AGB Cricket

BLAGGY GREEN

Authentic replicas:

Cricket Australia says it will investigate eBay baggy green caps

Cricket Australia advised Fairfax Media on Monday that its legal department would investigate the flood of replica Australian Test cricket caps on eBay that were being manufactured in India.

Gideon Haigh: If the Cap Fits.

THE WASTED MONEY

The Worst Pieces of Cricket Memorabilia Ever

Firstly a disclaimer, good readers: I own an alarming amount of cricket books, memorabilia and tat associated with the game and thus it is a bit rich for me to be passing judgement on the people who buy the items that follow.

Hard to believe Rusty actually shelled out good money for Brett Lee's Stump Scam, just as it is equally hard to believe he included a classic Qantas bag in such dubious company.

ARS GRATIA FUTUTIONIS!

My cousin Keith Burt entered last year's Cricket Art Prize. The best twelve entries get published in this year's CAP calendar.

Keith missed out on the calendar, but can't have been too far off the four-times podium since his entry, Deep Fine Leg (Or perhaps Deep Third Man to a right hander?), adorns the cover of this year's Poetry Booklet.

"I love laying on paint. Putting a fielder in whites down at deep fine leg in a sea of green was a great opportunity to explore the shades of Australia's grass. It's sometimes burnt by the summer sun, dug up by fielders (or footy players in the winter), but it fights back, patchy yet determined."

Okay, so that's balls. Just buy something.

 

$500 FRAMED

The HSU administration, the gang that couldn't rort straight, maintain they were fitted up for ripping off their members. Among the items of rort were the usual geegaws: travel, meals, booze, home extensions, hookers - but scamorabilia?!?

HSU to sell sports treasures

WHEN Saddam Hussein fell the populace discovered stashes of artworks, cash and gold-plated guns.

Now, with the discredited administration of the Health Services Union facing possible criminal charges, incoming officials are planning to sell off unusual assets accumulated under the leadership of general secretary Michael Williamson.

Items up for auction include ... an extensive collection of sporting memorabilia. A Donald Bradman bat and signed David Beckham jersey are among these items.

"Scamorabilia" just achieved a whole new level of taint.

COWERHOUSE

They have barely had a chance to prise the bat out of his hot sweaty hands.

HAIL TO THE CHEAP

Fine article by Geoff Hutchison about Nine's scamorabilia and its Commander & Chief or "Commander IN Chief" as Tawny repeatedly called it in Melbourne:

Pride of place above your bar

Do they think we're mugs? Clearly yes. Take this offering, curiously entitled "Commander and Chief" a framed print that commemorates "The 43 captains that have carried the distinction of leading the national cricket team onto the field of battle".

Yours for $299 plus $45.00 postage and handling. Bad "that instead of who" grammar at no extra cost.

It comes, reassuringly with a certificate of authenticity. From whom I wonder? What is the least bit authentic about a collection of scanned photographs you've surely seen in any book Jack Pollard wrote exploring the history of Australian cricket? As much as Barry Jarman and Graham Yallop will be chuffed to get a mention alongside The Don and Punter - what actually matters about this piece of memorabilia?

And the title, Commander and Chief - from where in the history of cricket does that come? Are we celebrating the long list of US presidents who have proudly captained Australia? Or perhaps incredibly, both Barry Jarman and Graham Yallop are among those Aussie skippers who have led the United States into war?

What we are seeing is a mashed up, misappropriation of ideas and history.

I FEEL LIKE A DICKHEAD TONIGHT

"While not everyone will admit it, virtually everyone has performed the 'Chicken Dance."

They have?

As a faithful customer of the "official restaurant of Australian cricket" you could could be a "part of history", or you could just be a dickhead tomorrow night:

KFC will attempt to break world record for biggest ever 'Chicken Dance' at the MCG this friday night

KFC has today asked cricket fans to channel their inner chook as they lead a world record attempt of the biggest ever 'Chicken Dance' at the Australia vs. England Twenty20 cricket match this Friday night at the MCG.

At 7.15pm the crowd will be called on by 400 KFC Colonels to bust out their best moves and perform the world-famous 'Chicken Dance'.

Hate mail here:

The event is a joint effort by KFC's ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, Sydney, PR agency Pulse Communications and experiental agency Ensemble Australia.

(Hats off, Litza.)

YOUTH IS WASTED ON THE OLD

The whole point of growing up is to make you to realise that the songs, shows, movies and TV advertisements you liked when you were twelve years old were mostly rubbish:

Cricket breaks don't ad up

YOU didn't need to spend two full days watching Australia toil away at the Gabba for just one English wicket to realise our cricket ain't what it used to be.

But there's another decline in Australian cricket stocks that, while it's been more gradual, has been no less cataclysmic, and just as potentially damaging to our psyche.

We're talking, of course, about the remarkable lowering of standards when it's come to an important staple of any cricketing summer, the TV commercials that go along with it.

Rohan Connolly has donned the rose coloured beer goggles.

Take the VB ad campaigns. John Mellion? Selling a cow? I got it now? Wow. But I find the repetetive parades of placards - "historical re-enactors" and "guys who peaked in high school" and "men who punch above their weight" - to be the try-hard droppings of smug, self-congratulatory, hipster deadshits. And yet loads of young people love them.

Come On Aussie Come On and its West Indian cousin were fantastic ad campaigns, and most everyone fondly remembers Maxy Walker and Aeroguard. But were I a cynical forty-nine year old in 1977 and not an impressionable twelve year old, I would find their relentless repetition every bit as aggravating as I do the KFC, Weet Bix, Solo and Ford ads as a cynical forty-nine year old in 2010.

There is every chance that in thirty-seven years today's twelve year olds will fondly reminisce about Doug the Rug dancing to Vodaphone, "Be very afraid, Clarkie," Steve Waugh and Johnnie Walker (I never had Tugger for a whiskey man) and Tubby Taylor's air conditioners every bit as much as today's forty-nine year olds (forty-five in Rohan's case) reminisce about the cricket ads of the 1970s.

Hooksey. Hooooookseeeyyy...

PUTTIN' ON THE 'RITZ

The picture appears in Sport Style, an Age glossy. I wouldn't normally give it the time of day, or night, but it contains articles about Michael Clarke (by Malcolm Knox), Shane Watson, Matthew Hayden, Cricket in Compton, Stakeholders Sutherland and TSG writes about Graeme Swann, Andrew Strauss, Kevin Pietersen and James Anderson.

Mad men, what is the point of the yellow line on the right? Does it "balance" the picture? Is it there for a specific porpoise, or by accident?

For the record: suede jacket, $1495; cotton shirt, $229; silk tie, $150; cotton pants, $249; watch, $23600.

ULTIMATE STIMULUS

Sports Online, in generously offering to relieve you of your hard-earned, is getting into the spirit of the stimulus:

Sports Online are proudly Australian owned and operated. As many Australians have recently received (or are about to receive) their economy stimulus payment, we would like to offer a selection of purely AUSTRALIAN sports memorabilia that is 100% Aussie through and through. You can be sure that every dollar spent on these sale items will be kept in our country!

What's more, they are doing it with a surprising piece of scamorabilia. Not merely your 500 ceramic caps or your 457 authentic replica Mobile Prepaid stumps, but with an actual one-off bat:

2007 The Ultimate Hat-Trick World Cup Champions bat
ONLY 1 AVAILABLE
Framed Price: $3,930.00 + $65.00 delivery

Who knew "one-off" was in the scamorabilia lexicon. Pity it's a generic bat and not a player's bat.

The timing of the release is serendipitous, too. I mean, Australia might have sagged in the world rankings, down to a gutter-grovelling No.3 for the first time, but the media cycle has a short memory. Australia have won the last three World Cups. Or as it is known round these parts: The Only Fifty/50 Tournament That Matters.

GLUT REACTION

You were thinking "Gee, at $295 that Ceramic Blaggy Green looks like a prime investment opportunity. Only 500? I better get on board quick sticks."

Later, watching your purchase sit on the shelf, you are surprised to hear that another, almost identical, 359 Matthew Hayden Ceramic Blaggy Greens are to be released onto the market.

(Framed Price: $295.00 + $20.00 delivery)

Framed?

Then your memorabilia broker rings up. "Bad news. Every Aussie cricketer is going to get a Ceramic Blaggy."

Coincidentally, or not, potential buyers of the Hayden Blaggy Green curious about how many Original Blaggy Greens were released will find it is the only item to have been removed from the cricket page of the Sports Online & Wide World of Sports memorabilia site.

BETTER BELATE THAN NEVER

The Old Bastman (a quite excellent blog, by the way) links to Gideon Haigh's belated but not dated tribute to Matthew Hayden:

Haigh and mighty

Gideon Haigh's farewell to Matthew Hayden in today's Guardian was a couple of weeks late, but to mangle a cliche, if it's good enough who cares how old it is?

Also mentioned is a sledge Hayden is reported to have given Zaheer Khan during the 2003 World Cup final:

"Smell that, Z?" he smirked. "That's your house in India burning down."

No doubt about it: gold. During the Strayan tour of India the commentators (can't remember which ones) were talking about the sledge in a way that suggested it was common knowledge. But upon googling it, there were only three mentions. Why does it not have greater prominence? Or it is another "You just dropped the World Cup, Hersh" moment?

And since when did Mike Atherton lose the plot?

PULLING THE PINK

BLAGGY GREEN

3 FOR 10,000

TOUR OF BOOTY

STUMP SCAM

Phone now!

AND I ASK YOU IS IT ANY GOOD?

Complete with "authentic facsimile signature."

SCAMORABILIA

A long overdue article on the sh1t flogged by the Nine commentators:

The frame game

CHANNEL Nine has been flogging the stuff for years. In the Sydney Test, it was Andrew Symonds’ turn. A "beautifully presented, personally signed" photo of Symonds, on bent knee after a belted drive, and underneath an actual swatch of willow from a bat used by Symonds in a 2007 Test match, complete with his year’s statistics, all finished in "a quality timber frame".

Titled A Smashing Year, this limited-edition "amazing collectable" of 250 pieces is officially licensed by Cricket Australia, authenticated and certified by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and two weeks ago, you could have it for just $728. Yesterday, its price was down to $693.

Only problem is, according to sports memorabilia expert Rick Milne, they’re worth next to nothing. Because by next year no one wants to buy them.

"At the Perth Test two weeks ago, Richie Benaud stooped so low as to be flogging some Adam Gilchrist tribute," Milne said last week. "I don’t think it’s a good look for somebody like Richie Benaud to be flogging that stuff, and there he was, saying, ‘Great memories of the brilliance of Adam Gilchrist, just call this number’. But the things on the secondary market are almost worthless."