AGB Cricket

I OBJECTIVE!

Tonight's T20 at the SCG suffered from the usual lack of objectivity. Tubbs: "Looks at McCullum's speed." as he chased, with no great speed, a ball to mid-wicket, slid, and fumbled. The Dick: "Great athleticism from Haddin," as he jumped, but got nowhere near a snicked bouncer. Slatts: "Look at Hilfy! Don't ya think he's aware of the pressure," as he tried to get something out of his eye. JB: "Never seen anything like it in me life," as Voges pulled in a clever catch on the boundary. Surely he has seen Travis Bichel's catch. But lack of objectivity and T20 go together like shit and blankets. It's been the genaral lack of objectivity all summer long that has gotten right up my hooter.

Since the two Tests against NZ in November CricAussie and its media minions have pounded us with a relentless barrage of hyperbole, most of it seemingly intended to reassure us - those of us who haven't overdosed on KFC and Suisse vitamins, that is -  that everything is going according to plan. Cam Noakes neatly captured the spirit of the season in Friday's Age:

You can confidently say we don't really have a plan

REMEMBER Australia A? They were the days, weren't they? Hey … this is just between you and me, OK? Don't tell anyone and don't tell the Kiwis but did you hear — our confidence is back?

Of course, that was written before Friday night's TwentyTwo22 when Australia suffered the indignity of being bailed out by the weather. Muse on that for a moment: we get to hang onto the esteemed and storied Chadlee courtesy of a rain ruined and reduced Fifty50 against New Zealand. Ohh, the humanity. I wonder: how did Geoff Lawson re-position his doom-and-glooming in the light of Friday's result?

Meanwhile, Richard Hinds (very much in form lately) sheds a sensible light on how the media sees the public:

Front-running fans hightail it when chips down

NEAR the start of this long and now fading cricket season, as the first cracks in the Australian team became evident, a usually astute observer of sport wrote that the public had continued to attend matches in record numbers despite their team's dominance making so many recent series predictable and one-sided.

It's not just the astute observers who have made a cock-up of this season's cricket, the numb-skulls have had a field day with absurd commentary and punditure.

Take Mitchell Johnson. Again. Sorry. His five-for spell at the end of day two in Perth was exhilarating, but it skewed the judgment - such as it is - of a heap of experts. Studs has been mediocre since the First Test against SA, the main highlight being a zinger to win the Sydney Test. Since his holiday during the first two one-dayers against SA, he has been rancid. SA sat on him after Perth and once they worked out how not to get out to his SGW, they looked comfortable. Naturally, this didn't stop the commentators from consistently referring to his "brilliant summer" and words to that effect. Johnson could well become a great bowler, but he will need bowlers to pinch wickets at the other end. If it's left to him, he, and we, will struggle.

David Warner.

Were I to over-rate Twenty20, I would probably have payed more that a cursory attention to tonight's match, but instead, I only watched it during the boring bits of I Am Legend. As it turned out, I saw quite a bit of cricket. During one particular boring bit I was stunned to hear that Adam Gilchrist's Big Moment of the summer was Brad Haddin's 100 against the Kiwis in Adelaide, or as Gilly termed it: "the coming of Brad Haddin". If by "coming" he means fives, aerial gloves, drops, byes and charity wickets, he is spot on. Haddin can bat a bit, but.

The big over-rating of the summer was Graeme Smith. It's nothing to do with his previous reputation, I have no residual animosity eating away at me. Smith had a fine summer, batting, catching, captaining and media-ing with aplomb. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say I quite like him. But only quite. No, Smith's big overratement of the summer was his broken handed innings in Sydney. Come on, people! Barring a English-style collapse in the first session, Smith was always coming out. Why, in these circs, do experts always fall over themselves to laud the moment? So, he had a sore hand. Diddums. What was he going to do? Sit in the rooms? "Borley Chorley! My hand's too sore." Get stuffed. If McKosker could come out with a broken jaw and no helmet, Smith was certainly capable of trotting out for half an hour with a sore hand. Especially when the alternative was returning to SA with his courage in question because he allowed Straya to win a Test match by protecting his own hand. Don't kid yourself that even though SA had won the series someone wouldn't have had a pop at Smith if he pulled a sickie.

And if you reckon that's harsh, count yourself lucky I didn't insert a white-trash pop song between each sentence.

CHADLEE GABBA

Henry Lawson:

Win or more gloom awaits for Aussies, warns Geoff Lawson

"Winning this last game is very important because you have already seen that winning the last two one-day games has changed the complexion of a lot of things," Lawson said.

"Australia will go to South Africa with a lot more confidence if they can win the Chappell-Hadlee trophy.

"But if they lose in Brisbane there will be a lot of doom and gloom again, the world could come down on their shoulders.

"Winning form is good form. There is a lot more riding on this final one-day international than there has been on any one-day game for a while."

PORTUGEEZER

In other news:

MOISES Henriques will become the first Portuguese-born cricketer to represent Australia after being named in the side for Sunday's Twenty20 match against NZ at the SCG.

CHADELAIDE

CHADLEE SCG

So, the summer's not going too well: rolled by the Varks in the Tests; rolled by the Varks in the one-dayers; rolled by the Flightless Ones in the Chadlee (although that will undoubtedly change now that we have been panicked out of our rotations and cut short Saviour Ponting's R&R); Hayden goes out with a whimper; Lee has stressies, can't bowl, anyway; Siddle is showing signs of stressies; Johnson will, too, if his workload isn't eased (although surely it's about time the pundits stopped raving about his brilliant summer - he's been ordinary since the Perth Test, and rubbish since his R&R); Clark has an elbow; Marsh a hammy; Watson is an injury; Sideshow Roy is an idiot; Haddin is a goose; the selectors are gooses; no spinner; Ponting can't captain; Katich and Clarke are brawling; Mike Hussey looks like an FTB; David Hussey, too; one hit Warner; Hilfenhaus going at six an over; Bracken has a girly head-band; dropped catches; run-outs; we look like losers; et cetera; et al; and so forth.

And yet:

CHADLEE MCG

What's Haddin got for us today? Will he take the ball in front of the stumps? Throw his glove at the ball? Let the ball go through his legs to hit the helmet? Will he do something as mundane as, for Haddin, chuck his wicket away or drop a catch? Personally, just for the laughs, I hope he punches Michael Clarke, or a reporter. (Speaking of which: where's Jon Pierik? Has Rupert punched him?) And there's always Setanta.

CHADLEE WACA

Plenty of recent commentary about how Straya have been granted a chance recover lost form in the Chadlees against the hapless Vettoris... which means one thing: we are going down. And if, by chance, we do win the Chadlees, we can then only lay claim to being a WBP FTB.

SECOND TEST: ONLY FOOLS AND COURSES?

Since 1984, when factory manager Kevin Sheedy moved Bill Duckworth and Paul Weston from the maintenance department to the production line during the Great Restructure of 1984, Australians-all have rejoiced in the marvellous modern byword "flexibility", and in all its euphemistic friends and relatives: redeployment, restructure, versatility, multi-skilling, multi-tasking, multi-grain.

Now, flexibility and horses for courses are being bandied around, once again, by the Australian cricket community. The exhumation of "rotation" can only be a press release away.

In the not too dim and distant the three seemed to lose their caché, but now they are back to explain recent controversial selections. Trouble is, good teams don't need them; not in anything other than a Tri-Series practice match, anyway. Andrew Hilditch obviously lacked a better word to spin the selection of Nathan Hauritz. He just needed to get his jargon right: Nathan Hauritz = stop gap.

Although. After each period of rotation, say the Comm Bank series won by England last year, we seem to come back stronger and better. Fingers crossed.

BLEACHED AS, BRO

I love a good gaffe:

New Zealand Cricket apologises for controversial slogan

New Zealand Cricket (NZC) has apologised to the West Indies Players' Association (WIPA) for the controversial marketing slogan to promote the first Test between New Zealand and West Indies in Dunedin next month. Justin Vaughan, NZC's chief executive, assured that the slogan "It's all white here!", adopted by Otago Cricket, the staging association, was intended to promote Test cricket and not anger anybody.

NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT

Spelling faggot wrong, that is:

NZ vs Aust - Gabba - Day Two

The crowds here are pretty good, ruined by a few, actually quite a few, idiots who think a day out at the cricket is just to abuse the guys playing any way how. You get called anything and everything. Embarrassing for these guys really, as a lot of the others around them are cringing. I don't know how many times I've was called a 'fagot' this afternoon!

Mind you, the biggots at the Herald Sun didn't see it that way:

New Zealanders say they were called faggots at the Gabba

"I dont know how many times I was called a faggot," O'Brien wrote on his blog.

ALL POSTS BLOGS GREAT & SMALL

CricNZ have called a vet:

O'Brien faces censorship after blog furore

Future blogs by New Zealand cricketer Iain O'Brien will be vetted after his claims he was called a "faggot" by Brisbane spectators made headlines today.

FIRST TEST: HEY HEY WE'RE THE EASYBEATS

Australia are officially* scrubbers after losing their first series in three years. Toothless bowling, dodgy batting, slack fielding, crap captaincy, haphazard management, end of empire. Can they bounce back from being spanked by India?

* Unofficially.

You'd like to think they would smash the flightless cricketers, especially back in Brisbane in front of a home crowd on a lively pitch, but it never pays to under-estimate the Vettoris. Which Kiwi cricketer will pop up from next-to-nowhere and take a bag or score a ton? Is Lou Vincent here this year?

WE GET THE POINT!

It is a land in which prolix Pommy pundits belabour the point:

This nation deserves a team to again be proud of

AS A new season starts it is time to talk about the country this Australian team represents. It is a land in which a Prime Minister sits in a cafe without bodyguards, a land in which nippers plunge into breakers twice their size, a place in which firefighters subdue angry flames, taxi passengers sit alongside cabbies, in which the nation's leading runscorer could change places with a garbo and doctors from Melbourne regularly go to Galle to assist victims of the tsunami. Meanwhile, a woman from Gawler fills vast containers and sends them to AIDS victims in Africa, schoolchildren dig into their pockets to give hope to desperate Zimbabweans. It is a nation of SBS and shows featuring Muslim comedians.