Jarrod Kimber's Blog, page 45

cricket news hurl: The Official World Test Cricket Day Programme

Community service announcement:

“A dollar a day can barely get you a cup of coffee, or an issue of Swamp Thing, but for a Pakistani Cricket fan looking to travel to India, it is also largely useless. But if you are an Indian, and you want a Pakistani cricket fan to see the cricket, you can sponsor them for a Visa. And if you’re a Pakistani cricket fan that is sponsored for a Visa by an Indian, you should buy them a coffee, or two Ayn Rand books.”

Monty Panaser was not included in this column.

Jesse Ryder continued his brilliant form with a strike rate of 225 but also tweeted this, “Test cricket bitches awesome Friday a head #AUSvRSA#Debuts#Fire#Shortballs” And that’s because, like us, Jesse likes to bathe in the naked glory of Test Match Cricket. And there has been plenty to bathe in.

Sehwag showed us once again why Sehwagology is so powerful. Believe. England now do. We also had more of a Chevolution. Graeme Swann went beyond Jim Laker as the best spinner in English history. But I bet Jim Laker could do a better pub version of ‘Common People’.

Michael Clarke put a clinic on a clinic as the Gabba never woke up. Hashim Amla giggled at yelly Australians. And every single former Australian cricket ever has now talked about whether Shane Watson should be picked or not.

The West Indies and Bangladesh were trying to put each other to sleep. Kieran Powell will have very sweet dreams. And Bangladesh fans still abused their batsmen for not making big scores even as their total went beyond 500.

Test cricket, hells yeah.

In fact, write this is your digital calendar right now, the 25th of November is World Test Cricket day. On that day Australia host South Africa, Bangladesh host West Indies, Sri Lanka host New Zealand and India host England. All on one day. One magical Testy day. On this day you are supposed to drink whatever you drink (cheap bourbon for me), sit on your couch in your dirtiest underwear and order the most disgusting take away you can while you watch, read, listen and tweet Test cricket.

One player who will miss this new universal holiday is Tillakaratne Dilshan because he has a back injury. He is being replaced by debutant Dimuth Karunaratne. According to the SLC, “The Hon. Minister of Sports has approve this selections”.

Another left handed opener who had a good week was espnCRICINFO columnist Ed Cowan. The truculent hirsute opener made his first Test hundred. Like his articles he started off clear and concise, grabbing your attention in an organized way. Then played to his strengths as he does when constantly mentioning Charles Darwin and Michael Lewis (the writer, not the angry Northern Suburbs quick). Before finishing in a way that made you like him even more.

The more we watch Eddie, the more we all want one. I’ve heard a rumour that people are in the process of making a ‘Teddy Cowan’ bear. Twitter even stopped being nasty as he closed in on his hundred. Although that hundred will cost him, as now Eddie can’t take the job of captain of Gloucestershire. If you haven’t had enough of Eddie or his Graeme Smith inspired hundred, you can read his speech at Gideon Haigh’s recent book launch.

While Eddie put together his innings and ensured his career, Greg Ritchie made racist remarks and put his “career” in jeopardy. Everyone is surprised that a man who made a career dressing in brown face make up and taking the piss out of Indians would say something racist. You may not remember Greg Ritchie, but before he was unfunny and racist for a living, he was overweight and averaged 35 in Test cricket. He also ran out onto the ground when Steve Waugh made 200 in the Windies. Although it is unknown whether he did so to racially abuse him.

Old players make good money out of politically incorrect stories at Test events. But few talk about locking Muslims in their car trunk. I’d like to think if Greg Ritchie tried to put Usman Khawaja in his trunk, Usman would score a dignified 30 odd by spanking Greg Ritchie.

Another Muslim cricketer, who probably wishes Greg Ritchie didn’t exist, is Fawad Ahmed. In a move that will probably upset Greg Ritchie further, Ahmed has been granted permanent residence. Ahmed is the Pakistani legspinner playing for Melbourne Uni who applied for asylum in Australia as he was persecuted in Pakistan for being a legspinner. There is no word yet on whether he has been picked for the Adelaide Test.

Players who have decided to stay in Pakistan, but are currently claiming to be suffering from persecution include Umar Akmal. UMAR AKMAL has been dropped from his FIRST CLASS team. Umar’s team, well the team he used to play for until this week, is Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (rolls off the tongue, no?) and their coach Basit Ali (remember when Warne went through his legs) seems to be trying to make a point about Umar’s desire to play first class cricket and his ability to play the long innings. Umar is furious, telling Pakpassion.net “I’ve already faced over 100 deliveries in a Test innings on four occasions and I have full faith in my ability to play long innings”. I’m glad we are now in a position in cricket where young batsmen are excited at facing a whole 100 balls.

Other Pakistan players who are being told what to do include Shahid Afridi, Saeed Ajmal and Umar Akmal. They have been told that they cannot play in the Big Bash as they have to prepare for their ODI series against India. So to recap, Umar Akmal is not allowed to play first class cricket, and not allowed to make money in the big bash. He can however play club cricket and warm up matches. That’s where the real money is.

There is other money in match fixing. And sports betting writer Ed Hawkins has written a book called “Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy” which has already had two extracts published in the Daily Mail and has predictably upset some people. The first extract was of the script that Hawkins claimed to have been sent from an Indian bookie of India beating Pakistan in the world cup of 2011. Why would you have to pay Pakistani to lose to India in a world cup, I don’t know.

EXT. Mohali – Day/Night

The camera tracks in on Sachin Tendular in a classic hero shot. Sachin looks resplendent in the Mohali sun. Behind Sachin, out of focus, is Kamran Akmal. On a dutch tilt we see Kamran Akmal in an extreme close up, he looks confused, gormless and worried.

Kamran

I wish I was an airplane.

Sachin

For them the gracious Duncan have I murder’d;

Put rancours in the vessel of my peace

Only for them; and mine eternal jewel

Given to the common enemy of man,

To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings!

Rather than so, come fate into the list.

And champion me to the utterance!

Kamran

Yogalates.

In the second extract, Hawkins claims that, “This much is clear from the erroneous sentencing remarks by the Hon Mr Justice Cooke: ‘Bets could be placed on these no-balls in unlawful markets, mostly abroad, based on inside advance knowledge of what was going to happen… Individuals in India were making £40,000–£50,000 on each identified no-ball. On three no-balls, therefore, the bookmakers stood to lose £150,000 on each bet by a cheating punter.’ Butt, Asif, Amir and Majeed went to prison for charges that included ‘conspiracy to cheat at gambling’. If there was no bet placed, if there was no opportunity to even place that bet and therefore no one was defrauded, can anyone be guilty of such a charge?”

Hon Mr Justice Cooke did make a mistake, and should have known that you can’t bet on no balls. But if this comment was that important to the case, the lawyers of these men, who all charge a fortune and went to lawyering school, would have appealed, no? They didn’t do that, because the crime wasn’t about whether you could bet on no balls, but that the players and manager conspired to cheat and accept corrupt payments. Although, I might be wrong, and perhaps I am using this column to talk about errors in the book because when I opened my free copy the book, the envelope exploded all over my couch, and more enjoyably, over my wife’s cat.

People love taking pictures of cats, the blog King Cricket even has a section devoted to animals, but mainly cats, being conspicuously indifferent to cricket. However, if those cats were inside an Indian cricket ground, you could only take photos if they were being used for editorial purposes according to the BCCI rulings for this series. At the moment the press is mostly taking a stand and not using pictures in protest. The Telegraph also did a stick drawing. Enron got better press than the BCCI, and they probably spent less time trying to strong arm the media. One day the BCCI will find something they don’t want to control. It is yet to be confirmed, but it looks like when the 80 foot high gold statue of Mr Srinivasan is completed you will have to pay to take pictures of it.

Freddie Flintoff also received some bad press this week when people dared to question how serious his boxing match against an as yet unnamed opponent is. Freddie has lost about 20 KGS for the fight, and as he says, “You couldn’t go through this for a TV stunt”. No, well, unless you’re on the biggest loser. If I was to make a reality TV show, it would be a celebrity edition of ‘Extreme Zimbabwe Cricket Coach’ who have advertised for a new coach, even though they haven’t announced that Alan Butcher is getting the chop (I wanted to get in early on this bad pun). I bet any fights in ‘Extreme Zimbabwe Cricket Coach’ would be as serious as Freddie’s, and who doesn’t want to see Heath Streak attacking Jason Gillespie with oversized cones as Peter Moores and John Bracewell have a laptop off on Victoria Falls.

Importantly, Victoria smashed a hapless NSWales team for first innings shield points. They were inspired by Cameron White batting at number 7 and bowling 26 overs.

The Hon. Minister of Sports has approved this column.

 

If you’ve got anything you think should be in next week’s cricket news hurl, email cricketnewshurlatgmail.com or tweet #cricketnewshurl. Contact Virginia Lette if you’d like your very own stuffed ‘Teddy Cowan’.

England’s wonder

Four men are hired to save a rich rancher’s wife in Mexico. The rancher picks four people with particular skills to form the ultimate team. The film is called the professionals. Andy Flower is probably a fan of this film, and not just because of Woody Strobe and Lee Marvin, but because it fits his ethos.

England got to the top of the world by being more professional than every other team in the world. Their selections were impeccable. Everyone did their job. They made each other better. Choked with the ball, dulled with the bat, take all chances. Preparation was key. They believed they could win. And they won a bunch of series on the way to number one.

Then things fell apart in the UAE. Saeed Ajmal does that to people, but England seemed to play like every Pakistani was Ajmal like, and they lost. In Sri Lanka they had Ajmal flash backs, before ending up 1-1. At home against the West Indies they did what they needed to do and nothing more.

Then South Africa turned up. And they did what England had been doing for a while, made no mistakes.

England made many. Their batsmen who had built foundations on common sense and minimizing risk suddenly played at balls they should have left. Their bowlers lost pace. The fielding fell down. Inside the changing room was a disaster. And their captain was on the way out.

The professional well put together team was missing key components and fighting amongst itself.

Yet they went back to basics. Sri Lanka could have played three Test series and fitted in a series of ODIs against India in the time England used just for warm up matches. Short of moving to Chennai, they couldn’t have spent any longer over there. It was the old England. Prepare, prepare, prepare.

At the height of England’s run, bowlers didn’t play with injuries that often. They believed in their back ups, and wouldn’t risk losing a bowler mid match.

In this Test they went with Broad, now perhaps he was fully fit. Perhaps he wasn’t. But once Broad played, Bresnan had to be more likely (even without his reverse swing in the last warm up), and that meant they were taking in a potentially injured bowler and leaving out a spinner on a wicket that from all accounts looked like it would have taken spin the day before the Test.

Then they fielded. And it was bad. Matt Prior’s keeping looked like the Matt Prior of the bad old days. Jonathan Trott seemed surprised at slip. And Jimmy Anderson seemed to be looking at Pujara’s lofted mistake like he had 2D eyes. They were the chances they missed. But there was also a look of flatness about them. Some balls were shepherded to the boundary. Dives were done to prove they had dived. And the energy was low.

That also lead to the run rate getting out of control. Now, everyone gets Sehwaged once in a while. But it also took them hours to slow down Pujara who as classy as he is, is a man who often slows himself down. The control and patience of the English attack was nowhere. Too many boundaries came at the end of otherwise good overs. India were 61 runs into their innings before Swann came on to slow it down.

Cook captained in the same way that most of his team fielded.

England may still salvage this Test, although it’s pretty doubtful. They might even win the series. But they won’t do either without what got them there in the first place. And perhaps they can’t. Things change. Right at the moment England look more like a middling side with issues than a team about to storm back to number one.

Watching Sehwag and Pujara flay their attack while their fielders looked like little more than CGI extras I remembered a line from Burt Lancaster in the professionals, “Makes you wonder how we ever beat the Indians.”

We can remember how and why they beat India, but 4-0 is a fading memory.

Cricket Sadist Hour with Gideon Haigh: Optimum Penetration

New podcast is up.

We talk about the state of New Texas (Queensland) comedy.

How really white whites can make you look fat.

Michael Clarke and Ricky Ponting’s changed personalities.

I mention platypus balls, again.

And we talk about a little hairy bastard.

Listen here.

Or, you can just read the whole thing here as transcribed by Swapnil who lives in Vancouver, not Salt Lake City, so he probably doesn’t wear magic underwear.

 

JK: Joining me again this week to talk non-sense about Australian Cricket is Gideon. How are you?

 

GH: Good Morning, Jarrod. How are you going?

 

JK: I’m very good. You’re back from Brisbane, you’re back in the sweet embrace of Melbourne’s bosom. What was it like up north?

 

GH: For one thing it was unseasonably mild. It was a little bit like the test match of 2010/11. It certainly wasn’t as tropically hot as we’re used to in Brisbane. Except, of course, for the Saturday when it rained cats and dogs and ruled out the entire day. It’s interesting that we still very nearly got a result in the game. Probably another half a day might have done it.

 

JK: Which is weird because the pitch just looked dead.

 

GH: Absolutely dead. But these days so often Test matches end in four days. Interesting that two teams who are Top 3 in World Test Championship still needed the rain’s assistance to achieve an honorable draw.

 

JK: There wasn’t much in it for bowlers. I suppose it was it was good to bat on but it was a bit slow. They said they had the right preparation, so I’m quite not sure how we ended up with that pitch. The Queensland government were protecting the Gabba from drop-in pitches, but that played as much like a drop-in pitch as anything at the MCG.

 

GH: Exactly what had crossed my mind. It seemed to me to be bearing some of the impact of football on the ground. The outfield was very slow as well. And certainly the rain didn’t help things. The Gabba usually quickens up on the second and third day. I think a day under the covers probably slowed the pitch’s maturation. I thought the Australians bowled as well as anyone in the course of the game, on the last day. It suggests to me that perhaps they need some overs in their legs in order to achieve optimum penetration.

 

JK: Everyone wants optimum penetration.

 

GH: Jeez. Pattinson was terrific on the last day. Hilfenhaus seemed to have fallen back into the mechanical ways of two years ago, the appearance that he gives of being on a treadmill where he is running in and almost running back to his mark.

 

JK: He does that semi-circle like he finishes his delivery and just goes straight back around.

 

GH: And then he doesn’t pause at the top of his mark at all. It’s almost like he just wants to get through and bowl a maiden and take his sweater. And Siddle improved over the course of the game and so did Lyon. There wasn’t much spin for Lyon but he took advantage of the match situation in the last innings to throw a few up and he looked a better bowler for it.

 

JK: It was quite interesting that Australia was in disarray after Day One. There was so much talk, even someone like Steve James said that I am glad to wake up to find out that Australia doesn’t have a bowling attack. But pretty much by the end of the test you can almost reverse that statement.

 

GH: Certainly when Morkel and Steyn were not bowling, I thought, South Africa looked terribly, terribly ordinary and actually embarrassingly abject when Graeme Smith and Hashim Amla were turning their arms over. What kind of No. 1 Test nation in the world has two bowlers like that who really would not get a game in the Top 3 XIs at the Yarras.

 

JK: They were a bit unlucky though because Duminy can bowl, maybe not brilliantly, but he can bowl better than that.

 

GH: Little bit unlucky, but I think you make your luck to some degree. I thought that was a poorly selected team too. I can’t really follow the rationale for choosing Rudolph. He’s an honest cricketer but at No. 6 he doesn’t really provide them with any kind of counter-punching power. He’s not a particularly outstanding fielder. I understand that he is quite good for the morale, but teams at No. 1 in the world should not be in need of morale.

 

JK: He’s the best Andy Bichel they could find. I want to talk about Kleinveldt. He’s an amazing selection. When his record came up, when he was bowling that first over, he had a first class bowling average of 27. And I thought okay he’s a guy that’s not too old. He’s obviously massively out of shape. He’s shaped pretty much like one of your teammates at the Yaara and much of the testmatchsofa crew. And he bowls with this amazingly whippy action where it doesn’t look like he can get much swing or seam movement. And he decided to try and bounce Eddie out for a day. And he couldn’t stop bowling no-balls. He just looks like a club cricketer who is just lost.

 

GH: Exactly. I don’t know whether you saw the South Africans wear this very brilliant white strip, it’s almost luminous. He looked like a refrigerator on casters. I think he bowled a couple of no-balls in his first over. He just looked like someone who was either (a) nervous or (b) a case of mistaken identity. Apparently he’s a teammate of Philander’s and to he was Philander’s mentor and, to a degree, Philander overtook him to take his opportunity. But he looks a mile off being a test-class bowler and I’d be very surprised if we saw him at Adelaide.

 

JK: Yeah, that first over, he went for ten, with two no-balls and twice Eddie hit him for four. But Eddie also picked out the fielder with two even worse balls that he should’ve smashed. It could’ve been an eighteen run first over. But it wasn’t so much that. You can understand first over nerves even though he is a very experienced player, as you said. It’s not like he’s a young talent coming in. But what was more amazing is it was hard to see how he’d ever averaged 27 in first class cricket. There didn’t seem to be any wicket-taking ability, really, other than the fact that for the first couple of balls you’d probably say to yourself – that’s a weird action. Or you might say to yourself – he’s a bit chunky. But other than that, he’s the sort of guy that, if I was playing first class cricket, I’d go okay against. It’s interesting that him and Philander are from the same area because neither of them looked fit and you have that white strip, it is so unforgiving. You know the whole Samit Patel thing, of looking worse in the white, that definitely happened to those two guys. What did you think about the whole sledging furor on the last afternoon?

 

GH: Just absolutely nothing to it, really. I was glad to see some intensity in the cricket on the last day because at times the match had drifted. South Africa, in particular in the field, they have so many poor fielders that they just don’t seem to be maintain pressure. You’re hiding three or four blokes in that team and when the batsmen are on top and it looks like the entire field is down ill, which is what Michael Clarke makes it look like at the moment, they really looked like a mid-table team. They’ve got a lot of work to do before they get to Adelaide.

 

JK: It’s interesting that, when I was watching England-South Africa, last summer, on four different occasions, when I had nothing to write, I started to write a piece about how un-athletic they were in field and how bad they were. Morne Morkel, it’s almost like he can’t see the ball. And Imran Tahir, it is brilliant. Then you’ve got someone like Vernon Philander who puts a lot of effort in but he is not particularly the best mover. They looked marginally better than India did the summer before but that’s not what you think of from South Africa. You think of these amazing athletes and they are not really like that anymore.

 

GH: You look back to the South African team of 1952-53 which probably invented the idea of fielding being an offensive weapon in international cricket, Jack Cheetham’s team. You’re not meant to talk about that in South Africa anymore, that period, of course, did not exist.

 

JK: I don’t think those players have numbers, Gideon. I’m not sure if they count.

 

GH: They’ve really missed de Villiers in the field. It’s almost bit of a club cricket situation where your most athletic guy in the field happens to be the only guy who can handle the gloves so you put him behind the wicket and, all of a sudden, your fielding looks absolutely hopeless. It’s happened to us often enough. They really needed some energy and some vitality in that in-field to just keep the batsmen on their mettle. Because for periods, the Australian batsmen, particularly when Hussey and Clarke were batting, were just coasting.

 

JK: The AB thing also accounts for the run-outs. Because he doesn’t think like a wicket-keeper, which is a problem when he is keeping. But the biggest problem is, I think Eddie should have been run-out. He hit the ball straight to mid-on, to be fair they might have even made a run in it but Clarke didn’t want it. I’ve counted about seven or eight times in the last summer, where it just took AB a second to work out that he had to go to the stumps. It’s funny because Matthew Wade who isn’t a keeper from Perth, even though he looks like he should have been a keeper from Perth, but when you watch him or Matt Prior, they take off straightway, whereas AB de Villers doesn’t take off. That’s almost like what South Africa look like at the moment, they’re that team that who is just not sure what they want to do, because their first innings was really confused for me.

 

GH: Yes it was. It looked to me, at the end of the first day, that they were building towards a massive total. I think they made 69 in the last 27 overs of the first day and both batsmen didn’t mind coming back the next day and dictating. Australia bowled quite well in the first half hour although not all that well after that. Throughout that period Australia were not good at building pressure either. But then there were a couple of wickets, both the establish batsmen got out. You had two new batsmen at the crease and they showed no particular initiative or game awareness. Perhaps because Duminy was out and that had thrown their plans awry, Rudolph has a question about his place in the team and Philander really is an over promoted tail-ender. And it was a very low intensity period of cricket which allowed Australia to re-establish themselves in the game.

 

JK: I watched the first session and to go to bed and then get up. I didn’t expect Australia to bowl them out but I also didn’t expect them to score that low in that period. The one thing I’ve noticed under Kirsten is they actually have been far more aggressive. I noticed that Ian Chappell and Ian Healy were making jokes about the fact that they are still the same old South Africa but everything I’ve seen of them in recent times hasn’t been like that. They’ve actually done fairly attacking declarations. I’m pretty sure I had a heart-attack at one of their declarations in the UK. I wasn’t sure if it was Graeme Smith or someone had taken over his body. And yet, it almost looked like they retracted to that old style team. When you’ve got Kallis and Amla, those guys can roll on forever and they don’t always kick on, but surely it’s up to the other guys to get going and AB and Rudolph didn’t look like they could.

 

GH: In hindsight, one of the inflection points in the game was when Kallis failed to advise Amla to review the LBW. I’m surprised that Amla needed help in that. If you’re hit above the knee-roll and the ball feels as though it’s decked back in, fair dinkum. If it’d happened to me and I would have been given out, I’d have been furious. It was que sera sera with Amla.

 

JK: It is a bit like his personality. My first call was that’s a bit high. No way it couldn’t look that way. That was quite interesting. Let’s talk about Clarke. Its hard to talk about him because he’s had so many different periods in his career. He’s probably, in the future, only gonna be remembered for his amazing start and this bit.

 

GH: I’ve actually written a column in the paper today about the perception battles that both Clarke and Cowan have undergone in their careers. They both played together in the U-19 world cup in 2000. That was the tour from which Clarke was recalled to play first class cricket for New South Wales. There was huge investment by the media and by fans in the idea that Clarke was a continuation of the glorious green and gold tradition. We fell in love with the idea that he wore his baggy green when he scored his maiden test century in Bangalore. We had Darren Lehmann offering to stand down for him because he was obviously so special. Then there was this period of bitter disillusionment about three years ago when he became associated with a high-profile, accident-prone girlfriend and boot was in the other foot for a change. The Daily Telegraph was describing him as the most over-rate cricketer in Australia and saying that personally he was a tosser. We’re very difficult to satisfy in Australia and no one changes that much in the course of their life. Clarke certainly has matured as a person over the last 18 months or so, he’s had to. It’s interesting, if you have memory longer than a goldfish, these are quite strange times in cricket to find that Michael Clarke is not only Australia’s captain and go to guy but he’s also a columnist in the Daily Telegraph.

 

JK: That was about the period that everything started changing. He changed management, he changed girlfriend, he, sort of, changed everything in his life. I suppose, he had to because he was massive under-achiever, purely on talent. You were talking about he was the continuation of the line. I heard the phrase ‘once in a generation’ about Michael Clarke so many times that it almost lost meaning. It was like people were punching me in the head with that phrase.

 

GH: They said the same thing about Mitchell Johnson, didn’t they?

 

JK: They did.

 

GH: So it was twice in a generation, wasn’t it?

 

JK: There’s a lot of ‘once in a generation’. It comes around more than you think. But it was quite weird and then for him to drop off. I thought he struggled not so much tactically but he struggled with handling players. It seems like everything is changed in his life and he’s just become a real boy. He wasn’t really a real boy at any time and now he is (unintelligible). The form, you can’t make up form like this, can you?

 

GH: That’s right. I think he was always a super dedicated cricketer and a terribly, terribly hard worker and an enormous talent. The one thing that has been immensely useful and under-rated in Clarke’s ascendancy is the role of Ricky Ponting in legitimizing his captaincy. Having an ex-captain in the ranks is not historically a formula for tranquility and congenuity.

 

JK: More importantly, it is un-Australian

 

GH: It is un-Australian. But Ponting has actually helped make it Australian. There’s no doubt that Ricky Ponting, of all the cricketers in my time, has said (lets draw) by public image and personal glory than any other. This last period of his career is, in some respect, his finest moment. He’s become a senior pro and first among equals as far as the Australian team is concerned and a bench-mark for other players in this team. If you train as hard as Ricky Ponting then you will as successful has Ricky Ponting.

 

JK: Ponting’s changed a lot too. He became very bitter and very angry when he was captain and things weren’t going his way and once he let go of the captaincy he looked at the world a little more and went it’s not the end of everything, it’s just me being a captain. I remember moment when he couldn’t accept the third umpire’s decision of Kevin Pietersen at the MCG and that was about the last time I can remember him being, what we used to call, the hairy-armed troll. It’s the last time I can really remember him being that angry little man. Since then he’s just become a normal human being. From everything I’ve heard around the team, you can’t go past the fact that players just talk him up at all times and wasn’t happening five years ago with Ponting. So he’s obviously had a lot of change and Clarke’s had a lot of change. I don’t think three years ago, had neither of them changed, this situation would wotk for either of them.

 

GH: That’s true. For Ponting the source of confusion and dissatisfaction was the fact that he, sort of, led Allan Border’s captaincy career in reverse. He started off with this great team and watched it disintegrate around him whereas Border started with a middling team and built it up into a team on the brink of being World Champion. And the first half of his captaincy career didn’t prepare him for the second half. Your bowlers couldn’t bowl to one side of the wicket. When you’ve gotten used to handling Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, it’s just baffling. What do you do then? I think part of the truculence that Ponting displayed in that period was a sense of disorientation. Why can’t bowlers do what they have been used to doing for years? Bowling used to look so easy.

 

JK: Yeah, definitely. Have you got any amazing insights for us for Adelaide? What are you expecting? Tahir has to play, doesn’t he?

 

GH: Definitely, Tahir has to play. Tahir worries me a little bit. l know you are a big fan. He does seem to bowl his overs in a terrible hurry. He does seem terribly, terribly excited as he’s bowling. With the short squares boundaries at Adelaide, he could go for a lot of runs. That’s one of the reasons why I would have liked to have seen him play at Brisbane. It is a more forgiving ground for a spinner.

 

JK: He can start very bad. He needs to find a rhythm. Sometimes, it can be hard for him to get into it. Once he gets into a rhythm, he doesn’t get scored off that much. Of all the bowlers I’ve seen in the world, he’s probably the most in love with his own bowling which is actually something I like.

 

GH: Yeah, but these days in international cricket, there is a tendency to want to attack every spinner as soon as they come on. I have no doubt that that’s the tactic that Australia will pursue if all things are equal. I think Smith has sent a message of ambivalence about Tahir by leaving him out in this Test match. If the current formation continues, there will be seven lefthanders in the Australian team for Tahir to bowl against. That’s not an easy challenge for a leg-spinner.

 

JK: It isn’t. But if any leg-spinner is gonna do it then it’s gonna be the one with a very hard to pick wrong’un. That definitely brings him back. If they pick anyone other than Tahir, they are almost saying that they’re gonna try and win this series by attrition and I’m not sure that’s the message they should be promoting. Having said that, Kallis didn’t bowl many overs. So perhaps Tahir not playing wasn’t as much to do with him as much to do with the fact that Kallis doesn’t look like he can get through anything more than five or so overs in a day.

 

GH: I think they were banking on not using Kallis too much because after a while it did look like a draw for the last day and a half. They weren’t gonna take too many risks on busting a bowler, they’d keep him back for when he’d have maximum impact. I actually think that he looked alright with the ball. He wasn’t taking a lot out of himself and I think that from what we saw of him in England he’s still potentially an impact bowler. He’d still bowl that 140-145 kph ball out of nowhere with that little bit of extra grunt. He’s not a bowler that you can afford to take a too many risks with. He’s just so sagacious.

 

JK: I think you’re right but the one thing that I found interesting is that we know that the Kookaburra ball doesn’t swing that long. And he was brought in well after it was going to swing. I just wondered whether they just didn’t want to give him too much to do. Whether that’s just that he’s not that fit. He never really looks fit. Does he? And he never really looks like he wants to bowl.

 

GH: None of the Kookaburras swung at all in Brisbane. To be fair, the climactic conditions didn’t really suit it. But it was amazing that when the odd ball did swing, it was completely out of the ordinary. There was a little bit of reverse swing but not very much.

 

JK: That’s because the Kookaburra ball is from the Southern part of Melbourne and the Platypus ball is from the Northern suburbs, it would have swung sideways.

 

GH: You’ve used a Platypus, obviously, rubbish balls. They used them in the BTCA.

 

JK: We should talk about how rubbish Platypus balls are every podcast. I wanted to talk about Greg Ritchie. It’s an amazing furor about a guy who since the early 90s has had a racist comedy act and it’s taken this long for it to upset anyone to the point where he’s not being invited to cricket grounds.

 

GH: It was interesting that Ritchie delivered that routine several times during the course of the Test match. Neil Manthorp, who was sitting next to me in the press-box, saw the first one the day before the game and he was extremely unimpressed. He didn’t do anything about it. When in Rome. I’ll just let it go. Telford Vice, from the Sunday Times who reported the story, only came upon it quite by chance. He walked past an open door and heard the sound of Ritchie’s voice and pours to listen in to some of the material and was shocked about what he heard. So he wasn’t actually attending the lunch, he was just overhearing it. So, it’s, kind of, a fluke story. I dare say that Ritchie’s being giving the same routine in Queensland for fifteen years and hence his consternation and confusion that anyone should begin to complain about it now.

JK: I don’t think it would be the same routine. He probably originally would’ve had it against Aboriginals or Asians and then he moved it on. Let’s not forget Mahatma Cote, who became an icon of a brown- faced comedian. He was the only dark face we had on Australian TV during the 90s, wasn’t he?

 

GH: Yeah, but don’t forget we had Hey Hey it’s Saturday.

 

JK: The difference Hey Hey it’s saturday was that it happened once and everyone seemed to not like it anymore. Whereas Greg Ritchie, when I grew up, he’d be on Sport 927 in the mornings, doing Mahatma Cote’s voice. Whether he put the make-up on to do the radio interview, I don’t know but that’s been going on a long time and it’s just a thoroughly unlikeable person. But the thing is that the report I read and you might know more talking to Telford, but the report I read was everyone just laughed at it.

 

GH: Yeah, at the lunch that Neil Manthorp attended, the laughter was somewhat embarrassed, somewhat uneasy. You might just have gotten away with it. Oh No, maybe you didn’t.

 

JK: At your book launch for the Shane Warne book where Eddie Cowan stumbled over some words, did you perform anything there in brown-face?

 

GH: No, I didn’t but there was a hysterical moment at my book launch. We now have a lift in the South Yarra pavilion, which is one storey. Apparently it’s for the throng of hand-kept cricketers that over the years have been turning away. The fact is we only use it for getting slabs upstairs. And just as Eddie finished his speech, the lift doors opened as if by magic and there was an intake of break. Was it Warnie turning up with Liz? When, in fact, it was one of our committee members and his wife turning up with a bowl of salad. He looked around the room at everyone looking at him and was wreathed in this imbecilic smile. Why is everyone looking at me?

 

JK: I suppose we better talk about Ed. He’s the one person we haven’t discussed at all, considering he’s probably going to be one of the seven listeners of this podcast. How was it being there? I missed out, I didn’t even stay up for the actual 100 because I was so angry he couldn’t do it before lunch.

 

GH: From a purely personal point of view, it’s a unique experience for me to see a friend of mine make a Test century. For the first half hour of the innings, I was extremely nervous. I was actually physically shaking in the press box. I had to cross my legs in order to stop that happening.

 

JK: I’m glad it’s not just me that it happens to.

 

GH: We live every ball with Ed. But after half an hour, he asserted himself early. He got to 20 very quickly and his wife always says that he’s the calmest, he’s nervous. And he certainly didn’t look it.

 

JK: Can I just say something about that? She says that a lot. I’ve got a lot of documentary footage of Eddie that I think completely takes that theory apart. Also, talking to George Bailey about him, I think you’d find he is quite often nervous.

 

GH: Well, nervous energy can help you perform. You wouldn’t want to be sleepy or indolent facing an attack including Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel. He looked very decisive. I saw him batting in the Victoria Shield game, he didn’t make many – he got 42 and 16, but I thought he looked in terrific form and seemed to me to be batting as well as he ever had. He just hadn’t been getting the results that he would have wished. Here we are the irrelevance of form in domestic cricket. Ricky Ponting’s average over 100 in domestic cricket and got our fifth ball and Ed’s averaged in 17 and looked to me in (barks).

 

JK: He was helped by South Africa. It reminded me about the Marcus North and Phil Hughes thing. When they bowl to batsmen they are not really used to, they quite often get it amazingly wrong for an entire innings. They, suppose, did in the session the following morning when they didn’t bowl him as many short balls. I didn’t think they put any pressure on him; they still let him score a bit easily.

 

GH: He’s very good at getting off strike. He’s got lots of options off the hip, to the left hand of cover. This was an innings of someone who had planned for every bowler, was thinking about the ways in which the bowler might try to get him out and had come up with means to counteract it. It was an innings that he had been thinking about for five or six months and it showed.

 

JK: It was very obvious the way he batted against Philander especially. He was so far down his crease. He was thinking about how he was gonna stop the late movement and all that sort of thing. More importantly and probably the most important thing we can finish a podcast with is that Ian Chappell was forced to say nice things about him over and over again.

 

GH: I didn’t hear that but I wish I had. It would’ve been a great moment. Ed was in England with Australia A over our winter and he watched the South Africans bowling to Strauss. So he had an idea of the way in which they would approach bowling to a left-hander. He had anticipated all the situations that he was gonna find himself in. This was not an innings that was won or lost on the day in question. It was one that his whole life had been leading up to. I know how much he’s longed for the opportunity to show what he can do. And so far in Test cricket, he’s been typecast as a limited player, as an old-fashioned grinder, an old-fashioned attrition cricketer. Well, there’s more to him than that and you began to see it. This was an innings that he’s hankered to play. It’ll be a defining one for him.

 

JK: I think when he retires from the big time, I think he’d do very well in one-day cricket for the Yarras but I don’t wanna put any pressure on you for having to select him at all.

 

GH: If I can play one-day cricket, then Ed can too.

 

JK: Thanks you very much, Gideon. We’ll talk to you next week.

 

GH: My pleasure, Cheers Jarrod.

Cricket Sadist Hour with Gideon Haigh: Optimal Penetration

New podcast is up.

We talk about the state of New Texas (Queensland) comedy.

How really white whites can make you look fat.

Michael Clarke and Ricky Ponting’s changed personalities.

I mention platypus balls, again.

And we talk about a little hairy bastard.

Listen here.

Eddie’s joyful loneliness

You make the hundred. You go crazy. The crowd roar. You celebrate with your batting partner. You acknowledge your family, team-mates and the crowd. The celebration is then replayed with the commentator explaining what it means. Usually that is it.

We’ve seen it so many times that sometimes we don’t even pay that much attention. If it’s someone’s first, you might watch just to see how they react. What sort of person are they. Did they kiss their badge? or the turf? Did they squeal uncontrollably? Were they almost crying. How did the non-striker react to it all? Then you go back to half-watching the cricket like you always do.

But Channel 9 caught something else on Ed Cowan.

Mark Nicholas was busy contextualising the event for us as quick as he could before the producer put a commercial on. As he was, Cowan came to a standstill and had a moment to himself.

It was during an ad break in Australia, but if you were watching internationally you would have seen the moment after the over was bowled. No commentary. No hype. Just the gentle background cricket crowd noise and a close up of a man who had just made his first Test hundred.

Cowan took a deep breath after completing a quick two, but it wasn’t the deep breath of someone who had run, but the deep breath of someone trying to get his thoughts in order. Quickly he took his helmet off and rubbed his eyes dry. Then he looked up above. Cowan said it was for his mentor Peter Roebuck, but it was quickly aborted due to the sweat that was in his eyes. That is assuming it was sweat and not something else. Cowan then looked up the pitch and smiled, smiled that nervous kind of smile that you do when you cannot believe how lucky you are.

The crowd then gave him a gentle applause. The sort of applause you give to a bowler as he walks down to the crowd after taking a wicket. He acknowledged them in an awkward way by barely raising his helmet, like he was embarrassed to continue to celebrate his hundred. Like an actor who feels comfortable with an encore. Cowan wandered down the pitch unsure of what to do, how to act, where to go.

Clarke had left to see the 12th man about a dog, no one seemed close enough to talk to Cowan. The South Africans had gone hard at him in the morning, and probably didn’t want to chat with him. The umpire was not around either. It was like everyone had left him alone so he could have a moment to himself, but all he wanted was someone to come over and talk to him.

The man had just made a Test hundred but he looked so alone. For a while he just stood at the non-striker’s end, waiting for everyone to get into their place for the next over.

Perhaps he knew the cameras were still on him and didn’t want to look smug, but I don’t think so. I think he genuinely couldn’t believe how lucky he was, and really had no idea what to do next. It was like he was waiting for Clarke or an umpire to give him instructions on how to act.

In a shield match he probably would have just made the century and relaxed, but this wasn’t a shield match, even if the crowd size hinted it was.

Everything has changed for Cowan now. In some eyes he was the walking dead. A middling middle-aged cricketer one bad shot from the end of his career. It looked like Test attacks had worked him out. There were articles suggesting he’d be first out of the team. Too defensive. Not enough runs. Rob Quiney and Shane Watson wanting his spot.

And then he makes that Test century, and has about 45 seconds to think about it.

Cowan has spent his whole life trying to make that century, he’s probably thought about how he would celebrate, which ground it would happen at, where his wife would be, maybe even how he’d raise his bat. No one teaches you what to do next. There was no Friday Night Lights swelling of the music; just crowd hum and Cowan standing on his own.

Eventually Cowan put his helmet on and tried to get back into the headspace you need to be in to face Morne Morkel. The only difference about the next ball was that he faced it having achieved something that no one would have believed possible a year before.

Ed Cowan is now a Test centurion.

Cricket News Hurl: Vulnerable Dossier Edition

Strengths: Only comes out once a week. Only the third edition, so still not that annoying. Has a lot of cricket news in it. Is written in a folksy sardonic way that make it feel like you’re sitting on an uncomfortable barstool next to someone you don’t hate.

Vulnerability: Not enough Jesse Ryder mentions. Bad body odour. Tenuous links between stories. A basic lack of education or intelligence. Enough already with the pop culture references. Could be easily dismissed by anyone reading on a phone.

Jesse Ryder is still burning down New Zealand. Even though some over enthusiastic administracrat fined him 750 bucks for showing dissent in his last barnstorming game, that couldn’t stop the Ryder. He used the rage of that unnecessary fine to hump 90 off 57 and win another game for Wellington.

A dossier on Jesse would read “Strengths: everything, vulnerability: NOTHING”.

The not so secret dossier that the Australians might have accidentally leaked on purpose to put off South Africa was marginally more detailed than my Jesse dossier. Marginally. They took the controversial view that Steyn and Kallis are good. Australia has turned leaking info on your opposition into an artform, not a good artform, more like those paintings you see on the fridge of tired parents.

Considering it was a well thought out tactical ploy to upset the opposition, it was rather tame. Far tamer than Graeme Swann was about India. Swann was cornered at a mango event by Joe Fish and said that England shouldn’t continue their run of playing spinners like they are delivering invisible balls because India don’t have the mystery spin that the others had.

Considering the way England played India in the World T20, mystery doesn’t seem to be that important, just the designations of SLA, OB, SLC or LB. There simply cannot be any mystery left in Harbhajan Singh, and yet England played him on a sub continental pitch like he was bowling laser beams.

Bhajji may or may not make his comeback against England, but he has asked that those of us that don’t understand cricket stop judging him by the amount of wickets he has taken. It’s fair. Too often in cricket we focus on things like runs and wickets, and don’t focus on things such as spirit, ethic and trying really hard.

It is with this in mind that I apologise for everything I have ever said about Derek Crookes.

Ofcourse if we were to judge cricketers on their runs, like the old time thinkers used too, we would think that Boree Kieng is a legend. Boree made 200 out of a total of 253 in a losing match. Boree plays for Hectorville Cricket Club in the Adelaide Turf Cricket Association F-grade and was playing against Gaza at Klemzig Reserve. Sure, it sounds like a made up team playing a west bank representative side in Berlin, but the East Torrens Messenger is reporting it, so it must be true. Boree had never made a 50 before, so the odds on a double hundred would have been pretty high, shame there is very little betting action on the Adelaide F Grade action.

One man who knows absolutely nothing about betting is Mohammad Azharuddin. He has fought and won a decision to allow him back in cricket. Azharuddin was the most graceful batsman to be banned for fixing, but disgraced himself far more by later becoming a politician. The BCCI funded their side of the case wit the emergency N Srinivasan 80 foot high gold statue fund.

The BCCI were not just fighting against old dudes in court, they were also accusing young dudes of being older than they really are. 230 underage cricketers were actually found to be overage when their bone density was tested by the BCCI. In the Mumbai under 16 side, 11 players from a squad of 30 were found to be older than 16. I have no idea if bone density tests are accurate, a quick online searches shows they are marginally more believable than a Steve Waugh lie detector test. However the parents of these children are very upset and are rushing to the BCCI waving their marriage certificates to say something went wrong.

The ICC says the testing is not fool proof (DRS, anyone?), so it is possible that in one week the all powerful BCCI could be beaten by an old guy and a bunch of 14, 15, 16, 17 and 22 year old kids.

Talking of cricketers who are nowhere near their publicly stated age, Shahid Afridi is so out of form that he is considering playing first class cricket. I would have more to say about this but when I googled Afridi, the first response was ‘Shahid Afridi real age’ (37 according to PakPassion), and the second option was ‘Shahid Afridi age’ (32 according to public records).

The other old leg spinner that the press love may not be playing in the big bash if his fiancée’ s tweets are to be trusted. And if you can’t trust a semi occasional film star’s tweets, whose can you trust? Hurley, the star of passenger 57 (always bet on black), tweeted “Praying for a White Christmas this year-it will be @warne888′s first English one.” It is possible that Warne is just heading back to the UK for Christmas between his Melbourne Stars match on the 21st of December and the 27th of December, or by Christmas she meant the bit where stores start to crowd their shops with stupid decorations.

Another unlikely Australian English couple met this week. David Hussey met the Prince of Wales and was moved to say “very nice man, very welcoming and easy to speak to”. The Prince of Wales said of David Hussey, “I think he struggles against the short ball and looks ordinary against top class spin. I think Australia were right to leave him out of the T20 side”.

If David Hussey does get a regular game for the Australian T20 side, he will be pleased to know that Basement Jaxx (their 2001 hit “Where’s your head at” had a music video with monkeys in it) are performing at the Australia Sri Lanka T20s. In 2011 Basement Jaxx scored the film “Attack the Block” which was a one act film starring Ashwell Prince. One website said that DJs and cricket are a funny mix, perhaps overlooking DJ Sammy.

There will also be lots of music at the newest T20 league, the Caribbean Premier League. That’s right. More premier. Premier, premier, premier. Allen Stanford has not said whether he will buy a franchise.

More news from cricket boards trying to extort every single dollar they can. For this summer ABC Grandstand do not own rights to the radio mobile phone app, and therefore you can’t listen to Test cricket that way. Last season you could. But you still can on the actual radio, kids still own them, right?

More idiotic is the SLC charging Radio Sport from New Zealand so much that they didn’t buy the rights to New Zealand’s tour of Sri Lanka. How is Radio Sport not broadcasting and paying no fee, better than Radio Sport broadcasting and paying a fee? It’s not like there are a plethora of kiwi radio stations lining up for the Sri Lanka tour. Even from a tourism angle it is surely worth giving them away. In order to make back their money Sri Lanka probably have 1400 proposed ODIs against India next year. And each delivery of those match is worth more than the radio rights for this entire series.

If the SLC really need money, they could always just check MS Dhoni’s pockets on the next tour.

Dhoni is so rich he owns a Superbike team. Now I don’t follow motorbike racing, but I bet that cost him a little money. He isn’t one of those superbike owners who sits on his laurels, he’s bought three-time World champion Kenan Sofouglue and Fabian Foret for his team. I have no idea who Kenan is, but I do know he once headbutted Fabian mid race. Dhoni may be planning to get Sreesanth and Bhajji to consult his two racers on how to make nice once you’re on the same team.

There seems to be little evidence that KP was physically assaulted by the English players, although ego wrestling definitely seemed to happen. But he’s back now, cricket’s longest pointless melodrama came to an end with KP making a effortless hundred in a tour game against a poor bowling attack. The next day of the match was stopped by Monkeys. Coincidence?

Monkeys. (Not an Andrew Symonds joke, but I am hoping mentioning Roy and Bhajji in the same column will insight morons to abuse each other and make this column look like more people read it).

Noted monkey enthusiast, Navjot Singh Sidhu, has admitted that he once cheated in a Test Match to dismiss Courtney Walsh. Sidhu said this while hooked upto on a non Steve Waugh sanctioned lie detector test live on reality TV. This is still not the most embarrassing thing Sidhu has ever done. The question is not why de he cheat, but why did he cheat to get Courtney Walsh out. Walsh batted as bad as you and I performing Villanelle poems with gaping head wounds.

A seam bowler who can bat better than that is Vernon Philander, and he’s won South Africa’s sports player of the year award. Philander beat Amla and that swimmer whose father cries a lot. Not long ago espnCRICINFO writer George Dobell said* that he knew of a thousand guys in the Home Counties Premier (not another one) League that were better than Philander.

According to Mike Knox from the Oxford Mail “A threatened breakaway from the Home Counties Premier League (HCPL) has moved a step closer with Hertfordshire clubs backing a proposal to set up on their own. In a poll of 24 clubs in HCPL Divisions 1 and 2 East, and Hertfordshire League Division 1, there was a split of 15-5 in favour of a move to quit the Premier League set-up, with four clubs not replying. If the breakaway goes ahead, it is likely to occur before the 2013 season.”

Rob Quiney was picked from virtually nowhere this week when Australia seemed to adopt the Eddie Cowan batting selection policy. “Batting averages are meaningless and the art of BMW repair” is Eddie Cowan’s second, yet to be released, book. Australians seemed intrigued by Quiney, a former fat factory worker, and he trended on Australian twitter along with ‘almonds’, ‘tristan’ and’vaginas’. Quiney is a Victorian.

Victoria defeated Western Australia with a bonus point. Many pundits claimed this victory inspired America to re-elect Barack Obama. Others claimed a leaked dossier with Mitt’s strengths and vulnerabilities that Ben Dorries wrote about was the real reason.

*Approximate quote.

If you’ve got anything you think should be in next week’s #cricketnewshurl, email cricketnewshurlatgmail.com. Email Sambit Bal directly if you’d like to be the chief writer of the Adelaide Turf Cricket F Grade or Home Counties Premier League.

The South Africa night parade

In Japan they have a particular set of monsters called Yokai. These monsters can be anything from a small boy who carries tofu to a demon hag who stabs and eats pregnant women. Once upon a time in Kyoto, all the Yokai walked around the outskirts of the town in a menacing way. They called it the Demons’ night parade.

It upset the locals.

The South African touring squad has not yet menacingly walked anywhere. They have arrived late due to the Champion’s League, have played in only one warm up match on the unGabba like SCG and were largely uninspiring in that game.

And yet the locals have been upset.

Last season according to Bill Lawry, Craig McDermott and other Australians, Australia had the best bowling attack in the world. Somehow that same bowling attack, which now looks exactly the same, is no match for the South African bowling attack that is the best since the West Indies of the 70s,80s and 90s. What happened to our much loved aussie bravado? Surely the sight of Steve Smith and Glenn Maxwell making half centuries against this South African attack would be enough for someone, anyone, to shout from the roof top that Australia is going to murder this attack.

Nope.

Then was the Rob Quiney decision. Australia could have said we picked Rob Quiney because he represents good old Australian club cricket attacking nature. Sure he’s taken a while to get his shit together, but it’s now together, and the guy plays fast bowling like he has the reflexes of Jay Garrick, hits the ball really hard, has a good head on his shoulders, plays the Gabba like it’s his backyard and will take down this South African attack.

Instead we hear about good form and that Dale Steyn doesn’t bowl well against left handers. Pitiful.

Then there is the not so secret dossier. Every now and then since John Buchanan “misplaced” before a shield final against Western Australia, Australia has released notes about the opposition that will embarrass or unsettle them.

I bet Kallis is upset by being called a once in a generation player.

Australia are denying they had anything to do with it. But considering their history in allowing the opposition to see what they think of them, it’s hard to believe that they weren’t involved one way or another. Whether it was written by an Australian player, member of the support staff or any one in Australia the real problem is how limp it is.

We have no real idea how to get Hashim Amla out, let’s sledge him.

Vernon Philander is really good with the new ball, let’s try and not go out to him.

And when Graeme Smith is out of form his feet don’t move much.

Come on. What is this. If you’re going to write something like this, how about something a bit more in depth or just a bit more cutting.

Vernon Philander has been seaming the ball like crazy on helpful wickets; let’s see what he does on flat Australian tracks. He might be rubbish at it. Morne Morkel’s last over at Lord’s shows just how mentally fragile this killing machine is. Sure, he’ll take a 4/80 in this series, but if we break him, their great bowling attack is stuttering. JP Duminy has made one Test hundred since his debut ton in Melbourne; he’s one bad series from being back in the wilderness. Let’s send him there for what he did to us at the MCG. Imran Tahir is flighty and unpredictable, South Africa still have no idea how to use an attacking spinner, and he can’t bowl defensively. Let’s tear his head off and use it as a reusable shopping bag. Never go out to Kallis, if you can manage that he wont want to bowl anymore. If Kallis doesn’t bowl much they have a four man attack with Tahir and Morkel as potential weak links while Philander is untested in Australia.

And where the secrets on the psyche of South Africa? I don’t see the word choke once. This unsecret dossier should have been titled the choke manifesto. The word choke should have been used so often that SA’s brain doctor Paddy Upton had to turn his mobile off just to have a coffee. No mentions of previous occasions where South Africa had the chance to become world number one in Sydney, and didn’t do it, or how they lost the following series at home after Australia brought in Marcus North, Phil Hughes, Bryce McGain and Andrew McDonald as their special weapons. No mention of how South Africa could only ever draw with India even after they repeatedly won the first Test in shortened series. Nothing.

If South Africa win this series, they’re more than the number one ranked ICC side, they’re the team in world cricket. If they don’t win it, it’ll be seen as another false dawn. South Africa drew against India at home, drew against Pakistan in the UAE and drew against Australian in South Africa. They’re the best side of a bad bunch, but they haven’t proven themselves yet.

They were brilliant against England, but it was an England that was emotionally moronic and in the middle of a slide. They defeated New Zealand 1-0, but they usually burn villages when they play the kiwis. And last summer they beat Sri Lanka 2-1 at home, far from an effusive win for a team of this caliber.

Their captain has signed a deal with Surrey that shows he has one foot out the door. And their best ever player is about 100 years old.

This South Africa is a very good cricket team, but they’re not the Justice League. There are problems and insecurities that even an injured and average on paper Australian side in transition might be able to capitalise on.

This is not Bambi Vs Godzilla, this is one really good team against another who wants to be really good. South Africa should win this, but that’s no reason for Australia to act like they already have. I actually saw a piece that said Australia had nothing to lose in this series, from an Australian. What is going on? When I left Australia last summer I floated away on the aura of this soon to be world number one cricket side, not a scrappy insurgency team.

Australia may not win, but South Africa will have to do more than just turn up and walk menacingly to win this. Some bravado, posturing and name calling would be nice. Just to remind us that the Australian summer has begun.

Gids & I: the transcript

Swapnil Shah transcribed this for me. You’ve got to appreciate the unnecessary effort in doing this. Sort of like writing up a dossier just so you can leak it. Although on his site it says Swapnil lives in Salt Lake, so what else is he going to do with his time.

If this transcript looks scary long and you need something to listen to while running from imaginary monsters on your treadmill, the podcast is available here.

Cricket Sadist Hour – A Transcript

Nov 7, 2012

Jarrod Kimber chats with Gideon Haigh on Rob Quiney, Graeme Smith’s future, cricket balls and what’s not-so-good about the Gabba

Digitally joining me is the man, the myth, the legend, that’s what everyone says about him but actually he’s a F-grade cricketer that basically is trying to hold on to Cricket any way he can. It’s Gideon Haigh.

JK: How are you?

GH: You flatter me, Jarrod.

JK: It was great the way that you got your, basically you were asked to do the Bradman speech and you spent about 25 minutes talking about yourself and how you play Cricket.

GH: Well, I talked about my sponsors, the sponsors pretty mad at me; I was on message to put on a gratuitous Lachlan Fisher reference (unintelligible). It hasn’t done me any good at club level – last three innings I’ve had two dodgy lbws and a dodgy caught-behind.

JK: But that’s what we love about Club Cricket, that you can say everything nice about it but at the end of the day, if you can’t play…

GH: it just turns around and bites you in the arse.

JK: Now, you’ve got a new book as well. I think, I could be wrong, but you are the first person to ever write a book about this young man, Shane Warne.

GH: Ya, first person to write a proper book, anyway. Even Shane wasn’t able to do that. He’s written two autobiographies and they’re really book-shaped objects rather than books. It was interesting to sort of study the existing literature on Warne. It’s vast but it’s not deep. There’s an awful lot of very pedestrian, very superficial, very, quite puerile stuff that’s been written about it. And, to my surprise, I found relatively little that was actually a physical description, of him bowling. I guess, because people saw him bowl, fifty thousand deliveries at international level, there’s a general assumption that people have seen it all before and if they are curious they can go to Youtube. But it was one of my paramount objectives to write a description of Warne bowling that kind of, explored exactly how wonderful it was and the sensations that you experienced while watching it. Because I suspect that in ten-twenty years time when we don’t have the physical specimen to study, people will have forgotten what a transcended experience it was.

JK: You talk about the physical specimen and the first thing I noticed when I got the book was he just doesn’t look anything like the person on the cover of the book anymore. I mean, it’s impossible not to notice that. It’s almost like, because we’ve seen him change, not slowly, but quite dramatically, quite quickly. But at the same time, we’ve all seen the pictures as it’s been happening. And then to actually, suddenly get that image in front of you of what he used to look like, it’s phenomenal how much he’s changed.

GH: Yes, I’ll never forget being in the press-box at Lords in 2009 and seeing out of the corner of my eye this orange streak pass through the back with this blue rictus. His teeth were so white, they are almost blue. And it is quite spell-binding; you almost can’t take your eyes off him. He actually reminds me, little-bit, these days of Bert Newton (not sure). I remember I once went on the Bert Newton show and the advice that I was given before I went on was, “Don’t start staring at his head. You just can’t take their eyes of his hair. Just try to look elsewhere”.

JK: Ya, that wouldn’t be hard with him. Talking of people with big heads, I want to go into Shane Watson a little bit. Brydon’s written a piece saying that if Shane Watson doesn’t bowl anymore, he may not get picked for Australia. I know, last summer, that was the big rumor – that Australia could do without him. And since then he performed superhero like in the World Twenty20. What do you think about Watson and do you think they will pick him if he can’t bowl and he clearly can’t bowl?

GH: Watson has created himself, over the last three or four years, a bit of a niche that suits him at international level. He likes opening the batting, because as he says in his autobiography, he likes the fact that when going in first, he doesn’t have to respond to a match situation, he can create a match situation for him. And he likes being able to bowl, because he thinks it takes pressure off his batting. Psychologically, he seems to be unable to step outside that and do anything else. He’s created a world that suits him or a role that suits him and I think any changed to that role, he finds, disproportionately difficult. So, if for physical reasons, he has to change his role, then that will stretch him psychologically.

JK: “Watson’s world” is a very scary concept. Basically, what we have got is, we’ve got a guy who doesn’t make enough hundreds in Test Cricket. He does get a lot of good starts but he is probably not batting like a top-order batsman if he’s not making big hundreds. We’ve got a guy who can bowl decently and take wickets and has taken five-wicket hauls in test matches and occasionally change the game but everytime you bring him on to bowl you’re afraid you want see him again for six to eighteen months. And you’ve got a guy who, for whatever reason, maybe doesn’t quite fit the new team, the new Australia way of working

GH: Yes, I think that it’s interesting that Australia was able to get by with four bowlers last year, they didn’t necessarily need a fifth bowler’s input, and his position in the field has closed up. He can’t field at first slip anymore. First and second slip are taken. Where do you put him in the field? He’s not quick in the midfield, he’s not a natural gully fielder, do you stick him at mid-on? He’s not gonna look a little bit obtrusive at mid-on. Somehow, the role that he performed has closed up and he hasn’t been able to re-invent himself.

JK: Ya, it’s quite odd and obviously with him out, we’ve gone straight to Rob Quiney. Have you seen much of him from Victoria?

GH: Yes, Little bit. I’ve always quite liked him as a classic, he’s a very Australian looking player. He’s one of those players who couldn’t come from any other country – lean, (ranging), hungry, aggressive, plays all three forms. A bit home-spun, even sometimes a little bit crude in his methods but looks as though he’s played a bit of cricket at lower levels, knows what it’s all about. You’ve seen a bit of him too, Jarrod. I enjoyed your piece about the night that made Rob Quiney.

JK: Well, I’ve seen a lot of him early on, I’ve not seem him that much recently except in IPL and they odd game in the Big Bash. I’ve always said, he gets a lot of abuse in the IPL because he plays spinners dreadfully. But I think he’s as good a fast bowling batsman there is in Australia and I think that’s essentially why he is being picked. I can’t think of too many other batsmen outside the main team at the moment who could play fast bowling anywhere near as good as him and he probably plays it better than some of the others. And I think that’s a massive advantage coming up against South Africa. He’s gonna face two of the fastest bowlers in the world and probably the smartest seam bowler in the world. I am worried though that they picked him, perhaps, too much because of this whole thing that Dale Steyn doesn’t like bowling to left-handers. I think Morne Morkel could bowl to a left-hander in his sleep and let’s be honest he usually plays in his sleep.

GH: You got Post hoc ergo propter hoc rationalization, isn’t it? The whole left-hander shtick.

JK: Ya, it’s interesting. What do you think about Doolan? He’s made 160 in that game. He’s usually a top-order batsman, usually a No. 3, and he is also four-five years younger than Quiney. It’s interesting that they went with Quiney, it’s not like his record or his form this year has demanded it. I wonder if they were just looking for someone who wouldn’t be fazed.

GH: Ya, I really liked Doolan. He’s essentially another classic, old-fashioned Australian player, who hasn’t come through the new-fangled path. He’s got a very traditional upbringing of club cricket. He’s a bit of an enigma, Doolan. I’ve seen him look absolutely terrible like he’s almost got no idea which end of the bat to hold. Infact, I saw him batting at Bankstown earlier this season and he looked in all sorts playing against Trent Copeland with Brad Haddin standing up. He seemed to lack any sort of fluency and any sort of shape. And then two weeks later, I saw him playing at the MCG and looking a million bucks. It’s almost as though he doesn’t quite understand how good he is. I’ve met him when he came to the South Yarra cricket club last season. He’s a very mild mannered, softly-spoken and dryly-humored young man. He doesn’t strike you a natural, gregarious, aggressive, out-going, international sportsman. He’s done it the way that Australian players used to it, by steadily accumulating experience at the first-class level. The fact that he has batted at No. 3 for such a long period suggests that he actually might have been a better bet than Quiney. There is a difference between opening the batting and No. 3. It’s actually asking quite a lot of Quiney to essentially bat out of position in his test debut.

JK: Ya, you’ve got, Doolan, Davis and Klinger who were the other three. And I just that wonder whether they are all too similar to Eddie Cowan and whether they were just thinking we know that Quiney’s not sort of guy that’s gonna get over-awed, we know that he’s gonna attack a little bit, we are willing to take a punt on him batting at No.3. We don’t want to get stuck in the mud with Davis or Klinger. Maybe they were worried about having too many defensive batsmen in the top order.

GH: Well, I tell you what. Watching Doolan in the Shield match here, he was smashing them, they were peeling off the middle of his bat. It looked as though he almost could not believe how well he was hitting the ball.

JK: That’s a good place to be. I don’t know if I’ve ever done that myself. Let’s talk about South Africa. Graeme Smith. This could probably be his last test tour to Australia, if not, his last test tour anywhere.

GH: Ya, this is a South African team that’s at its peak that perhaps over the next two to three years faces a fair but of man-power turn over. That creates its own kind of pressures for a side with the need to achieve, the need to make the most of this environment and the opportunity to win in Australia. He’s obviously closer to the end than the beginning.

JK: The signing with Surrey was quite interesting. I know for a fact that surrey were looking for someone who was going to be available a good period of the year but basically they were looking for someone who wanted to retire and become their captain. It sounded like he originally said No to the deal and then signed a three year deal. It almost sounds like, I want to beat Australia, go back home, finish on my own terms, and then maybe just head off to England.

GH: And I think probably dealing with the South African administration on a daily basis would probably wear you out. And Smith’s had his problems over the last eighteen months. I think every one of those circumstances has a limited life-span. And the turn-over at the top of Cricket South Africa means that everyone’s operating in a normally uncertain environment too.

JK: And I think his wife is Irish or Scottish. There might even be more, he might just think, I can play probably five to six days of County Cricket without too many problems. It’ll be interesting to see who they go with because AB de Villiers is obviously their golden child but he is very close to becoming Dan Vettori. It seems to be that almost every job you need they go “Well, AB will do it”.

GH: It’s got to be Amla, I think. Amla’s got the authority, he seems to have to personality, he’s got a bit of grounding in the job and I think he’s got universal respect and authority. He would be my selection.

JK: He’s the person I would have selected as well but I talked to Telford Vice in the UK Summer and Telford said that he doesn’t think that Amla wants to do it. He doesn’t want to take an extra job and that he’s quite happy being the guy in the background who smiles and makes the runs. So it could be an interesting one if Smith does go. How do you think they’ll go in this actual tour? Because they’re a good side but they also generally play their worst cricket after they’ve played their best cricket.

GH: That’s a little bit like the Yarras.

JK: I’m gonna have to start beeping out references to the Yarras.

GH: You look up and down that side and it is quite hard to discern weaknesses in it. One thing that stands in Australia’s favor is that I think both teams have explosive attacks that could break the back of an innings in an hour. That’s often all that it takes to win a Test Match. So I think that probably Australia is a better chance of taking a Test Match off South Africa than England was, England being a steady, consistent, rather humdrum, sometimes professional outfit. You never quite know what Pattinson is gonna do on a daily basis and he was very, very sharp against Western Australia. Having looked a little bit indifferent against Tasmania, he’s coming into some prime Test Match form at the perfect moment.

JK: Ya, him and Siddle. I hate to say something nice about Cricket Australia but the idea of putting the videos up online of Shield Cricket. I’ve seen a few spells, especially when I was in Sri Lanka and him and Siddle just looked amazingly primed to take down Test Cricket. They’re at that level where they are almost too good to get the edge in Shield Cricket right at the moment.

GH: Pattinson just seems to have gotten better spell by spell this Summer and he was scary in the late evening on Friday against WA. He looked like he was gonna take a wicket every ball.

JK: I wanna talk about both bowling attacks because when I was leaving Australia last summer, Bill Lawry, Craig McDermott and a bunch of drunk people were saying that Australia had the best bowling attack in the world. And South Africa arrived with the best bowling attack since the West Indies. What’s happening?

GH: I thought England had the best bowling attack in the world.

JK: That depends on who you talk to on what day. But that did seem to happen. I noticed the minute the South African team turned up, the Australian press couldn’t stop telling them how good they were.

GH: But that’s just the fifteen second gold-fish memory of the likes of most Australian cricket journalists. We’re infinitely suggestible and once we pick up a line, we like to repeat it to enjoy the sound of it.

JK: But what do you think? I’d say that there are weaknesses and strengths in both attacks. South Africa have got an extra bowler with Kallis which gives them a huge advantage and Tahir gives them something else completely. Vernon Philander is a very good bowler but I don’t think he can keep up this run. I think he will eventually have to slow down and this may be the series on flat Australian wickets. Morne Morkel is always one cheeseburger away from ending up in an asylum from what I can tell. They are an attack that could collapse and they weren’t always bowling that brilliantly against England. England gave them a lot of advantages with lot of stupid shots.

GH: Of course, in a three test match series, less can go wrong than in a five test match series. Perhaps both attacks are suited by the fact that it is a shorter series rather than a longer series. They can go harder over shorter periods without necessarily having to worry about seeing out a full-fledged five test match series. It’s interesting the venues that have been chosen for this series. Brisbane and Perth, Australia’s taken actually a bit of a risk in programming games involving South Africa at those two venues rather than on more benign surfaces. It could be quite explosive. Certainly, if you are in the top three of either side, you will have earned your runs for sure.

JK: The Perth one is probably more interesting. The Gabba generally gets the first test now I suppose but the WACA would be the one that you would throw to Sri Lanka so that you give yourself an easy win. They haven’t done that. I know you are not up in Brisbane yet, but do we know much about the pitch? There’s talk about Gabba green tops and then quite often they are shaved the last moment. Do we know much about the pitch?

GH: I’ve heard it’s pretty flat. I’ve heard it’s designed to last the full five days. Of course, what you can’t reckon is the climactic conditions. It’s both an innovating environment and a potentially enticing one for a bowler who moves the ball in the air. You’d suspect that if Philander is gonna bowl well anywhere in Australia, it’s gonna be at the Gabba.

JK: Ya, that’s a good point. Although I bet you that he might need to get used to going up the wind at the WACA. I think it was New Zealand, this time they toured or the last time, there was an early November pitch that moved around everywhere up there. It’d be interesting to see if they take that because it could be a series, if you win the toss on the first day you could almost book yourself a chance of not losing.

GH: The scores last time against New Zealand at Brisbane belie how good the pitches were. Batsmen were being beaten once an over, they just weren’t good enough to get an edge. I thought Clarke’s hundred at Brisbane was a first rate one. The season before, the preparations were compromised and they ended up with a pretty flat wicket and that it was very difficult to get the batsmen out on the last couple of days. But the scores have been middling at the Gabba this year which leads you to suspect that the groundsmen are trying to do something to make things a little bit interesting and none of batting top sixes have had an awful lot of recent form on the board. They’ll be doing their acclimatization to five-day cricket in a five-day game which has a lot of challenges.

JK: It’s interesting, actually, I forgot to mention it earlier that Quiney’s record at the Gabba is phenomenal. I’m not sure why he hasn’t moved to Brisbane. Maybe he’s afraid they play at the Allan Border Oval too much, but he seems to be the only batsman excited that that’s where the Test is being played.

GH: The other thing about the Gabba is those ridiculous seats that they have, it’s probably one of the worst seeing grounds in the world, those dabble seats, the multi-colored seats. You often see slip catches go down the first couple of days because the back drop to vision from slip is unlike any other ground in the world. So don’t be surprised if you see some crucial catches going down.

JK: The South African journalists haven’t been there in a long time so they might get lost. When I was there for The Ashes, I had no idea where I was going and I kept looking up and everything looks the same, there’s nothing to tell you where you are, you just keep walking around. I’m pretty sure I did three laps once just to try and find the nets.

GH: And you can’t get outside the ground. I went to the Gabba for the first time in the mid-1980s. It was like the Queenslander, that classic kind of indigenous architecture. It felt like a sub-tropical cricket ground. The architecture was quite varied; these bizarre crenellations like the place had been built on the run. Back in the 1950s, apparently the place was so covered with barbed wire to keep the hoi polloi out of the members stand; the visiting cricketers called it the Belsen, not a politically correct reference at all. But it had a certain home-spun charm; you couldn’t have been anywhere else in the world. Well, you could be in Melbourne; it feels like a Football Oval.

JK: But at least there’s the gladiatorial aspect at Melbourne. It feels like no matter where you are sitting, how far you are, you can still spit on a player, which is what I like about Melbourne. I want to talk about one other thing. There’s been a lot of talk in the India-England series about the fact that India won’t let England face any spinners in the warm-up. It was quite interesting that South Africa who haven’t really complained about this so much; Smith might have mentioned it at the first press conference but they arrived in Australia to prepare for a Test at the Gabba by going to the SCG, which is about the opposite.

GH: They tried to get it changed, didn’t they? But it was too little, too late. It was almost as though they hadn’t paid any attention to the itinerary until they looked at their plane tickets and then went oh what we can do about it. The system as you and I know used to be that you used to play a first class game at the arena that you were going to play the Test Match immediately before hand.

JK: And you play at Lilac Hill when you first arrived, quite often.

GH: The fact is that traditionally there has been such a great variety of conditions at the different Australian Test Match venues that playing a game at the venue on the eve of the Test Match was disproportionately valuable, perhaps more so then in England or in India. But now what dictates the itinerary is more player workload than actual preparation to play under particular conditions and particular times or particular venues.

JK: Ya, the England pre-tour, I am surprised at how many matches and how long they seem to be in India and preparing. I’m pretty sure they arrived in India before South Africa arrived in Australia.

GH: Ya, South Africa only arrived it seems like yesterday …

JK: When did the Champions League finish? Maybe that hasn’t finished, maybe it is still going, you never know. Pat Cummins is probably still bowling over there.

GH: World Cup 2007 is still going somewhere…

JK: I just got one final thing actually. It’s the thing that maybe will only be interesting to you and I. And it is not about LockLand Fisher Bats, for once. It’s about the fact that they are using different balls. They are thinking about using Dukes and then eventually phasing in SG balls and Kookaburra came out and said that if they don’t have Cricket Australia’s support then they might actually end up going broke. Is this not the same Kookaburra that took over balls and basically made the company Platypus go broke.

GH: It is the same company that’s had a monopoly on the Australian Cricket ball manufacturing since the Second World War and frankly, rightly so. They make the best ball. We used to use Platypuses in our local comp and they were rubbish. They never seemed to have a seam which is a bit of a problem when you are making a ball. Have you ever noticed that a Kookaburra sits nicer in your hand? It just seems like a better put together, more compact ball. It seems to retain its shine a bit longer. I certainly could never get used to bowling spin with a Platypus. I suspect that this is more maybe the authorities reminding Kookaburra that their monopoly isn’t a natural one, balls can be imported from overseas and that if they should decide to charge that extra 10% then Cricket Australia has ways and means of making sure that the internal market for balls is competitive.

JK: I wonder if it is not worth for first-class cricket, especially, using Duke balls in Hobart and Gabba, using SG balls in Sydney and Adelaide, and using Kookaburra balls in Melbourne and Perth.

GH: That is such an esoteric scheme, Jarrod, that only you could have dreamed it up.

JK: I spend a lot of time thinking about balls, Gideon.

GH: All rays on (unintelligible)

JK: It is. Thank you very much. You are gonna be popping in and out during the Summer and we will talk about things, generally, when there’s actually been Cricket rather then this non-sense that we have tried today.

GH: Well, there was Cricket, I played at the weekend.

JK: But you failed, ya?

GH: Yes, we lost by 1 run.

JK: I think every time I ever talk to you about Cricket, you’ve always lost by 9 wickets or 1 run.

GH: That’s the glorious game for you.

JK: Beautiful, Thank you very much for joining us.

GH: No worries, Jarrod, See ya.

Gideon Haigh and I talking shit about South Africa and Australia

For the summer, the Gideon Haigh is going to be joining me for some chats about Australia vs South Africa, and then Sri Lanka.

If you like Gideon Haigh or I, you can listen in, if not, you can’t.

In the first episode I call Shane Watson a big head and Gideon speaks in latin.

Listen here.

Quiney the club cricketer

Before the 28th of November 2007 Rob Quiney was just a club cricketer.

When he started club cricket he was a chubby kid who people at his club thought was named Bobby. At first all he wanted to do was go beyond St Kilda’s fourths, and later he fit in Victoria training around working in a factory while getting a few games mostly as a fill in. On the night of the 28th, Quiney was playing in his 29th match for Victoria, and there was a very real chance it might be his last. One more failure and he was back to club cricket forever.

That night on a typical MCG wicket, too slow to make batting or bowling an enjoyable spectacle, New South Wales made 259 from their 50 overs. A young almost unknown Phil Hughes was far from free flowing in making 68. Simon Katich used all his chest hair and grit to push around for 58. And the player who would become an agent Dom Thornley slapped a few around at the end for 49.

Dirk Nannes and Bryce McGain played in that match, two men who played club cricket until their late twenties and early 30s before Victoria made them regulars. Michael Clarke missed because of illness, but watched the whole game from the dug out looking sick and unimpressed.

Michael Klinger, still in his underachieving Victorian phase, made a trudging 50. David Hussey made 80, but it wasn’t pretty or like a normal Hussey innings for Victoria. When Klinger went out, Quiney came in ahead of Andrew McDonald to face an attack of Brett Lee, Stuart Clark, Nathan Bracken and Nathan Hauritz. It was an odd decision. In less than 18 months time Andrew McDonald would be playing for Australia. And Quiney was a player in his mid twenties without any big achievements behind him who’d not showed much when playing for Victoria.

It was a low-pressure game. There were few hundred fans at the ground, a few thousand more watching on TV, it was an unimportant early season game, and yet Quiney had more pressure on himself than at anytime in his career.

Quiney brutally thrashed 89 off 57 balls, Victoria won by four overs and six wickets.

It all started in a batting powerplay. While many fans and officials don’t like the powerplay, Rob Quiney’s Test call up might never have happened without one.

Quiney brutally thrashed 89 off 57 balls, Victoria won by four overs and six wickets.

It all started in a batting powerplay. While many fans and officials don’t like the powerplay, Rob Quiney’s Test call up might never have happened without one.

The reason Victoria had pushed Quiney up the order was as a pinch hitter who could use the early batting powerplay to get them above the rate. You’ve all seen this scenario before; generally the pitch hitter walks off after soaking up too many balls and the new batsman has to face up with all the fielders in the circle.

When the powerplay was called, Quiney was 11 off 15 balls.

The powerplay started with Nathan Hauritz, 14 runs off his over.

Stuart Clark bowled over number two for eight runs.

14 runs came from Brett Lee in the third over.

Clark’s next over went for 12.

And Lee finished the last over went for another 12.

When the powerplay finished, Quiney was 57 from 35 balls.

Quiney had gone from a no one to a player to watch in one night. It was the might where Quiney started believing in himself.

Since the Argus report, club cricket’s health in Australia has been much discussed. It was the centerpiece of Gideon Haigh’s Bradman oration. And many think that until club cricket improves its quality Australia will struggle.

Quiney is a club cricketer. You couldn’t say Quiney batted like a first class or International player. He played like a club cricketer with serious talent. It was raw and unkempt. A classic shot could be followed by a horrible slog. It was instinctive and natural. Entertaining to watch, frustrating to bowl at. He wasn’t formed through the academy or underage systems, he just sort of appeared in 2006 as a 24 year old batsman because he made so many runs for St Kilda. You can see the difference between Australian cricketers from club or country backgrounds compared to the academy and underage players. There is an unclean nature about them, but not in a bad way.

His first venture up from club cricket was playing against a World XI attack of Akhtar, Kallis, Ntini, Vettori, Afridi, Pollock and the Murali. He was run out for three.

It took three years for Quiney to make a first class century. His highest first class score is 153. He seems more like the person who will make a classy half century (the man has collected many scores around 80) and then give it all away. His career has seven first class hundreds, and an average of 37, when combined with his age of 30 it doesn’t inspire too many people.

But if you’ve seen Quiney on a good day, like that day against NSWales or in the 09/10 Shield final against Queensland, you feel you’ve seen a special player. He imposes himself and dominates, can score anywhere and when in form looks like a run out or stupid shot is the only way to get past him. Rod Marsh and John Inverarity might have seen another of his good days when he made 85 against Vernon Philander, Imran Tahir and the Dale Steyn.

Leading run scorer in last years Shield, averaged 49 and picked up the Domestic player of the year award still couldn’t get him on the A tour to England. Even through injuries and squad departures, he never made his way onto that trip. With Hughes and Khawaja seemingly far ahead of him. Now he is one injury from a Test cap. It’s either a while hunch by a slection committee that likes form, or an unconventional decision by a group of men who value hard, work, talent and perseverance. An 85 and a middling average don’t usually propel you that quickly.

Quiney is a pre-Argus player in a post-Argus world. The immensely talented club cricketer who’s made it to Australian set up with a weight of 80 odds. He’s had experience playing New Zealand, Sri Lanka and the IPL, and is coming off two solid years of domestic cricket. His selection will upset those who thirst for 20 year-old one in a generation Australian batsmen. Quiney’s far from 20, and is not a ten year player. He ’s been around now for a while without exciting many or getting headlines. But he has been getting better every year and was consistent and lucky enough to make it this far.

Michael Clarke was never a club cricketer. He was born with a baggy green in his mouth. These days he is pretty busy, and chances are on his day off he doesn’t sit in a dugout watching a List A game. But luckily for Quiney, when the other selectors brought up his name, there’s a strong chance that Clarke’s mind went back to that night at the MCG.

It was one great night for Quiney, and it may mean he joins a far more exclusive cricket club on Friday.