Australia cricket news

David Warner’s Twenty20 reputation

We’ve some sympathy for the young, millionnaire cricketer, David Warner – and it’s not just because he’s Australian. We feel that sympathy – just a small amount – because he’s been branded a Twenty20 player.

Warner’s done well off the back of Twenty20, but he’s always going to have to strive that little bit harder for respect now, no matter what he achieves. Like a left-handed artist or a left-handed carpenter or a left-handed teacher, his triumphs will only be reluctantly acknowledged by the public.

That Twenty20 brand will always be there. It’ll fade when he bats well, but it’ll shine like a xenon headlight bulb every time he fails. There’s something a bit snobby about it all.

Twenty20 and Test cricket aren’t different species with a common ancestor, they’re the same species. They can interbreed. A successful Twenty20 batsman is likely to have a good eye, which is a quality shared by all the best Test batsmen. A successful Test batsman will be a good decision-maker, which is also a great attribute in Twenty20.

If there were no Twenty20 cricket, David Warner might not be making his Test debut, but that’s hardly his fault. If anything, he seems to be approaching his Test career rather admirably. With three first-class hundreds in 11 games and an average of 60, he’s doing his bit on the pitch and apparently he’s spent long hours in the nets simply to practise batting for a long time.

He was out for three on his Test debut today, playing a short ball like he’d never seen one before. Maybe he hadn’t.

Australia pick the wrong bowlers

With New Zealand 176-5, you may disagree with that. That’s not really our point. Our point is that we haven’t got anything to say about James Pattinson and Mitchell Starc.

We were hoping Ben Cutting would get the nod. His training revolves around distance running, not weight-lifting – an approach we approve of – and he avoids no-balls by humming trance music to himself in his head as he runs in.

We’re a bit disappointed if we’re honest, but not so much that we’re going to get angry. We’re something of a connoisseur of disappointment and this is at the lower end of the spectrum.

Michael Clarke’s support for Mitchell Johnson is getting ridiculous

Michael Clarke concluded early on in his tenure that his man management of Mitchell Johnson would involve unconditional love, no matter what the tufty-haired purveyor of left-arm ineptitude did with the ball.

Johnson hasn’t taken many wickets recently, but Clarke’s been steadfast in his support. Someone should tell him he can give it a rest now.

Johnson is expected to have surgery on his left big toe this week and is likely to be out of action for about five months.

Seemingly engaging ‘mindless support mode’, Clarke said:

“I think it could have a good impact on him. It will give him more time away from the game to clear his head and get himself fit and strong.”

For once, we’ve got some sympathy for Johnson, because the poor sod’s already at a low ebb and is now going to miss basically a whole season. However, the idea that sitting on his arse with his foot in the air for half a year will somehow improve him as a bowler isn’t all that convincing.

Back to what’s important

We’ve got behind Australia to a quite sickening degree in recent days. We’ve intimated that South African defeats can be enjoyable and we’ve sympathised – SYMPATHISED – with Australians when they weren’t able to win a Test series after one little catastrophe.

Well enough of that. Let’s get back to the catastrophe. Not content with writing about it here and basing an entire weekly newsletter on it for The Cricketer, we’ve also written about the 47 all out for Cricinfo.

A two match Test series that was a success on every level

Australian defeats, South African defeats, brilliant fast bowling, feisty batting, 47 all out and everyone feeling profoundly irritated at being massively short-changed by there only being two matches – this was the perfect Test series.

It was better than anything. It was better than turning up at a restaurant and only being allowed to have a starter. “Lamb shanks? Get out. You’ve already had four scallops, you greedy bastard.”

It was better than going to the pub at 7pm and only having time to get one round in before they inexplicably close. “Quarter past seven, mate. I’m not hanging round here to pull you pints all night. What do you think I am?”

It was better than going to a theme park and sitting on a rollercoaster on the initial steep climb only to find there is no more track and so having to get off and walk back down again.

It was better than reading the first 42 pages of a brilliant book only to find that they’ve recycled the rest of the paper to manufacture the junk mail that you threw away that morning.

It was better than being sliced open for much-needed surgery and then being totally neglected and left to bleed to death.

Great times.

When the fifth day of a Test match has the right ingredients

The fifth day of a Test can be dreadful. It can also be the best thing ever. When you get the right ingredients, it’s rich and intoxicating, like a creamy mustard sauce laced with smack.

The second (and final) Test between South Africa and Australia is set up perfectly. South Africa could win or Australia could win. Nor is a draw out of the equation and that’s a good thing. People talk about wanting a result, but a draw is a result and that extra layer of complexity is one more thing that affects the way in which play develops. The changing tones of the action are what make cricket what it is.

Then there are the subplots. The most significant is that of old man Ponting. The crease-faced munchkin is being written off because he’s not been getting into double figures of late, but the man’s always looked gash early on. He managed to get up and running yesterday and if he does so again, it’ll be fascinating to see how he does.

Follow today’s play in person, on TV, on the radio or via the internet. It will be better than whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing by some margin.

One down in a two Test series

It’s a generalisation to say that long-term cricket fans gravitate towards the longest format, but it’s not an outrageous generalisation, like saying that all left-handed people are agents of Lucifer.

We’ve twice this year had perfectly civil interaction with someone who has later revealed themselves to be sickeningly wrong-handed, but we haven’t spoken to a single person in that period who has watched cricket for a decade or more and whose favourite format is Twenty20.

Yet here we have a two-Test series between South Africa and Australia. It’s counterintuitive that the whole sport should be geared more towards the fairweather fan than the diehard, but it is understandable. Our loyalty is taken for granted and the assumption is that we will make do with other formats if that is what we are given.

Still, if we were an Australian, we’d be quite pissed off that our side had lost the chance to win a Test series in the space of one hour of hilarious batting during the first Test.

“Fourth day of a series and the best we can hope for is a draw,” we’d say. “Is this what it means to be Australian these days? Is this our lot from now on? Is this why our forefathers renounced sleeves?”

There is nothing big or clever or grown-up about wallowing in other people’s misery

So says Bert, who continues:

Fortunately, nobody here has ever claimed to be big or clever or grown-up? Anyone like to take a guess at what the following sequence of numbers is?

245, 304, 268, 309, 98, 258, 280, 281, 273, 210, 411, 316, 488, 284, 47

Yes, that’s right – it was an easy one. If the 47 at the end wasn’t enough of a clue, the 98 in the middle really should have given it away. Mmmm, 98 – my favouritest of numbers.

Anyway, here is a graph:

• The upper red line is The Internationally Accepted Standard of Good
• The middle red line is The Internationally Accepted Standard of Basic Competence
• The lower red line is The Internationally Accepted Standard of Barely Avoiding Embarrassment

The mean of these numbers is 271, which as you can see is below the Internationally Accepted Standard of Basic Competence. The median, which allows us to set aside the exceptional numbers like 47 and (mmmm) 98, is 280. This is also below the Internationally Accepted Standard of Basic Competence.

So what we have here is exactly one third of the numbers being acceptable or good, and two-thirds being bad. Actually, if we’re being accurate we should say that only 8/15ths of the numbers are strictly ‘bad’, the other two being better described by the more technical term ‘catastrophically hilarious’.

But enough of this schadenfreude (German – lit: the state of being an Englishman in 2011). In 2008 it was said that the generating engine of these numbers was ‘in transition’. And indeed, the numbers prove that this was true. They were transitioning from being very good, through being ordinary, right the way out the other side towards being crap.

Brad Haddin’s wicket was our favourite

When they manufacture a girl band or a boy band, they often work on a simple principle: put enough reasonably attractive people in one place and it’s hard to assess the visual merits of any one individual.

When it comes to girl bands, we subconsciously take the best features of each of the talentless no-marks, blending them together to form a Frankenstein’s pop star of rare beauty who exists only in our mind. After a year of struggling to keep up with the rapid editing of their music videos in a bid to identify the good-looking one, we will eventually realise that they’re all munters. But it takes a year.

We feel similarly about today’s South Africa v Australia dismissathon. So many wickets. Can any truly stand out?

Well, yes, actually. One wicket does stand out. Brad Haddin’s. On a day when great bowling met mindless batting, this was an absolute beauty.

It’s all about context. 17 wickets have fallen in the day and your team is 18-5. What do you do? Do you amble down the pitch to a short pitched ball and try and flap it into the air on the off side for no real reason? HELL YES, YOU DO!

Imagine you’re standing atop the white cliffs of Dover. A strong wind is blowing, causing people to lose their footing. So far you’ve seen 17 people slide over the edge and if you peer over, you can make out their spattered remains on the rocks below.

Most of us would back away from the edge in that situation. Brad Haddin would take a ruddy great run-up in the belief that he could jump to France.

Australia’s lowest Test total of all time

As we write, Australia are 22-9 in 12.5 overs.

Their lowest total ever is 36 and the lowest Test total of all time is New Zealand’s 26 (both those scores were against England, incidentally).

Bizarrely, Australia are actually 210 ahead, thanks to Michael Clarke’s increasingly spectacular 151 in the first innings and South Africa’s 96 all out.

Australia could quite easily record an utterly humiliating victory in this Test match.