Gawkers,
There is just one certainty to come out of this year's Adelaide Oval test match - the Pink Stink still stinks.
Of course, the game itself was won & lost at the toss.
In the Cannon of the Word according to Chappelli, a captain needs to do but one thing on winning the toss "think about bowling, and then bat".
The only way the England Captain, Dudley Root Esq, could expunge his fatal error of sending Straya in and inviting them to make 300+ [which turned out be 8/442 dec], was to win the match.
The only redemption for Skippy Smiffy's dubious decision to fail to enforce the follow on, on Day 3, was to win the match.
And everybody knows how that worked out.
The scoreboard never lies.
The small saving grace was that Engerland couldn't even bowl Straya out in the first innings and it actually came down to the last day, and who would have thought that a Pink Stink would go on for five days for the first time?
Even that was lucky, it should have ended on Day 3 with the Poms being told to go back in and imploding under impossible circumstances.
But we know that never happened.
With the innumerable number of overturned umpiring decisions, the umps were either absolute shite, or the technology's completely fooked.
You be the judge, but you can't have it both ways.
It's by-and-large the Pink Stink to blame, again, because the ball insists on not behaving itself.
Apparently the unit they were using was the Pink Stink Mk8, and yet they still haven't been able to work it out after all these years - it must drive the manufacturers absolutely crazy.
To wit, in the after dinner session on Day 3...due to the perfect storm of the new ball, inviting damp weather conditions, and the fact that it was bloody dark...the Bamford's would have been well within their rights to call off the sesh due to the state of the shiny pink nut with black seams, under the "dangerous playing conditions" clauses in the Laws.
Someone could have been hit in much more than the box with the pill dipping, darting, shooting, wobbling, curving, swinging both ways, leaping and freaking out off a good length and generally carrying on like a mad dog's breakfast, and the players - never mind the spectators - had no hope of even seeing the gaudy orb at night.
Utterly unplayable and unpredicatable.
Straya were very fortunate to finish the day alive, and in retrospect, got away with it lightly at 4/53.
On account of the video umpire being kept very busy indeed, there has been some discussion on whether the on-field umpires will soon become obsolete, redundant, and appealing to them for a decision will go by the way side, as every ball which has even the remotest possibility of having a batsman out will be automatically determined by some technician operating the infallible DRS machine, making an already slow game, extremely slow.
Who'd be an umpire, anyway?
Cricket is like war, long periods of tediousness, with short bursts of excitement, but the ump has to make a decision on whether to kill a batsman dead or not on the evidence of something that may happen in less than a fraction of a second.
Remember this thing goes on for five days.
Surely, you'd trust the naked eye in real time over pictures on the Crystal Bucket any day - having worked for years in television, it became perfectly clear to me very early on that the camera lies.
So what if The Man in White is not always right?
It all evens out in the end, and you do have lucky and unlucky days.
Adjudication is a matter of judgement and that's where it should rest, for mine; DRS should be used only for assisting the umpires in the matter of run-outs or obstructing the field.
But nothing - nothing - will stop "progress", aka the running-dog money-grubbing posers at Cricket Australia for whom the honky dollar means the be all, and end all, and spout rubbish like: "The 'Amazing Adelaide' test match is widely-regarded as one of Australia's greatest wins", and expect us to believe them.
Bye, bye, Bamfords.
Consigned to being quaint curiosities in village cricket?
Day-night cricket has been problematical from the outset, but a five-day/night Test match?
Bugger tradition, it just upsets time-honoured drinking practices which should not be messed with.
For a start off, the liquid Lunch should be an immovable feast starting at 1pm sharp, rain, hail or shine.
On the crowd FX microphones on the radio & TV, the after dinner session on Day 4 sounded more like an English soccer stadium full of hooligans than a cricket ground, with the incessant "singing" of the Barmy Army echoing around the half empty ring of grandstands purpose built for AFL.
The vuvuzela is more pleasant sounding to the ear.
If the rumour is true that all MCC Members are pissed by 9am during a Lord's Test match, it follows that if the first ball is bowled at 2pm, the possibilities of pre-loading after a Champagne breakfast are endless, and then you can continue to get on it for the next seven-and-a-half hours at the ground.
Woot!
Did note that it was a record accumulative attendance for an Adelaide Oval test match - but that was simply because they let way more people into the ground than there were seats on the first two days.
And they weren't there to see Bodyline.
Many many thousands of people never saw a ball bowled all day as they whiled away the time getting maggoted on pink gins, jugs of Pimm's,"Champers? Darling", Crownies and God only knows what else in the specially constructed Vomitorium out the back of the Member's pavilion.
The crowd figures did not reflect a resurgence in the popularity of attending Test Cricket, rather more an interest in getting as parrotted as possible in a quiet and sociable way.
Of course, with the Members being the respectable and genteel place that it is, there would have been no brawling, or fucking-in-the-flower beds of an evening.
Surely not.
Don't quite know what it is about that very peculiar place called Adelaide, can't put my finger on it, but there is no doubt it's Yobbo Magnet Central, and has been for eons
Must be the town's reputation for depravity.
When the joint was a real cricket ground and it was graced with my presence during the mid '80's [when you could bring yr own esky into the ground and onto the high wide and handsome viewing Mound], and up until the early 90's, [when the 24-can-limit per-person per-day was just being introduced], there was one lout who did a comedy act spending all day staggering about the hill gibbering in an entirely incomprehensible dialect of South Australian English, wearing stubbies, a terry-towling hat, a ridiculous mullett, a deranged look on his face, and a tattered t-shirt that read: ADELAIDE OVAL YOBBO [RETIRED DUE TO POLICE HARASSMENT].
Late in the day, his specialty was getting into fights and comically coming off second best.
Not trying to be nostalgic here, but that's the way Test cricket should be viewed; slobbering drunk that yr so laid back you've almost fallen over in the late afternoon hot baking sun, ideally wearily barracking tired & emotional opposition bowlers up against your team's on-song batsmen.
Even better if it's Poms being belted all over the park and remorselessly ground into the dust on the scoreboard.
The thwack of leather on willow, remember? That sort of thing, old chap.
The ball-by-pink ball call on the wireless in the after dinner sessions deteriorated markedly.
At one stage the Foghorn suggested the reason why the Barmy Army is so barmy is their alleged fondness for the "cool libations"; then followed a short discussion on drinkers with a cricket problem, but somehow Jim - in the course of a just couple of minutes - then went from "everyone needs cordial!" to "you know what they say, never drink port after Champagne".
What the?
The world's gone mad.
What would Pup do?
Said it before, say it again...being the traditionalist that he is, he most likely hates the Pink Stink and would like to see the patently failed experiment shooed off for all time, but he's paid handsomely by the Nine Network to say that day/night test cricket is the best thing since bottled Scotch [or Canadian Club for that matter], on account of it rates its head off, peaking at an estimated 1,299,000 individual viewers nationwide during the evening session on Day 3.
People know what's going on - but it had nothing to do with the hour of the day, folks were home and it was just the match situation.
So Michael's between a rock and a hard place there.
Sorry Clarkey.
We'll pass on that.
After being seriously psychologically damaged by failing to break Straya's 29 year winning streak at the Gabbatoir - copping a gigantic tusk up the runter in Adelbrain to go 2-nil down in a five match series, well, the Poms, you could say, are in more trouble than the early settlers.
Now that they have been well and truly sucked into Australia's very effective "psych-war" known as sledging, complete mental disintegration from here on in is guaranteed.
Their top order is rooted with unfavourable pitches to come, their bowlers aren't as good as the home side's in any conditions, and they have to win at least two of the next three matches.
A draw in Perth wouldn't even cut the mustard, let alone stop the rot for the tourists.
Poms on toast like kippers for breakfast.
Where do you put yr money, or your sheep station, on the dead-set certainty that Sydney will be a very dead rubber?
Craves.
PS> The game is finished...in broad daylight...
