ends up in the National Sporting Museum at the MCG.

Yet they aren’t on Warne’s list. Warne either doesn’t like their cricket brain (his quote about how to select the captains may suggest this), or he thinks they’re doing a bad job.

Have their performances been so bad? Is the Australian team in the hands of the rugby guy, the professor and the overseas coach been so bad that we need an urgent review, two years after the last one?

According to Warne, yes, “The current set up is not working, as the results are showing! What are our world rankings in all forms?”

When the Argus report came out, Australia were ranked 5th in the world with a rating of 100. They are now ranked third in the world with a rating of 117. That’s a direct improvement under the Clarke, Arthur, Inverarity and rugby regime

Not even Warne could say with a straight face that the rankings of ODI and T20 are a proper representation of where you are as a cricket team. Since Argus, Australia has played in one ICC tournament. They lost in the semi-finals to the team that won.

In Tests they’ve been up and down. They drew with New Zealand at home, beat the West Indies away, beat Sri Lanka home and away, beat India at home, drew with South Africa away and pushed them before losing at home. It’s not popping corks time, but it’s not bad for a team in transition.

When the Argus report came out, Australia were ranked 5th in the world with a rating of 100. They are now ranked third in the world with a rating of 117.

That’s a direct improvement under the Clarke, Arthur, Inverarity and rugby regime.

Not that they couldn’t do better, and even be helped by some of Warne’s people. But from the outside, it doesn’t appear like it did two years ago when there was obviously something very wrong with Australian cricket.

Right now it appears like a lot of fairly intelligent cricket people, and one rugby guy, moving Australia forward. They make mistakes, but Stephen Fleming made mistakes too, even if he did it with nonchalant, silky charm.

Cricket brains and ex-players are very important, but they are not the answer to everything. For instance, after 150 years of organised cricket, with the many champions and genius cricket brains that have graced the game, we still don’t have an effective training technique for improving running between the wickets.

If cricket were simple, we may have worked that one out by now.

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Jan 17 2013
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Informed player management with Gideon Haigh

A complete history of Australia’s rotation, resting and informed player management is included in this podcast.

Also how Australia think ODIs are background noise.

There was a bit of Michael Beer’s reocrd this year.

And you know, other recent aussie stuff that Gideon and I bullshitted about.

Listen here.

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Jan 16 2013
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Why it’s always Bryce McGain

I grew up in the People’s Democratic Republic of Victoria. I was indoctrinated early. Dean Jones was better than Viv Richards in Victoria, and had a bigger ego as well. Darren Berry kept wicket with the softest hands and hardest mouth of any keeper I have ever seen. Ian Harvey had alien cricket. Matthew Elliott could score runs with his eyes shut. The first time I saw Dirk Nannes bowl, I felt like Victoria had thawed a smiley caveman. And even though I never saw Slug Jordan play, I enjoyed his sledging for years on the radio.

So my favourite player has to be a Victorian. But my other love is cricket’s dark art, legspin. I wish I knew whether it was being a legspinner that made me love legspin, or seeing a legspinner that made me want to bowl it. Everything in cricket seemed easy to understand when I was a kid, but not legspin. And that’s where I ended up. I’m not a good legspinner, far from it, but I think that any legspinner, even the useless club ones that bowl moon balls, have something special about them.

The first legspinner I ever fell for was Abdul Qadir. I’m not sure how I saw him, or what tour it was, but even before I understood actual legspin, I could see something special about him. His action was theatrical madness and I loved it.

Then the 1992 World Cup came. I was 12, it was in Melbourne (read Australia), and this little pudgy-faced kid was embarrassing the world’s best. I was already a legspinner by then, but Mushie made it cool. This was the age where we were told spinners had no place; it was pace or nothing. Limited-overs cricket was going to take over from Tests, and spinners had no role in it. Mushie made that all look ridiculous as he did his double-arm twirl to propel his killer wrong’uns at groping moustached legends.

By worshipping Mushie I was ahead of the curve, because from then on, in Melbourne, Australia, and eventually England, Shane Warne changed the world. Mushie and Qadir had made legspinning look like it was beyond the realms of understanding, but Warne made it look like something humans could do, even if he wasn’t human himself.

It was through Warne I got to Anil Kumble. He bowled legspin in such an understated way. It was completely different to Warne. His wrist wasn’t his weapon, so he had to use everything else he had. Warne was the Batmobile, Kumble an Audi A4. Anyone could love Warne, his appeal was obvious. But to love Kumble you needed to really get legspin. The legspinner’s leggie.

When I was young, my second favourite was a guy called Craig Howard, who virtually doesn’t exist. Howard was the Victorian legspinner who Warne thought was better than him. To my 13- and 14-year-old eyes, Howard was a demon. His legspin was fast and vicious, but it was his wrong’un that was something special. Mushie and Qadir had obvious wrong’uns, subtle wrong’uns, and invisible wrong’uns. Howard had a throat-punching wrong’un. It didn’t just beat you or make you look silly; it attacked you off a length and flew up at you violently. I’ve never seen another leggie who can do that, but neither could Howard. Through bad management and injury he ended up as an office-working offspinner in Bendigo.

But good things can come from office work. It gave me my favourite cricketer of all time. A person who for much of his 20s was a struggling club cricketer no one believed in. But he believed. Even as he played 2nds cricket, moved clubs, worked in IT for a bank, something about this man made him continue. A broken marriage and shared custody of his son. His day job had him moving his way up the chain. The fact that no one wanted him for higher honours. His age. Cameron White’s legspin flirtation. And eventually the Victorian selectors, who didn’t believe that picking a man over 30 was a good policy.

Through all that, Bryce McGain continued to believe he was good enough. Through most of it, he probably wasn’t. He was a club spinner.

Bryce refused to believe that, and using the TV slow-mo and super-long-lens close-ups for teachers, he stayed sober, learnt from every spinner he could and forced himself to be better. He refused to just be mediocre, because Bryce had a dream. It’s a dream that every one one of us has had. The difference is, we don’t believe, we don’t hang in, we don’t improve, and we end up just moving on.

Bryce refused.

The world would be a better place if more people saw McGain as a hero and not a failure. He just wanted to fulfil his dream, and that he did against all odds is perhaps one of the great cricket stories of all time

At 32 he was given a brief chance before Victoria put him back in club cricket. Surely that was his last chance. But Bryce refused to believe that. And at the age of 35 he began his first full season as Victoria’s spinner. It was an amazing year for Australian spin. It was the first summer without Warne.

Almost as a joke, and because I loved his story, I started writing on my newly formed blog that McGain should be playing for Australia. He made it easy by continually getting wickets, and then even Terry Jenner paid attention. To us legspinners, Jenner is Angelo Dundee, and his word, McGain’s form and the circumstances meant that Bryce suddenly became the person most likely.

Stuart MacGill was finished, Brad Hogg wanted out, and Beau Casson was too gentle. Bryce was ready at the age of 36 to be his country’s first-choice spinner. Then something happened. It was reported in the least possibly dramatic way ever. McGain had a bad shoulder, the reports said. He may miss a warm-up game.

No, he missed more than that. He missed months. As White, Jason Krezja, Nathan Hauritz and even Marcus North played before him as Australia’s spinners. This shoulder problem wouldn’t go away. And although Bryce’s body hadn’t had the workload of the professional spinners, bowling so much at his advanced age had perhaps been too much for him. He had only one match to prove he was fit enough for a tour to South Africa. He took a messy five-for against South Australia and was picked for South Africa. He didn’t fly with the rest of the players, though, as he missed his flight. Nothing was ever easy for Bryce.

His second first-class match in six months was a tour match where the South African A team attacked Bryce mercilessly. Perhaps it was a plan sent down by the main management, or perhaps they just sensed he wasn’t right, but it wasn’t pretty. North played as the spinner in the first two Tests. For the third Test, North got sick, and it would have seemed like the first bit of good fortune to come to Bryce since he hurt his shoulder.

At the age of 36, Bryce made his debut for Australia. It was a dream come true for a man who never stopped believing. It was one of us playing Test cricket for his country. It was seen as a joke by many, but even the cynics had to marvel at how this office worker made it to the baggy green.

I missed the Test live as I was on holidays and proposing to my now-wife. I’m glad I missed it. Sure, I’d wanted Bryce to fulfill his dream as much as I’d wanted to fulfill most of mine, but I wouldn’t have liked to see what happened to him live. South Africa clearly saw a damaged player thrown their way and feasted on him. His figures were heartbreaking: 0 for 149. Some called it the worst debut in history.

I contacted him after it, and Bryce was amazingly upbeat. He’d make it back, according to him. He was talking nonsense. There was no way back for him. Australia wouldn’t care that his shoulder wasn’t right; he couldn’t handle the pressure. His body, mind and confidence had cracked under pressure. He was roadkill.

But Bryce wouldn’t see it that way, and that’s why he’s my favourite cricketer. I wasn’t there for all the times no one believed in him, for all those times his dream was so far away and life was in his way. But I was there now, at what was obviously the end. Bryce McGain saw the darkness but refused to enter it. That’s special. That is how you achieve your dreams when everything is against you.

Before I moved to London to embark on my cricket-writing career, I met Bryce for a lunch interview. It was my first interview with a cricketer. We were just two former office workers who had escaped. At this stage Casson had been preferred over him for the tour to the West Indies. In the Shield final, Bryce’s spinning finger had opened up after a swim in the ocean. He was outbowled by Casson and the selectors didn’t take him. Surely this was it. Why would anyone pick a 36-year-old who had been below his best in his most important game?

Bryce knew he may have blown it. But he still believed, of course. We were just two former office workers with dreams. Two guys talking about legspin. Two guys just talking shit and hoping things would work out.

At the time it was just cool to have lunch with this guy I admired, but now I look back and know I had lunch with the player who would become my favourite cricketer of all time.

The world would be a better place if more people saw McGain as a hero and not a failure. Shane Warne was dropped on this planet to be a god. Bryce McGain just wanted to fulfil his dream, and that he did against all odds is perhaps one of the great cricket stories of all time.

Bryce is one of us, the one who couldn’t give up.

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Jan 09 2013
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when i sat on a digital cricket couch

Subash from the cricket couch has a bit of a crush on me.

It’s kind of sweet, really.

This is my 4th time on his podcast, and considering Rahul Dravid has only been on once, you can see where he places me in the pantheon of cricket royalty.

To listen to the podcast, click here.

It mostly goes like this,

“Subash Jayaraman– Hello and Welcome to Couch Talk. Today’s guest is Jarrod Kimber of Cricket with Balls, Two Chucks and Cricinfo. We will be talking about the over all performance of the Australian team in 2012, the big retirements and the promising debuts, the enigma that is Shane Watson and look ahead what seems to be quite a busy year in 2013.
Welcome to the show, Jarrod.

Jarrod Kimber- Thank you very much.

SJ- This is your 4th time on Couch Talk. I’ve asked Channel Nine to make a commemorative mug that Mark Taylor will be plugging during the Commonwealth Bank ODI series.

JK- The BullShitter. “Available in a special print of only 10844.” Every one of them will have a piece of my DNA, but you won’t know which piece.”

Read the full transcript here.

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Jan 04 2013
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Cowan’s 7.3 seconds of pain

In 7.3 seconds Ed Cowan went from intelligent cricketer and author to a cricketing dunce.

Cowan’s a man who can read, and understand books. He likes the West Wing. Quotes from Charles Darwin. And he pressed keys on a laptop to make an actual book appear.

That brain has served him well in cricket.

Cowan also works really hard. There are several more talented batsmen playing in Shield cricket who would be where Cowan is if they had his work ethic and desire.

This combination has been used to plan, implement and refine a career that really should have been over in his mid 20s. Anyone who bought his book will know the effort he puts into his cricket, whether in training and preparing, and just how much time he spends analysing himself. And over analysing. He wasn’t suddenly picked because of a mass of talent, but rather working hard, and thinking more critically about himself as a cricketer than most people can, or would feel comfortable doing.

Sometimes, by his own admission, his brain gets the best of him.

There are times during his more onerous innings when he almost stops batting. You can see it in his face, or, if you are at the ground, sense it via the scoreboard. He’ll bat himself into some depressing cave of doubt, and suddenly the smile happy Ed is replaced by a Cowan face of intense worry and too many thoughts. Instead of playing each ball as it comes, you can almost see him trying to second-guess what the bowler is thinking. He becomes Mr Theory, and his progress, and the team’s, slows down as he bats against himself.

You get the feeling on occasion that he actually has to tell himself to stop thinking too much. It’s why Brett Geeves once referred to him as the Woody Allen of cricket. Which is unfair, and untrue, he’s much more Jim Jarmusch.

At the moment he is using his brain to overcome his problem of slightly over balancing when playing the straightening ball. It’s a common flaw in even the best left-handers. He’s spent hours with coaches and analysts to make sure he isn’t an LBW candidate for a canny seamer.

Thinking and working, what has made an NSWales reject an Australian opener. It’s also those things that have made Cowan a hit with many fans and writers in spite of being a turgid plodder in these slap happy T20 times.

To win over any Australian fans the way Cowan plays is a big achievement. Australians don’t do defensive minded batsmen. I’ve never been at an Australian cricket game where someone didn’t shout “get on with it” at least once an hour with at least one expletive added in. And I’ve often felt a brain used outside of cricket is often a superfluous requirement in Australian cricket.

The reason Cowan is in the side is because he’s the opening batsman Australia need right now. The batting line up, even when it had six proper batsmen and legends in certain positions, has been misfiring since 2009. Batsmen who are prone to waft outside off stump or plant their foot in a macho style, were simply not getting the job done when it was needed.

In this current squad Phil Hughes is, according to the selectors, not mentally strong enough to take on the South Africans. Despite a decent current average, Dave Warner’s technique and temperament style will mean many cheap outs. Wade is an unpolished street fighter. Michael Clarke’s magic super voodoo form may not last forever. Mike Hussey is no more. It’s possible that Shane Watson’s Test career is over. And Usman Khawaja may not be a top order player, or even an Australian player.

So Cowan is needed.

But Australia don’t need a batsmen who is stuck averaging in the mid 30s. Not even ones who can bat on grassy knolls and survive cracked up 5th day wickets.

His sins, in what should have been two simple runs, include:

A yawn of a back up.
Running the first one at skipping pace.
A vision impaired turn treacle turn.
Hesitating like Satchel Paige.
Not screaming “no” like he saw a wolfman.

That is a lot of mistakes to cram into less than ten seconds. And every easy cover drive, or ball clipped off the pads from Hughes and Warner would make those seconds on rotation in Cowan’s head.

If Ed Cowan goes on to be the Test player he and the Australian team believe he can be, this is just a funny chapter in his unghosted autobiography “Op Ed – tales of a hirsute leaver”. If not. It’ll be a far darker introspective chapter full of self-loathing.

The selectors believe Ed Cowan is their man, and Cowan believes it too, but he is a man who has to be at the top of his game at all times just to survive at Test level. He can’t afford too many more 7.3 seconds of lazy stupidity.

Cowan knows that. And his batting diary probably says something similar.

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Dec 28 2012
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Brett Lee’s tongue problem

If you want women, fame and money, it’s probably better to be a cricketer than a cricket administrator.

If you want job security, business cards and the ability to wield power over people who are better looking and more athletic than you, cricket administration is a good gig.

You might think being one of the fastest bowlers on earth with an album, Bollywood career and breakfast cereal sponsorship is enough give you some special treatment from your employers in the twilight of your impressive Australian career.

Instead Brett Lee has been charged with unbecoming behavior and detrimental public comments when speaking about a CEO of a state organization that is hemorrhaging Test players has been a non-entity in the ultimate domestic tournament and currently has the two last placed teams in the Big Bash.

It is just the latest in a long line of Cricket Australia stamping down on players and coaches saying what they feel. Simon Katich wasn’t allowed to talk about why he believed he was dropped. Darren Lehmann was charged by Cricket Australia for criticising the legality of a bowling action that the ICC has deemed illegal on occasions.

And now Lee is alleged to have breached Rule 6: Unbecoming Behaviour and Rule 9: Detrimental Public Comment of the Code of Behaviour regarding comments about Cricket New South Wales and its Chief Executive Officer Dave Gilbert.

“Rule 6 states: Without limiting any other rule, players and officials must not at any time engage in behaviour unbecoming to a representative player or official that could (a) bring them or the game of game into disrepute or (b) be harmful to the interests of cricket.

Rule 9 states: Without limiting any other rule, player and official must not make public or media comment which is detrimental to the interest of the game. “

Cricket Australia would save their staff a lot of time if they could convince their players to cut their tongues out like Kakihara did in Ichi the Killer. The problem is, Kakihara only slices off his own tongue when he was wrong.

Convincing Brett Lee he is wrong could be a tough thing to do.

Lee has said that the CEO of an underperforming state should be fired, and for Dave Gilbert that is detrimental. Ofcourse, Dave Gilbert had fired Anthony Stuart, which I suppose for Anthony Stuart was detrimental. And it was Gilbert who had hired Stuart, which was detrimental to Cricket New South Wales. Cricket New South Wales being an embarrassing mess who struggled to win games or keep their Test players could also be seen as detrimental.

The person who hired the wrong man and then fired him mid way through the season is ok, but the one guy has been fired, and the other has to defend his words.

Has Lee brought the game into disrepute, or has he merely pointed out that Dave Gilbert had already brought Cricket New South Wales disrepute? Lee just put a name to the bad practices that have produced bad results. Gilbert is a big boy, with a decent wage, and he can find a microphone to defend himself when he needs too.

And let us be honest, being that, and this is tough for a Victorian to say, New South Wales is the most important state for finding Australian players, the way CNSW have been performing over recent seasons is being directly detrimental to Australian cricket. And their CEO should be fined for that, no?

Ofcourse not, I’m being silly. Having a poor record is not detrimental, having someone pointing it out is.

There’s something properly wrong with CNSW at the moment. It shouldn’t be a crime to say so. Perhaps instead metaphorically cutting the tongues of anyone who says anything off the CA propaganda script, more time should be spent on ensure that cricket in New South Wales is returned to it’s former arrogant glory.

It’s a great job being a cricket player, but it’s probably less enjoyable doing it while constantly gagged.

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Dec 06 2012
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Honest John: and how Rob Quiney was used as a human shield

After the Andrew Hilditch years, there is something nice and warm about John Inverarity’s honesty. Even when you don’t agree with his take on things.

It’s hard to agree when he says that Phil Hughes was hidden from the mighty South African attack, and yet is still strong enough to bat at No. 3 for Australia. That seems like a contradictory message, and one that will be sorely tested if Hughes (caught Guptil, bowled Martin) does make runs against Sri Lanka and ends up on tours of India and England.

If Hughes needs Quiney to be his human shield against a class opposition, then will three Tests against a poorer attack that he has dominated before really change anything?

It’s as important to be mentally tough and believe in yourself to bat at No. 3 as it is to be really good at batting. And if you have to hide Hughes, then perhaps the position is not for him. Hughes is not even a No. 3; he’d be a makeshift No. 3 replacing another makeshift No. 3.

Perhaps Hughes is being used as a Sri Lankan specialist, or even as a human shield for an even tinier technically flawed run making batsmen. It could be Australia’s own Russian doll style number three system.

It’s also possible, and slightly less likely, that Michael Clarke could move himself up the order. Michael Hussey, as a former opening batsman might be the better option. What better way for Hussey, in his last years as an Australia player, to serve his country than as a human shield by taking over the most difficult role and allow some of these more fragile souls to develop their skills batting at five or six, before moving up to three when they are ready?

No. 3 is not a place to build your confidence, it’s a place you make work with confidence.

With Quiney not taking his chance and already seemingly out of favour, and Alex Doolan talking up everyone other than himself, it seems that Australia are back to Hughes and Usman Khawaja for now. But even the Australian selectors don’t believe Hughes is ready for real challenges, and Khawaja is still not in the side.

It was only a few months ago when Inverarity used all his headmaster skills to sit the two errant boys in the corner and not play them for Australia A. It was a brilliant move, as neither deserved to be picked for Australia A at the time. Both had played horrendous summers for men of their talent, and deserved to be punished for it. So Inverarity, with his honesty, made them earn their places rather than take the easy rides they had received earlier in their careers.

And looks what has come of it, form and hunger.

Selectors aren’t perfect, even Inverarity the saintly grandfather of Australian cricket is going to make mistakes. This past week he probably made some with his entirely new bowling attack. But getting Hughes and Khawaja back in form was a massive effort from him.

Khawaja has just given away a start against an underwhelming Sri Lanka. While he’d probably like to rectify that in the second innings, he won’t be able to as the Big Bash League comes first when it comes to Cricket Australia’s priorities at the moment, and Khawaja forcing his way back into the Test side is apparently not as important as him representing whichever Sydney franchise he plays for.

As if being a selector who uses honesty isn’t hard enough, Inverarvity has to do his job around a vacuous vacuum of a tournament that is trying to use his future charges for publicity purposes. It’s still not as hard as actually batting at No. 3 though.

As Quiney, Marsh and Watson will tell you.

Luckily for Quiney, Inverarity thinks he’s a wonderful person. Personally I’d rather be a whiny asshole who plays more than two tests and isn’t used to stop bullets from hitting Phil Hughes.

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Dec 04 2012
10 Comments
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Generation Ricky

My own emotional development as an adult seems to run parallel with Ricky Ponting’s career. As he was the cricketer who took me from my teens into my 30s. When he started playing in the sickly green of Tasmania, I was just a gorky teenager, when he walked off the WACA for the last time, I was holding my newborn son in my arms.

He was, for better or worse, the player of my generation. The player who was always there as a young kid or an old bloke. The one who’s game I knew as well as the Marge versus the Monorail episode of the simpsons or the Epping Train line I grew up on. I obsessed over Ponting’s batting like you do when you’re a teenager. I told my friends he would became a great number three for Australia. I tried to bat like him. I supported him when he played against Australia for Australia A. He was Tricky Ricky to me and my friends, and we all waited impatiently for him to become a great.

Most Australians guys of my age wanted to be Steve Waugh. Yet most of them were more like Ponting. Quick to anger, slow to mature, unforgiving, prickly, uncomplicated, aggressive and honest.

So honest that his face would tell you everything you wanted to know. A Ponting press conference was often redundant, a series of close ups throughout the day had given you everything you needed to know. Ponting gave great face from the time he was a cocky young kid who was one of the last to give up the helmet, until he walked out onto the WACA trying to pretend it was business as usual to bat one more time.

As a batsman, and fielder, Ricky was something I just instantly fell for.

His batting was also easy to read. His shots were crisp and final. The ball was delivered, the ball was hit. The only time his batting looked fussy was when he spent time playing with the pitch. The delicate way he could pick off some loose bit of grass that only he could see. That double hand slaps he would give at anything that had floated onto his surface. Or the double tap at the pitch he would do with his right hand. His fielding was just as final as his batting, everything he did was final and clean, and often brilliant. In the field he also had the spit in the hands followed by a deep rub together, like his saliva was somehow more adhesive than everyone elses. And considering his fielding, maybe it is.

That’s what you notice when you see a guy as a young man, and you follow him until he becomes an old man. You don’t get what with a player you first saw when you were 8, or 28. It’s different then.

I was old enough to get cricket when Ricky came around, and once he came around, I knew this was a player for me. Forget that his drives looked like gut punches and his pull shots were balletic artistry. It was what his batting stood for. Ponting didn’t bat for records, milestones or adulation, he batted to win.
The great batsmen are often selfish creatures who would run out their children if it meant they get to continue doing what they do best. That wasn’t Ricky, when people talk about him being an all time great, and comparing him to Lara, Tendulkar or Kallis, if it’s done purely on stats he can’t compete. Lara batted for the adulation of the masses, Kallis because it’s what he does and Sachin Tendulkar just bats because he loves batting. Their batting selfishness is what makes them great players.

Ponting bats like a team player. His style was closer to self-immolation than selfishness. If Ponting had to play a big shot to get things going, then he played it. It was simple, and very Ponting like. The team comes first, second and third, so that the team only comes first.

Kallis moved down the order to number four, and Tendulkar never moved to three, they did it because it would produce more runs for them. Four is an easier position to bat. Lara stayed at number three because that is the ego seat. Ponting stayed at three, for as long as his skills allowed it, because at three he had the most say in the game. That is why he batted.

Every time Ponting entered the field he had had to control the game. He made to move it forward, he had to make sure his team were in a better position than they were before, he had to win.

All professional athletes like to win. Most love to win. But for players like Ponting, it was almost a sickness. At it’s best it drove him to be one of the best batsmen of a generation, and one of his greatest cricketers. A hard nosed professional with the skills of a champion and the fight of a battler. At it’s worst he made him a sulky brat who couldn’t understand why he ever had to go through losing.
Winning and losing also define him far more than the other greats. No one ever blames Kallis for South Africa’s underachievements. Ponting won more Tests than any other human being, but by the end it was the losses that defined him.
In batting he channeled all that rage to become a great. In captaincy the rage ate him up and he became a bore.

As a captain I never liked Ponting.

Captains are like politicians, you either intrinsically feel like they’re right for you, or you don’t. And I spent years moaning or mocking Ponting as captain. I moaned as 13th men annoying him in the Ashes, misuse of bowlers, the team Australia bubble, his part in the Monkeygate Test, and when he almost had a mental breakdown in the middle of the MCG during his last Test as captain when he thought he could see the hotspot mark from 120 metres better than an umpire staring at a screen inches from his face. I’ve called him the hairy-armed troll, been so angry at him I could have broken a changeroom TV and hurled abuse at him from beyond boundaries in 3 continents.

Our one sided relationship was never at its best when he was captain, only when he was batting.

Yet in the wider world the angrier and grumpier Ponting got, the more iconic he became. A hero and leader under pressure to those at home, a villain and bully to those away. A very Australian cricketer.

Ponting could have played on, even with his bad form, the selectors may have given him a Test against Sri Lanka to prove himself just because of who he is. And against a failing one-man attack like Sri Lanka, he might have made enough runs to make it to India, his batting Hades. But he seemed to know that he just wasn’t good enough to help Australia win matches anymore. And that would have been worse to him than knowing his skills were on the wane.

Ponting announced his retirement the day my son was born. While my wife was in agony, I was thinking about how I would explain an entire lifetime of living with Ricky to him.

I’d definitely tell him about his scratchy 88 batting at number three against Courtney and Curtly, every detail of being at the Wanderers for the 03 final, the last over of a List A game I saw him get smashed for 21 runs, that he everyone said he was a good footy player, that he once was the face of Milk in Tasmania, watching him make a half century in his first Test knock at the G, the 257 he produced there years later and the many fuck you hundreds he made when he was at his most angry at the world. But mostly I’ll tell him that despite how I loved Ricky as a batsman, and hated him as a captain, that he was the player I grew up with.

Not my favourite, but the player that was always there. And when my son gets bored of me going on about this old cricketer he’s never seen, I’ll just play him a collection of his pullshots that I’ve found on the internet.

Every generation has their own players, and while I may prefer Trumper, O’Reilly or Harvey, Ponting is mine. To me his batting says more about Australia than the flag, national anthem, Australia day or even the baggy green.

Ponting is the Australia I grew up in. But it’s now just a memory that an old man will tell a young boy.

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