Canine Fanciers,
A couple of months ago, stupidly declined an invitation to watch the Test Match from the comfort of the Members Enclosure at the Adelaide Oval on a Guest's Ticket.
Fool!
Idiot!
Imbecile!
Certainly pulled the wrong rein there - big time.
Just another day, just another double hundred.
Right up there with the most spectacular innings played on the ground in the modern era for mine, if only for it's sheer audacity, breakneck speed, and breathtaking expansiveness as he tonked the pill that looked like an oversized watermelon to him to all parts of the ground.
Never mind the grace and artistic genius.
Never mind making 200 in day and hitting 41 boundaries in the knock.
Didn't have to bother much with running between the wickets, that's 72% of his runs coming as the ball clattered into, or on one occasion, over the white picket fence.
You'd have to go back to Barry Richard's 224 in a Shield match in 1970 to find a better one, there.
Chase after that, you kaffir kicker, then you'll know who's boss.
A nice little factbox appeared in the next day's fishwrap that should have been, but wasn't, headlined SPELLING IT OUT FOR THE HOI POLLOI IN PLAIN & SIMPLE TERMS:
"Clarke, who has been in great form in 2012, brought up his second successive double hundred today after he had made a double ton against South Africa in the first Test in Brisbane.
Clarke is the first man in Test history to score 200 or more runs four times in the same calendar year.
Bradman (in 1930) and Ponting (2003) had done it thrice in one year but the current Australian skipper has bettered the greats.
The right-hander started the year with a triple hundred against India. He scored 329 not out in Sydney in January and followed that up with a 210 in Adelaide against the same opposition.
At the start of the series against South Africa, in the previous Test in Brisbane, he made 259 not out. Now, here he is batting on 224."
Better than Bradman.
My father always claimed he saw Bradman's 299* at Adelaide Oval as a 13 year old, but he's been gone for ten years now.
Enough said.
Did like Jon Tuxworth's column in The Age after the fourth day which began with the line:
"Dear Pup, on behalf of the Australian sports media and cricket fans across this sunburnt nation, it's time to officially say sorry".
Yeah, right.
Not before time.
But he probably went a bit too far to include the general public in the apology.
The next time MJ Clarke doesn't make a first innings hundred, they'll be calling him hopeless rubbish.
Oh well, he'd be well used to it by now.
That's the thanks you get, mate.
