Jarrod Kimber's Blog, page 48
October 1, 2012
September 30, 2012
Watto whacks
This tournament is fast becoming the search for Australia’s middle order. It’s weak, wounded and clutching rare gems, but first you have to get past the gate keeper. For the fourth time in four matches Shane Watson swatted away anyone who came near the Australian middle order. He has climbed halfway up the World Twenty20 tower clutching the Australian middle order in his large sweaty palm, and will have to be brought down by someone or something special for anyone to see this middle order.
There was a time when Dale Steyn looked like the man who could bring down Watson. Steyn was fast and on song, and Australia barely limped out of the gate. Dave Warner struggled to get bat on ball, Watson was subdued and Steyn seemed to lift Morkel as well. There were plays and misses and the scoring rate was low. South Africa looked confident and Australia appeared meek. The talk started to be about Australia’s first real test of the tournament, people wanted to know what were Australia made of. They’re made of Shane Watson.
After four overs Australia were 15 for 1 but when Steyn was taken out of the attack, Watson opened up. The next four overs went for 45, and Australia went from nervous to magnificent. Jacques Kallis, Morne Morkel, Johan Botha, Robin Peterson and Wayne Parnell all were dealt with like they were pesky net bowlers. Fours were smashed, sixes were cracked. At one stage Watson almost blasted a ball through the rib cage of long off. South Africa collapsed in much the same way Ireland, West Indies and India did.
In this tournament Australia have lost seven wickets. England lost that many in about eight minutes on one night. Tournaments like this are often won by one man, Shahid Afridi in 2009 and Kevin Pietersen in 2010, but neither of them had half the impact that Watson has already had. The most wickets in a world T20 ever is 14, Watson has 10. The most runs in a world T20 is 317, Watson has 234.
At the moment he is mis-hitting sixes, bouncing out the world’s best batsmen, and taking a team that was rightfully a laughing stock and making them their favourite for the whole tournament. It can’t last, can it? There are three matches left for Australia if they make the final, and Watson can’t be man of the match in all three of them, no one could be man of the match in seven straight games.
The next match will be against Pakistan, the team that defeated Australia 2-1 in the UAE as a warm up to this event. The team that reaffirmed the notion that Australia’s middle order is fragile and their play of spin is suspect. Watson was there and made two 40-odds and took a wicket each match. That was the Watson of a few weeks ago, the human Watson. Nothing like the carnivorous man-beast we now see before us.
This Shane Watson is master of the universe. In his grip is Australia’s middle order and Australia’s chance of winning the tournament. Watson’s holding them tight in one hand, while knocking out everyone else with the other.
India vs Pakistan: the blog
So this is what it’s like walking around the ground at an India v Pakistan game in Sri Lanka.
Many men will dance with each other, some will dance because of the cricket, others will not notice the cricket.
People will stop you and ask you to take their picture, you get good at making a clicking sound with your tongue.
Pakistani fans will abuse Kakmal and Malik.
India fans will abuse Rohit.
Suresh Raina will shush the crowd, and that will make them love him.
Various men of various nationalities will say, “Hey England, fuck you”.
The cheerleaders will look completely jaded unless they think a camera is on them.
Police officers will smile at you.
Police officers will scowl at you.
Police officers will tell you not to go somewhere and you’ll nod and act dumb and go there anyway.
More dancing.
Flags will be waved in a way that only dislocate your shoulder.
Both sets of supporters will look happy at the same time in a way that will confuse you.
Pakistani supporters will stare mournfully at the screen for longer when their team does something really stupid.
A wicket is the greatest moment ever. A six is greater than the greatest.
The crowd will chant Sachin’s name even though he is not there.
A slog will get as much cheer as the prettiest drive Kohli can muster.
Men will stroke each other’s mullets in a tender yet probably completely hetero kind of way.
70% of the crowd will have their countries shirt on.
Someone will take a photo of his mate posing with another friend, then they will all confer on whether the photo is any good, and if not they will reshoot it again and again until everyone is happy with the photo.
You’ll be asked if you are on facebook.
People with face pain are more likely to dance.
People with wigs are more likely to scream.
Pakistani fans will leave earlier enough that they don’t have to deal with too many Indian fans on the way out.
Indian fans will stay, dance and cheer the tv interview.
Pakistan fans will wander the streets in packs of two and three, all wearing similar vintage replica shirts, hours after the game has been lost.
Result: Pakistan have a great bowling attack against anyone who isn’t India, Virat Kohli is batman to Watson’s superman.
solo steyn
The ICC has dangled promotion from everywhere in Sri Lanka.
There are probably a few people in Hambantota who have changed their name to World T20 for the duration of the tournament.
The most ubiquitous promotion is that of the various star players in three poses with a drum anchoring them to the ground.
The drum signifies the ICC.
The players included in this promotion are mostly batsmen, or all rounders. Ross Taylor, Shahid Afridi, Chris Gayle, Ab De Villiers, Shakib Al Hasan, and Shane Watson.
Stuart Broad and Lasith Malinga are the only real bowlers included.
Dale Steyn has no poster.
DALE STEYN has no poster.
No poster.
It’s Dale fucken Steyn, ABD is nice, and likeable, sings pseudochristian motivational tunes and has a face that could sell baby oil, but he’s not Steyn.
There is only one Steyn in the entire world. And I don’t care if this is a batting tournament, he deserves his own stupid promotion poster.
Steyn had bowled two overs for seven, been the only player to make Watson look human, looked too good for Warner and given South African fans the sort of false hope that religious leaders often give.
Steyn just has the perfect controlled menace about him, you know he wants to hurt you, you know he will try and hurt you, and you know he can hurt you, it’s just whether you can hide in the cupboard while he looks in the attic.
This tournament is not about fast bowlers, but for two glorious overs we saw Steyn stalk the Aussies, and even Watson had to hide in the cupboard.
Then Steyn left, and Watson was Watson.
Morkel fell apart, Kallis looked old and tired, Botha and Petersen were harmless and Parnell became the new Albie. Steyn had two overs to win the match, by the time he came back on it was all over, as was their tournament.
At the very least the man deserves a fucking promotional poster.
Result: Watson is an extremely large gorilla and South Africa have some time to prepare for the Champion’s league.
September 29, 2012
The children of Shane Warne and Craig Howard
I wrote this for last year’s wisden.
Shane Warne’s first real victim wasn’t a batsman, but a fellow legspinner – a fellow Victorian legspinner, in fact, with a wrong ‘un so brutal it would crash into the chest of those who lunged blindly forward; a legspinner who ran in like a graceful 1920s medium-pacer, but who then produced a dramatic twirl of his long arms and ripped the ball off the surface like few teenage legspinners before or since. This legspinner was so good that Warne said he had more talent than he did. His name was Craig Howard. And if you’ve never heard of him, it’s probably not your fault: Howard doesn’t even qualify for a single-line biography on ESPNcricinfo.
By December 3, 1995, Warne – who was by then closing in on 200 Test wickets – had already saved legspin. If the date sounds random, then for Howard it was not: it was his final day of first-class cricket. He was 21. Howard retired with 42 wickets in 16 first-class games at 40 apiece, which was no great shakes. But to understand how good he was, you had to be there – you had to see him hit a batsman with his wrong ‘un. Aged 19, he had returned second-innings figures of 24.5-9-42-5 at the MCG against the South Africans.Wisden noted: “Only Rhodes, with 59, made much of Howard’s leg-spin second time around.” Darren Berry, who kept to Howard at Victoria, said he would have named him in his all-time XI of those he had played with or against if it hadn’t been for Warne. Yes, Craig Howard could definitely bowl.
Plenty of others have been bit parts in the story of Australia’s post-Warne spin apocalypse, but no one has been a more intriguing bit part than Howard. He is the only Australian bowler to go through the Cricket Academy twice, once as the artistic legspinning prodigy from my teenage years, later – after one of his fingers packed in – as a 28-year-old, made-to-order journeyman offspinner. And now Howard is back, plucked from his office job in telecommunications to coach Nathan Lyon, currently Australia’s No. 1 tweaker.
Howard, as it happened, did play alongside Warne in four Sheffield Shield games in 1993-94. The comparison is unflattering: Warne took 27 wickets at 23, Howard – who bowled 100 overs to Warne’s 247 – three at 108. But in between, with Warne away on international duty, Howard finally got a decent bowl: he took 5 for 112 against Tasmania, including the wicket of Ricky Ponting. More than 15 years later, when another leggie – Bryce McGain, who was almost 37 – was making his Test debut for Australia, the 34-year-old Howard was playing for Strathdale Maristians in Bendigo, up-country Victoria.
He is philosophical now. “Had I played Test cricket, my life would have turned out different,” he says. “I probably would have ended up in some sextext scandal and lost my wife and kids and ended up a lonely bum. Although, yes, playing Test cricket was the dream.”
There are many reasons why Howard didn’t make it: injuries, bad management, terrible advice, over-coaching, low self-confidence. But had he played in an era when Australia were desperate for a spinner, he might now be a household name – or at least someone with a decent blurb on the internet.
“At one stage, there were headlines saying I was going to play for Australia,” he says. “I remember being about 20, and at the top of my mark at the MCG. Instead of thinking, ‘How I am going to get out Jamie Siddons or Darren Lehmann?’ I’m thinking about a small group of men in the ground who are judging me. It wasn’t like that all the time, but when I was struggling this is how I felt. In the back of my mind I know the captain of my side doesn’t like me, and has told me to f*** off to Tasmania. The coach believes that, because I can’t bat or field, I am never going to be that useful. It was a dark time.”
In the mid-1990s, no one needed to look for Warne’s replacement, because he would play for ever and inspire so many kids to take up legspin that any who fell through the cracks wouldn’t be missed. Junior sides each had four or five leggies – often with peroxide hair – and they all walked in slowly, ripped the ball hard, and barely bowled a wrong ‘un. But they weren’t Warne. None had his physicality: Warne was built like a nightclub bouncer, not a spinner. Massive hands led into awe-inspiring wrists, the whole lot powered by an ox’s shoulders. But kids who try the same quickly wear themselves out.
Howard knew how they felt: “My body never backed me up. I couldn’t feel my pinky finger, had part of my right arm shortened, tendinitis in my shoulder was operated on, a wrist operation, stress fractures in my shins, tennis elbow in my knees from excessive squat thrusts, a spinning finger with bad ligaments, and barely the fitness to get through a two-day game, let alone four. There was no million-dollar microsurgery in the US for me. In the ’90s, you still had to pay for a massage and work a day job.
“There were suddenly legspinning experts everywhere – not ex-spinners but just ex-cricketers, coaches and selectors who spent years ignoring legspin. No one ever came up to you and said: ‘You should be more like Warne.’ But every bit of advice seemed to be about making you more like him. It wasn’t subtle. Everything just created doubt in your mind. And with legspin, if you have an ounce of doubt, you’re cactus.”
Warne’s retirement sparked a desperate search for his replacement. One spinner simply begat the next: Stuart MacGill, Brad Hogg, Beau Casson, Cameron White, Jason Krejza, Nathan Hauritz, Marcus North, Bryce McGain, Hauritz again, Steve Smith, Xavier Doherty, Michael Beer, Nathan Lyon. Never mind Simon Katich, Michael Clarke or Andrew Symonds.
MacGill should have softened the blow of Warne’s departure, but his knees gave way, his career as a lifestyle-show TV host took off, and it was clear he just didn’t want to bowl any more. Even then, there was Hogg, the chinaman bowler with two World Cup wins to his name. But after one horrendous home summer against India, he retired as well – only to make a bizarre return to international cricket during the Twenty20 home series against the Indians once more, in February 2012, aged all but 41.
Along came Casson, another purveyor of chinamen, but a boyish one who seemed too pure for international cricket. His first (and only) Test was uneventful, and within 12 months he would be out of the Australian set-up altogether after an attack of the yips. A brief comeback was ended by tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart defect.
White was captain of Victoria, where he virtually never bowled himself, but suddenly – a product of injuries to others and weird selection – he was Australia’s frontline spinner. He was awful. Krejza eventually got a chance and, on Test debut in Nagpur, claimed 12 wickets. The problem was he also gave away 358 runs; he played only one more Test. Marcus North became a Test batsman because he could bowl handy offspin, some said better than Hauritz. But despite a flattering six-wicket haul against Pakistan at Lord’s, North’s offbreaks were gentle; and they weren’t much help when his batting faded.
McGain made his debut amid plenty of jokes about Bob Holland, who was 38 when he first played for Australia. McGain was an IT professional in a bank, who had never really been especially close to state selection. But he wouldn’t go away. And while the search focused on big-turning kids, McGain sneaked into the Victoria side. In the 12 months before his Test debut, a shoulder injury had limited him to four first-class games. When the day finally came, at Newlands, McGain was roadkill: 18-2-149-0. That was it. McGain now plays part-time in the Big Bash League.
Hauritz was not deemed good enough even for New South Wales. He was a timid offspinner from club cricket with a first-class bowling average of more than 50, but he fought hard and improved regularly. The trouble was Hauritz was neither an attacker nor a defender, and Chris Gayle said it was like facing himself. By the time Hauritz was dumped, he was in the best form of his career.
A young allrounder named Steve Smith bowled legspin, and was brought in to play Pakistan in England. He made a dashing 77, was dropped and then later recalled in the Ashes as a batsman who bowled a bit – just not very well.
Xavier Doherty was given a go because Kevin Pietersen kept falling to left-arm spin. He got his man – but for 227. So in came Michael Beer, who admitted he probably wasn’t ready for Test cricket, and then proved it.
Mighty big shoes to fill
Bowler
Style
Test debut
Matches
Runs
Wkts
BB
Avg
SR
Econ
Shane Warne
LBG
1991-92
145
17,995
708
8-71
25.41
57.49
2.65
Brag Hogg
SLC
1996-97
7
933
17
2-40
54.88
89.64
3.67
Stuart MacGill
LBG
1997-98
44
6038
208
8-108
29.02
54.02
3.22
Nathan Hauritz
OB
2004-05
17
2204
63
5-53
34.98
66.66
3.14
Beau Casson
SLC
2007-08
1
129
3
3-86
43.00
64.00
4.03
Cameron White
LBG
2008-09
4
342
5
2-71
68.40
111.60
3.67
Jason Krejza
OB
2008-09
2
562
13
8-215
43.23
57.15
4.53
Marcus North
OB
2008-09
21
591
14
6-55
42.21
89.85
2.81
Bryce McGain
LBG
2008-09
1
149
0
0-149
-
-
8.27
Steve Smith
LBG
2010
5
220
3
3-51
73.33
124.00
3.54
Xavier Doherty
SLA
2010-11
2
306
3
2-41
102.00
151.66
4.03
Michael Beer
SLA
2010-11
1
112
1
1-112
112.00
228.00
2.94
Nathan Lyon
OB
2011-12
10
832
29
5-34
28.68
55.72
3.08
The first anyone in Australian cricket heard of Nathan Lyon was when Kerry O’Keeffe mentioned him on radio. At that stage, Lyon was part of the Adelaide Oval groundstaff, and was travelling to Canberra to play for the second XI. After some good performances in the nets, Darren Berry – now Adelaide’s Twenty20 coach – took a punt on him. Lyon suddenly looked like the best spin prospect in the country – which wasn’t saying much.
Howard really had come along at the wrong time. But there were moments, before I finally spoke to him, when I wondered if he actually existed at all. Finding someone who remembered his name was hard enough; finding someone who’d seen him play next to impossible. I’d talk to a guy, who’d tell me to contact a guy, but that guy would also tell me to contact a guy. The leads never went anywhere. Craig Howard wasn’t the missing link of Australian spin bowling: he was just missing.
Then I asked Gideon Haigh about Howard, and he gave a long stare, as if he was searching through his billion-terabyte memory. I had my breakthrough. Haigh talked about how Howard looked like an otherworldly artist – long shirt buttoned to the wrist, billowing madly in the wind; incredibly gawky, like a schoolkid. Howard didn’t fit into Haigh’s, or anyone else’s, imaginings of an athlete. But it was the Howard of my youth. Someone else remembered my poet leggie.
After that I cornered O’Keeffe, legspin’s court jester. He had coached Howard at the Academy, probably twice. O’Keeffe’s eyes were full of regret: he said Howard had a biomechanically flawed action, and O’Keeffe hadn’t tried to fix it. But that didn’t stop him happily reminiscing about “a wrong ‘un batsmen had to play from their earhole”.
I collared Damien Fleming, Howard’s Victoria colleague. Fleming seemed surprised to hear the name again. He told stories about how he thought Victoria had a champion on their hands, but said his skin folds were thicker than those of Warne or Merv Hughes: “Basically bone and fat.” He could have gone further with a more supportive coaching structure, said Fleming. He added, almost lustfully: “The best wrong ‘un I’ve seen.” Then came the clincher. “If someone like him came on the scene now, he’d be given everything he needed to succeed. Like they treat Pat Cummins.”
Haigh, O’Keeffe and Fleming all seemed to think Howard was a Test spinner we had missed out on. They could be right. But Howard was caught between two eras, relaxed and regimented. And Australia had Warne.
“My career is long over,” says Howard. “It finished with me out of form and mostly injured. It wasn’t one thing that ended my career, and I’m not coming up with excuses, but this is what happened to me. Due to my finger, I can’t even bowl legspin any more – I have to bowl offspin, but nothing can ever compare to being a legspinner. I’m younger than Hogg, McGain or MacGill and instead of preparing to play in my 100th Test and thinking about retirement, I am working in an office in Bendigo.”
Craig Howard went from a freakishly talented wrist-spinner to a boring club offie. Australian spin did much the same.
September 28, 2012
Australia is Watson
Forget the many shit slow filthy disgusting deliveries.
Forget Pat Cummins impressive display.
Even forget Dave Warner’s new Steyn moustache
The only thing you need to know about Australia at the moment is that Shane Watson is a freaking robot of death.
There was a time when he was a loud marshmallow of inconvenience.
In T20 cricket you need to bow down to Watson and apologise for all the mean things you ever said to him.
I’ve said more than most. I think I once compared to him to Paris Hilton, or Lindsay Lohan, or someone like that.
In T20 cricket you can only compare him to Voltan, defender of the universe.
Sure, you and I could have hit some of those shit long hops for six, or at least two.
But would we have got them in the first place?
At the moment Watson is getting shit balls delivered to him simply because his machismo is fucking up the bowlers before they even come in.
Wickets, runs, cheques, he’s getting them all.
Are Australia shit, who the fuck knows, we just know that Watson us UnShit. Very very UnShit.
Watson cannot continue to to be this good, even robots of death eventually stumble, but while he is let us put behind us all the petty shit we say about him and just enjoy the carnage.
Destruction like this is a joy forever.
Result: Chawla and Sharma are back, and Australia still struggle to score singles off the spinners.
Live Morkecide
In the last few days I’ve dealt with heavy traffic from Colombo to Pallekelle, a driver who yelled into his phone non stop the whole way, having to wait while someone found Ian Bishop at midnight, tripping over several times, fighting the urge to vomit on people sitting below me, a killer stomach pain, being kicked out of a lift because of Broad and Finn, having to stop (twice) in the middle of the night to check out inflatable toys, sleeping like someone was in the corner of the room with a twitchy switch blade, waiting for someone else to finish their runny shits, being sent across town away from the ground to pick up our accreditation, and then 90 minutes sweating before my actual ass off before Nissanka (the Ninja tuk tuk driver) aborted the trip. Then there was one more 30 minute trip, with more sweating, which also included the feeling that once I wrrived at the ground my cock would be fondled as 12 men stare into my eyes.
When I finally got into the ground, a couple of hours after the Pakistan South Africa match had started, Pakistan were in the shit. They were four down, and then five, and then Afridi.
All that travel, all that sweating, all that discomfort, no penis touching, and now I was about to see my least favourite team beat my favourite team. At that point the World T20 could go and fuck itself in the ass. I hated Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the ICC, T20 and Stuart Robertson.
Then the Umars committed Morkecide.
There is a brilliant billboard by a major Colombo round-about that calls Sri Lanka a paradise island. You can look at it while you stay stuck in your sweaty tuk tuk. Surrouned by all kinds of pollution. Large buses trying trying to push you into some posh dickhead’s unnecessary four wheel drive. Occasionally you inch forward before an overly officious police officer decides he doesn’t like your lane anymore.
This tournament is a bit like that at its worst.
But then Umar fucken Gul and his elongated face come in and start slapping the ball around everywhere. Quickly you realise you’ve travelled a long uncomfortable way, bowel movements are controlling your life, you’re away from your wife and unborn child, your undies are all sweated out again and the hum of the air conditioner at night sounds like a Slovenian hit crew about to off you, but it’s worth a lot of shit to watch South Africa lose in person.
Result: My cock wasn’t touched, Pakistan won.
two chucks live from kandy/colombo day 11
Yes, that is Richard fucken Levi.
