After Grog Blog

MAYDAY ON MY MIND

After reading Best of the Best, Australia's 50 Greatest Albums in today's Age EG, I have only one comment to make: Help!

Are Usual Suspects all we have?

Best of the best

FROM Johnny O’Keefe to AC/DC, the Divinyls, Midnight Oil, Jet and the Drones, Australian music has come a long way since “the Wild One” first strutted his stuff 50 years ago.

While some claim that recent technology has rendered the album obsolete, we at EG believe the best bands are still judged by great albums.

Australian rock’n’roll turns 50 on July 5, the anniversary of the release of Johnny O’Keefe’s The Wild One, and to celebrate we assembled a panel of experts — ranging from EG critics and music journalists to musicians, broadcasters, record shop owners and band managers — who undertook the painstaking task of narrowing down an entire history of music to a micro list.

More than one comment, actually.

There are albums I've liked: Living In The 70s (2), Radios Appear (3), Stoneage Romeos (5), Born Sandy Devotional (9), Back In Black (10), Highway To Hell (15), Sunnyboys (16), 16 Lovers Lane (17), High Voltage (24), Liberty Belle & the Black Diamond Express (44).

A lot of it sh1ts me: Midnight Oil, You Am I, INXS - I would have picked Shabooh Shoobah, Crowded House, Nick Cave - although I liked Lyre of Orpheus, Died Pretty, Regurgitator, Silverchair, Jet, the overrated Saints, the fvcken Whitlams.

Then there's the stuff that cruised right by me without me taking much notice: Chisel, Richard Clapton, Stephen Cummings, Chris Wilson, Paul Kelly, The Black Sorrows, Flowers, Hunters & Collectors, the Reels, Aussie Crawl, the Mentals - one brilliant song, notwithstanding, the Divinyls. The Easybeats and Masters Apprentices were before my time; not that I ever thought they were that great.

Your best bet is to pan through the selections of the individual reviewers for nuggets like The Band's Alright but the Singer is Gulliver Smith, which was a Billy Pinnell selection, and Joel Silbersher's Tendrils. Pity The Sand Pebbles don't crack a mention. And just what is Registered Nurse - Strippers?

Ironically, while Chris Johnston features The Church's Of Skin & Heart in today's "The Crate" article, he hasn't included it in his top ten. I wouldn't include it, either; but if the whole album was as good as Unguarded Moment, it would just about be my No.1.

GLARSED!

Be careful up there:

Student 1: "I was in the Trendy Bar last Saturday. You know, the bar a few doors up from the Glenferrie? No? Anyway, I was up on the roof, in the open air part where the smokers go, sitting at one of the tables with my girlfriend and a mate when I felt a bit itchy in the arse. I wiggled, but that didn't make any difference, so I reached around for a scratch, and fvck me if there wasn't a piece of glass stuck in my date. Big fvcken bit, about three inches. It had gone right through the new Calvin Klein jeans my cheese had bought me for my birthday, right through my undies, and sliced me another crack. Fvcken blood everywhere. My mum reckons she can fix the jeans, but I chucked the boxers out. Big fvcken piece of glass. Right in me arse. Didn't even notice it had cut me. Fvck."

Student 2: "Yeah, really. Same thing happened to me about a month ago. Six stitches."

There followed an interesting conversation on arse related injuries. I suppose, when you think about it, with all the people going to all the bars in Straya, there must be a lot of people sitting on broken glass.

A NOD'S AS GOOD AS A LINK

Sensational music blog: The Rising Storm. Feast your eyes on this pot o' gold.

(Thanks, RT.)

GO DIRECTLY TO FRAIL

Will Dick Pratt do a Bondy? "I am sick, your Honour, and I don't remember doing what I did... not even once... back then... at the All Nations... on May 21, 2001."

Billionaire Dick Pratt faces jail

BILLIONAIRE Dick Pratt faces up to four years' jail after being charged yesterday with lying about his knowledge of a price-fixing scandal.

The laying of criminal charges could force Mr Pratt to step down as president of Carlton Football Club.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alleges the chief of cardboard manufacturer Visy gave false and misleading evidence before a commission hearing in 2005.

The way I see it, Dick will plead guilty, get his charge reduced by 25%, and be free to president next weekend.

Unfortunately for Dick, Adam Goodes has the Get Out Of Jail Free card:

Carlton Monopoly Now On Sale

The Carlton Football Club 2008 Charity Edition of Monopoly was officially launched on June 12 at the MCG.

The game celebrates Carlton’s remarkable history as well as today’s players. The Carlton version of the world famous board game features 22 current players and four icons of the Club. Rather than wheel and deal with Mayfair and Park Lane, players have the chance to build a footy-opoly empire through buying, renting and mortgaging their favourite Carlton stars. Stars and legends featuring the ‘top end’ of the Board Walk include Chris Judd, Brendan Fevola, Nick Stevens and Marc Murphy.

DONNIE HOWSER

Melbourne great, Doctor Don Cordner, was delivering babies at nine years old.

Demon has heart

MELBOURNE draftee Jack Grimes comes from tough stock. And here's proof. His grandfather Don, 77, was playing golf last Saturday when at the eighth tee he experienced chest pains, which later turned out to be a mild heart attack. But not only did he play the remainder of the 18 holes but won the tournament before being carted off in an ambulance to a hospital cardiac ward. And he was still there yesterday, doing well thankfully. Truth is, it's Don's fault that Jack and all his family barrack for Melbourne. When Don's mother was pregnant with him, her doctor was Don Cordner, one of the handful of Cordners who made such a big mark at Demonland. No doubt the Dees will be hoping Jack is as tough as his grandfather … and as talented as his great-grandmother's doctor!

Don is 77, which means he was born in 1931. Don Cordner is 86, which means he was born in 1922. You do the maths: 1931 - 1922 = 9 years old.

Is Don, is wrong.

Still, it's not a complete balls-up for the Age. Both Don's father Ted and his uncle Harry were doctors. Since Harry was born in 1885 and Don 1905, either could have been on hand to slap Don's arse.

I expect - nay, demand! - Media Watch expose this wicked, flagrant and wanton distortion next Monday.

NO YORK

Horse sh1t from Rod Curtis in The Age. Eli Manning plays for the New York Giants, not the Baltimore Indianapolis Colts:

Money is a curse unless you can buy it out

The New England Patriots have won three Super Bowls in the past seven years and, if it wasn't for the Indianapolis Colts' ridiculous final-minute play in this year's decider, when Colt quarter-back Eli Manning somehow extricated himself from a tackle deep behind his line of scrimmage, and threw a mighty hail-mary downfield, which David Tyree somehow jumped up and caught one-handed against his helmet, Boston would now be the baseball, basketball and football champions of America. Or, if you believe the T-shirts, the world!

Sports journalists ought to stop cracking on about how much sportsmen get paid. If someone wants to pay a bundle for a sportsman's worth, then the only issue is whether or not the sportsman delivers - as long as he behaves himself. (I'll leave it up to you lot to define "behaves".)

Maybe Rod Curtis wants sportsmen to get paid the same as sports journalists. But if that was the case, 90% of sports journalists would be out of work. Instead of a twelve page Age Sports lift-out, there would be a one page Age Sports page. And anyway, if Curtis was a fantastic sportsman and someone wanted to give him $60 million dollars to play, he would play.

EXCITABLE ME

Big news! Saturday I bought a CD:

One of the most heinous crimes in rock 'n' roll was the suppression, intended or otherwise, of Warren Zevon's mind-blowing Stand In The Fire, recorded live at the Roxy in Los Angeles. It tragically disappeared many years ago from the bins of music stores and could be found only by the intrepidly obsessed, and then strictly on the inferior format of the cassette. Now, at long last, this vanquished treasure is available to decent, law-abiding citizens on the compact disc.
Much has been said and written about Warren's remarkable songwriting, but he also happened to be a sensational live performer. I was a fan long before we became friends, and I'd seen him in concert many times. It was always raw and wild and unforgettable (except to Warren, of course, who late told me that there were entire tours he couldn't recall).
In his slightly more sedate years, he favoured solo acoustic shows, which were impressive - but I can tell you that there was nothing quite like Zevon in his anti-acoustic mode, unchained and rampaging with a band. For those of us lucky enough to have experienced that seismic jolt, Stand In The Fire is a joyous and raucous ignition of memory. For those who never got to see Warren take the stage, this is a grand taste of a mad rock wizard in his prime. Hang on to your Thompson guns.

~~ Carl Hiaasen.

I first bought Stand In The Fire in 1981 at the Wickham Sound Lounge in Wickham WA, the mining town in the Pilbara where I lived from 1973 to 1985. As you might imagine, the Sound Lounge wasn't exactly Tower Records or the record shop in High Fidelity. It wasn't even a record shop proper, just a general appliance retailer, video library, gift shop and chemist with a record counter in the corner. I never found out how they came to have Stand In The Fire, given the sort of stuff they stocked: An Englishman in New York (Strange Apparatus), Zenyatta Mondatta, Jon & Vangelis, Jules and The Polar Bears, Judy Tzuke, Sky I, Sky II, Sky III, Styx, Rocky Burnette's Greatest Hit, you get the drift. But there it was, propped in one of those flimsy rotating record racks that were the stamp of your lamer music outlets. Nor was I even a massive Zevon fan. I only grabbed the album because I thought it would be interesting to hear what Werewolves Of London sounded like live. What's more, Werewolves was the only Zevon song I knew. Although it was my favourite song of 1978 and came with a great film clip. (Not the one with a dress-up werewolf stalking the streets, but a studio version with the band rocking out, which is the best sort of clip. Balls to your wanky, filmy, tricked up nonsense! Just get out there and play, ya bastards!)

For some reason I was under the impression live albums were the peak of an artist's career. Don't ask me why. During the seventies all my favourite albums were live albums: The Stones' Get Yer Ya Yas Out and Love You Live, Bob Dylan's Before The Flood, The Who Live At Leeds, Otis Redding Live in Europe, The Doors Absolutely Live, Status Quo Live, Neil Young's Live Rust, Lynyrd Skynyrd's One More For The Road, Jethro Tull's Bursting Out, Full House by the J.Geils Band, Cheap Trick at the Budokan, Deep Purple's Made in Japan, Bob Marley Live, Frampton Comes Alive - well, I was only 14 in 1976, it's not as if I knew any better - and the second side of Mondo Rock's Primal Park (if you haven't heard that last one, check it out).

So it was with some relish that I raced home - what record fan didn't relish racing home with their latest purchase? - and plonked it on the turntable. Werewolves Of London was indeed a fine version, but at least three other tracks immediately revealed themselves to be better: Excitable Boy, which I realised I already knew; Poor Poor Pitiful Me, which I'd thought was a cover of a Linda Ronstadt song; and especially The Sin. Here was a great live rock n roll album!

But you know what sets it apart from all the other live albums above? I've actually listened to it in the last twenty years. In fact, I've listened to it regularly since 1981, which is much more than I can say for all those others. The exception would be the occasional lash at Powderfinger from Live Rust. Other songs that I've recently played, mainly because some passing reference peaked my curiosity, are Soul Kitchen from Absolutely Live, Forty Five Hundred Times from Status Quo Live and Space Truckin' from Made In Japan. You'll notice I haven't mentioned The Kids Are Alright by the Who. That's because it's not really a live album, but a collection of film clips and TV takes. I HAVE listened to and watched it a lot over the journey and count Baba O'Riley and Won't Get Fooled Again, both recorded at Shepperton Studios in 1978, as timeless live cuts, and A Quick One from the Rolling Stones Rock n Roll Circus in 1968 is my all-time favourite live track.

Much of the power on Stand In The Fire comes from the band. In the studio, Zevon had L.A.'s best session musicians at his elbows. But at the Roxy, except for his friend and lead guitarist David Landau, Zevon came armed with an actual group, Boulder, that he picked up whole from the Colorado club circuit. Their specialty: rough-house covers of Zevon tunes.

~~ David Fricke

A couple of points. One) Stand In The Fire is so good it stopped me from ever going to see Zevon play live. As Hiaasen says, he switched to mainly solo acoustic, but I only ever wanted - Dead Or Alive, ho ho, ha ha, it is to laugh - Roxy Zevon. And two) the bonus tracks aren't really necessary. Sure, they are fine, but I'm sure if they passed muster in 1980, they would have been included back then. Nice, but no thanks.

Stand In The Fire will not be everyone's cup of tea. Boynton: "Very seventies." But if you, like me, are a bloke of a certain age, you simply must buy this album. The third time you listen to it, at the part where Warren introduces "David Laannndaaaauuu!!!", shivers will shoot up your spine. They will.

WORST SLIP

First Test

33.1	Lee to Chanderpaul, no run, Dropped! by Katich at first slip. Lee can't believe it and holds his head. Chanders gets a reprieve. How costly that is going to be. It was full, outside off, straightening a touch and Chanderpaul stabs it off the outside edge low to Katich who clangs it.

Third Test

48.3	Johnson to Taylor, no run, and that's Dropped! Great bowling from Johnson, follows the bouncer with one angled across Taylor, who edges a straightforward chance to Katich at first slip. Not the first one he's put down in that spot this series.
50.4	Johnson to Benn, no run, Dropped! Katich again! Benn edges a simple chance to Katich at first slip and he just can't hold onto them. Really simple stuff, the Australians are missing Hayden in that spot.
2.1	Lee to Marshall, no run, Dropped! And guess who? Simon Katich has moved into third slip for Lee, Marshall gets a thick edge to some outswing and it slams into Katich's hands and back out again. Simple chance, and that's his third easy drop in the cordon this match.

THE THINGS

Reminiscent of Nosferatu, when the spooky, crew-less Demeter sailed into a foreign port, a lone stranger scuttles through the snow and away from a mysterious ship that has anchored near Barrow, Alaska. The stranger, it transpires, is there to prepare the way for the town to be invaded by vampires when it sinks into the frozen Arctic isolation of 30 Days of Night.

(The opening scene is the best looking in the film; most of the rest of 30 Days looks sound-stage shabby.)

30 Days, based on the comic book graphic novel of the same name, is not up there with the better vampire movies - Black Sunday, Martin, Daughters of Darkness, Near Dark, John Carpenter's Vampires, Nosferatu (both), Salem's Lot (the original) - but it's not bad. If you are not a vampire fan you probably won't find anything to like, but if you are like me and have a life-long affection for the genre, then you will more than likely enjoy it. There's the odd new idea, too, although there are plenty of vampire/horror clichés to keep the faithful happy: whooshes, shadows, suddenly appearing baddies, watch out behind you!

And these are not your debonair Hammer bloodsuckers. These toothy monsters are more like a pack of (strange dialect speaking, with subtitles) rabid wolves, stalking Barrow in packs, ripping the throats out of the town's inhabitants.

Should you watch it and enjoy it you will probably agree with me that it's better than big budget bloat like Coppola's Dracula and Interview With A Vampire. I've got this theory that big money should steer away from horror. It's not a rigorously researched theory by any means, in fact, it just came to me then, but it's a theory nevertheless. You'd think that pots of money could make for some pretty handy effects, but more often than not the best horror films have low budgets.

Anyway, one day I'll review a film without making comparisons to other films. One day I might even address a film on its merits. But don't hold your breath. 30 Days of Night. Check it out.

NICE ONE, CENTURION

If you like historical fiction you could do worse than check out Under the Eagle, the first book in the Eagle Series, by Simon Scarrow.

Under The Eagle is about Macro, a Centurion, and his optio, Quintus Lucinius Cato, starting with their adventures in the Second Legion on the Rhine and in Gaul and Britain under the reign of Claudius in the AD 40s.

It's not your classic literature, but nor is it the opposite, whatever the opposite is. It's just one of those easy reads that skips along doing what books are supposed to do: entertain you. Well, me.

Can't vouch for the historical accuracy, but considering Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo from Rome are two of the very few military underlings to crack a mention in the chronicles of Rome, it's a fair bet Macro and Cato are fictional constructs. That's obviously not the case with many other characters in UTE - Caesar, Vespasian, Claudius, and assorted members of Big Rome - but it's also a fair bet no one was around to write down their conversations over diner, drinks and debauching.

If you feel like an argument, or a laugh, stroll on over to Sars and read Hijack Robertson's ranti maximi on facts, ficts and research. Ask yourself, too, why writing long comments, even non sequiters, is such a bad thing. I'm chuffed when people feel moved to bang out essay length comments here at the AGB.

Or - and it's strictly up to you - have a debate about hard c versus soft c. Is it Loosinius or Lukinius, you cilly sunt?

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WHAT THE ROMANS HAVE DONE FOR US #

Speaking of Romans: Elle MacPherson and her son Aurelius.

The Corpus and the Herald Sun fashionista - "Only Elle Macpherson could manage to make knee-high, tassled sandals look glamorous" - are taking the piss, right?

THE U-SUAL SUSPECTS

(By Nabakov.)

If you’re going to Beat The Devil, then who better than with a crew like Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, John Huston, Truman Capote and Bernard (“Q”) Lee larking about in the sunny post-war Mediterranean?

(1953. B&W. Script: Truman Capote and John Huston. Direction: John Huston. Cinematography: Oswald Morris. Score: Franco Mannio. Ex-bullfighter’s limousine: Hispano-Suiza. Stills photographer: Robert Capa - yes, the Robert Capa.)

BTD was based on the eponymous novel by larrikin British journalist Claude Cockburn (under the pen name James Helvick) who, amongst other moments in his highly checkered career, had his 1930s current affairs magazine The Week shut down by a law suit after its film critic, one Graham Greene, suggested in his column that Shirley Temple’s screen persona was deliberately exploited by her handlers to appeal to pedophiles.

So as you’d suspect, the book was a pretty dark and very funny satire about a motley bunch of adventurers chasing after the rights to African uranium deposits. But after Truman Capote and John Huston spent many nights together on location consuming mucho whiskey to turn it into a film script, often producing pages barely in time for the next morning’s shoot, BTD metamorphosed on screen into Casablanca on nitrous oxide.

The plot is a farcical collection of double, triple and quadruple crosses where everyone’s lying, even when then they lie about why they are lying. Bogie, whose independent production company Santana financed the flick, apparently gave up on trying to follow the story and decided to just trust that Huston and Capote knew what they were doing.

Which was writing brilliant lines for and getting brilliant performances out of a brilliant cast in locations from a lugubrious Italian port hotel to the rust bucket tramp steamer the SS Nyanga, captained by Captain Haddock’s Levantine cousin, to flyblown Moroccan prisons presided over by fez-wearing, hubble bubble-smoking suavely corrupt bureaucrats.

And BTD is also beautifully lensed by in sunny noir by Oswald Morris whose other DOP credits include ‘Lolita’, ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold’ and ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ which has some interesting resonances with BTD. Huston seemed quite drawn to the theme of Western hustlers becoming unstuck in foreign lands.

Bogie cheerfully sends up his usual hard-bitten soldier of fortune with a heart of gold character, Robert Morley and Peter Lorre take turns outdoing each other as two of the most implausible, hapless and entertaining screen villains ever and Jennifer Jones and Gina Lollobrigida are equally gorgeous and completely crazy femme fatales. Especially Jennifer, who in a seemingly artless way, turns everyone else’s nefarious schemes completely on their heads.

All the secondary characters get right into the spirit of it as well, not least the Nyanga’s droll deadpan purser (Mario Perrone) who apparently has dealt with far worse than this mob and the Galloping Major (Ivor Barnard), five feet of  knife-wielding fizzing rabies in a bowler.

I’ve always felt a easy way of padding out a film review was just to cut ‘n’ paste some juicy screen quotes. However I am above such lazy devices.

GrogFlog’s verdict: “I’m a typical rare spirit. I was an orphan until I was twenty, then a rich and beautiful woman adopted me.” 8 out of 10 lies.

Coming soon: Burt Lancaster and his deadly typewriter, a surprisingly submersible Gene Hackman and GrogFlog’s all-time top 10 movie themes which should inspire the kind of gracious and reasoned comment thread that has made the blogosphere what it is today.

FEATHERED FIENDS

County cricket: not for the feint hearted... pigeons.

The Spin headed for The Oval last week in anticipation of watching Mark
Ramprakash score his 100th hundred, but ended up instead watching a
vignette which ought to silence once and for all those who deny the
county game is a vicious world of dog-eat-dog. Or perhaps
pigeon-eat-pigeon. As Surrey's Matt Nicholson carved his way towards a
fourth first-class hundred, a ferocious cut shot headed towards a flock
of pigeons, minding their own business in the third-man region.
But one of the flying rats got unlucky: as her colleagues took flight in
the nick of time, she was hit by the ball, sending a flurry of feathers
into the air - a moment that was captured in its gory glory by the
photographer Graham Morris. But her ordeal had only just begun.

As the wounded bird lay rooted to the spot, a male colleague wandered
over, appraised the situation, and promptly took advantage of her
immobility in the most heinous manner imaginable. As the press box
erupted to cries of "they're animals!" another pigeon waddled over to
assess her mate's plight. Alas, she was to prove anything but the
cavalry: far from providing a rescue act, she began pecking at the
unfortunate creature's head, and it needed swift action from Rana Naved,
Yorkshire's Pakistan seamer, to wander over from fine leg and shoo away
the miscreants.

By this stage, the pigeon was on her back, feet in the air and looking
like she'd seen better days. Naved picked her up and carefully laid her
to rest beyond the boundary. Back in 1936, a sparrow was killed at
Lord's in a mid-air collision with a ball delivered by Jehangir Khan
during a game between MCC and Cambridge University. It was subsequently
stuffed and mounted on the ball that killed it, and still has pride of
place in the Lord's museum. Without wishing to make hackneyed
comparisons between life north and south of the river, the Spin suspects
the dead pigeon will not exactly get a state funeral along the
Harleyford Road.

Thanks, Andy.

WHOOSH!

Still here. Just popped in from the slopes where I've drawn a line in the snow with my Range Rover.

Mick Malthouse? The extension of today's stupid comment that Collingwood play too many blockbusters is "We want easy games." Wanker.

Adam Goodes? Rort! People have been muttering he got off his THIRD charge because he is aboriginal. I don't buy that. It's because he plays for Sydney and not Melbourne. You see, the Affle want Goodes to overtake Jim Stynes' consecutive games record so that a Melbourne achievement is expunged from the record books, thus further clearing the way for the Affle to shaft the Demons.

HARPER'S BIZARRE

Which Hawk-Eye has Daryl Harper been looking at?

'The on-field umpire is in the best position'

Do you currently use Hawk-Eye graphics as part of your preparation process? And do you think umpires have become bolder in giving lbws thanks to exposure to Hawk-Eye graphics?

Bowden: No. It is just a gadget for commentators to use to explain to the viewers what might or could have happened, not what would happen. It's all subjective, and lbws will always be a matter of opinion. One thing that is definite is, there is no doubt the on-field umpire is in the best position and has the best view to make an lbw decision

Only statistics will show if the percentage of lbws given by umpires has increased overall since Hawk-Eye's introduction. One thing is for sure, Hawk-Eye shows a lot more balls hitting the stumps than I believe. This does not really persuade me to give more lbw decisions. It's never been proven that it is 100% accurate. I call it the "Guessereye". Leg-befores will always be open to debate. There is no final outcome or definite conclusion. It's in the opinion of the umpire - who is in the best position, and not Hawk-Eye, to make the final decision. This will always be the case.

Harper: I probably do give more lbws because of Hawk-Eye than I did ten years ago. My personal feeling is that the ball hitting the leg stump a decade back would very rarely be given out lbw because of the feeling that the ball was sliding down leg. But now we've seen so many times from the replays that the ball hits leg stump very often, and we give it not out much more than [the ones hitting] off stump. I've subconsciously made that adjustment.

I wouldn't say I have become bolder, but more accurate. I normally store the Hawk-Eye situation, and use that bank of information along with little details like the bounce, the pitches, and use that to make the right decision in the field.

BUM RAP

Playing footy for Brigades at Northampton in 1987 I was once sent off for abusing the umpire. I said "awwww" [sic]. OK, so it was only for the rest of the quarter in a pre-season lightning carnival, but the umpire was a real estate agent.

An email arrives from Bruce:

A story from my Grandfather playing in the Millewa league before the war. A pretty harsh tribunal for a man to miss a grand final for use of the word 'arse'.  Makes a punch in the guts 50m off the ball look like assault.

You know what they say: The more things change, the more things change. Barry Hall would have got life at that tribunal.

At a guess I'd say Bruce had just read the wonderful Football Stories From Country Victoria.

Thanks for the email, Bruce, and thanks for the link, Brownie.

GANGH BANGHERS

AGB hero Bashin' Bedi gets stuck into the Quicket:

Bedi averse to Twenty20 cricket

New Delhi (PTI): Indian Premier League may have hit a cord with spectators, but former Indian captain Bishen Singh Bedi on Saturday strongly criticised Twenty20 cricket, saying the game had "reached its lowest possible denominator" in the name of entertainment.

"I must say that cricket has reached its lowest possible denominator. May be it is popular because people have a herd mentality. They tend to follow everything blindly that is new to their eyes and taste without any substance," Bedi said.

"The administrators, the players, the franchisees, the media and the spectators are all responsible for this degeneration of cricket. And I am sorry to use such strong words that they are all collectively "gangraping" cricket, and we think that this is entertainment. In my eyes cricket is the biggest institution for character building," he told Sahara Samay.

Taking stock of the present day scenario in cricket, Bedi came down heavily on sportspersons and not the sport for deviation from its path.

"Cricket is not deviating from its path, rather, the cricketers are deviating from their path. There were times when the game and the player looked merged into one another, such was the dedication for cricket. Now-a-days, it has all vanished and lost into a void. And there are certain reasons behind it."

Thanks via hat-tippin' Boynton.

FINGER ON THE PULSE

From today's Pulse in the Herald Sun:

Richmond needs to kick six more goals to bring up the 25,000th goal in the club's 100 year history.
The Tigers have amassed the goals in 1028 games.
Wouldn't it be fitting if Matthew Richardson kicked the milestone goal?

By my maths, right off the top of me noggin, without the help of a calculator, 24994 goals divided by 1028 games works out to roughly 24.313 goals per game. That seemed a little high to me, if not quite unlikely. But only quite.

Following extensive research:

Richmond have indeed scored 24994 goals, but they have done so in 1937 home-and-away matches and 78 finals matches for a total match count of 2015 matches, which works out to an average of about 12.404 goals per game.

And they say I'm not on top of the big issues.

PLAYING THE PERCENTAGES

The latest Aussie Rules research from Roy Morgan. Yawn. The AGB has done its own research.

Adelaide Crows supporters are:

• 490% more likely to think KG & Cornsey are adults

Brisbane Lions supporters are:

• 276% more likely to think Kevin Murray is a river

Carlton Blues supporters are:

• 221% more likely to have participated in white collar crime

Collingwood Magpies supporters are:

• 332% more likely to eat through a straw

Essedon Bombers supporters are:

• 167% more likely to have inherited a speech impediment

Fremantle Dockers supporters are:

• 304% more likely to celebrate too hard, too early

Geelong Cats supporters are:

• 245% more likely to be retrenched by Ford in the next 4 years

Hawthorn Hawks supporters are:

• 145% more likely to have been kicked out of a nightclub

Melbourne Demons supporters are:

• The best

North Melbourne Kangaroos supporters are:

• 148% more likely to have sold their holiday shack on the Gold Coast

Port Adelaide Power supporters are:

• 396% more likely to have received stolen goods

Richmond Tigers supporters are:

• 162% more likely to have children named after soap stars

St Kilda Saints supporters are:

• 397% more likely to over-rate their chances

Sydney Swans supporters are:

• 498% more likely to have danced and sung along to Kylie Minogue

West Coast Eagles supporters are:

• 286% more likely to think this statistic will be about drugs

Western Bulldogs supporters are:

• I couldn't find any

MAA KI BALL

Moneyball, cricket and the IPL. Remember this?

ACE ON BASE

Moneyball (The Art of Winning an Unfair Game) is a book about baseball by American sport's writer Michael Lewis.

The thrust of the book is that The Oakland Athletics, a team struggling against the big money advantages enjoyed by the likes of the NY Yankees, Boston Red Socks, Atlanta Braves have been able to stay highly competetive. They could not afford to buy, say, Pedro Martinez or Randy Johnson for gazillions of dollars and, instead, had to look extremely closely at the statistics of lesser credentialled players such as Nick Swisher and Scott Hatteberg in an attempt to keep up with the big boys.

How about this?

WINDOW DRESSING

In the same way I'm not against the EPL being big business, I'm not against T20. I don't take much notice of the format, but nor do I take much notice of ice hockey, tennis, horse racing, golf, any motor racing format or large mouth bass fishing. I pretty much contain my interests to AFL, Test cricket, NFL and major league baseball, but all the rest merrily exist without any input from me.

And they are all professional. Just like T20 is now professional.

Someone needs to tell that to the papers; Saturday's headlines were particular gloat-fests. The Herald Sun: Another Poor Return. Aussies win but million dollar batsmen fail again.The Strayan: Money cannot buy runs. Bad Day at the office for cricket's new millionaires.

Perspective, please. The combined total of the T20 Aussie bids was $7.39 million. Tiger Woods can make that in a handful of tournaments. Roger Federer likewise. Same for good AND bad boxers, loads of phoodboll players, and pretty much everyone in the American baseball except for the kid who picks up the bats. You don't see the papers getting stuck into the likes of Woods, Federer, Tom Brady because the make big money.

Mind you, what you do see is the press getting stuck into players who fail to live up to their price tag, which I suppose is what Saturday's papers were doing. It will be interesting to see if the IPL signees live up to their auction value. Imagine if Dhoni Kebab strolls out and makes a string of ducks, drops sitters, or is caught cheating like he might have been yesterday with his cheaty gloves.

That's the "beauty" of professional sport: your reputation is on the line. That's why I love major league baseball. Watching a clutch pitcher or hitter perform when the heat is on goes to the very essence of competitive sport. The same goes for Michael Jordan. He was not a superstar because he could sink buckets with his eyes closed, he was a superstar because he could sink buckets with his eyes closed with half a second left in a big match and everyone in the opposition trying to stop him.

That will be one of the attractions of the T20. Will players deliver? The cricket, from a purist's perspective, will mostly be crap, but big money has cranked up the pressure. Who will crack first?

Now stroll through this fine piece of work from Athers in the Times:

Arrogant IPL owners must admit mistakes

Twenty20 franchises need statisticians to show extent of first-year flops

Are Rajasthan Royals the Oakland A's of cricket? Devotees of excellent sporting literature will need no introduction to Moneyball, a terrific yarn about how the A's, a relatively low-budget baseball team ($41million - about £22million - to spend on players counts as low budget in American sport), consistently outperformed their more illustrious and wealthier rivals by dint of the unorthodox coaching methods of Billy Beane, their general manager.

Initially I thought the post on Moneyball was a dry old piece of work. But the comments are terrific. For the porpoises of this post, make sure you read the ones related to cricket. And read the others because they are good.

Thanks, Gaz.