the nightwatchman and the substitute 12th man

Denizens of the bleachers,

Listening to the wireless after the fourth day's play of the New Year Test in Sydney, someone came on and mentioned a newsflash that Cricket Australia, in all their magnanimous generosity, had decided to throw open the gates on day five to all comers for a gold coin donation to the McGrath Foundation.
After looking at the outrageous ticket prices being charged all week [the heavily promoted $30 tix are in fact just a couple of bays of "hot seats" in sun - or rain - all day] it seemed like an offer too good to refuse.
Everyone likes free, particularly Sydneysiders.
Australia had set Pakistan 465 to win.
They were a wicket down at the start of play with a hopelessly distant 410 more runs to find, the nightwatchman at the crease, a day to play and Australia nine to get...so a good day's play was still in prospect.
Could be all over in an hour or it could take all day, such is the nature, the vagaries and appeal of Test cricket - no one really has any idea at all what will eventually happen, none.
Found myself on an obscenely early [for me] train on a busy Saturday morning into Central to catch the event bus to the ground [whatever happened to the tradition of Test matches starting at 11am sharp?].
As the old vehicle rumbled up Albion St with a full load, the chap sitting next to me and wearing ear-buds blurted out at 10.05am "in for a short day".
"ah ha. how so?"
"another one down, wicket in the first over of the day. Hazelwood, caught and bowled"
"so that's the nightwatchman gone?"
"oh no" he said "it's their good opener, the nightwatchman is still in".
On approaching the only gate open to riff-raff like me, the crowd inside made that unmistakable roar - another one down, clearly, but my hobble along on the walking stick just hadn't made the stadium in time.
Two gorn before even getting there soon after the start, and seven to get.
A Greencoat scanned a single ticket continuously, letting people through the turnstiles, and a dozen well-meaning folk dressed in gaudy pink were waiting to nab you holding even brighter pink collection buckets.
Given that entrance was effectively free, wondered why on earth they were bothering to assiduously count the numbers - then it dawned on me - to work out how many stooges had flicked a 5c coin into the rattle-tin instead of a dollar change.
My bony arse made it's way into an uncomfortable bucket seat reserved for cripples only at the back of Bay 30.
It quickly became all too apparant that it was now down to wickets and time.
Runs were out of the equation.
Settled in for the widely expected block-a-thon until stumps.
All kinds of people were flooding in, rapidly filling up the Brewongle Stand and concourse, which apart from the Members Enclosure, was the only part of the ground open.
There were plenty of Pakistan supporters there of course; full family's, men, women, children, even wizened old ladies who were on two sticks and clearly in their 80's, but puzzlingly, there was a distinct lack of hijabs.
No women - and there were plenty of them waving Pakistani flags - were wearing traditional head coverings - they all had on lavish make-up and team caps; the younger hipper girls, the wrong way around.
Why they all came in such numbers when their team was in more trouble than the early settlers is anyone's guess, but to their credit, they were faithful to their side to the bitter end.
Everyone was there - and still they kept coming.
Regular cricket punters who'd probably been there for the duration of the match, fathers teaching their sons how to watch first class cricket, people-watching gawkers, mobs of fully-bearded pre-loaded hipsters who perhaps were just carrying on through from Friday night, fools hopelessly trying to push prams between rows of seats, vintage wino's with a cricket problem, breast-feeding millenials, classic bogans with mullets out of the '70's, pink sombrero wearing drunks, clutches of kids pressed up against the boundary fence pleading for autographs, hobo's - obviously homeless, even a bag-lady or two, the regulation contingent of spastics seen at every sporting match, cross-dressers [yes, there was an unshaven man in a dress - a refugee from a buck's night?], young folk much more interested in their telephones, those annoying types who stare at everyone all the time, an old piss-pot with the staggers who's BOONY ARMY t-shirt barely covered his spectacular gigantic beer gut, jolly folk who appeared to be on perpetual holiday and others who'd decided to just drop by on their way to something else.
...and still they came.
The crowd was getting genuinely big and noisy - most likely the largest for the fifth day of a Test match in Sydney in living memory.
...and still they came.
It occurred to me at one point before lunch "shit. this is getting a bit dangerous here. could be a crowd crush on" and just at that moment, they opened the Doug Walters [now Victor Trumper] Stand concourse to relieve the pressure, and there was a wild every-man-for-himself stampede for the shady seats.
It was a picture postcard day in the Emerald City, about 25°C with some passing white fluffy clouds, the colour of creams on green, the thwack of willow on leather...
Younis Khan took out the long handle and was looking to get hold of the spinners until he lobbed a lolly of a catch off Lyon to Hazo at mid-on.
The assembled went crazy, except for the woman in front of me was who was right in the moment; painting her nails, you guessed it, hot pink.
Six to get.
Then the nightwatchman, Mr Yasir Shah, after a well-made 13 and holding up an end for a couple of hours, got a tickle on a good'un from Keefey and the genuine 12th man, The Birdman, pouched a great two-handed catch an inch off the ground at second slip.
The crowd went beserk.
Five to get.
Then it was lunch.
Got myself a warm bottle of Coke and a thermo-nuclear five-day-old offal footy pie for $11.60, but eschewed the beer queue, where they were flogging a hitherto unknown snakey substance called Great Northern Mid-Strength, the cost of a plastic cup of which was pushing a niner.
Well used to knowing what cricket ground beer, at the best of times, tastes like, and it's never, ever, good.
Went back outside the ground and a pass-out ticket was thrust in my hand.
A pass-out ticket on a free admission day?
WTF?
They must be extremely rare now, those.
Haven't seen a pass-out ticket at the SCG ever since they banned bringing your own esky into the ground with a 24 can per person per day limit - that must have been many many decades ago now - and then suddenly they really started to monetise the bar concessions, by outlawing BYO.
No alcohol allowed in, no one allowed out, no pass-outs, once you'd left the ground that was it, no getting back in, unless you were fool enough and sober enough to pay again.
Decided to sit under the magnificent gigantic Hill's Weeping Fig trees along Driver Avenue [planted in 1919 in remembrance of Our Glorious Dead] and laid back comfortably on a park bench with a couple cigarette smokers.
Enjoyed nonchalantly toking on a fat scoob of powerful weed, a choice lovingly hand-rolled refeer of the ol' cannabis sativa; you know, that sort of thing.
Great clouds of pungent smoke billowed from my mouth and nostrils from time to time; stacks of people were milling about, heavily-armed police and security men were pacing up and down, but no-one gave a shit.
Nobody even gave me a second glace.
Bless.
Pondered this for a while and thought it's probably a function of the fact that us baby boomers are now temporarily in charge of the whole country, and us old stoners are only now beginning to get the approval/permission to insist on our God-given and inalienable human right to get off one's tits, wherever and whenever one pleases.
Everyone is, one way o another, at the cricket and It was just nice to be well baked for the second session of play.
Completely normal.
Utterly harmless.
Went through the turnstiles again, paid another dollar to the charity people and artificially inflated the official attendance by one, in order to purloin/souvenir the pass-out ticket.
Play resumed.
Seeing Starkers coming off his long run from the University of NSW [Randwick] End is something else again.
He gently swings around into his run-up to a perfect delivery stride then a lovely text book straight-as-a-die arm that flies with a snap of the wrist at the point of delivery...you try to watch the ball out of his hand...but at some 70 odd yards away, more often than not you lose sight of the pill in flight, and then a millisecond later the batsman jumps, and the ball gently down rolls back down the pitch and you think to yourself "fark! that was quick - that hurried him a bit".
He is quick, very quick.
At his best, MA Starc looks unplayable most of the time.
Got all the swing skills, and if you look very closely, he seems to get some extra pace off the wicket, also.
But at the end of every over he came down to long leg virtually in front of me and he looked the very picture of pain.
Grim agony was etched on his face; Starkers was nervously touching his limbs to see if they were all still there, his bones and muscles must have been in a tormented sore-as-hell flame ache, and at one point he just sat down and looked at his shoes with a vacant stare and then put his head in his hands.
Completely and utterly buggered - the fifth day of his 6th test match in a row.
Why would a man even try to hide his humanity in that situation?
And yet, he could still send them down with all the aplomb in the world at 140+ kph.
A class act.
Soon after lunch came the surprise of the day, the novelty debut of the 12th man substitute fieldsman, Mickey Edwards, which was worth the price of admission alone.
Warner went off for a bit [the curry at lunch might not have agreed with him], and on came Mickey, a tall lanky young chap with a small borrowed Baggy perched atop his peroxide blonde surfer-boy mop-top that tumbled down to his shoulders.
The crowd started asking among themselves "who the hell is this bloody bloke???"
He went up to Skippy Smiffy at first slip and appeared to ask him where he should field.
Smiffy just held his arms out in puzzlement and shrugged his shoulders and might have said to him something along the lines of "I don't know. Why ask me? Field where you like, son. You'll get the hang of it".
That sent Mickey into a spin and he wandered around in circles for a bit, before he settled himself at point to the right-hander, or thereabouts - and he ended up staying there the whole time he was on.
His name briefly came up on the scoreboard and soon enough the crowd were barracking "Hey Mickey! Who's your barber!" "Hey Mickey! Watch out for the cut shot!" "If the hat fits, wear it, Mickey!" "Hey Mickey! Give us a wave!" or in the more irreverant parts of the ground "Hey Mickey! Drop yr daks and gissa look at ya donger!"
He became an instant folk hero, for doing absolutely nothing at all, except running onto a test match ground with all that hair and a silly hat.
Everytime he came anywhere near the ball the crowd took it upon itself to go absolutely ape-shit, screaming wildly, madly for Mickey, and then a big mob of rowdies starting chanting the old Tori Basil tune "Hey Mickey, you're so fine, you blow my mind. Hey Mickey! Hey Mickey!"
Mickey got a crazy-mad standing ovation when he dived to save a certain four, getting tied up in the boundary rope signage as he hit the deck all arms and legs.
Talk about larf!
Lyon was getting in on the fun - high-fiving him, slapping Mickey on the arse, stopping running theatrically to allow Mickey to chase after the ball to raucous cheering, and generally taking the mickey out of Mickey, but Mickey steadfastly refused to acknowledge or even look at the crowd, no doubt in grave fear that they might put him off his game.
But he did do a little wave as he came off to another standing ovation - it was almost exactly 15 minutes of fame - right there.
[It turns out on reading the papers the next morning, that Mickey is a second grade district fast bowler for Manly who was at the ground as a net bowler and was walking through the Members Bar in his creams when someone or another, he couldn't or wouldn't say who it was, tapped him on the shoulder and told him to go out and field - he was as surprised as anyone. He was asked on interview what it felt like to be the No.1 trending topic on Twitter for about half an hour and he replied "I don't use Twitter very much, but that sounds cool"].
There must have been a jester involved somewhere in all of that.
In the over after Mickey made his appearance on the ground, Starkers bowled a real pearler, which produced the best sight of the day - Shafiq's off stump bent back at a 45 degree angle seemingly stuck in the Bulli soil mud - after his feet got rooted in the crease and he played all over, around and on top of the ball...and played on something horrible.
The crowd went ding-bat delirious.
Four to get.
In the meantime, the Paki skippy Misbah was hanging around making a nuisance of himself in defence and then for some unknown reason started carting the slow men, until he was trying to tonk Keefey out of the park and mis-hit it, lofting the cork high wide and handsome.
The crowd watched the ball go up, up, and up, almost in silence, until Bowling Garry trousered a good catch on the move at mid-off, when everyone instantly lept to their feet and went fully, totally, bananas.
The noise was deafening.
Three to get.
No one had really noticed that Sarfraz had put together a very good, under the circumstances, half century -- he got a gentle, respectful round of applause and went on to top score by the length of street and remained not out at the denouement.
Then it was just a matter of time as the tail was cleaned up and we could say "we won the cricket!"
As 20,000+ voices roared their lungs out, there was also a sense of relief it was finished with, even though it was all over red rover well before tea.
Absolutely hoarse and parched, took advantage of everyone soaking in the team celebrations, and dashed down the stairs as fast as a gimp can go, and got the very last Frozen Fanta in ground before they closed up the shop.
Scored!
It tasted of very sweet victory.
Sat under the old fig trees again waiting for a bus back to Central, when a fat woman with peculiar unusually large angular breasts walked out of the SCG sweeping a white cane on the ground in front of her, and had a man on her arm who was clearly her "caller" at the match.
Thought hallucinations were beginning to take hold, ["a blind woman at the cricket!? surely you are seeing things?"] until another sight-challenged person, this time an ordinary looking middle-aged fellow with designer sunglasses and also sporting a white cane came by with someone who may have been his sighted brother - who didn't feel the need to wear shades - alongside him as they too walked the short distance to the bus stop.
What's the chances?
Been told since childhood that the only blind bastards at the cricket are the Umpires.
They would have loved it, the day's sound would have been outstanding for them.
And it's not hard to hide at the SCG, you can even got lost there, even though you've been coming to the much loved ground for 35+ years
Said it before, say it again - it's a cripple's nightmare.
Shamefully, it has to be the worst cricket ground in the country for spectator's ease and comfort.
A disgrace.
There are no lifts to speak of, everywhere there are steps, up and down all over the shop, uneven sloping ground, broken ashphalt, trip hazrads galore, great flights of stairs that appear to go nowhere, and do; you can walk into a dead end alleyway and have no idea where you are, or up a narrow corridor, open a door you think might let you out, and see a mob of folk in toques and starched shirts making canapes.
If you are in the beer queue or stumbling along the concourse to have a quick chunder in the dunnies, you cannot see any part of the playing arena at all, let alone the scoreboard - which is useless in any case - at no time does it show a complete scorecard, a light certainly doesn't come on next to a player's name when he fields the ball to tell you who it is, like the old-style manually operated scoreboard did.
The ground appears very tired, even though two of the stands are relatively new.
The whole joint looks like it was designed by a committee over several decades - which it was - nothing fits with anything.
The twin MA Noble/Bradman Stand is an abomination, no architectural merit whatsoever, it's ineffective "roof" looks like an afterthought; a cheap colorbond lid.
The poor old Bill O'Reilly Stand is suffering from concrete cancer, The Doug Walters aka The Victor Trumper Stand has lost any shine it may have had, and the Brewongle Stand is just a plain run-down mess.
While the Members Enclosure boasts a couple of nice Victorian relics, there's no money in the maintenance budget for old things - the roof of the Ladies Stand is rusting, while the Members Pavilion could do with a good lick of paint.
And the view from there has always been crap, anyway.
People like me still adore the old ground, as it's never really been much good anyway, but ever since they took down the old scoreboard and started building over The Hill, they missed their chance.
Now it's just a hideously cobbled together mish-mash.
Shame.
There's my whinge.
However, the Trustee's never listen to me.
But a marvellous day out was had by all, no question.
And the result?
Never In Doubt.
Over the moon, couldn't help myself but to drop by The Buzz Tipple Bar on Chalmers St, a "small bar" attached to a backpacker's hostel, and ask the barkeep to make me up a frosty schooner of tonic & lime with plenty of ice in celebration.
Back in the day, it didn't matter if you came out of the ground at the end of the day's play paralytic - the first post-match beer in the pub out of a cold glass tasted better than your first drink of the day, and much more refreshing, or debilitating, depending on how far gone you were.
Old habits die hard.
As the rattler rolled along back up the Bankstown line towards home, a pre-recorded comforting soothing female voice came on the train's Tannoy and said "Please help prevent delays. If you feel unwell, don't risk staying on the train. The staff at the next station will be able to help you".
Absolutely no chance of that, baby!
Just seen Straya do the three-zip whitewash to snatch one of those rare mysterious trophies in world sport that has no name.
The series' Hat Trick!
Woot!


Third Test Match [3-7 Jan 2017]
Australia 8/538 (dec) & 2/241 (dec).
Pakistan 315 & 244.
Australia won by 220 runs.
At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 23,409 [Day 5].

most shocking photograph of 2016

Long sufferer's...

Seen a million; but this is the worst, most shocking, horrifying, despairing photograph of the nightmare that was 2016, without a doubt.

Apologies.
Don't know what came over me.
So sorry to share it with you.

an unhappy man with a bad barber

Canine Fanciers,

And the moral of the story?
On winning the toss and electing to bat first, never, ever, declare yr 1st innings closed.
Make the bastards bowl you out.
Full stop.
The Poms learnt that lesson 10 years ago now at Adelaide Oval.
Haven't done it again.
Now it's Pakistan's turn.
Did note that during the Boxing Day Damp Squib Score As Many Easy Runs as You Like on an Eight Lane Freeway to a Miracle Victory Test in Mebourne, an on-line petition was raised calling for The Great Michael Clarke to be replaced with Andrew "Roy" Symonds on the Channel Nine commentary team.
Cruel game, cricket.
My Spy at The Ground says the last time he saw Roy, he was sleeping under a bridge in Darwin with a whole lot of busted fishing tackle.
The petition had raised a humungous 600+ signatures at last count.
Hard to work out if it was a joke, a scam, fake news, or what?
Was it really real?
Leaving that to one side side, it's clear that despite being arguably the greatest batsman of the modern era, Pup is still yet to find his niche after being forced to fall on his sword into an early retirement on losing the Ashes under his watch and being unable to put up with his chronic dose of Shagger's Back any longer.
I'm so sorry, Micheal, but your contract on a bloated stipend at Nine won't be renewed for the '17-'18 season.
It's not your game, sad to say...and that's free advice from someone who worked many years in the goddam business.
The poor kiddie is yet to come to terms with the fact that in television it's the pictures that do the talking, but the camera and the editing also lies.
While he is a fair average quality analyst of the game, there is little point in stating the bleeding bloody obvious when it's there on the crystal bucket in bright colour in plain view for all to see in super slo-mo HD micro-detail.
MJ seemed to spend most of his time in the box during Pink Stink III in Brisvegas telling Smiffy how to set his field, and didn't have much to say at all being rostered lightly in commentary after Xmas in Melbun; just directed, mainly, to make funny faces at The Great Warnie while they were together on the telly on the ground during the numerous breaks in play.
Doesn't even seem to have any humourous blokey stories from his glittering playing career to offer the viewer, either.
He could always start with "did I ever tell you about the one that happened that time when I shagged Miss South Africa..."
But, no.
Clarkey has other things going against him as a television commentator; he has image issues - chief among them being his mysterious and as yet unexplained deep unpopularity with the Strayan General Public, and his unique squeaky kind of whining little voice.
Even though allegations have been levelled against me re: loving the bloke to death in Fandomville; the sound of what comes out of his cake-hole even gets on my nerves after a while.
It's a ratings killer.
He certainly doesn't have Jim Maxwell's professionally soothing mellifluous radio "foghorn".
Which brings us around to the perennial question: what do you do with former Australian Prime Ministers and Cricket Captains?
There have been wild rumours circulating that Prime Minister Turn Bullcrap has invited Pup to captain or coach or captain/coach the PM's XI, in a game which has now been shamefully and sadly reduced to an afterthought; an utterly meaningless T20 caper at Manuka with no prestige whatsoever against a Ceylon XI right at the fag-end of the season on Feb 15.
But that's hardly a "job"
It appears being a published author is not Michael's long-suit either.
Reliably informed that his highly anticipated tell-all autobiography My Story was a miserable dud in terms of sales, despite is salacious content and it's magnificent 446 page coffee-table production with more than a hundred photographs.
The book, by rights, should take pride of place in any sports fan's library.
[However, it is true that The Good Lady Wife picked up my copy from a big stack of 'em on the remainder table at K-Mart, of all places, two days before Xmas at $19.95, after it was published in October at RRP $49.95].
Admittedly the lavish hardcover was in a crowded Xmas market with Dennis Lillee, Mitchell Johnson, Brad Haddin, Brad Hogg, and Jim Maxwell all penning half-truths about themselves at the same time for the same readers, but unconfirmed reports coming into the Stats Guru [who obviously knows everything there is to know about numbers] suggest Pup managed to flog only 13,000 copies of My Story in the month leading up to the pre-Xmas rush and the publisher Pan Macmillan has dropped well north of $700K on it.
Deary, deary me.
Unlikely to run into a 2nd edition, you'd imagine.
Compare that to the wealthiest man in cricket, Ricky Ponting, and his tome At the Close of Play, which sold 120,000+ copies in two months at full price, and easily topped the best sellers list by the length of the street.
Joisus.
Clarkey tried being a yachtsman last year, but after one day at sea in a leaky, broken boat in the Sydney-Hobart race, he decided that ocean racing wasn't for him.
Sensible move.
He didn't play many 1st grade games for Western Suburbs this summer, before quietly fading away from that scene with barley a whimper, leaving his sponsored Nepalese teenage leg-spinner in his place.
Perhaps the former Skippy could take up professional pigeon racing?
That'd keep you busy.
While there is no doubt that Clarkey is an astute and highly successful property investor, it's not really a "job" either - all you have to do is sit on yr fat/bony arse and the greatest free gift of all from the Govt - negative gearing - and lightly-taxed capital gain does the rest.
Ka-ching!
He scrupulously follows his sponsor's contractual obligations and is a worthy philanthropist also, doing much of it anonymously - but all rich people have a moral obligation to be one - and while he's done some good works as the 'ambassador' spokesmodel for Pain Australia, what he really needs is full-time work to keep him off the streets and out of dark alleys.
Kyly is busy down the Zen garden path off with the fairies pursuing her own career in the women's magazines, as Kyly, wife of Michael Clarke and mother of one.
Now that's a full-time job.
A chap can change only so many nappies, and Pup doesn't strike me as a man who would be content with being a house husband.
It all give me the shits.
What is to be done with the great man, dammit?
Instead of celebrating his stellar "after cricket" career 18 months on, it is my melancholy duty to report that heading into 2017, MJ Clarke, at 35, looks like an unhappy man with a bad barber.
How did it come to this?

on the Pink Stink, Pt II & III

Traditionalists,

When confronted with something like the Pink Stink, the first obvious question you would ask yourself would be "What would Clarkey do?"
But, Pup appeared to be just as perplexed as anyone on commentary duty on the telly.
If he wasn't getting paid a handsome fee to say that day/night Test match cricket is the best thing since bottled Scotch or a years supply of KFC, as a newly minted Honorary Life Member of the MCC, you'd hope that MJ Clarke would say "Disaster. Tremendous waste of time and money for no purpose. Abandon it ".
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with Test cricket.
There used to be a saying "if it aint broke, don't fix it, and if it is broke, and you can't fix it with fencing wire, then it's not worth fixing".
The Stats Guru is scratching his head also, and while his abacus is having real trouble trying to make sense of the crazy numbers, he ventures to suggest that playing the crucial hour before sunset and the hour after the orb dips below the horizon could just be a matter of developing a new tactical element in a game already chock full of known unknowns.
But for the purist, there is obviously something wrong with the ball, and no amount of fencing wire is going to help.
Apart from the hue of this year's model of the Pinkie looking very gaudy indeed, at first glance it can wildly favour the bowlers in the twilight hours, or, it may not.
So, if you are the Captain, you really can't put a tactical punt on it.
Otherwise how do you explain Pakistan being bowled out cheaply on the evening of Day Two in Brisvegas, and yet comfortably batting their way through the dusk on Day Four to push the game into the hitherto unknown territory of Day Five, on their way to what could have been the biggest winning run chase in the history of the game, only to fall oh so short?
Weird as.
But it's obviously no longer about the game itself; bugger the survival chances of Test cricket.
Doesn't matter how many swimming pools, pool decks, beaches, cocktail bars you put in the ground, or how many punters dressed in stupid costumes come through the turnstiles to be seen and get pissed, it's all about how it rates on the crystal bucket.
And cricket television ratings, it seems, are already going sub-Antarctic anyway, if it's not T20.
With a generation that has the attention span of a gnat, and the way things are headed, the BBL will end up being the only thing Cricket Australia has left to sell, but it's franchised, so they don't even own it properly.
And what was the official attendance on Day Five in Brissy?
A Sheffield Shield crowd -- less than two thousand.
Same as it ever was.
Reports suggest Kookaburra turned out the MkVIII version of the Pinkie for the current summer, and they are already working on MkIX to serve up to the Poms next year.
They must be so utterly frustrated, given that there is nothing at all wrong with the traditional red ball - it's worked for a very very long time, well over a century - and yet they can't, for all they try, get the Pinkie right.
And who was the bright spark who dreamt up the insane idea of putting flashing lights in the bails?
Gawd save me.
Wassup?
To me, the tactics in a day/night Test match seem to hinge almost entirely on whichever side bats first and can produce a batsman who can simply survive a couple of hours of a wildly swinging, curving, spinning, wobbling, bouncing, practically un-playable invisible ball under lights, and then goes on to make a big hundred in the broad light of day, wins.
Simple.
Ipso facto, the Token Muzzie's 145 in Adelbrain, and Skippy Smiffy's 130 up there in the sub-tropics.
But is that what the people want; survival in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, followed by a dead-boring daylight saloon passage on a road of pitch such as the one at the Gabbatoir, which was more like a six-lane highway?
Is that the new, manufactured for television, drama?
The whole thing has just got me completely bamboozled, flabbergasted.
Been saying this for years -- if you want to go about taking Test cricket out of the Intensive Care Unit, then Tubby Taylor's call for Test matches to be reduced from five days to four makes absolutely perfect sense, for mine.
As it stands, watching or listening to the Boxing Day Test and the New Year Test occupies half of the annual leave of the ordinary working man if the matches run their full course.
And there's form for it - before the era of complete silliness and "timeless tests" [1928-39], Test matches were routinely played, more often than not to a result, over four, even three days.
But that was back in the day of uncovered pitches and when over-rates was very rapid indeed, compared to today's placid wickets and the god-awful mind-numbingly pedestrian over-rates.
For chrissake, how long does it take to set a field and bowl six balls?
Four days, four hundred overs, in the time allotted.
If Test cricket is to hang on for grim life, which is currently in grave doubt if the Powers That Be keep fiddling about with it the way they are, that's probably where it should be at.
But that's only my, and Tubby's, opinion.
Clarkey might do it differently.
But there's no difference of opinion about Uzzy; beautiful to watch, style and grace to burn, has all the shots, and his ton over three days in Adders will be the best by far of the summer and remembered for a while yet.
The old boys can just plod along, the rookies can keep looking over their shoulders, but having been shamefully and shabbily treated by the now former selectors, The Uz-Man is the real deal and he's here to stay with a glittering career ahead of him.
But please, please, let's just go back to the clear light of day where everyone can plainly see what the faark is going on, and for the love of Joisus, stop messing about with lunch and tea.
It is, after all, the most civilized sport in the world - the only game that stops for afternoon tea.
What's broken about that?

the interminable imponderables of the selector

Decision makers,

Forget about the small matter of the thievin' cheatin' Seth Efreakens and the breaking of Law 42 regarding "fair and unfair play", there once was a saying in Strayan cricket "it's harder to get dropped from the Test team that it is to get picked".
Not anymore, unless you have the negatives of the photographs of the selectors like Shane FIGJAM Watson did.
How many first class games did Mike "Mr Cricket" Hussey have to play before he got picked at age 30?
Just how it was...and that's in recent times.
The system had long history.
The Stats Guru is still manically whirring the beads on the abacus trying to work out when the last time was that six players were dropped in one fell swoop from a Strayan test team, outside the World Series Cricket era?
He's still looking for the answer.
After throwing RW Marsh MBE under a bus, seems like TV Hohns has been down to the local costume shop over the weekend and picked up the full Grim Reaper outfit.
Off with their heads!
You can say anything you like about it, but there's no doubting it's a gutsy call from the Interim Chairman and the Temporary Three Wise Men.
Always thought, to do their job properly, selectors should act like judges - shun the limelight altogether, be the Faceless Men, and should not necessarily be asked to give reasons, let alone volunteer them.
All Trev had to say...Madds "enormous potential", Renso "in-form", Chadds "plays good in Adelbrain", The HandyComb "made a double ton on the weekend", Bird's "just Bird" and Wade "can bat"; nothing at all to say about those dropped apart from the wicky Nevill - "unlucky".
No mention of one-test wonders Ferguson and Rennie having already put their Baggy's in glass display cases.
Back in the day when he was skipper, MJ Clarke got right jack of being a selector, quite rightly pointing out that he thought it was a conflict of interest.
But they forced him to be one anyway.
Then he dusted off his little history book and found out that up until the very recent past Strayan captains were never required to be a selector, except on tour, when the skippy, his deputy, and the team manager would pick the playing XI from a set-in-stone squad of players, chosen by the selectors.
Soon enough Pup told The Board they could "shove this job for a joke", and promptly resigned as a selector while retaining the Captaincy, home and away.
Clarkey said "just give me a team, piss off, and I'll captain it, OK?".
Of course he wasn't very popular in certain circles and found Boof, Pat the Freakin' Freeloader and a myriad of other hangers-on in his way, busy protecting their own patches and their own bloated stipends.
In the entire course of cricket history, "coaches" never used to have a role in the main game; yoof would learn, and learn hard, how to play a hard game from experience.
When they got over the utter nonsense that was the Amatuer/Professional pommie class shit, the proscribed method of team management worked - by and large - pretty well for a very long period of time; that's not to say there weren't unholy stinks, perceieved slights, accusations of favouritism, nepotism, sheer bastardry, vitriolic acrimony, fisticuffs and bar brawls, etc etc etc et al over who, or who shouldn't, be in the team.
That was all part of it.
But persistency and consistency were still valued.
What do we want? Gradual change! When do we want it? In due course!
Things are different now in the age of instant gratification, and yet, people still hate change.
Could very well be starting on down the road to losing it, but do find the current debacle all very confusing, perplexing.
Pup had nothing nice to say about the Rosy Ball last time out, so what will he be expected to bark on about on Channel Nine, who are fond of paying the piper and towing the CA party line?
As My Spy at The Ground was heard to say "imagine making your Test debut under lights in the Pink Stink at Adelaide Oval. No wonder Trev's asking everyone to be very patient".
Five days in the glare of the spotlights is a long time to be treading the boards - so, now for some Shakespearean oratory! Heroics! Comedy! Tragedy! and chin music in five acts.
Bring the fans flooding back through the turnstiles for five nights in a row.
That couldn't be too much for Marketing to ask?
Surely?
Wandered into the Front Bar at The Local for a quick mid-morning Monday cordial and found The Philosopher, as is his wont, in his usual corner nursing this week's favoured tipple [a strong bone dry vermouth and soda on the rocks], looking rather dazed and disheveled poking his bony finger into this photograph from AAP on the back page of the paper; so impressed was he by the Captain's quizzical visage, he decided to caption it:

"In the name of sweet weepin' Jesus upon the Cross! Who the Hell are you?"

Where's Jim Higgs when you need him?

I'm surprised Trevor Hohns is still alive.
Where's Jim Higgs when you need him?
Wasn't Greg Chappell sacked as a selector a few years back for being a rude vegan prick, and now he returns to the interim panel as if he was a knight in shining armour?
And, it seems, if you thump a ton in a single Sheffield Shield match, yr in.
"Go to the top order for Straya, son, and see if you can join the ever growing ranks of one-test wonders".
After committing the cardinal sin of being run out in a Test match, and with his 32nd birthday on Monday, CJ Ferguson has already put his Baggy in a glass case.
No matter, they'll be handing out baggy's like confetti, anyway.
Crisis?
What crisis?

bad moon rising

Fellow aghastee's

Nothing good ever comes from a Super Moon.
Straya get thumped in the test cricket by an innings and then some in 2.2 days by the Seth Efreakens on a lovely batting deck in Hobart sparking a full-scale crisis of confidence and calls for ruthless recriminations, the south island of the Shakey Isles only confirms why hardly anyone lives there with an apocalyptic size tremblor right bang smack on the full moon, and a member of a "prominent Sydney crime family", which turns out to only be the Mafia, cops it up the runter in a "hail of bullets" coming from a schmick Audi cruising past in broad moonlight on a street behind the Coles supermarket in the next suburb over from my gaff.
Just ask Smiffy, the good burghers of Christchurch, and Pasquale Barbaro Jnr...they'll tell you.
The Good Lady Wife also blames the bad moon rising, saying somehow, somewhere along the way the team got on the wrong side of the Cricket Gods, as they stare down the barrel of the first home series white-wash by Seth Efreaker in centuries.
There's a lot to be said for that theory, but it's a bit too superstitious for mine.
Maybe someone, somehow, somewhere along the way forgot about the concept of first class cricket.
It's as if Cricket Australia and the Board of Control have entirely neglected to remember and honour the great Lord Sheffield and his Shield.
>From one who doesn't mind a drink in a crisis, the knee-jerk solution is, of course, to sack the lot of 'em.
Swampy, Boof, and the greatest hanger-on in the history of Australian cricket, Low Performance Manager, Pat Howard, must all be GORN by Xmas.
The Chairman of the Board, The Board, and Mr Sutherland and his myriad of acolytes and cronies might as well all follow them out the back door without so much as a sausage.
The Stats Guru has been whirring the abacus, and the ancient abacus he uses never lies.
He has calculated that the collective batting average of the top six Strayan batsmen in the first two tests is, you guessed it, 23.70.
And if it wasn't for a couple of half-way decent knocks by Dave "Boy from the Burbs" Warner, Smiffy, and the Token Muzzie, it would have been closer to zero.
You can draw yr own conculsions from that.
Never mind that the previously much feared Strayan bowling attack is old, tired, injured, and/or underdone.
All power must be returned to the Captain, as it should be, and has always been, until the Honky Dollar [or more accurately, the de-monetised high-denomination Rupee] took over the game.
Having switched the telly off in disgust, never did see SPD Smith on interview after the match.
They say Smiffy went just about as ballistic as the skippy can go ballistic in public, but having read the transcript, his words seem to be rather more sober and measured to me:

Joisus, the Pink Stink dead-rubber in Adelbrain will be a whole lotta fun.
Needless to say, none of this would ever have happened back in the day when Pup was in charge...aaahhh...back in the day...