Michael Clarke's baggage

Canine Fanciers,

You call that a suitcase? Now THIS is a suitcase!

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/news/free-louis-vuitton-exhibition-coming-to-chadstone/news-story/969ccc6f8410154c1a6f456ffbf945b5?nk=b599541c0f5a55ca8e5829f689b28a08-1518343896

It looks like the kid Pup didn't travel light.
None of this throwing yr cricket gear into a sports bag and humping it to the nets.
When yr the best batsman of a generation and yr Champion of the World, you'd wanna have the bespoke gear:

You have to love how the suitcase/trunk/wardrobe, which must be six foot tall, opens out into four panels to reveal the great man's gear; the draws for the boots and the creams are immaculate, and in goes the tin lid and the bat & pads, and if you look closely there's even a draw for Michael's box.
Outstanding.
It must weigh a ton, and would have attracted freight charges, not excess baggage.
Can't say that the autobiography Michael Clarke, My Story, [ 2017] pp, has enticed me beyond Chapter Three, but there is no mention of Louis Vuitton in the index.
You'd doubt, in the maturity of his retirement, that he'd want to own up to anything so ostentatious, and he probably couldn't wait to loan it back to LV [takes up far too much room in the mansion basement], in the hope that they will take it forever...maybe give it to the Lord's Museum.
Yeah.
That'd be the appropriate place for it.
Pup is, after all, one of the few Honourary Life Members of the MCC.

Ran into the immense power of brand while covering the Louis Vuitton Cup way back in '87 in Fremantle, which that C.C.C. Dennis Conner won in his 12-metre Stars & Stripes, which qualified him to successfully challenge Straya and win back the Auld Mug.
He got the LV Cup alright, but more importantly, he took the merch; worth much more than some ordinary silverware.
No money was spared on anything during the Glory Days with no less than 32 twelve-metre yachts going around in the LV Cup, and if you didn't have the right luggage, you were out of the scene.
Louis Vuitton managed the press very nicely indeed, including a state-of-the-art media centre with coaxial cables, electric typewriters and new fangled fax machines and such like.
But more importantly, LV sponsored the Thursday Five O'Clock Follies, which masqueraded as the weekly press conference put on by the Challenger-of-Record, the Yacht Club Costa Smerelda, for any questions on the week's proceedings, which was attended by upwards of a hundred journalists and lasted about ten minutes on account of out the back of the room were trestle tables covered in endless opened bottles of Moet & Chandon and a mess of Champagne flutes on an open slather basis - pour your own - but strictly only between when the press conference ended and 6:30pm, when the drink would be turned off.
Not a bad word was ever said or written about Louis Vuitton.
They were only sponsors, after all.
Nothing was ever said or written about what happened after The Follies, but when pissed toe-rag reporters and yachting types are let loose on what was then the outrageously expensive carnival streets of Fremantle waving half drunk bottles of Champagne in both hands, you can only imagine the havoc and depravity.
Toot! Toot! On the LV Gravy Train.
"where did I leave my luggage? ah, fuckit, what luggage?"

Looks like y'all have to go the Chadstone Shopping Centre to see this masterwork with yr own eyes.
It aint coming to you, that's the truth.
Down to the mall you go.

two verbs in an old growth forest

Triumphalists,

Utterly and completely exhausted; never did get to the fifth day of the Test match in Sydney this year, as is my wont.
Suffered enough the day before.
Decided the cost/benefit analysis was all wrong under the circumstances and it was not worth the time & effort to go and watch the Engerland captain bat as the last Pommy wickets of the summer fell around him on what turned out to be a hot & humid day [and this was before the news broke that Mr Dudley Root Esq had been a quivering mass of nerve endings on a drip in the hospital after sweltering through the 43 degree heat on Day 4, undoubtedly the most horrific day the pink-faced Yorkshireman had ever encountered].
Everyone suffered, the mercury got up to 44.9°C at my weatherboard gaff in Sydney's armpit, the punkahwallah had gone on strike, so there was nothing for it but to crawl into a dark crevice and hope to die.
Only Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, as they say in the classics.
Boom, boom!
After playing 25 days of Test cricket in six weeks carrying the burden of the Captaincy, at the denouement, Root ran into the hottest day in the Emerald City since the Great Depression at the same time as he was going at both ends, so getting any cordial into him to re-hydrate his limp carcass as it wilted in the thermometer-busting maelstrom was all but impossible.
Root was rooted.
Good and proper, just ask the express emergency dept. up there at St. Vincent's Private, they'll tell you.
Retiring ill [or as a scoreboard graphic seen on the telly called it 'rt. hurt'] twice in the same innings, and not resuming to leave your team at nine down and an innings and a mile behind, before the Bamford's called stumps, there being no other prospect than a resounding Australian victory, must have been truly awful.
The indignity surely would have been unbearable.
It will take a long time for Mr Rooty to recover from his delirium, but he will be forever scarred; put him in cotton wool and push him through an MRI scan while yr at it to see how much his head has been done in by Straya's "psych-war".
The bloke was buggered beyond belief, mentally and physically desiccated.
But never at any stage was there any call for Day 4 to be postponed due to the hellfire heat - the question simply never arose - "play up! play up! and play the game!"
If memory serves, the last time a Test player of any note ended up on a hospital drip due to heat stroke was 19 September 1986 during the tied test in Madras.
Never been to Madras, but it's farkin' hot at that time of year by all reports, and Dean Jones was having a few up-chuck vommies on the wicket square while he was pissing his pants and diarrhearetic-style-shit was running down his trousers and into his batting pads, just like Rooty.
But he made 200+, did Deano.
Tonked his double hundred after putting on 150 on the second day in a 42 degree horror while being goaded by A.B. as a "weak Victorian", and then went straight onto the hospital drip after finally giving up and throwing his wicket away on 210 after 502 minutes in a black hole.
Many crates of very powerful strong beer would not have even cut the mustard.
Asked to recall the day five years ago, Deano said "It wouldn't happen now because of litigious players and workplace safety. Should we be playing in 42 degrees? We go off for rain but we don't go off when it's 42."
Wrong.
Nothing has changed 31 years on.
Match awareness goes missing all the time.
...Deano of course arose from his death bed to witness Greg "Long Donger" Matthews [who had been driven utterly insane by the absurd heat during the course of the match to the point where he wore a long-sleeve jumper throughout the fifth day, even while bowling, taunting the paltry crowd at third man with "you call this hot? Try Australia, matey!"] trapping the No.11 Maninder Singh LBW for a duck to take the last wicket of the match to produce the now extremely rare tie, with Ravi Shastri not out 48 at the other end...
The heat-wave went on for five days in Madras, but there is no extant television footage of the match, not a single frame of history in the making survives.
No lessons learned.
The video tapes hit the bulk eraser and the film is lost, so the last flaming day of a thermonuclear test match in India might as well have been a tree falling in an old growth forest.
It is tempting to say "Poor ol' Rooty - couldn't hack it - but good on the Poms for coming over anyway, showing up, and trying their best knowing that they didn't have a team who were up for it", or "jolly good show, chaps, under trying circumstances" or "bad luck, old cock, better luck next time, carry on regardless", that sort of thing.
A bit of an old fashioned charitable pat on the back. .
Well, bugger that, there is no mercy in cricket - there is no mention of the word in The Laws of the game.
None.
No quarter is given, and no prisoners taken in this caper.
It's all done by the book.
Torture is rampant.
Not only is it tolerated, it's perfectly legal, encouraged, and it's celebrated.
Never mind the out-of-control climactic conditions - said it before, say it again - putting the boot on the throat and grinding Poms into the dust and clean out of the equation, slowly, is one of the finest sights in world sport, and is rightly lauded.
While a win by a single run or wicket will do, and is usually described as "thrilling", putting yr opponents on the rack and getting to work on tightening the screws is generally called a "magnificent effort".
In a sweet irony, by the time the tourists got through the blast furnace of that day, they we're in more trouble than the early settlers, hence the pointlessness of going to the ground on the last day of the tour.
On a lighter note, My Spy at the Ground, who had the Bakelite earpiece in throughout, reported that if there was any doubt that the radio commentary of the cricket is chockablock full of long-winded verbosity and verbiage offered this example as confirmation.
As Straya were piling on the runs on Day 3, Jim "The Foghorn" Maxwell - who'd likely had a glass or three of a thumping good Hunter Valley red cordial at lunch - broadcast to the world "there are two verbs in the England slips cordon - Cook and Root".
Not nouns, verbs, very specific about that.
You've got to forgive the bloke for his momentary lapse - probably just reminiscing about his younger days there in a roundabout way, you'd have to guess.
Who knows?
In the meantime, the Stats Guru has given the beads of the trusty ol' abacus a whirr and will give you any number of powerpoint presentations on how records tumbled left, right, and centre, and how the Poms were outclassed, outplayed, outfoxed, done like a dinner...had - like kippers for breakfast - so it's probably best to just to have a quick lookie at the margins to illustrate the point.
1st Test: The Brisbane Gabbatoir - won by ten wickets - maintaining Straya's unbeaten run at the ground at 29 years and counting.
Jeesh...Skipper Smiffy wasn't even born the last time they lost there.
Must get up there one year in the safe and certain knowledge that it's been rigged so the home side will never lose.
Perhaps that's just the Sydneysider in me: as a tribe we can't stand losing, and are very fickle and flaky when it comes to teams on a losing trot; always overkeen to see a winner.
Smiffy tonking up a classy first innings not out hundred set the tone for the entirety of the series.
Everyone knew where this one was heading after taking a priceless 1-0 lead.
2nd Test: Adelaide's Pink Stink Ep.3 - won by 120 runs - in a silly glow-in-the-dark canter.
3rd Test: Last days at the WACA Ground, Perth - won by an innings and 41 runs - Smiffy's magnificent double century in glorious weather put the issue beyond doubt.
4th Test: Melbourne - tame draw - on a pitch that had been badly baked in a patty pan - the Pommy opener Cooky took 634 minutes going large with a career-saving double century on a six-lane highway, so there was precious little time left for anything else.
5th Test: Sydney - in a heat wave - won by an innings and 123 runs taking the opportunity that presented itself to absolutely murder the opposition stone dead. There is no beating 600+ at the SCG, and then finding yrself batting on the last day on a dust heap turning at right angles.
The Pommy vice-captain Jimmy "wot's the score, Jimmy?" Anderson, standing in for his indisposed skipper who was asleep on a gurney in the dressing room during the presentations, was in deep denial when he claimed on interview post-match that England were not "blown away" [ah, huh?] and that "upheaval" in the team was unnecessary.
[They'll probably just sack their turn-coat Strayan coach in Trevor Bayliss and then blunder on].
The Poms have been sent home packing [via New Zealand] with their tails between their legs after copping a gigantic tusk up the runter.
There won't be any MBE's waiting at the Palace or ticker-tape parades for you lot when you finally get back to the Heart of the Empire, oh no, siree.
That must hurt.
So, that's it, we come to the 8th of January, and it's the test season over, Four-Zip.
Ashes in the dilly bag, until 2019 in the Old Dart - then, watch out!
Now for Seth Efreaker, four tests in March, always a hard ask on The Veldt.
But, winning away is the measure of a great team.
It's on Smiffy's 'bucket list' to join the "Invincibles".
MJ Clarke can only rue the one thing that eluded him as Captain, winning that Stoopid Little Urn in the Britarse Isles, prompting him to fall on his own sword.
But those days have gone away.
Onwards and upwards.

drawn on a flat pillow

Snoozers,


MJ Clarke - who seems to have taken on the role as Channel Nine's official "pitch inspector" on the morning of each day's play - saw the featherbed as the covers were peeled off the pitch on Boxing Day at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and exclaimed "that looks like a one-day wicket! Oh, that is flat, and look at it, shaved, not a blade of grass...that is going to be a beautiful pitch to bat on."
Pup would have been muttering under this breath "what a farkin' belter! Wish I wasn't retired, or I'd fill my freakin' boots".
And so it came to pass.
One of the commentariat called the strip a "bowl of porridge".
In retrospect the match was drawn at the toss, never mind the fact that Straya fell at least 150 runs short in the first innings, when 600+ was ripe for the taking.
The pitch and the scoring were so lifeless and slow on the opening day, how could it be otherwise?
On the morning of Day 5, Clarkey was moved to remark "it's extremely flat, hardly any foot marks at all. This pitch looks just like it did on Day 1”.
Marvellous Melbourne.
It's been 18 seasons now of "drop-in" pitches at the MCG - the pioneers in that Dept. - and they only did it after Australian Rules footballers got weak and sick and tired of being hammered into a concrete hard mud heap in the winter, and whinged and complained about it, after it had been going on for more than a century.
Don't they know football was invented to give cricketers something to do in the winter?
And what's it been good for?
Absolutely nothing.
And as far as Powers That Be down at the ICC go, 40 tonnes of "drop-ins" are now the gold standard.
You'd have to suspect their evil plan is to play all test matches into the night and let the pink ball do the talkin'.
Even the very idea would have the purists apoplectic with fury
This year's model was doing zip, jack shit, bugger all throughout - dead from the opening delivery; deceased, no more, finished up, kaput, carcassised...dead, buried & cremated.
My Spy at The Ground pushed through a message at the start of Day 4 on the Bush Telegraph "bat, bat, bat, and then bat some more, on this flat pillow".
On interview after stumps were drawn early at the denouement, soon after the Australian captain wiped his brow with yet another century, he remarked, "the pitch was slow, although it was good to bat on it wasn't that easy to score runs over the five days. Yeah, pretty slow".
The Stats Guru did a quick whir of the abacus and confirmed as much with an aggregate run rate of 2.75 per over the duration.
Even the old bush cricket ploy, where an opposition captain would lay a well formed log of a turd on a good length at both ends the night before the match, would not have livened things up much or helped that deck.
And the over rate, as usual, got more appalling as it dragged on.
The pitiable bowlers knew there was nothing in it for them from the opening bounce and lost interest for hours on end.
As Smiffy was meticulously getting together his ton, with most it all run, on the last day, the Good Lady Wife reminded me of the great Peter Shanahan, the long serving breakfast newsreader during my stint at Radio 2GB back in the 80's.
One morning during an Ashes test match in the 70's, Shanahan was presented with some sports copy to read and broadcast to the world:
"England's Tony Grieg failed to extract any bounce from the lifeless bitch...er...pitch".
If only he hadn't corrected himself, he would have got away with it; as it was, he never lived it down.
Just lucky it wasn't me who got strangled for writing the copy.
Wasn't there, yr Honour.
As far as tame draws go it was an inconsequential dead rubber, anyway.
The only time the Poms ever got even the slightest hint of a sniff was having Straya four down and 13 runs in front on the morning of the last day, but the result was never in doubt.
NID.
The curator had made sure of that.
Skipper Smiffy's second innings hundred put him way out there into the stratosphere of course, with some plainly ridiculous average for this season on account of he's all but impossible to get out and is making tons at will, double centuries if you don't mind, when they matter.
A good Captain's knock, have no doubt about it - no ifs or buts - but in the Grand Scheme of Things it didn't really matter that much or 'save' the game, as the whole shootin' match slowed to a crawl and fizzled out, with rain taking a couple of bites out of the damp squib.
Not much of a game worth 'saving', really.
Oh well.
Engerland's opener AN Cook, who no-one's really ever rated and everyone thought was one bad game away from being dropped after a long career, of course made 244 not, prompting cries from the most uncharitable of "even my grandmother could make a hundred on that six lane highway", but more to the point, Cook spent every minute of the test match on the field over the full five days.
Never missed a minute.
He fielded in both the Australian innings and performed the rare feat of "carrying his bat" for ten and a half hours in the Poms only innings - saw the lot, he did.
Nothing passed him by.
No time spent in the sheds, no rub-downs, no doing the crossword or having a game of cards, and no chance to slip out the back for a quiet gin'n'tonic.
Cook witnessed every damn one of the 2,325 balls bowled in the match, and closely watched just 24 wickets fall.
There's no rest for the wicked and the poor Pom would have been absolutely buggered and completely rooted after that.
But he would have been miserable even after going very large with a big double hundred as his team still couldn't win.
Not on that road.
Oh, no siree.
Purpose built for Straya not to lose, it was.
It's still 3-nil, chaps, with Sydney to play.
Although the prospect of a whitewashed clean sweep is now gone, and with the Ashes won what seems a long time ago now during the co-coinciding Silly Season, Smiffy will make doubly doubly sure that the Poms go home in the New Year without winning so much as a sausage.
And that's the way we like it.

the Urn returns and the demise of the W.A.C.A Ground

Wackarites,

The punning was dreadful in the papers "Australia urns the Ashes!"
Won't bore you with the rest.
"Brilliant Aussies Humiliate Pathetic Poms", was all the Daily Terror could come up with as a front page headline.
Weak.
Tame; they were massacred, no-one left behind to tell the story.
News from the Mother Country has it that there was NO reportage of the event whatsoever in the fish-wraps in the Ol' Dart, and there was certainly no cause for jubilation in the Heart of the Empire.
Done cold by the Colonies, they were, the Poms, with two games to spare and now staring down the barrel of the ignominious disgracement of 5-nil.
Few things give me greater pleasure than to see the Pommy bastards cop a gigantic tusk up the runter at cricket.
There was a feeling of unbridled reflected joy & glory as one of the finest sights in world sport was being played out on the third day - "moving day" - in Perth...Poms being slowly, but unmercilessly, ground into the dust...to the tune of 9/662 dec.
Everybody has their opinions on the hinge of battle - the thing on which everything else swings - was it by far and away their best batsman, the mild-mannered Benny Stokes, going berserk in Bristol way back in September in the brain-explosion to end all brain-explosions?
We'll never know.
Was it the tourists getting utterly hammered by ten wickets at the Gabbatoir after winning the toss and putting on 300?
Smiffy was in it from the off with a lazy 141 not.
That could well have been it, there and then - the absolutely priceless 1-nil lead in a five match series.
Was it Mr. Dudley Root Esq calling the flip correctly and then incorrectly inviting Orstralia to bat and make a poultice in Adelaide at zero one down, ignoring the fact that he didn't have a sufficient arsenal, day or night?
And everybody knows what happened at the Pink Stink
Or was it Smiffy [again] departing the planet in Perth?
Sorry Pup, but your mantle as the best batsman of your generation is being seriously challenged by Skipper Smiffy here.
The double ton on a six-lane freeway was a simple joy to watch as it went on all day - proper Test cricket - the crisp cut shots, the glorious cover drives, the pulls, the swipes and sweeps and hoiks, the superlative textbook leg play all easily beating the hopelessly hapless field - even Cow Corner wasn't safe - and as the shadows grew longer it was plain comical to see the Baby-Faced Killer effortlessly twirl his bat around about above his head and just flick a short one way over the top of the only slip off some absolutely buggered Pommy bowler.
Anderson, Broad, Woakes, Overton and Ali all got hit for a hundred and then some.
And they were told about it - endlessly.
A master class.
SPD Smith has now been admitted to the Pantheon, if he hadn't been before.
At one point it was mentioned that someone with far too much time on their hands had calculated that Smiffy does up to 27 different movements of his body between facing every ball.
Crikey!
More fidgety than even MJ Clarke ever was, if that is humanely possible.
Was it Hey Hey Jonny Jonny Bairstow's unusual behaviour in a Perth bar before the tour even really began where all the wheels fell off the dodgy touring wagon?
Smiffy learnt alot while he was on a rickshaw recently in India, where they are past-masters at it; and the Poms were sucked in holus bolus and had their heads completely done in by Straya's very clever "psych-war" that was guaranteed to produce mental disintegration, despite the sledging not getting too out of hand, except for a bit of light-hearted banter...e.g. Smiffy v Jimmy Anderson discussing the state of the scoreboard in Adelbrain [Aleem Dar adjudicating].
What about the Poms just being not up to standard as the hinge point?
Plainly not good enough.
Attack? Poor, too slow. Bats? Took 'em until the third game to get a ton. Field? Below average. Minds? Gorn.
Out-played and out-foxed in every department there is.
Series over.

The epoch-ending of the WACA as a test match venue is something that cannot be let go without comment.
The Western Australian Cricket Association Ground has been there literally forever, and remains the last genuine cricket ground in the country [a high wide and handsome hill with a higgeldy-piggeldy collection of odd little old grandstands] with perhaps the exception of Bellerive Oval [whatever happened to the old TCA Ground?].
While it will apparently remain as a first-class ground for the time being, no money has been spent on it in decades - Joisus, even the pitch covers come apart after long periods of disuse - and in time it will be built over with high-rise flats, mark my words.
Never mind the black and white images of Lillee taking wickets at one end and Thommo making them jump at the other, as the chin music hummed off a "pacey WACA wicket".
Thing of the past.
The powers that be say it's too small at a notional capacity of 24,500, and apart from "high ranking teams", Perth will now not have a test match every summer, as the "lower ranking teams" test matches will be moved to Hobart.
You've been dudded without knowing it, Perth.
They will fill their new 60 thousand seater Superdome to the brim every weekend in winter, directly rivalling that other football stadium known as the Adelaide Oval, but test cricket has been consigned to the dust bin of homogenised all-seated stadia with same same only different drop-in pitches world-wide, on instruction from those on high at the ICC.
Sad, for any weary ol' nostalgic traditionalist; bloody ruined it.
Been to the WACA, once, almost exactly 31 years ago.
That's ancient history now, but the ground's barely changed since.
While the match in question is pretty much lost in the mists of time, it was a picture post-card perfect Perth day if memory serves, warm with little fluffy clouds and that unique light that reflects off the Indian Ocean, the Doctor was in, and found myself watching from one of those charming old white-washed thick wicker chaise-lounge arrangements on the balcony of a bar overlooking the ground attached to the old Western Australian Cricketer's Club sucking free ice cold Emu Bitter out of cans and smoking my head off on sponsor's product.
By invitation only...on my own in a joint full of well dressed strangers on the take, all yabbering their heads off, and it got pretty messy, to be sure.
Essentially a large "private box" before there was even such a thing, well, free piss, anyway, and not too many seats, either.
Somehow recall that it was very bright too - the first time the brand spanking new floodlights had been switched on?
Can't remember, who knows, but even so there was no shortage of shady places to lurk in.
And they were still mucking about putting in the new Lillee-Marsh stand; thinking it was meant to be open [?] but it was certainly the last major building project there
Thank Christ there was no need for anything to spill out over onto the hill, which as usual got rather raucous, but then the mob grog groaned; can't remember that much really, but it was that sort of atmos late in the day with no booze limits on full strength gear when the result is forgone against you and fist fights start to break out for alternative entertainment, and the cops move in to the cries of the crowd howling derision and calling for more.
And old-school one-day game - they'd only been playing in pyjama's for eight years - at an old-school ground, even then.
Told him not to, but the Stats Guru has been going through his filing cabinet of index cards and he reckons it was the 4th of January 1987...Australia v West Indies, Benson & Hedges Challenge Cup.
The deity-like Sir Vivian Richards was in charge of the Windies, and batting first, Gordon Greenwich tonked up an even ton, in what was a competitive 8/255 in those days, with Scoob O'Donell the best of the Aussie bowlers working The Doctor to good effect.
So far, so good.
Then the memories started flooding back - the Green & Gold were utterly destroyed without mercy by a fearsome pace attack of J Garner, CA Walsh, and MA Holding - Roger Harper was the spinner and even Larry Gomes and Gus Logie took catches in the field - and the evening session ended all-of-a-sudden soon after sunset, with Straya all out for 91, about 15 overs short.
Only the young "The Iceman" Waugh and Sundries made double figures, while the Keg on Legs, Marsh Snr, Deano Jones, A.B., and Glenn Bishop failed miserably with the willow and were all out at 5/32.
Didn't help when Boony had his stumps seriously rearranged neck and crop by Joel steaming in off the long run to make it 1/4 for a start off.
On recollection, it was a serious disappointment.
And very sincerely doubt now, wracking my brain, that such a thorough thwacking of a thrashing has been graced with my presence before or since.
Well, that's the way it was on my one and only day at the lovely old dump, as far as it goes.
So, bye bye WACA, it was nice knowing you.

Of more immediate interest on the not too distant horizon is the fact that Sydney hasn't hosted a live Ashes rubber in 23 years now.
Little wonder really, the Poms have never been able to adapt to the conditions let alone master them - never will - the vastness of the Wide Brown Land is way beyond them.
At what point do we lose interest?
Never!
Poms collapse in a screaming heap in Melbun!
Start chanting [to the tune of Robbie Burns' 1788 corker Auld Lang Syne] "5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil!"
Bugger the dead rubber, odds on you have to be at the SCG on Day 5, Monday the 8th of January, 2018, [if not earlier] for the Poms' miserable denouement and to kick their arses all the way back home to their Mumsies for a good cry.
Cricket is a hard, cruel game and all is right with the world.

Craves.

On the Pink Stink, Ep.3 - The Man in White is not always right

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...

the Australian cricket team's moral compass

Pom Baiters,

Trust David "Burbs" Warner to kick off the Ashes series hype a couple of weeks back when he said that "more hatred" was required when playing England at cricket, firmly focusing the Australian team's moral compass.
A couple of days later, the PR people at Cricket Australia forced him to retract the comment saying it was in jest and he didn't really mean it.
My arse.
This from the, formerly disgraced, now Vice Captain Warner who only four years ago clocked the now Captain of England, a bloke known as "Rooty" to his mates, for being an idiot in some dodgy, non-politically correct nightclub known as the Walkabout Bar in Birmingham.
Warner later said he did it because Root was being a twatty ol' clot and a dickhead, and he had his excuses, as he'd had a few Jägerbombs and voddies and Red Bulls, and it was the drink talking and he only got Rooty with "a glancing blow" anyway because he was so pissed and regretted he didn't really connect and deck the little shit out cold - Benny Stokes-style.
Off-field violence aside, Warner is just the ticket for getting inside Pommy heads and driving them utterly insane.
More than one England player has been sent home with mental disintegration problems after getting the treatment.
On being anointed to make his test debut, CT Bancroft was asked how he would approach opening the batting with Warner: "I played against him a Shield game once. He sledged me for four days".
Right on, brother - you've been taught by experts.
Needless to say there is nothing unusual about Strayan selectors going right off piste and coming at you from completely out of left field - you can debate forever who should and shouldn't have been picked - my problem with the current 13-man squad is the fact that it is largely made up of dried up old turds.
Give Chad Sayers a run!
He's on the wrong side of 30 and the Token South Australian, to boot.
At an average age of 28.53 years, only two players are under 25, and Bancroft and Cummins are both 24.
Where's the future in that?
Whatever happened to the young tearaways and child prodigies and the much vaunted policy of selecting the brightest and best from the ranks of the Yoof of Today?
Gorn by the wayside as an imagined exigency...it is the Ashes after all...has the Chairman and the Three Wise Men freaking out.
What would Pup do?
He's got form when it comes to threatening to break "fucking" Pommy bones.
Well, win in Brisbane for a start, he reckons.
If the Poms do that, Straya are toast, by his account.
Simple as that.
No one but the home side has won at the Gabbatoir in the last 29 years - as Bruce Mac is fond of saying, "we know that".
But that was a West Indies team that had Desmond Haynes and Gordon Greenidge opening the batting and a fearsome four-pronged pace attack the likes of which hasn't been seen since with Malcolm Marshall, Courtney Walsh, Patrick Patterson and Curtley Ambrose rolling their arms over.
The Engerlanders certainly haven't got any of that going for them, being the mob of dead-set work-a-day county cricket clock-watching wilting shrinking violets that they are.
However, the whirring brain cogs of MJ Clarke have concluded that victory at The 'Gabba means triumph for the Poms in the series, and they get to take that stoopid little urn home.
Don't you worry about that, Pup, it won't happen at Fortress Brisbane, officially known as "The House of Pain".
And there's a new curator up there now in the form of some unknown called David Sandurski, after Kev Mitchell decided to retire from being in the job for 27 years, so that was always going to be a bit of a worry.
Then, lo, Kev decides to make the Ashes his last hurrah on an honourary basis and lets the television camera's film him riding atop the heavy roller for the very last time.
Vale Kev, job's right, job's done.
With any luck, the Durski Kid will be as patriotic as Kev was being most amenable to Strayan captains' requests to prepare a pitch to order, y'know, put a bit of good ol' doctoring into it and it'll be made sure there's a keg or two in it for the ground staff to keep the boys happy, that sort of thing.
And the coin will then be weighted at the toss.
Captain Smiffy has also revealed to the meejah that he is under pressure from the buffoons at CA "to modify my on-field body language".
Fat chance with Poms involved.
Can't see that happening after he graciously endured the most appalling dirty tricks and tactics seen in living memory displayed by that 24-carat card-carrying nasty piece of filthy cheatin' work, Mr Viralrat Kohli Sir, who recently took great delight in robbing Australia blind in India.
He had every right to be emotional, upset and downright angry at the Laws being bent and broken left right and center by a subcontinental chappie who thinks the sun shines out of his arse.
Any Pom that tries that on better watch out, or Smiffy will get snarly and sool Burbs onto them.
And Dave won't hold back, oh, no siree.
People forgive, but they rarely forget, especially in Ashes cricket.
It's not that we, as a nation, dislike the poor poor English folk as a general rule, we just HATE bastard English cricketers, jeez, there's history here chaps, nobody forgets bloody Bodyline back in the '30's do they?
Which itself was just a natural extension of WG Grace touring here at the end of the 19th century as the quintessential pompous Pommy prick, setting a blazing trail for all who followed.
Wandered into the Front Bar of The Local for a quick one over the weekend, and found the Philosopher in his usual corner - nursing this week's favoured a tipple, a whisky sour - while he was studying a story on the back page of one of the Sunday fishwraps which featured Starkers promising to go for the throat and give the Poms a bit of chin music to go on with at The 'Gabba.
Everybody knows that the Poms don't like the fear up 'em, don't like it up 'em, at all.
The Philosopher poked the paper with his bony finger and remarked "few things give me greater pleasure than seeing Poms ground into the dust, slowly, over five days".
Loose the bears on the midgets and let the gaming begin.

"a piece of dog meat"

Aficionado's

Did like the Foghorn, Jim Maxwell's ABC radio commentary [the match was not on any television - even pay] on the last session of the women's test match at North Sydney Oval last night..."not much happening here, as the game settles into a tortoise-like pace".
Never mind that the Pommettes were playing for the draw.
That may be the problem with the Ladies game in the "long form" and the reason why the last women's test match before this one was two years and three months ago.
Despite the heroics of EA Perry and her 15 mins of fame [it was a fabulous performance, any double-ton in any format of the game - male or female - is not to be sneezed at], and the fact they they do OK with the over rate, with 387 overs bowled in an hour short of four days...the run rate for the match was 2.35 runs per over.
That's an average of 117 runs every fifty overs, with an average of 5.5 wickets taken per day.
Now that's entertainment.

Then there is the uselessicity of the Pink Stink, writ large.
Of note was that one of the male commentators likened the Ladies pink ball to "a piece of dog meat" after about 60 overs of use.
And one of the female commentators remarked that while the Ladies ball, by law, is smaller than the Men's ball...the Ladies pink ball's all weigh roughly the same, but their dimensions apparently differ quite markedly, so it's very important to pick one out of the box of new balls that fits right for the female hand on your team.

mmmm....dunno...
What would Pup do?