Jarrod Kimber's Blog, page 39

The ashes squad with Gideon Haigh and Ryan harris’ latest injury (NOW ON VIDEO)

Ryan Harris is injured.

Mitch could be back.

Someone needs to get Fawad Ahmed a passport.

Phil Hughes, really?

Players like Brad Haddin.

James Faulkner is an impressive angry talented young man.

It’s literally me and Gideon Haigh talking shit about the Ashes, but this time on video.

cricket news hurl: the dickie troll

This week the cricket world was stunned when ageing former cricket umpire Dickie Bird released his best Test XI and overlooked Jesse Ryder.

Dickie had more. No West Indian speedster made the list either. No Holding, no Marshall, not even Nixon McLean could make it to Dickie’s list, which probably means watching it from the other end isn’t as scary as facing it.

But Dickie wasn’t done there. Don Bradman also missed out. Now, it is Australian law that all greatest XIs feature Don, so Dickie will be arrested the next time he sets foot in Australia.

Then Dickie got serious with his trolling. He took on the Sachin internet militia. I’d like to believe that Dickie knew that by leaving Sachin out he’d be annoying many people. According to many headlines, this mostly ignored XI shook the cricket fraternity. Former India batsman Chandu Borde said, “One need not refer to his XI. From my point of view, it’s the English media which has made Bird an umpiring legend. He’s always bias.” But even more aggressive was this quote from Dilip Vengsarkar to PTI: “I don’t wish to comment on this.” The best comment from a reader was Danier’s on Daily News & Analysis. “Who is Bird??? Let cut his feathers.”

While Dickie trolled, Australia did what they could for Sachin’s ego. They created a waxwork dummy of the man and put him next to Don Bradman. I mean, what more can you ask for?

Sachin is, according to some, (not me, I love you Sachin, I want you to play until you need a carer to walk you to the wicket) currently batting like he’s made of wax. But he had the only ally he needed this week when one half of Shroni, Mr N Srinivasan, came out and said to Outlook magazine: “I have absolutely no doubt that Indian cricket needs him – and will leave the final call [on when he should quit] to him.”

Just once I hope one of these champion cricketers really abuses this right and plays until he’s 64 and his arthritic hands can’t even hold on to a bat. And for the last 22 years of his career, administrators and fans just keep saying, “He’ll go when he’s ready”. And the frail grey-haired champion will just continue to get worse and worse while these fans and administrators continue their nonsensical thoughts.

If Srini really wanted Sachin to choose his own future, wouldn’t he just make him chairman of selectors? Or at least make him head of marketing for India Cements?

Shane Watson is not as indestructible as Sachin. He knew very well that he was lucky to be staying on as vice-captain for Australia after what went on in India, and in various airports. And being that Australian cricket has no Srini-like figure, Watson has decided to step down from the vice-captaincy and focus on his game.

Now, I think this is a great move. But if this is anything like Shane Watson’s other public statements, next week he will want the job again. Then he will talk to key management about the job. Before long he’ll be vice-captain of an IPL team. And then through the next two series he will change his mind on a match-by-match basis, like in some tacky courtroom drama.

In real cricket courtroom matters Brendon McCullum is to sue John Parker for his 77-point dossier about the sacking of Ross Taylor and the governance of New Zealand Cricket. Parker repeated a lot of hearsay, or just general rumours, about what had happened to Taylor, and very few of them make McCullum seem like the sort of guy you want to share a malted milkshake with. McCullum had two choices: either ignore the report based on the fact John Parker has been mocked and abused since his paper came out, or prolong the story with a lawsuit.

Another Brendan had a far better week than this. Zimbabwean geek chic Brendan Taylor outscored Bangladesh in the first innings and made enough runs in the second to think he could outscore them in the Test. At the very least he is the first non-Flower to make a hundred in each innings for Zimbabwe.

“The competition was really hard-fought with just the odd wide or good shot being the difference between winning and losing in a number of matches. It is noticeable that the overall standard keeps improving each year and the gap between the sides is really small.” That wasn’t a report on the Zimbabwe-Bangladesh Test, but from thisisgloucestershire.co.uk on the Gloucestershire district Lady Taverners’ indoor Under-15 girls tournament, which was won by Stroud High. The game was not shown on Youtube.

Soon it may be as the ECB are no longer just complaining about internet piracy and accusing those who use it of being thieves, they are now offering alternatives. So if you live on mainland Europe you will be able to see the Ashes right on Youtube. Right next to the videos of the cat who jumps in boxes will be the cricket, for all the Ashes-loving Kazakhstanis.

Maybe you don’t live in mainland Europe and you already have access to cricket on TV, so you don’t just want cricket, you want everything that is around cricket. You want to immerse yourself in the cricket world neck deep. For that, you need Ryan ten Doeschate’s literary blog. As Ryan says, “I generally like books for a variety of three reasons: the story line; the style of writing and use of vocabulary; or the knowledge the author imparts to the reader.” And while I count that as four reasons, you still have to respect a cricketer who in his time off reads and reviews book and starts a blog that is linked to the Room to Read charity.

Andrew McDonald was linked to South Australia this week. Which is also an act of charity from the Victorian people to their less fortunate South Australian kin. McDonald also missed out on Dickie’s team. Another conspiracy to defraud Victorian cricket.

If you’ve got anything you think should be in next week’s cricket news hurl, email cricketnewshurl@gmail.com or tweet #cricketnewshurl. As Ryan might say, “I have no doubt that you will enjoy this column’s mixture of facts and excellently written opinions.”

A day in Bangalore

7:10am was preparation time. As much water as you could consume. Stretching. A banana. Finding clothes that would be appropriate for the task ahead.

It takes 15 minutes of walking to arrive at the corporation school ground. Once you walk over the newly planted sand dunes, you arrive at a grassless multipurpose sports area where five games of cricket are being played concurrently.

Slowly the ESPNcricinfo employees arrive, most walking, some on motorbikes. Teams are picked. The heavier-than-normal-special-made-for-cricket tennis ball is selected, stumps are placed at one end, a stone at the other. It’s an eight-over game.

The first game has casualties. A very senior member of editorial staff runs a six, but only five are counted. He leaves soon after. A diving caught-and-bowled chance that few remember seeing is attempted by a young member of the staff. Later he tries to throw the ball in and realises he has hurt his elbow. His two elbows don’t even resemble each other. It turns out he has broken his elbow, which rules him out of office cricket for months and the office for two weeks. A key member of the staff has injured his knee, but he plays on like a dog that refuses to admit it has lost its hind leg.

In the second game the heat gets nasty, tempers flare, one person from the video department abuses another for not stopping a two. The chase is handled easily. This frustrates the bowling side more. Two men laugh as they use play equipment as a makeshift gym.

Back at the office, meetings are had. Big future plans are discussed. Budgets are debated. Website and cricket stats are discussed. Google hangouts are watched.

Then it’s IPL time.

An eternal queue lines up at gate 9, Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru. Near the gate are police officers with sticks. Cane for the men, plastic for the women. They punish any queue-jumpers. There aren’t enough police officers, though, as the queue won’t die. It goes beyond the bridge, past the tax office, around the corner and down the road.

The face-painters run at punters with their paint at the ready. More as a threat than a service. One, wearing a Kings XI Punjab shirt, is a Marcus Trescothick fan. He does a more-than-okay Mark Nicholas impersonation.

There are as many bootleg shirts, hats and flags as the eye can see. All of questionable quality and cheap, but extremely enthusiastically sold.

Back up the road, around the corner, past the tax office, over the bridge and within sight of gate 9, the queue-jumpers come in. Sweaty men who thrust their bodies up against yours like they are about to steal a wallet. They don’t want money, just your place in the queue. A place that took 45 minutes in the heat. The queue-jumpers receive angry looks, passive-aggressive abuse and the odd elbow in the ribs.

The first person to touch the groin at the ground does so fleetingly just inside the gate. People have to get in the game. Kolkata have already lost a wicket. It’s a fleeting touch rather than a secure pat-down.

The second person to touch is at the stand. They too have a backlog of people, so they check there are things in pockets – there are – and that is all they want to know.

At the third touch point, the security guard pats once and then moves the queue on forcibly.

At the fourth, the guard thinks everyone there has been checked so many times he barely touches at all. Four security checks, but no actual checking.

Kolkata are already batting. Their boundaries get cheered in certain parts of the ground. Some of those have KKR fans there, others have KKR cheerleaders in front of them.

The rest of the crowd cheers: “We want six, we want six”. Unfortunately, when a crowd says the word “six”, it sounds more like “sex”, which puts a dark cloud on them all screaming it at once

One cheerleader wears a cap. It makes her look like a tennis player with two walk-on girls beside her.

The KKR innings limps forward on a great batting pitch against an ordinary bowling line-up.

Beer is consumed in a room with a TV, chips, a couch and fans during the boring middle overs.

The scoreboard tells little. KKR are batting, but there is no record of who batted before, or what bowlers have overs left. The scoreboard ignores highlights, lowlights, or anything worth seeing again. It does have words like “awesome”, “devastating” and “Oh!”. The cricket exists in front right now, or it doesn’t exist at all.

KKR finish their batting. Music is played. Loud.

Chris Gayle walks in with a mortal. The music can’t compete with the sound for Gayle.

The mortal goes out and Virat Kohli and Gayle bat together. They knock the new ball around, play it safe, the crowd sees it otherwise.

When Kohli does something good they chant his name. “Kohli, Kohli”, but it sounds like a crowd of drunken Jack Whites singing the start of “Jolene” in a smoky honky-tonk.

Jacques Kallis slows Kohli down, and to spice things up, a drummer hits the beat of the RCB chant, which goes “R-C-B”, “R-C-B”. The crowd doesn’t care about the chant. It also doesn’t react to the maiden. The spectators are, however, entertained when bad animations of players doing Gangnam Style appear.

Chris Gayle hits a six. The crowd chants “R.C.B”, “R.C.B”, and “R.C.B”.

Bangalore are killing the contest on the field, but off the field the competition for who can cheer the longest after a boundary is hotting up.

Kohli is dismissed and then dissed by Gautam Gambhir. Kohli fronts up to him. The crowd has absolutely no idea what has happened, but it completely takes the side of Kohli.

The dismissal of Kohli never makes the replay screen, but a man with a digitally added sponsor blow-up hat does.

Bangalore are so far in front one man applauds two leaves from Gayle.

The rest of the crowd cheers: “We want six, we want six”. Unfortunately, when a crowd says the word “six”, it sounds more like “sex”, which puts a dark cloud on them all screaming it at once.

A bunch of fans say, “That’s out.” It is not given. Neither is a replay. The ball ceases to exist.

The ground announcer starts a Mexican wave. The crowd joins in. It then gets faster and faster, until whole stands are rising at once. Sunil Narine keeps two of the world’s best batsmen to few runs, but the crowd is besotted by its own uniformed magnificence.

At a strategic time-out, one set of KKR cheerleaders refuses to get up. Perhaps discussing future choreography that can inspire their team.

Gayle hits the last ball so hard that had the crowd had been mid-way through a Mexican wave, it would have knocked someone over.

Back to the office in time for a cameo on the Huddle while wearing silly promotional IPL beer goggles. Some more meetings. Some writing. Instagram of the day’s photos. Check local Pizza Hut menu. Go to local Pizza Hut. Man at the counter guesses correctly that pepperoni will be ordered.

At the Pizza Hut, no one is frisked.

cricket news hurl: Jesse’s perfection

This column usually starts with something on Jesse Ryder, because he is pretty much pure awesomeness. That means finding a way to shoehorn him into the news for some cameo in a domestic T20 match no one watching could remember any details if they were tortured about it.

This week Jesse was shoehorned into the news when two men brutally attacked him, caving in his skull and lung.

For a while it was touch and go whether Jesse would survive, and I was asked to be on standby to write a eulogy for one of my favourite cricketers of all time. I figured it would be easier to write a draft of it before he passed, as I’d be so upset when he did that it’d be almost impossible to write.

This is some of it:

Jesse’s worst made the media’s job quite easy. He churned out headlines, gave angry middle aged men their moral editorials and gave talkback radio days of free funny. Even on the field he never quite gave us what his wrists promised. Unfulfilled potential is the ugliest phrase in the sporting vocabulary.

At his best he was everything that was great about cricket. A shy man in a large body who could play a square drive so perfectly it would stop you in your tracks. If you ever saw one live, you’d never forget it. It was an immaculate cricket moment. This monstrous beast pushing the ball with statue stillness and perfect cricket hands in a gracefully delicate way. It was pure. It was artistic. It was flawless. It was brutal elegance and precision. It was a water buffalo doing a magnificent tango.

It was what cricket should be.

Most people try their whole life to do one thing absolutely as it was intended. Jesse did that almost every time he batted.

Now because of a seemingly violent act of randomness, Jesse has been taken from us. Leaving us with a few moments of cricket perfection, the sort that live in the stories people tell the next generation of cricket lovers.

Heroes, villains and artists don’t often come in the one package.

Cricket exists for men like Jesse Ryder. And men like Jesse Ryder exist for cricket.

Luckily, my hastily written overly emotional tribute to one of my favourite cricketers never got finished. While I was trying to write something that would honour Jesse, he was giving his doctors the thumbs up and is now in a stable condition. In hospital his family and friends have been reading him all the great things that people have said since the attack. Hopefully someone can read him what I said, but leave out the bit where I called him a monstrous beast.

Before the attack his former team-mates where fighting their own monstrous beast, Matt Prior. Sometimes when I watch Matt Prior bat I sigh out loud, and I am not a sighing person. But he really is that good. He may not make constant Test runs, but he seems to fall over making important ones. This Test, he was the only English batsman in both innings. And this could have been embarrassing for England. They could have, and probably deserved too, lost a series to the 8th ranked Test team in the world who didn’t even have Jesse or Daniel Vettori in their side. Instead after three Tests, this battered English team won no matches, and kept New Zealand to the same score. Barely.

Even while England couldn’t beat the 8th ranked side in the world in, they stopped to laugh at Australia who failed to beat India in any of their four Tests. Australia couldn’t find the intestinal fortitude of England however, as they lost all four Tests to Che Pujara and any bowler who could turn the ball. It was the end of a series where Shane Watson became captain and Glenn Maxwell became a Test opener, so only losing four-nil wasn’t too bad. According to Mickey Arthur, “I’m confident everything’s still on track”. What no one has told him is that his track may infact be straight at a brick wall that has a painting of a tunnel on it.

Bangladesh is on track again after drawing their one-day series with Sri Lanka 1-1. I’ve been sucked in by good performances from the play-doh tigers before, and I won’t be trusting them until they win a World Cup, or at least 12 of their players get IPL contracts.

The IPL starts next week. And it’s started with a controversy over the fact that Sri Lankan players can’t play in Chennai due to political interference over the treatment of Tamils in the civil war. This follows on from the fact that the Pakistani women’s team were not allowed to play in Mumbai during the Women’s World Cup. Indian politics is doing its best to get in the way of cricket any chance it gets. Next English players won’t be allowed to play in India because of victims of the sitcom It aint half hot mum will be offended.

Luckily Nishantha Ranatunga, the Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) secretary and (in no way is this a conflict of interest) CEO of Carlton Sports who own the local TV rights, said, “I don’t think Lankan players should boycott the IPL just because of a political party and its views. The game should be kept away from it. That is the SLC policy.” Yes, if there is anywhere on earth that separates cricket from politics it is Sri Lanka.

Sri Lankan cricket politics got bizarre this week when current SLC president Upali Dharmadasa (I once rode in his car, long story, tell you another time) was deemed unfit to be nominated for the role of presidency despite being president at the time. Two other nominees also failed to be nominated for similar reasons, so Jayantha Dharmadasa, Upali’s brother, is set to be president unopposed. Even though he had earlier pulled out. It seems Upali Dharmadasa forgot to get a letter of support from the Sports Minister, which was required for him. The need for the letter in no way makes Mr Ranatunga’s earlier statement ridiculous.

The WICB has a new president. Whycliffe ‘Dave’ Cameron defeated Julian Hunte 7-5. Cameron said, “It was a long process and I travelled the length and breadth of the Caribbean, from Kingston, Jamaica to Georgetown, Guyana to be able to address the concerns of our stakeholders.” Anyone who uses the phrase stakeholders must be a good cricket administracrat. I wonder if on his length and breadth tour Cameron actually kissed any babies.

The propaganda war in the Ashes got ugly this week when two old cricketers said things that contradicted each other. Ian “Beefy” Botham said something positive for England. Steve “Tugga” Waugh said something positive for Australia. There is a chance that sometime between now and the Ashes starting other former players of each country will continue this pattern.

The only thing more painful than pre-series old men talking up their country is a hernia. And Saeed Ajmal may have one. Ajmal is missing some domestic cricket at the moment and waiting to hear back from his doctor whether he needs surgery. I hope the first person to say he got the hernia from carrying his team actually gets a hernia.

Women’s cricket batting icon Mithali Raj and Indian pacer Jhulan Goswami have been “rested” (or informed player managed) from India’s home serie against Bangladesh. Raj, the captain, and Goswami, the former captain, are India’s two best players. And they aren’t exactly overworked. The Indian women’s team has played no Tests this year, and they played the same amount last year. Outside of the World Cup, which was over a month ago, they’ve played pretty much no international cricket. They don’t even play in the IPL. Although they do watch it, which can be tiring. The Indian selector Gargi Banerjee stressed that they hadn’t been dropped, but did say, “They are 30 years old and I don’t see them playing in the next World Cup, which is four years away.” Yes, how could you expect an Indian player to turn up to a World Cup at 34? I’m sorry Gargi, but that’s not cricket.

‘That’s not cricket’ is also the phrase that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her dissenting statement from the Supreme Court this week when talking about an antitrust case result. Later on in the day, the Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States tried to reuse the phrase but failed magnificently, “To be fair or, as was suggested this morning, to be crickets…” Now, it is not surprising that an American would confuse crickets for cricket, even after hearing the phrase earlier in the day. But the Principal Deputy Solicitor General’s name is Sri Srinivasan and he was born in India.

Surely for this faux pas, Sri Srinivasan should be banned from returning to India. Hopefully there is a political action group working on this right now.

Aaron Finch is going to the IPL to replace Michael Clarke’s back. Finch was selected for the IPL because he is Victorian, and the IPL has a quota for South African sloggers, nice kiwis, West Indians with quirky names and Victorians.

If you’ve got anything you think should be in next week’s cricket news hurl, email cricketnewshurlatgmail.com or tweet #cricketnewshurl. This column was approved by the minister for sports and candy.

It’s Bryce McGain’s birthday

Dip yourself in this legspin porn.

 

losing the lobster

Cricinfo made me come up with what I thought the most influential innovation in cricket is. I did this. The rest are here. 

No one flighted them like the lobster.

The lobster, or Digby Jephson as his mother named him, got more flight than Ramesh Powar, Nathan Lyon and Holly Colvin combined. His first-class bowling average was 25. He took a hat-trick against Middlesex, once took 77 wickets in a season, and his best figures were 7 for 51 against Gloucestershire.

The lobster did all this while being RUA: right underarm.

While in modern terms underarm bowling is generally associated with Australian arrogance and one family not being welcome in New Zealand, it is actually far more important to cricket.

Underarm bowling was the original bowling. While the lobster might have been one of the last first-class lobbers of underarm deliveries, until cricket came of age, it was just how people bowled. It was perfectly acceptable to lob a ball over a batsman’s head to get him out. It was a different kind of sport back then.

Of course underarm bowling was kind of rubbish. Okay to your three-year-old nephew, but not really a demanding athletic endeavour that would captivate millions of people, like Wes Hall in full flight did. So bowlers tried to change it. The story goes (you weren’t there, you don’t know it’s not true) that John Willes started bowling roundarm when he saw his sister Christina do it because her dress wouldn’t allow her to bowl underarm.

Either way, bowling roundarm caused Wiles so much trouble that he quit cricket and apparently rode off into the sunset, never to play again, after being repeatedly no-balled. Cricket then did what cricket does – protect batsmen at all costs and generally make the ignorant conservative reaction first. A law banning roundarm bowling was brought in.

It wasn’t until 1835 that roundarm bowling became legal in cricket, and overarm bowling was born in 1864, only 13 years before the first-ever Test.

But what if they hadn’t allowed roundarm or overarm bowling?

What would cricket be?

It would be treated in much the same way polo, croquet and fox hunting are. As a weird sport of the English elite. The best athletes would have gone to other sports. It would barely be a sport at all, more an eccentric novelty.

There would have been no Ashes, no reason for the ICC to ever exist, and the English language would be poorer. India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh would never have been swept up in leg glances and doosras. Don Bradman would have been a grumpy accountant, not a symbol of Australian pride. The West Indies would never have come together as one.

The world would essentially be cricketless without the invention of overarm bowling.

Sure, occasionally you’d pick up an American sweater catalogue and see men in white cable-knit jumpers lobbing the ball, and yes the illuminati would play it as they plotted a global government. But the cricket we know wouldn’t exist without overarm bowling. It wouldn’t be exciting, no cricket administracrat would call it a product, and no shady bookmakers would be taking bets on it. This website would not exist without overarm bowling.

It is the single most important thing that has ever happened to cricket, and it is not overly surprising that the cricket officials tried to stop it.

The lobster retired in 1904. Underarm bowling was finished (Trevor Chappell aside) shortly after World War I. By then, overarm bowling had turned a novelty game into one of the greatest sports ever invented. You can thank English dressmakers, frustrated bowlers, and those who believed the game they loved could get better.

We lost the lobster, but we gained an obsession.

cricket news hurl: schools out for summer

Jesse Ryder did not make the news this week. I can’t shoehorn him into my piece just for the sake of it based on something he has done on the field.

But off the field, Ryder is a perfect example of a player being suspended and working out that what he was doing was not getting the most out of himself as a cricketer. I am not in any way using this as an analogy for any other cricket controversy at the moment.

Ryder’s former team started well against England, so well, that when it turned dark on them it turned very dark. But even though at times in this Test, and the last, it looked entirely possible that England could score over 500 against New Zealand even if they reversed their order. That is now the case. England could not suspend four players from their team and still beat the Kiwis easily.

Zimbabwe are playing Test cricket this week, against West Indies. Everyone’s favourite leather-faced hitman, Ray Price, is still bowling his gentle left-arm spin and acting as if he’s bowled the most brutal bouncer ever seen. They may not have won, but they had a good first innings, which is more than Shane Watson can say this week.

Mushfiqur Rahim is still batting in Galle as I type. The Test between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh ended in a draw, but with all the bowlers slaughtered, Mushfiqur decided he might as well continue to bat on the pitch that gave Bangladesh their first ever Test double-hundred. Ex players condemned the pitch, stating in unison seconds after the Test that in their day Test pitches were never that bad and that it was like a schoolboy game.

Inspired by Gary Wilson, Ireland made a record score of 589 for 7 against UAE in their ICC Intercontinental Cup game. Scotland, who have no Gary Wilson, lost by an innings and five runs to Afghanistan, inspired by the 21-year-old quick Izatullah Dawlatzai‘s 11 for 94. That was exactly 11 more wickets than James Pattinson and Mitchell Johnson will combine for this week.

Star in India won their case to own cricket scores on mobile devices. That means that cricket is no longer news for India, but purely a product. Unless they pay Star for the rights, mobile companies can put up scores 15 minutes after they happen when the news is no longer hot. Now people will just have to disconnect from these mobile providers and log onto websites, Twitter, Facebook or just text their friends who are watching on illegal streams.

India’s biggest product, Sachin Tendulkar, was shunned this week while no one noticed. Brendon McCullum said Alastair Cook was the second best batsman ever. Amazingly he didn’t pick Brad Hodge or Tendulkar as the best. I am telling you this only if you are one of those Sachin Tendulkar fans who loves to complain about any slight the great man has received, but perhaps this week you were too busy laughing at the Aussies to notice these comments. All complaints can be sent directly to the Black Caps. Or Pat Howard.

South African cricket administrators are being praised this week from Farhaan Behardien. Behardien claims that the help they gave him has made him a better finisher. Presumably what he means is they didn’t ask him to wear the correct uniform, never checked his skin folds and never asked him to write anything down. Or maybe they did, and he did what they asked and he produced.

Andy Bull asks whether cricket writers are producing a golden era of cricket writing. Bull mentions this very site, but somehow fails to overlook the “Dual Warrnambool and District Cricket Association’s division two winners face off in grand final” piece written by the Standard‘s Justine McCullagh-Beasy. My favourite line (incase you are too lazy to click on a link about Victorian country cricket) is “Grand finals are always close”. Cricket writing might be doing okay, but cricketers speaking before a match are still as bad as ever. The coach would expect better than that.

Okay, fine, I’ve hinted at it, so here it is, the entire (not really) short history of #homeworkgate.

This is it in a chronological based-on-a-true story sort of way.

Several Australian cricketers improve their skills on Call of Duty.

Shane Watson, Usman Khawaja, James Pattinson and Mitchell Johnson are suspended for failing to do their homework.

Many, many, many ex-players say that is ridiculous. They blame Mickey Arthur and almost ignore Michael Clarke altogether.

It turns out the homework could have been sent by a text, and they had six days to come up with something to help the Australian cricket team win the next Test.

Watson leaves for Australia. Some say he is sooking, some say he is travelling home to be there for the birth of his first child.

Cricket makes the front page during football season.

Clarke gives a press conference, well, no, he talks to Cricket Australia in a KP-style video explaining what has gone down and that there is history of bad things that he never quite articulates.

Howard says Clarke and Watson are not besties, that he knows Watson well, and that Watson sometimes puts the team first.

Watson’s dad has not spoken to his son, but still says something to the press.

Watson then says Howard doesn’t know the real him. He resists the temptation to break into a country song.

Wally Edwards releases a statement that is about the length of a tweet.

The Aussies fly in a psychologist to help them, perhaps a week or so late.

Brad Haddin becomes a batsman.

Shane Warne says, “As a leader I always thought if the boys weren’t getting along or we weren’t performing then the best thing to do was to lock everyone into a room with some music (and) alcohol”. Usman Khawaja is probably not a big drinker. Although he does play the guitar.

Glenn Maxwell still somehow gets dropped from a team with only 12 fit players to pick from.

Ricky Ponting makes another hundred in the Sheffield Shield, keeping him as the top scoring player this year.

The first day at Mohali is washed out.

KP, Mike Hesson, Ryder and Sri Lanka Cricket must be glad to not be involved in any of this.

For an animated version of events, including a recreation of David Boon drinking and Mickey Arthur imitating one of Disney’s most loved products go here.

There are some who believe this was all a big conspiracy to confuse Victoria into bowling first at Bellerive Oval and possibly giving up any hope they had of winning the Shield this year. Victoria, who have been awesome (outside of finals) for most of the year, now look like missing out on the Shield Final. But they will be the moral winners, I am sure you agree.

If you’ve got anything you think should be in next week’s Cricket News Hurl, email cricketnewshurl@gmail.com or tweet #cricketnewshurl. For research, Jarrod visited his high school this week, they gave him a free pen after he was dragged to the headmaster’s office by a man who looked alarmingly like Mickey Arthur.

the kiwis are better than bad net bowlers with Iain O’Brien

This is the podcast where we talk about BRUCE MARTIN.

Lock up your granny.

We also do a bit on how Hamish Rutherford might make coffee.

How arrogant England are.

And how things were better in IOB’s day when electricity and homework for cricketers did not exist.

Listen here.

The homework hit on Watson – with Gideon Haigh

Whether we want to or not, Gideon Haigh and I end up talking about Shane Watson.

Usually, it is not that interesting.

I’m not saying this is interesting, it is for once actual news.

Listen here for many more minutes of thought that you need to send a text to your coach.

 

 

cricket news hurl: a MCCWCC review

Once a year, the MCC gets together a bunch of former leathered-faced greats, and they talk about cricket and drink lots of red wine (all ex-players drink red wine). Occasionally, they push the agenda of absolute stupidity such as in the case of lie detector tests. Occasionally they are ahead of the game like on day-night Tests.

It all comes from a desperate need for the MCC to be relevant. Lord’s may call itself the home of cricket, but we all know that the current home of cricket is in an office in Chennai. Lord’s is little more than an expensive summer house.

But what Lord’s does have is money. To get into Lord’s for a Test you need to forego buying a new Rolls Royce, membership involves selling your soul to Robert Johnson and such is the power of their logo it instantly means an item is worth three times as much.

What they are doing with that money is trying to buy relevance. Outside of the Laws of cricket, and photo ops, Lord’s has little relevance in modern cricket.

Hence we now have the MCC World Cricket Committee or MCCWCC for short. They’re a self-appointed moral compass. They’re also part of a cricket club that is based in a stadium named after a man who once tried to turn the ground into a housing estate.

Even so, the MCC World Committee is the nice, well-meaning grandpa of world cricket. It doesn’t have the power or impact of a Jesse Ryder square drive, but rather puts the ball into the gaps regularly, without possessing the leg speed to turn the singles into twos or threes.

A lack of power and speed doesn’t mean that what they say shouldn’t be looked at.

Corruption in cricket: more should be done This is the bit where the MCCWCC suggest that more should be done to stop corruption in cricket. They’re right, more should be done. But the ICC are not the police. They are more like volunteer school crossing guards.

While the ICC should procure all the betting details from each match, doing it in countries with illegal betting syndicates isn’t going to be easy. How will the ICC ever have the power to say that the BCCI should say no to a potential IPL team owner because they seem a bit dodgy? How can the ICC realistically protect players from the attentions of dubious individuals without beginning by buying every Nandos?

It’s not like the ICC can hire Charlie Bronson to follow around every single player to make sure they don’t get in trouble. Although I could get behind such an initiative. The MCCWCC have a point about corruption, and they come up with some lovely utopian visions, but it is hard to see how they can be carried through.

Committee strongly supports the Decision Review System There is no doubt that the MCCWCC are proper disciples of the DRS. If it was a cult, and it sort of is, they would have drunk the koolaid, donated their coccyx and donned their matching sneakers. They believe it protects the integrity of the game, is better than the human eye and can save cricket from an evil giant clam.

They no longer even want it just for howlers, they want it for everything. Everything. India disagree with this, and want it for nothing. Nothing. I wonder who will win?

Laws of Cricket: Committee initiates research into the size of bat edges Golf, tennis and probably even table tennis, eventually reach the period when power of the tools starts to majorly change the way the game is played. If you haven’t picked up a bat in recent times, find one, and you’ll want to go out and slog sweep your friends instantly.

Cricket bats have already changed so much. Look at old cricket paintings and you’ll see weird wooden machete-looking things which have little resemblance to modern cricket bats or even bats from 100 years ago. It’s probable that there was someone watching WG Grace from the members saying: “Indeed he is a skilled craftsman, but wouldn’t everyone also be if they held such a magically-shaped implement?”

Golf has limited the size of clubs to limit the potential imbalance caused by technology. The edge of bats might also be limited. Which is fine for the professional athletes with skill, fitness and training behind them, but for the rest of us, our days of scoring boundaries could be behind us.

World Test Championship required for three formats of the game to co-exist The MCCWCC still believe in the World Test Championship; the rest of us forgot it ever almost existed. They are also anxious it is well marketed to cricket enthusiasts. Compared to the way most Test series around the world are marketed, all they need is to provide a twitter hashtag and a billboard and they have done their job.

They were told a two-tier structure could be catastrophic for marketing. This is alarming as with South Africa playing as they are we already have a two tier structure.

Women’s cricket is part of the fabric of the world game The MCCWCC stated that the women’s game is now firmly integrated within the sport around the world. Well, it sounds nice, but the reality is far from that. The World T20 had the women hidden away in the south of Sri Lanka far from the media or TV cameras. They also received a lower per diem than the men.

At the World Cup the quality of the cricket was the best it had ever been for a women’s tournament. But the tournament had no national anthems, no semi-finals, no certainty on venues and up until a week before it began no fixtures.

Compared to the most famous integration in cricket, KP’s, the women are still outside the system.

Twenty20 Cricket in the Olympics Cricket isn’t at the Olympics largely because no one in cricket has really tried to get cricket into the Olympics. England don’t really want to lose two weeks of the heart of their summer to the Olympics. India don’t really care about the Olympics in general. Cricket as a community has no real opinion about the Olympics.

Would cricket be in a better position globally by the addition of cricket into the Olympics? Yes. Is cricket currently run in a way that tries to get it into a better position globally? No.

So why would the ICC (and by ICC I don’t mean the people who are trying to grow the game, but the ten nations who like to keep it as a private boys’ club) push for cricket in the Olympics? They wouldn’t, and don’t. If Ireland, Scotland, Netherlands, Canada and Uganda had a vote in cricket, then some sort of cricket would have been in the Olympics.

The chances of cricket making it into the Olympics as long as self-interested, shortsighted egotists run the ICC is pretty low. In fact, the chances are roughly the same as Victoria winning the next three Ryobi Cup finals.

The MCCWCC is a largely ineffectual respected think tank that has its heart in the right place

This column is just largely ineffectual.

If you’ve got anything you think should be in next week’s cricket news hurl, email cricketnewshurlatgmail.com or tweet #cricketnewshurl. This column was written by an MCC member. Not Marylebone.