AGB Cricket

HARSH FAIR

Hats off to the Bhogle (and Nick for the link) for pulling the trigger on chuckers:

Three cheers for the crackdown on chucking

So umpires in India have started calling bowlers for chucking, and it is nice to see a forgotten law being implemented. Some bowlers, especially those who have played first-class cricket for eight or 10 years, might choose to disagree with the current practice. They are entitled to be a bit confused, but really, in our part of the world we have no alternative. In law, in spirit and in fairness, bowling has to be a straight-arm exercise, and that definition has been mutilated over the years.

With fixed cameras at every first-class game, there is no place to hide anymore, and in any case the argument against unfairness suffers when confronted with the number of wickets that have been obtained with illegal actions over the years. In truth it had become an epidemic and had reached a stage where if we saw a finger spinner, rather than look at how good he was, we were overjoyed that he actually bowled with a straight arm.

Coincidentally, I was overjoyed when I first saw Manou, and then Paine, pouch pellets behind the poles instead of the Klutz.

GOOD HAIR DAY

Rug Bollinger is in the Test squad at the expense of Stuey Clark. The Rug bowled well without luck in his only Test against SA last summer, and bowled particularly well in the Indian one-day series (yes, I'm aware of the one-day vs. Test discrepancy), so his inclusion not a surprise. Nor is Clark's omission; his absence from the first three Ashes Tests was an indication he's on the selectors' shit-list. Rug seems to have found the penetration and bite that Sarfraz seems to have lost, Headingley's green conditions excluded. Whether Bollinger can push out one of Hilfenhaus, Johnson or Siddle, overcome the accepted wisdom that you don't pick two lefty quicks, even though it worked in Sydney, and avoid 12th man duty will be settled at a later date. That's assuming Hauritz keeps his spot; personally, I'm back on the Nyce Bryce McGain bandwagon.

Bollinger picked for first Test

NSW fast bowler Doug Bollinger has been named in the Australian team to face the West Indies in the first Test starting in Brisbane next Thursday.

Bollinger's selection has come at the expense of fellow Blues paceman Stuart Clark who played in the final Ashes Test at the Oval in August.

Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke, Doug Bollinger, Brad Haddin, Nathan Hauritz, Ben Hilfenhaus, Phillip Hughes, Michael Hussey, Mitchell Johnson, Simon Katich, Marcus North, Peter Siddle, Shane Watson.

Hussey, despite weeks of brow-furrowing deliberation by pundits and undits alike, keeps his spot courtesy of a ton in his last Test and a pile of runs in the, ahem, one-dayers. The Indomitable Paper Cut of Steel looks set to stay at the top of the order... is what I would have written had I not just spotted Our Don Hughes name on the list.

Lee's nowhere, despite his ability to talk a good game.

WALLOPING INFLATION

Five becomes six:

"Can he get six fours in a row like David Hookes against Tony Grieg?"

~~ Mark Waugh on Steve Smith, FRC, NSW v Tas

Ironic, then, that Smith did get to emulate David Hookes against Tony Grieg.

44.1 Drew to Smith, FOUR, good yorker is somehow dug out and driven straight back down the ground

He's seeing them like beach balls at the moment!

44.2 Drew to Smith, FOUR, slower ball outside off, down on one knee cuts through point, great shot

44.3 Drew to Smith, FOUR, short on off, steps across and places the pull shot over short fine leg

He's played all the shots today young Smith

44.4 Drew to Smith, FOUR, full toss on middle, not perfectly timed but gets it over square leg

44.5 Drew to Smith, FOUR, full toss on middle again, flicked through mid wicket for another boundary, incredible stuff!

Drew's figures taking a pounding here

44.6 Drew to Smith, 1 run, full outside off and drives through cover to keep the strike, the crowd will be happy!

MOST? PEOPLE I KNOW THINK THAT YOU'RE CRAZY

Lose 2-1 to a great side and you can conclude that some things went pretty well. Lose 2-1 to a shit-house England and, even if your assessments are statistically valid across all categories (bar the obvious one: scoreboard, mate), it's a bit rich to conclude that most things went pretty well:

Australian chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch digs in

"The only thing I know about selections is if you don't win the match of the series, you are fair game because anyone can say anything and you can't prove them wrong.

"It's not a very popular thing to say at the moment because we lost the Ashes, and that was devastating, but the reality is that most things went pretty well during the Ashes.

"Selection wise I was really pleased until the fifth Test."

In defining "most" Hilditch will doubtless claim that an audit of the key performance indicators revealed Australia won the "things" 51% to 49%.

BURT DICKLEY

Patrick hasn't heard of Sandy Roberts:

Singing Cockleys and Moises, alive-alive-oh

I think there is another reason why the selectors summoned Burt. It's his name.

Say it. Burt Cockley. What image comes to mind when you say the words Burt Cockley? Well, he sounds like a gardener, for a start, but it is also not the name of a modern Australian cricketer. It is a throwback to another age. In fact, when I first saw a headline saying "Australia summon Burt Cockley", I assumed it was a link to an archive story from the 1930s. Players just aren't called Bert, let alone Burt, any more.

In case you haven't heard of Sandy:

Despite this impressive resume, Roberts is often remembered for his infamous gaff in introducing the 1981 Miss Australia, Leanne Dick as "Leanne Cock" during a Mt. Gambier Cup meeting. (Ironically, Dick's surname after marriage is Cockerill).

NAGBASTON

Cue the sudden, co-ordinated urge of a million Aussie cricket fans to bang their heads on their desks:

"After Nagpur, winning the toss and bowling there, I think I'm batting for the rest of my career."

~~ Ricky Ponting belatedly gets it.

YOUNG SHEP

TAKING IT ONE CLICHÉ AT A TIME

Several years ago (possibly the 1997 Ashes) Ian Healy wrote an article in which he admitted faking a conversation with Shane Warne before the last ball of a day's play - you know the thing: hand over mouth, exaggerated "psst, psst, psst, giggle" - to "make the media think we had a special plan." Patrick Smith, then at the Age, took the bait and got stuck right into Healy for biting the hand that feeds him.

Disinterring Heals' idea, the current squad is again playing tricks on the cricket media. This time Greg Baum takes up the cudgels:

Australians' media 'fun' a tawdry exercise

THAT was a bit of a wrong-'un that the Australian cricket team sent down to the media in India this week. You can read about it in coach Tim Nielsen's blog on the Cricket Australia website. "The boys tried to have a bit of fun with the media day," he writes. "As I'm sure you can imagine with so many interviews you tend to get asked the same question over and over and we had a bit of a competition running to see who could work the most sporting cliches into one answer."

Here's the thing: how can you tell? It's not as if the cricketers don't talk in clichés, anyway. What's one, two or three more?

But why do cricketers speak in clichés in the first place? Why, because if they venture anywhere near the same timezone as a forthright opinion the media jump on them faster than you can say "Stakeholders Sutherland and the positive outcomes".

The rumpuses caused by unguarded opinions are the reason the grovel-terms "taken out of context" and "misquoted" exist.

Here's a solution: journalist asks question; cricketer gives thoughtful, sensible reply. Is that too much to ask?

LA CACHE QUI RIT

Baumy closes:

Without a respectful relationship between cricketers and cricket media, there is only the most censored, superficial and banal communication between Australia's cricketers and the fans they say they care about. But do they? "It's all for the fans": there's hollow cliche No. 1 for the next time they "do media".

Speaking of censorship: no doubt acting on the sage advice of Kiki & Sassy, Nielsen's comment has mysteriously disappeared from his CricAussie blog.

I can confidently say we've had our fair share of media.

[Doughnuts]

We had our last training session today before we head off to Baroda where we play the first one-day game, about a 50-minute flight from Mumbai.

Baum thinks CA is trying too hard to have "a bit of a laugh" and be all "blog-savvy, Gen-Y".

Fail.

Thanks to cache, Nielsen's offending paragraph, lovingly adorned with a salute to the Australia cricket family, can be preserved here for posterior:

TERI MASKI

Monkeys out, fuhrers in.

THE LITTLE MASTERMIND?

TLM's suggestion that cricket use techno-umpiring for all decisions except LBW is a concept with a hole in it the size of the one in Chris Martin's bat:

Tendulkar calls for video decisions

THE longest-serving player in world cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, wants video replays to be used to decide every contentious decision in Test cricket except leg-before appeals.

For the basic line decisions, he proposed using "a laser or something like that", noting that no-balls, like tennis serves, could be called "with a machine".

"We are still using technology for close catches. They should use the Hot Spot for the bat-pad decision so the main umpire has to only make the lbw calls."

"I'm quite happy with the Hot Spot because that establishes the contact. For the caught behind, the Hot Spot will come. Close-in catches again the Hot Spot will come."

"You don't need a machine for the clean bowled, so the lbw decisions are all the umpire has to concentrate on."