And he is. Forrest couldn’t cut it at NSW. He had a great start, played for Australia A and was talked about as a potential future player for Australia before he slipped off the radar. Eventually he struggled to even hold a place with NSW.

At some states, a player with his obvious talent might have been given more time, but you don’t get long at NSW. You’re either the next big thing, comfortable being a well loved but underused back up, or you’re out.

In his book, Eddie Cowan refers to the superstar culture there. No other state looks for the next big thing more than NSW, and it means that quality cricketers in average form can be overlooked for a 17-year-old potential once-in-a-generation player. To put it as bluntly as Malcolm Conn might, and slightly misquote the band TISM, “If you’re not famous at 20, you’re finished”.

In recent years Australia has called up John Hastings, Dan Christian, Eddie Cowan, Jason Krejza and even Nathan Lyon. All are NSW rejects. All went through the system there in one way or another. Christian, Cowan and Krejza even played for NSW, before moving to another state. But all were only picked for Australia when they were performing for their new states.

I love it when random bowlers come on for a tactical reason. No one can hide their smile when watching Graham Gooch bowl, and angels giggle through giddy excitement every time Sachin bowls his off and legspin. It’s fun and different, and makes cricket at any level feel like it’s being played in a park.

But it feels like enforced fun gone wrong when in the last eight overs before the new ball anyone is thrown the ball and told they just have to get through their over’s as quickly as possible so the real cricket can resume.

Before I squealed like a pig

We had a real identity crisis in Australia. Fun-time-happy-internet-vodcasters (or as one journalist called it, five minute piss-artists) one minute. Serious-film-makers-trying-to-get-to-the-truth the next.

Some odd stuff happened to us, which included Sam asking Jason Donavan for parking advice, but the Dean Jones / Ravi Shastri cross over was certainly up there.

Inevitably it was all India’s fault. For some reason the Indian TV channel NDTV befriended us in Australia; Jaideep and Amitoj were their two main dudes on tour, and when they weren’t putting Dean Jones in a silly costume, they were hanging around with us. So it was always a natural fit for Hansie, our Two Chuck mascot (who is fighting for a writer’s credit for the film) to appear on NDTV with Professor Deano. We were happy to do it, because Sam and I are natural media whores and we love it when Hansie gets on TV.

The problem was we only had half an hour before we had to do a key interview for the film with Ravi Shastri.

The ever-bullish “Professor Deano”, as he made everyone call him when he was dressed up, didn’t see this as the problem it quickly became when Australian women’s all rounder Ellyse Perry was spotted nearby. Before she knew what was happening she was added to the casting and it was Professor Deano, Ellyse Perry and Hansie.  Just when things couldn’t get any weirder, we were all kicked out of the ground to shoot outside.

Now we were running around the outside of the SCG looking for a background that looked like the outback. I’m not sure why. I was trying not to think too much about it, in my mind I was preparing for Shastri. But I couldn’t do that, as I had to hold Professor Deano’s Cricket Australia ID instead.

The small segment consisted of Professor Deano interviewing Hansie and Ellyse before forcing the two of them to play a weird game of cricket which ended with a piece of wood flying around dangerously as Professor Deano screeched into a microphone. It made little sense to anyone watching it, but I am sure NDTV edited it into something special.

Free at last, Sam, Hansie and I ran off into the ground, Sam to the press box to fetch Shastri, and me to got ready with the crew before going to face to face with Shastri again.

A few months earlier we had interviewed him for a podcast on Cricinfo, and it wasn’t always pleasant. This time he was standing in front of me.  And when Shastri stands in front of you, he really stands over you. The man is just big, with a voice like a foghorn, making you feel like you’re standing in front of an impatient transformer.

Even his soundcheck was loud and bombastic.

Halfway through the interview I think Shastri remembered he didn’t like me.  Suddenly he was so close it felt like he was suddenly on top of me. “Do you have a problem with that?”. As I squealed nervously I looked around for support. Anthony (Aka AK, TK, A-Kor, Manthony, TK-Maxx) our cinematographer, isn’t stupid – he’d taken several steps back.

Perhaps it was just to fit the imposing figure in the frame, or perhaps it was because when Shastri says what he means, you need serious space between you and him.

It’s a shame he hadn’t been on our NDTV shoot, I think he would have really enjoyed that.

Give so that we may annoy more Test legends.

Instead here is a video of Ricky Ponting with Ben Affleck hair and his goatee.

Every time I see him on the Australian team sheet I think it’s a weakened team. And it goes back farther than that, when he played for Victoria in the old days I felt the same way.

For years I’d be one of seven people in the G watching him for Victoria and telling the other six people that I didn’t rate him. Only for one of them to point out that he’d taken 4 for 60.

I should love Clint McKay. I should talk him up in random conversations and wear a t-shirt that just has his face on it. Clint McKay grew up 15 minutes from where I did. We should share a Northern Suburbs of Melbourne bond.

Instead of complaining about him I should be worshipping his head-swaying run-up, fetishizing his good lengths and eagerly anticipating his back of the hand slower ball.

A friend of mine had heard McKay might be their team’s overseas player and wanted to know about him. All I had for them was that he was tall and had a good slower ball. I could give them no more information of a guy who I’ve seen bowl probably 40 times.

To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen McKay not take wickets. But somehow I never seem to remember how he took them. They just appear over and over again.

He’s just one of those bowlers who takes wickets. In 18 ODIs, Mckay has 38 wickets at just under 20. That’s the sort of numbers that make any sort of preconceived perception sort of irrelevant.

And as I was writing this, he was Australia’s only bowler who looked like taking wickets. And then he was the only Australian bowler to be hit on to the cathedral by MS Dhoni, before following up with a waist-high no ball.

I’ve always felt that when someone hits McKay the ball goes further. He doesn’t get hit for small sixes, or gentle fours, people just hit him really hard. That could even be the whole reason I have had this thing against him.

Wickets are good, but everyone remembers the big hits.

That will probably be the case here again. McKay’s three wickets were handy, but I’d think more people will talk about how Dhoni almost killed spectators who were over a hundred metres away to win the game.

People are fickle like that.

It was too weird for me to process, so I just pretended he didn’t exist.

I felt like this when he fell over wickets against India, bowled Sri Lanka into a World T20 final, took a catch that went viral on Youtube and smashed Australia around the G. Now, finally after all these years, I am willing to admit that Angelo Mathews does exist, and he exists well. Really well. Weller than most. Peter Weller, well.

Forget for a minute he looks like he’s been drawn by a Sri Lankan artist trying to make a cool superhero, and that his skin looks so smooth that I sometimes think it’s not actually skin. And just think about the way he fights.
Allrounders usually come in two ways: gifted and lazy, or plucky and up for a fight. Mathews is gifted and up for a fight. He loves a fight. The worse Sri Lanka play, the better he seems to be. Every time I come into some pointless ODI with Sri Lanka already having collapsed to no real chance of a win, there is Mathews, annoyingly stuck at the non-striker’s end, looking frustrated and angry.

Always angry. So very angry.

Mathews really doesn’t like to lose. And I don’t mean that in the clichéd sports way, I mean it in the you can see it in his face way.

When he brought up his half-century tonight at the WACA, he didn’t raise his bat for the crowd’s polite adulation. He just looked angry. Angry that yet again his team was not playing as well as a team that 8 months ago was in a World Cup final.

Players who don’t like to lose are the best to watch up close. Their faces are magnificent. There is a reason fans talk of Ponting face. Players like Mathews and Ponting just despise losing, and don’t really try and hide it.

The last time he had to carry an unworthy side over the line against Australia, his anger turned to joy, when armed with just a plucky tail, he won the game and was uber-heroic. This time he tried to use that anger again and very nearly did, but even without the win this just adds to his character.

The hero can’t win every time, after all.

I now look forward to my future watching of an Angelo Mathews who does exist. Or maybe I was always right, and he doesn’t exist, because it seems he wasn’t given Man of the Match. Which seems odd.

Mushtaq Ahmed had hands of doom.

Shane Warne’s wrists were radioactive.

Anil Kumble could see into the future.

Imran Tahir had a magical alice band.

Tiger Bill O’Reilly was an actual tiger.

And Bryce is the human spreadsheet.

Legspinners aren’t normal.

Rahul Sharma is not normal.

He’s massive, maybe 8 foot 9, or taller.

He doesn’t spin it, but he still deceives, perhaps the hardest skill.

And he has a special legspinning bionic eye.

Some say it’s because he suffered bells’ palsy or something similar when he was a child.

Lies.

The man is just another super human mutant legspinner.

Now this doesn’t mean that Rahul Sharma is going to be the best spinner in the world, or even India’s first choice spinner. But it does mean he has an advantage that no finger spinner could ever have.

The world has been calling out for a tall wrist spinner with a bionic eye for years now, and Rahul could be that man.

If he was in the X-Men, he would be called eye spin, and his super skill would mean that his straight ball would be undetectable to the normal human eye.

He’d kill you while you were still waiting to see whether he’d bowl a leggie or a wrong’un.

His eye would also be silver or gold, which, if I was his manager, I’d have already sorted.

The man is uncanny, this should not be hidden, it should be celebrated like we do for the rest of the legspin freaks.

Legspinners aren’t supposed to be like other people, and Sharma isn’t, he’s better.

You can watch it here, if you feel the need.

I also wrote this.

-

Brad Hogg’s comeback and George Bailey’s rise don’t seem to have made people all that angry.

That’s odd, isn’t it?

Australia have picked an oldy and a dude to replace a dude with roughly the same record of the other dude who is slightly older. Where is the disdain, the outrage, the editorial’s sprouting anti-Victorian intent and how Australia are overlooking their future for some old dude the commentators all like?

Australia have picked a player who has been retired for years. I’m not even sure we knew that Justin Bieber was a thing when Brad Hogg last played, and Zach Galifianakis was a fat funny dude starring in such classics as Speed Freaks. Hogg isn’t exactly Bob Simpson, who was dragged from a retirement village to save Australian cricket.

I suppose if your lifestyle-hosting career is working well or you’re dating a famous model/actor/it girl, you don’t need to make a comeback at 40, but for Hogg it makes perfect sense. Statistically you can make an argument for Hogg. His economy rate is 5.4, he takes wickets, and no one has a better strike-rate on twitter abusing Mitchell Marsh. The only number not on his side is his age.

However, if you see Twenty20 as a way of easing young Australian cricketers into the team, then picking a guy who’s been retired four years who is only year younger than your selector is odd.

Then there is Bailey, who I am really glad is being given a chance to captain any Australian XI, but it’s not as if he’s hitting the captaincy with a stellar Twenty20 season behind him.

And age is also quite odd, as he’s a few months younger than Michael Clarke, and only a few months older than Cameron White. There’s no doubt Bailey can captain, he’s won more than his share of silverware, but so has White. Neither White nor Bailey made a cracker in a high class and low performance Melbourne Stars middle order this year.

You’d think that one of these decisions, if not both would be the catalyst for the first vicious attack on the John Inverarity reign as chief selector.

But it’s quite clear that virtually no one cares. Australians may casually enjoy the Big Bash League, and they may even make the trek down to see the odd match, but at the end of the day, you could have a man with a rubber chicken stuck to his head as captain and some bloke’s dog as the spinner and people would still spend more time discussing Shaun Marsh’s form or whether Punter (Ponting) should retire.

For all the hype and concern, Twenty20 is still just that thing people watch

We may make more.

Until people give us money, and then we’ll shut up.

Maybe.

That might still happen.

Although today was funner than seeing a borne film on a roller coaster, the series could still dribble out staid draws and the two teams could end up sitting on the pot and not shitting.

But today England shit a bit.

And so did the rest of the world, with laughter.

Before this England had shown to be a largely robotic team that could capitalise on flaws and had even learnt the hardest art in modern cricket, the un-collapse.

192 is a long way from 51, 47 or 43,  but it’s a cock up.

And England may end up winning this series, and travelling on their next couple of subbie adventures with their pith helmets held high.

Or they could shit themselves and prove to naysayers that they are grass merchants who who frown on brown.

I think both are ideal outcomes.

If England do fight back here, and then beat the Lankans and Indians, they’ll be a number 1 number one.  So cricket will have another great enemy that needs to be brought down.

If England don’t fight back, and they continue to play spin like it’s got herpes, world cricket will have another good ordinary side for the other teams to play awkward teenage sex Tests with.

Today’s English collapse was against a bowler with a career average and strike rate of 30/68.   He’s a bowler that when he has a good day, he has a real good day, when he has a bad day you might as well rent a truck and drive over him.

England aren’t going to come up against too many Ajmal’s in the world, but it’s comforting to know that when they do, their capacity to shit themselves still remains, even if this was a shart my modern Test standards.

So either they fight back and we all marvel at the professional nature of the new England.

Or they fall apart while we all point and laugh.

Cricket can’t lose. England can.