Jarrod Kimber's Blog, page 82

#SaveAfridi: the renegade

He was a cricketer, and good at his job. But then he committed the ultimate sin and stood against other cricketers – gone bad. Cricketers who tried to kill him, but got the woman he loved instead. Framed for murder, now he prowls the badlands. An outlaw hunting outlaws, a bounty hunter – a RENEGADE!

I have no idea if Afridi has ever stood up against corrupt players, or if the woman he loved was killed by him, but he's a renegade, mostly by accident.

He needs to be protected, supported and cherished as the mad man he is.

So when he needs us, we should step up.

It seems that Pakistan is the only cricket nation in the world cup that hasn't decided on a captain yet.

With Ijaz Butt involved you sort of expect him to wait until the first game is over and then make a decision.

Apparently the players, sponsors and management want Afridi.

Mahzeer Majeed and the PCB wants anyone but Afridi.

So it's a tough choice.

Do you trust the players who have to go out on the field with him, the management team who have to plan to win the world cup with him and the sponsors who should have no say but I'm using in my argument because they are probably smarter than Ijaz Butt.

Or do you trust the PCB, the KAOS of cricket administrations and the man who recently said to me, "and you have seen the whole footage have u? The complete unedited version to make your statement… no I thought not."

Support Afridi, use your social media thingies, tell a friend, tattoo his name on BUtt's head, but get it done, because even one man against the world, needs some friends.

Here are highlights of Afridi to remind you what a great he is.

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The cricket film of the decade

Directed by Darren Aronofsky, edited by Ceci, starring Graeme Swann as Natalie Portman.

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The ICC gets Indie cred

We all assume that people who work for the ICC think Miley Cyrus is part of the underground music scene.

We could be wrong.

It seems that someone involved with the ICC (possibly a contractor) listens to the English Band Django Django.

There is nothing wrong with that.

Listening to Indie music proves you are human.

However, stealing Indie music to make an ad for an event that everyone in the cricket world already knows is happening is wrong.

So with that in mind, here is Django Django's song, followed by the weird tight rope ad with really creepy looking one day captain horror masks made of skin.

Lawyers at ten paces or nothing alike?

Thanks to Neon Filler.

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Take the collar off Clarke

Michael Clarke should not be the next captain of Australia.  I've said this for longer than it's been fashionable.

I don't see him as a natural leader of men and I've seen enough tactical decisions from him in the field to not feel comfortable with that side of him either.

It should be mentioned that I don't factor in his tattoos, boring ass twitter feed, who he dates, what he does with his hair, the magazines he's in, the trendy café he eats at or even what car he drives when looking at him as a captain.  You can run the team from a beachside café with a shit hair cut just as well as you can from a diner with a cap on.

My problems with his captaincy have almost nothing to do with the reasons he seems to be hated.  If he wore a pirate earring, read Sylvia Path on the balcony and only talked to people who watched modern day French Films I wouldn't hate him more, or think he would be less of a captain.

All I can go on is his past actions.

He has publicly stated he would never captain Ricky Ponting.  Making it sound like he was scared of leading him.  I want a captain who would at least publicly say he would captain a sabre tooth tiger if he was picked.

He has said at times he doesn't always feel comfortable going to Ricky Ponting with suggestions.  He's the Vice Captain of Australia; this isn't some title you get when you've sold 100 whoppers.  It means something, and he should be chipping in, especially when he sees Ricky losing it.

He wouldn't change his game for T20 cricket.  In real terms I care almost nothing that he played bad T20 cricket, but in the larger worldview, if he can't change his game for his team when it is needed, that is a problem.

His apology for not walking.  I appreciate a man who apologises.  Too many people never do.  But don't apologise for not walking.  Apologise for wasting our time, yes, but you don't for walking. You're Australian, that is fine, don't apologise for that.  And if you are going to apologise, do it like a man and do it in front of the press core, not via twitter 12 seconds after play.

His lack of appearances at the press conferences during the Ashes.  Clarke did not appear at a close of play press conference until the 4th test.  Watson, Haddin and Hussey all came out on days when Australia was pummelled and they did little to justify walking out.  He should have come out before Melbourne.

His role in the Andrew Symonds outing.  It never felt right, and he has never spoken about it publicly.  It seems like it was more personality based than fishing based, and he was the captain in charge at the time.

I know nothing about him.  I follow him on twitter.  Read all the cricket press. Watch his interviews. Have been to his press conferences.  And have followed his career since the day he began, and other than he likes fast cars and is a bit metrosexual I know nothing about him at all.

How can this be?

Who is Michael Clarke? What does he believe in?  Who does he vote for?  What pisses him off?  Does anything piss him off?  Is he embarrassed by his public acts of affection for Lara?  Why did he wait until Lara was in a bind before leaving her?  Does he like leg slips?  How does he believe Mitchell Johnson should be handled?  Why so many bowling changes in Sydney?  How will he fix over rates?  Would he be a better captain than Cameron White?  Has he read Mike Brearley's captaincy book?  Does he believe in human cloning?  Will his back ever be truly healed? Is he nervous or energetic?  Why should he be the next captain of Australia?

I just want to know who he is.  Perhaps he is the right man for Australia; perhaps they need a yuppie (© Crash Craddock) captain right now.  Maybe they need him.  He is a man who has reshaped his game on 3 separate occasions to make it as an international cricketer.  Someone who left a tour to get his life in order, only to return and make his highest test score. And someone who stated desperately that he never wanted to be dropped from the test side.

That is the most I know of Clarke, that he didn't want to be dropped, and that desperation to stay in the side.  It was the most human I've ever seen him.  And although it was a bit depressing at the time, it showed that he has a fire inside him, there is a desperate ugly will to succeed in there, I want more of that and less of his corporate image.

Enough of this ghosted corporate cardboard cut-out, bring out Michael Clarke so we can see if we actually like him or not. Because it seems the image that has been carefully created is not working.

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Fixing twitter

Recently someone complained about my treatment of an Australian captain, I can't remember which captain, either the hairy armed one or the former Bingle one.

They said I didn't deserve to be on twitter.

Luckily Twitter's morality rules didn't find me in violation, and I was allowed to stay on their putting out more of my anti Australian captain bile.

Now twitter has a new person on it, and some might find him in violation of twitter's morality code (the spirit of twitter?) but there he is, tweeting and being followed by very few.

Mazeer Majeed.

For those not on twitter, you won't know just how hard it is to tell a fake account from a real one.

I use the bring test, if the twitter profile is boring and says nothing at all, then you just assume it is real.

So this account throws me a bit.

Of the 9 or so tweets he has put up, 8 of them are boring.  They seem very real.

Then there is this one.

"Afridi cannot be captain! doesn't know how to speak to players and totally arrogant! All of the players hate him and he is totally overrated"

The genius in this quote is on Johnny Cash's level.

If it's faked, then it's perfectly sandwiched between boring tweets to make it look more real. If it's real, then wow, this guy is cruising for a beat down the world has never seen. If I was him I'd pretend cricket never existed and if I saw a small bug that was chirping I'd call it a small big that was chirping and just walk away. Mentioning the captaincy is like asking all the pakistanis of the world to Hot Karl him at once.

Even if it is fake, I might stay with it, just to see how angry everyone else gets at him.

That the man is a cuntard fuck of the most grandma felching level is beyond doubt, but if this is a real account then his profile bio is some piece of work,

"I own Croydon Athletic Football Club and was the manager of many International Cricket Players until……"

Until….. I was caught with my head up my own ass licking my prostrate as I told someone enough information to fuck up my life?

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The Popester; he was the last Aussie in form

When I left Australia I had no real belief left.

The team, selectors, coach, marketers and administracrats were all completely out of form.

Had it not been for one man, I would have given up forever.

That man was Philip Pope.

Unless you are deep inside the cricket bowels, you may not know Philip (known as the popester).

While Cricket Australia say his job is in their media department, he is actually far more than that.

He lubes up Shane Watson for photo shoots, ghost writes Michael Clarke's tweets, picks out which white shirt James Sutherland will wear, tells Tim Nielsen that Ricky respects him, ties Peter Young's bow-ties, nods when ricky is yelling, proof reads Michael Hussey's latest buddy cop thriller and programs the Andrew Hilditch atari brain for each day.

It's clearly too much for any normal man, but the popester is no ordinary man.

He's an official with a cape. If they put him out on the ground he would have ground out a plucky, yet ugly 30 odd at the G.

Leaving Australia I felt slightly better knowing the Australian Cricket team was being serviced by him. Australia was hurting, but in the soft and generous hands of the popester, it would heal, grow and come back.

Then Andrew Hilditch said excellent, and all my faith in Philip Pope came crashing down.

According to Cricket Australia, it was Pope who said Nathan Hauritz's form in India was excellent, proving me right that Hilditch has an atari for a brain, and breaking my heart knowing that the popester had been broken trying to hold up all the other men around him.

You can't blame him, even a super official needs some help, and when trying to cover up the gaps in Australia's sieve, he was bound to mess up something along the way. For all his victories he never got an opentop bus or a cooking show on cable TV, but his first mistake, ever, is plastered around the world as a sign of his incompetence.

It hurts me to see one of the greats go down, but I know he'll come back, because that is what champions do.

According to Peter Young, Hilditch signed off (read; atari brain was programmed) on the comments before a 4am flight from Adelaide to Sydney.

There is no 4am flight from Adelaide to Sydney scheduled by any airline I know of.

So we can only assume the popester, as part of his CA duties, flies a Dash 8 when VIP CA people need it.

Maybe he does, because he is the popester, and even if he stuffed up once, I back him to bring this Australian team back to the glory times.

If anyone can, the popester can.

I'm now visualising the popester getting carried around the ground by Ricky and Clarke, as the crowd go wild for him, only to jump off their shoulders, straighten is CA approved tracksuit, and then get to bed early for some rest before taking Sutherland to Perth on a 3am flight.

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When Dirk writes, you read

Dirk Nannes has a blog.

Not some sissy over-edited ghost-written namby-pamby load of garbage that you wouldn't make Delta Goodrem or Sourav Ganguly read, but a real blog type blog.

IOB style.

It's on wordpress.com for fuck's sake, it doesn't get much bloggier than that.

He has already talked about Aaron Finch's fat ass. You could say that Aaron Finch's ass is Dirk's perfect jeans.

I've always suspected that Dirk does more in a day than I do in a decade. So any words from him, ass related or otherwise, are valuable and should be read.

At the moment his about section says this:

"This is the Official Dirk Nannes Blog. Dirk Nannes is a left-arm fast bowler in the Australian Twenty20 cricket team, the Delhi Daredevils in the Indian Premier League and the Victorian Bushrangers."

It's nice, but it isn't very Dirky.

I think he should go with this:

"The first time you see Dirk Nannes bowl is the first day of the rest of your life. Write down all the details so you don't mess any of it up when you retell it to your grandkids. Dirk Nannes is fast bowling. He's the monster in the closet of T20 batsmen, only coming out to scare and scar them. It isn't a fair fight, and when it ends in blood and tears, the batsmen is taken away for a quick and anonymous burial. Dirk's bowling action is far more masculine than any 80s action film. He plays for who he wants, when he wants, and when he isn't doing that he's saxaphoning on a ski slope, because he can. If he wasn't a cricketer he'd still be cooler than you."

Go check out his blog because, well, it's dirty dirk nannes' blog.

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Andrew Hilditch's modified atari mind is excellent

An opinion I have is that Andrew Hilditch's mind has been abducted and replaced with a modified Atari.

This modified atari brain reads the papers, follows Warne's twitter feed and writes a name that Greg Chappell types into him.

My opinion has many so called pieces of evidence, but my favourites are the spinners like Beau Casson, Nathan Hauritz, and Michael Beer.

Beau Casson was picked even though a look at him when riding your unicycle as he drove past in a car would tell you he didn't have the mental stength to place test cricket.

Nathan Hauritz was picked when the New South Wales selectors didn't believe he was good enough for them. He was then dropped when he finally believed he was good enough (before an Ashes losing test), brought back to suceed (for him) and then was dropped for a poor left arm version of himself, and has now been brought back because every other spinner in the country seems to have had their go.

Michael Beer was picked because Warne said he was good, Hilditch had no idea where he was from or anything about him at all. I could get six blokes from any cricket club and put them in a line up with Michael Beer and he'd need two chances to pick him out of the line up.

Hilditch could be a real functioning human being who occasionally says something that makes no sense to back up his latest mistake. He may not even make mistakes, perhaps there are no mistakes, and everything is just part of a larger interrelationship matrix that keeps the world hurtling to some sort of a disappointing conclusion. See how opinions open things up. What is a mistake, can you make them, is Hilditch made of them, etc.

Today Hilditch has picked Hauritz, again, and said this, "his one-day record in India is excellent".

Excellent is Hilditch's opinion. Nothing more. The man was asked a question and came up with an answer. Excellent isn't concrete, it's just an adjective used to explain why Nathan Hauritz has been brought back randomly again.

Just like Hilditch can rubbish my opinion on him having a modified atari making his decisions (mistakes), I can rubbish his opinion of using the word excellent when discussing Hauritz's Indian one day form.

In seven one dayers in India Hauritz has taken four wickets at 70. He has an economy of 4.56.

It's not terrible, saying this is excellent is better than saying Andrew Hilditch's recent selections have been excellent, it just isn't excellent. It could be described as ok, mediocre, not bad, far from exciting or meh. Excellent is a ways away from all of these.

Peter English's opinion is "To call Hauritz's India record "excellent" shows how little knowledge the chairman has of his subjects."

Surely if Andrew Hilditch was a human who was in charge of selection he would know the players records well enough that if when asked he wouldn't call a decidedly average record excellent.

So he must have a modified atari for a brain. It's only an opinion, but it makes more sense than anything Hilditch has done in a long time, in my opinion.

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James Sutherland is a supreme error

Naming a 17 man squad in a city centre to make a marketing deadline is ok.

Dropping one spinner for the exact same kind of spinner with less experience who is roughly the same age is ok.

Giving a coach with a sketchy, at best, record, is ok.

Publicly stating you have rested a player who publicly states he is dropped is ok.

Having your chairman of selectors say a player has local knowledge while showing he has no idea where he has come from is ok.

Letting a player who writes a largely ghost written twitter feed to apologise for his actions and not facing up to press conference is ok.

Keeping a selector who states he doesn't watch overseas cricket on TV is fine.

Naming a spokesman for the selectors who is not the chairman is ok.

Letting your chairman of selectors slate the players while saying he did a good job is ok.

But going to a cricket function a few hours before you are due to play a boxing day test is a supreme error.

James Sutherland has never been my favourite guy, yet I've always assumed he has a few smarts up there. So when he has a go at players who made a mistake, when he and his team of moronic yes men are running around stepping on rakes, throwing cream pies at each other and making comedy noises, what a dick.

Nielsen has a 3 year deal, and the power to stop Hughes and Clarke from attending the event, and he didn't make an error.

Cricket Australia has more hangers on in wanky blue tracksuits than Kim Jong Il, why didn't any of these people demand that Clarke and Hughes miss that event?

It was the morning of boxing day, and it was just another error from Cricket Australia.

The same Cricket Australia that James Sutherland rules with a manicured thumb.

If Sutherland is a man of integrity, he should take the blame for Australia's summer.

Sutherland has been in charge while crowds and interest went down in cricket. Even while Australia was by far the best side in world cricket. He was in charge while the team has been patched up by part time selectors who don't watch enough cricket, and he was in charge of the worst home series on and off the field in over 20 years.

He is the error.

He is the person who should be accountable.

Not the one helping Hilditch sniping at the players.

Do Cricket Australia a favour, Mr Sutherland, step down after you've taken a few with you.

The Cricket Australia alternate reality is a nice place to live, but you can't stay there forever.

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Neil Harvey says

"You call that a shit Australian team, you're an idiot. All too busy tweeting your faces at each other and praising Steve Waugh to know that this isn't even the worst Australian team in the last 40 years. You're soft fat headed fools for thinking that.

When I was a selector they were real hard times. Half my team disappeared quicker than you can say, 'someone shoot that fat prick Packer'.

Back then we had rubbish spinners, tonnes of them, but we didn't complain, we just put them in the side and told everyone to shut the hell up.

Our captain wasn't no fading champion either, he was just some bloke we picked because he had a tough sounding name.

Rodney Hogg carried us back then, man was crazier than a hat full of assholes, but he did the job and wasn't rested.

They were the real deal, not like this lot.

Selling jumpers, getting girly tattoos, hugging, taking showboat hat tricks, executing their bloody tweet boxes, apologising for being Australian, and giving interviews two minutes after they've shafted their team mates.

Sure, they've got a bit of talent there, but I wouldn't pick em in my worst team.

Not even Xavier Doherty or Steve Smith. Hell, I'd pick 11 Craig Serjeants before I'd cough up for one Phil Hughes.

Craig never said he wanted to be the new Viv Richards, the boy knew his limitations and spent his whole career proving he did. That is special.

These new guys have no idea of their limitations, even though the rest of us are sick of seeing them.

Back when I was selector the useless cricketers had a certain dignity in their play, they knew they were useless, and were helpless to stop it, but they had class about it, and they were far worse than this mob.

Cricketers were far worse in my selecting days."

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