Tag Archives: aussies

Feb 27 2013
3 Comments
general balls

#blamepat – how Pat Howard ruined cricket for Australia

“I’m sorry Australia but test match has very quickly slipped away! I wonder how many test matches Pat Howard played in India @warne888,” said Damien Martyn as @Dmartyn30 on Twitter.

In case you were wondering Pat Howard, Cricket Australia’s general manager of team performance, has played no Test Matches in India. Rugby Union, the sport Pat Howard played, is not that popular in India. But had Pat Howard played Test cricket in India, would Australia have had a better day today?

Hugh Morris, England’s managing director, also never played Test cricket in India. His three Tests were all in England. But unlike you or me, and most importantly Pat, he knows Test cricket.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who have played Test cricket, and those who haven’t. I assume, unless you are Ray Bright or Venkatapathy Raju, you haven’t played Test cricket. That means, for some people, you are not qualified to have an opinion on Test cricket. You can simply not understand what it is like to have played the game at that level. The pressure, the conditions, the fans, the stress and the constant post game interviews where people ask you, “how did that feel”. You have never dealt with any of them.

Hugh Morris’ England team beat India in India. And perhaps those three Tests he played were enough to help him guide a team to victory, but it’s probably more to do with the two Test quality spinners, the best swing bowler on earth, a captain who doesn’t sweat, KP, a brutal meticulous coach and the resources the ECB have put into their team being as well prepared as they can for big Test series.

Hugh’s job is not to teach anyone how to play cricket, but ensure that the team has the right coaches, equipment, backroom staff and “structures” in place to win cricket matches.

That is what Pat Howard is there to do as well. It’s a radical appointment, and for those who believe only cricket people understand cricket, it’s hard to understand how a rugby player can help. But think of Pat Howard as a fixer. Mickey Arthur, Michael Clarke or John Inverarity come to him with a need, and instead of them overseeing it, making cold calls or sending out hopeful emails, Pat Howard does. He also speaks to experts to try and find solutions to Australian problems, deals with player management, is involved in organisation and development, yet has very little impact with what happens on the field.

Howard doesn’t coach, select or bat.

Cricket Australia realised through the Argus report that it was no one’s job to do all that. So they made it one and gave it to Howard. Someone at the top of the tree, to oversee all aspects of Australian cricket. Clarke captains. Arthur coaches. Inverarity selects. But no one was really looking after the whole package. Someone to bring everyone together, to have a cohesive plan, and for someone to be blamed outside of the coach, chairman of selectors or captain when things go wrong. That is Howard’s job.

I’m no Pat Howard apologist.

I’m not even saying it’s a real job, or that he is worth his salary, I am definitely not sure how effective he is, or whether someone else could do his job better. I am not sure whether this job wouldn’t be better as just a fixer rather than as a grand title of GM.

But I fail to see how Pat Howard’s non-existent Test record in India, or his non-existent Test record anywhere, is the reason that MS Dhoni started putting cricket balls over the fence.

Of course, I am no Test player. So maybe I see this different than someone who has made a Test century in Chennai, but there are certain things that seem obviously not Pat Howard’s fault.

Pat Howard did not drop Dhoni, or even fail to run him out when given the opportunity. It also wasn’t Pat Howard who dropped Bhuvneshwar Kumar when flinging himself for a tough catch. That was Ed Cowan.

 

At no stage did Pat Howard demand that Michael Clarke only bowl Pattinson for six overs on the second day. Sure, he might have been involved in the informed player rotation management, but Pattinson’s under bowling seemed more to do with the bizarre inner team thinking than anything resembling a mid-match rotational process.

 

Pat Howard was not on the field to drop his shoulders as the Dhoni-Kumar partnership took hold. Not one mis-field was perpetrated by him either.

 

It was Moises Henriques’ ugly, across-the-line swipe that gave India a total they could pass on day three, giving them the upper hand in this Test. Howard has never played a shot that bad in India.

 

Australia haven’t played spin well, or in India well, well before Pat Howard worked for Cricket Australia, and realistically, before he even played rugby for Australia.

 

There is nothing Pat Howard can do to suddenly make Nathan Lyon better. Sure he can gets coaches, and invent a software package that can expand his mind, but unless he invents bionic spinning fingers or does and arm transplant with Warne, Lyon’s progress from handy spinner to good enough to run through Kohli, Tendulkar and Dhoni consistently isn’t really in his hands. You can enhance performance, you can’t play god.

 

It’s also no fault of Howard that Jon Holland and Michael Beer are injured, that Australia don’t quite believe in Xavier Doherty, or that Glenn Maxwell and Steve Smith aren’t close to Test quality spinners. All Howard can do is get Fawad Ahmed a passport and hope Adam Zampa is a slice of magic.

 

Australia have fast bowlers, and this pitch does not help them enough. However, Pat Howard does not control Indian groundsmen, even the BCCI can’t always control them.

 

Even the selection of the team isn’t Howard’s fault. Test cricketers John Inverarity, Andy Bichel, Rod Marsh and Michael Clarke picked this side. They decided on Moises instead of Maxwell.

 

Australia just aren’t that good at the moment, Don Bradman as GM, coach, chairman or tsar wouldn’t change that.

Better Australian teams than this have been embarrassed by far worse batsmen than Kohli, Tendulkar and Dhoni travelling to India. It happens.

 

I suppose most importantly, had Clarke caught Dhoni, had Australia taken a run-out, had Cowan caught Kumar, or if Dhoni had been given out with a dodgy lbw, and Australia might have had a lead, or be 80 for 0 at stumps with a small lead, would Pat Howard get credit for that?

 

Probably not.

 

Pat Howard’s job seems mostly to be blamed by former cricketers for poor performances. If something bad happens in world cricket it’s the fault of the #bleddybcci. If England lose an ODI, it’s #trottsfault. And anything and everything bad that happens in Australian cricket means that we #blamepat.

 

And what happens if Pat Howard is fired due to the pressure from Martyn or Warne.

 

The blame will just move to Mickey Arthur, who also didn’t play Test cricket in India, or anywhere, and also, shockingly, as Jeff Thomson once brilliantly noted, is not even an Australian. If Mickey is fired, we can blame John Inverarity, after all, he only played six Tests, and that’s not really a career. And then James Sutherland, another outsider who never played a Test in India, or anywhere.

Currently Damien Martyn is a mosquito repellant entrepreneur. Martyn has never been a mosquito or a candle. And unless he was sent into the wilderness unfairly after that shot in Sydney and studied science, I doubt he’s an entomologist. Yet, there he is, selling these candles using his fame as a former cricketer, his charismatic smile and his skills on social media.

Sure, I bet there are some experienced old timers from inside the mosquito repelling business who think he shouldn’t be there. They probably believe that he doesn’t know what he is doing. That he could never understand what it is like to be a real mosquito person. Can’t understand the pressures of the mosquito business. They probably know of many people are more suited to the mosquito set up. In fact, if the mosquito repellant is made properly, it doesn’t even need a salesman. They just see Martyn as another hanger on in the mosquito world, using modern methods to confuse people when the simple old school ways have always been the best.

I think they are wrong, and I think that Damien Martyn should be given the chance to sell mosquito repellant candles. If he shows over a prolonged time that he can’t sell the candles, even if the candles just simply aren’t that good, he’ll either step down will be simply replaced. If the candles do sell, people will just claim they were good candles, and that anyone can be successfully with a good product.

Luckily for Martyn, there is no mosquito candle press to heckle him. Unluckily for Pat Howard, whether he is successful or not in his job, there are some people he will never win over.

Although, as it seems like the main part of his job is to be blamed when Australia fail, he is actually doing it rather well.

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Feb 27 2013
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victorian bushrangers

no one loses like Victoria

List A cricket is so unimportant to the world; the finalof the Ryobi Cup is on a Wednesday. When the final started, there were roughly 120 people in the ground, and you had to do two and a half laps of the G to even find any overpriced food.

 

But perhaps the reason that so few people made their way out to the G wasn’t the overpriced food, the weird Wednesday final or even the fact that most people don’t know List A cricket still exists, but because Victorian fans are so used Victoria losing finals.

 

They knew the result before they even went. Coming into the final, Victoria had lost six of the last seven Australian domestic limited-overs tournaments. They’ve lost Ford Ranger Cups and Ryobi Cups. Twice before they have lost to Queensland.

 

So when watching Victoria in this final, the few people at the ground, or the few more watching on Foxtelwere just wondering how Victoria were going to stuff this up.

 

They started well with the ball, getting plenty of movement and keeping the Bulls scoring pretty slowly. It was only extras who looked like scoring early on.

 

“Too many extras. We’re going to lose because of extras, aren’t we.”

 

Then young allrounder Jason Floros came in and actually started scoring. The first Bulls’ player to look like he could make any runs.

 

“Floros, bloody hell, what the hell is a Floros.”

 

In the Bulls final over, Floros went six, four, six. 16 runs in one over, let alone 3 balls, is huge in a match where only one other player scored at better than a run a ball.

 

“Now we’re going to be beaten by a guy who should be batting at number five for the Canberra Comets.”

 

While 147 in 32 overs seems an easy enough chase, the ball was moving around, Ryan Harris was in form, and there was the pressure of a final chase.

“147, bloody hell, we’ll never get there now, 120 is the most we could ever chase with confidence. And that’s in 50 overs. “

 

When Quiney left early, Finch got a dodgy lbw, and Hill and Hussey went to poor pulls, the total of 147 looked a long way off.

 

“I told you we’d lose. Our only chance of winning now is if the rain comes before the Duckworth Lewis kicks in at 20 overs. But the umpires won’t do that, they hate Victorians.”

 

Then Peter Hanscomb and Cameron White built a small confident partnership, they edged their way up on the total, keeping it at a run a ball-ish so that Victoria had the chance to improve their record in the finals.

 

“Don’t be an idiot, this is just giving us false hope, we aren’t going to win this. We’ll stuff it up, just wait.”

 

Then even when White and Hanscomb went out, Victoria kept up the pace as McKay started bouncing balls off the nylex sign and Sheridan looked good as well. They did so well that they made the equation five off ten with three wickets in hand. A winnable hand in any game. Victoria had finally done it.

 

“We can still lose, not sure how, but we will”.

From there, Victoria lost three wickets for two runs to lose their seventh final of the last eight.

 

“I can’t believe we lost that. Oh, yes I can. Of course I can, it is what we do, we lose finals like champions. No one loses like us. Mind you, it was the umpires fault, they hate Victorians, the whole cricket world is biased against us. Chris Rogers hasn’t played a Test since he became a Victorian. How is Cameron White not Test captain yet? Why is there a final anyway, we are clearly the best side in every game that isn’t a final, it’s bloody rigged mate. I blame New South Wales.”

 

If Cricket Australia really want crowds to come back to the Ryobi Cup, forget about playing the finals on weekends, tinkering with the rules or even getting the big named players to turn up. What they have to do is make sure Victoria is in every final, and that the final isn’t played in Melbourne.

If your team was playing Victorian in a final in your home town, why wouldn’t you turn up, you’d be all but guaranteed a victory and your chance to see the Vics embarrass themselves.

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Feb 23 2013
3 Comments
aussies

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
3 Comments
aussies

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.

Tagged ,
Jan 17 2013
aussies

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
7 Comments
aussies

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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Gideon Haigh pronounces the Bogus Age

Two men, australian cricket, a bit of shit talk, you know the drill.

What starts is an unscripted dive into run outs.

Then we bullshit about writing on your friends (read smooth Eddie Cowan).

Then Watson, again. We can’t help it. It’s a sickness.

And at the end Gideon rides a stunning white stallion through Marlon and Shane’s stropfest.

Put this in your ears now.

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Jan 07 2013
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The myth of Shane Watson

Shane Watson is desperate to be an allrounder who bats in the middle order and dominates like Freddie Flintoff. Then he wants to open the batting and still bowl his full overs. Then he’s happy to move down the order to three, as it puts less stress on him. Then he’s content to bat at four, and that it will help him bowl more overs. Now he’ll bat anywhere, but probably gets that his body won’t let him bowl.

That is Shane Watson.

But that is also the Australian selectors. Shane Watson is the biggest headache and most confusing question the selectors have at the moment. Before the Adelaide Test there was more than enough noise that they couldn’t play Watson just as a batsman, and now Watson is just a batsman, they have to work out where to get the best out of him, if they want him at all. Today Mickey Arthur has suggested he may have to go back to opening.

Watson is pure throbbing talent. Large, powerful, deadly and mean. He picked up attacks at the World T20 and shook them down. In the IPL he looks better than entire franchises. In ODIs he’s a consistent wrecking ball.

But in Test cricket he’s an LBW candidate who gets bogged down and doesn’t make hundreds.

In Test cricket he’s mostly myths.

Watson the opening aggressor

One of the most common incorrect thoughts in cricket is that Shane Watson is an attacking opener. It’s simply not true. Sure, for a couple of overs, on the odd occasion, he will slash outside off stump and muscle some pulls, but once he gets to 20 or 30, he stops. And when Watson stops in Test cricket, he’s cadaverous.

Virender Sehwag’s opening strike-rate is 82.
Tillakaratne Dilshan’s opening strike-rate is 71.
Graeme Smith’s opening strike-rate is 59.
Simon Katich’s opening strike-rate is 49.
Alastair Cook’s opening strike-rate is 47.
Ed Cowan’s opening strike-rate is 43.

Watson’s is 52. That means that in terms of quick-scoring opening batsmen, Watson is marginally closer to Smith than he is to Cowan. And Dilshan and Sehwag are distant dreams.

Watson is a plodding opening batsman who can hit powerful boundaries. More Jason Arnberger than Matthew Hayden.

Watson is a part-time bowler

Some people will suggest that Watson’s bowling isn’t that important. That due to his body and the many, many, many changes in action he is nothing more than a trundling medium pacer who can take up a few overs when the ball is older.

Watson has a Test average of 30 with the ball. His economy is under 3. And he has three five-wicket hauls. He’s a proper fifth bowler who can bowl with the new ball and get movement. Bowl with an old ball and get reverse swing. And be used as a bowler who can keep the runs down.

In 2011, as an opener who was underbowled, he averaged 19 from six Tests and has won Australia Tests with the ball. Sometimes with game-changing wickets, sometimes by the number of wickets he has taken.

He’s clever, he’s cocky and when he doesn’t bowl Australia feels the nakedness of not having a legitimate fifth bowler.

Watson’s in bad form because he isn’t opening

It seems amazing that anyone, especially those in the Australian team bubble, would consider that Watson should be moved back to opening the batting and dropping Cowan. Forget that Cowan’s ugly, yet ultimately effective 36, might have been the difference between them winning and losing a Test match in Sydney. Cowan has averaged 32 opening the batting for Australia in 2012-13, with a hundred against the best bowling attack in the world, and in 2011 Watson averaged just 24 doing the same job.

In 2012, not opening the batting, Watson averaged 31. Watson’s loss of form in Test cricket seems to have come from teams targeting his massive front pad, his inability to turn the strike over with the field set in anything other than full attack mode and his lack of conversions from 50 to 100s.

Overall Watson still averages 43 opening the batting, but that was mostly earned early on, when he was doing very well. Now he’s simply not doing well, no matter where he bats.

Those expecting a return to form batting at the top of the order may find a rude surprise.

Watson is a batsman

Batsmen score hundreds. Allrounders score fifties. Sure that is a generalization, but you know, that’s kind of how it works unless you’re a Sobers or Kallis. Watson can bat, but that’s not being a batsman. There is more to it than that. He seems, either mentally or physically, not able to make the large scores that other batsmen make at the top level.

Watson simply does not score enough Test hundreds to bat at the top of the order. In 38 Tests he has two hundreds and 19 half-centuries. It’s the reason he averages 37 and not 42. Top-order batsmen need to score big hundreds. Watson knows this, and his desperation for the big score has even gotten him out before.

Batsmen work through their innings, not hit and stop like Watson.

Watson can’t bat in the middle order

When Watson first played Tests for Australia he was brought in as an allrounder who batted at seven. Eventually he was moved up to six. In both positions he was a disaster. But Watson as a cricketer was a bit of a disaster at that point. His body was useless. He gave more press conferences than faced balls. His place in the Australian team never felt secure. And he didn’t seem to really know his game at all. That he failed then was not a big surprise. He would have also failed as an opener in that time, but his form was so bad that no one would have tried him there.

Things are different now, Watson’s place in the world is secure, and he knows that he can master worldwide attacks. But perhaps he should try it in the middle order much the way he bats in ODI cricket.

An average of mid to high 30s batting at No.6 with a high strike-rate and bowling when he is fit could be very useful to a team that currently has no No.6 and four openers. It could also unshackle Watson, who just doesn’t look comfortable as a top-order stalwart, but seems perfectly made as a middle-order enforcer.

Or Australia could try him at No.5, as in 38 Tests they’ve tried him in every other position from 1-7.

If that doesn’t work, perhaps Watson could bowl some spin.

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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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