Australia cricket news

Australia’s World Cup winning streak bookended by losses to Pakistan

Australia lost in the World Cup yesterday. Turns out we were there last time that happened, at Headingley in 1999.

That match featured one of the all-time great run-outs with Inzy taking a quick single in the time it took Moin Khan to run two. Nothing unusual in that, but the fact that Moin didn’t notice until the throw was almost in the keeper’s hands was what made it so good. He turned round and saw Inzy casually leaning on his bat at the same end. Why Inzy hadn’t pointed out that there was a problem is a question that only he can answer.

That match pretty much exemplified the Pakistan template for one-day cricket. Sensible batting early on and outright chaos towards the end of the innings and then smart spin bowling and devilish reverse swing to prevent the opposition from batting how you did.

The current Pakistan side is missing the ‘sensible batting’ part of that recipe, but we’ve still been pretty impressed by them during this World Cup. Well, we’ve been impressed by Afridi and Gul anyway. Not sure you can win a World Cup using two players and cobbling something together from the other nine, but it’ll be interesting to find out and they do seem to have a bit of something about them.

As for Australia, it’s no longer wise to judge a side based on its ability to beat them, which says it all. It would be like being impressed by a computer game because it had speech.

Why did Ricky Ponting smash a TV?

There are some great stories going around about Ricky Ponting smashing a telly after being run-out against Zimbabawe.

We like the ones that depict feeble tantrums rather than those where he has THE RAGE. Our two favourites so far are:

1. That he threw his gloves at the TV and now there is no picture on three-quarters of the screen (does he keep magnets in his gloves?)
2. He threw his box in his bag. It bounced and bust the telly.

Both good stories for their unlikeliness. The real reason is more mundane. As a child, Ricky Ponting had a very bad Halloween experience with someone dressed as Evil Edna.

Without wishing to go into details about that particular incident, immediately before he powered his bat through the screen this week, Ponting was heard to shout: “No means no, Evil Edna. No means no!”

If only there were an eighth one-day international between Australia and England

What is the greatest mark of quality for any given one-day international? We’ve always thought that if a game features four wicketkeepers, that’s a pretty good sign. During the seventh one-day international between Australia and England, that dream was finally realised.

In many ways, this match represented a high water mark for one-day cricket. Due to resting, ripped tendons, rotation, retirement and rigor mortis, neither team was anywhere close to featuring the best 11 cricketers from that nation. Rigor mortis might be pushing it, although it has to be said that Arthur Dolphin wouldn’t have wasted a whole six balls making a duck like Steven Davies did.

The recruitment policy for both teams was akin to that of Jon Favreau’s character in My Name is Earl when he’s looking for fast food staff:

“Got all your fingers? Do they bend? I’ve been fooled before.”

The match also had the timeless quality of being a dead, already-decomposing match in a series long since won by Australia that was played out in front of a largely indifferent crowd a week or so before a World Cup in which most of the players on show won’t be featuring.

Unmissable.

Ashes series were already too frequent

We’d like to add a slightly more sober footnote to our post from last Friday.

We described back-to-back Ashes series as being ‘quite literally the worst idea of all time’. We stand by that and would like say that it’s actually the worst idea by an even greater margin that we had previously thought. Here’s why.

Every other year?

Ashes series have long been played every other year, give or take a few months as a result of the different seasons in England and Australia. However, up until fairly recently, there was only an event once every four years.

Up until satellite TV and the internet, only home Ashes series were a phenomenally big deal. Yes, you could get highlights at midnight on BBC1 and you could read the newspaper reports a day late, but an away series wasn’t all-pervasive like a home series was.

An away Ashes series didn’t unfold before you. It was something faintly unreal and distant. You really had to make an effort to keep up with it.

This meant that a home Ashes series was even more significant. The home series was the one you watched. This was the one people most cared about and it only happened once every four years.

Home and away

These days away series are almost as big a deal. You can get up early or stay up late and watch live coverage. You can read a million news reports via the internet. You can follow it on Twitter or on an obscure English cricket blog which unexpectedly goes all serious during the first Test.

An away Ashes series is now that much more vivid, it might as well be a home series. In effect, the big event is every other year, not once every four years. It’s slightly less special.

Now twice the same year? That’s really not special.

10 Ashes Tests in a row

Sweet fucking Christ, does everyone in the world of cricket suffer from all three major forms of retardation? This is quite literally the worst idea of all time.

Back-to-back Ashes series. Ten England v Australia Tests in a row. Does no-one who has control over anything have even the most basic understanding of sport?

We should have seen it coming

The fresh, punchy Twenty20 World Cup that was far, far shorter than the 50-over World Cup was really popular. The overlong 50-over World Cup was massively disappointing.

They decided to shorten the 50-over World Cup and for a very short while we were all full of hope. Lesson learned?

No. They then announced that the Twenty20 World Cup was going to be longer, because that was the popular one.

But back-to-back Ashes? That’s something else

We get that the next Ashes in Australia can’t be played the same year as the World Cup that’s also taking place there. But quite honestly, we’d rather miss a series than have two back-to-back.

Yeah yeah yeah, commercial concerns and all that. We get it. But we also don’t give a shit about that.

Let us spell it out clearly and simply: the Ashes is a big deal because it is an event. That’s the whole fucking point.

It’s not about England v Australia. That’s why no-one gives a toss about these one-day matches. The Ashes is special because it doesn’t happen every day. Looking forward to it is half the point.

You can’t have the best thing all of the time because it rapidly becomes devalued. Too much of anything and it becomes mundane.

Any idiot knows that your 10th slice of cake isn’t as good as your first. And don’t you dare disagree – we’re not in the mood. Eating cake all the time would be fun for about half a day. Then it would be boring. Then it would be miserable.

What possible excuse can you give for having the same two teams play 10 Tests in a row against each other?

Let’s ask ECB marketing boss, Steve Elworthy. Why, Steve? Why?

Why the fuck are you ruining one of the last decent events in cricket?

“It’s important to maintain momentum.”

Jesus. This is what we’re up against.

We are completely fucked. Cricket will be dead within a decade.

Do you want to buy Nathan Hauritz a pint?

We do. The poor bastard. It’s bad enough going through life feeling like everything’s out to get you without repeatedly being confronted with evidence that it is. Hauritz must have offended the Moirae at some point. Maybe, with that face, they’ve mistaken him for a child and feel that he’s getting ahead of himself.

As an Australian cricketer, Hauritz will be most bothered about the Ashes and the World Cup. He missed the Ashes for no sensible reason, as proven by the fact that the selectors felt they had to return to him for the World Cup. Now he’s dislocated his shoulder.

It’s the fact that he’s in such proximity to these events that must make it so painful for him. Imagine being seven years old and being desperate for the Millennium Falcon. No-one has ever wanted anything quite so much as you want the Millennium Falcon. You’re only seven, but you’ve actually taken the trouble to remember how many Ls and Ns are in its name.

Your birthday comes and goes. No Millennium Falcon. Christmas comes and goes. No Millennium Falcon. Your next birthday comes and goes and you still don’t get a Millennium Falcon. It feels like it will never happen, but then it does.

The next Christmas, you are given the Millennium Falcon and it is everything you’d dreamed it would be. In fact, it is better. Your favourite Star Wars figure, Ree-Yees, can sit in the cockpit and it makes space weapon noises when you press a button. You cry a bit with gratitude and sleep with it right next to the bed.

Boxing Day morning, you get up and put your foot right through the middle of the damn thing. The dream is over. Nothing will console you – not even an offer of 568ml of a fermented alcoholic beverage from someone who writes a website on the far side of the world.

When Shane Watson hit 161 not out in a one-day match against England

We’ll be honest. We didn’t see a single ball of this match. We were drinking Belgian beers and playing Goldeneye when it began and we were getting over that experience when it ended. On balance, we made the right choice.

Seven one-day internationals between Australia and England a couple of months before a World Cup – it’s a bit of a netherworld, isn’t it? World Cups are pretty much all that counts when it comes to one-day cricket, so this is like a series of practice matches that are for some reason being played out in front of a paying public.

Yes, both teams want to win every one of them, but only in the same way that they’d want be the best at tiddlywinks or throwing a screwed-up piece of paper into a bin from a few metres away.

Matthew Hayden Ashes reaction

Even now, people often ask us to write about Matthew Hayden. We never do.

Partly it’s that Hayden has retired and is therefore no longer ‘a target’. Mostly it’s just that we don’t like doing what people ask us to do.

With that in mind, we’d like to emphasise that our recent Cricinfo Ashes piece featuring Hayden was NOT written to please anyone.

That said, it’s gone down amazingly well in the comments section, with one person saying that Alan Tyers is merely 10 times better than us. Another, who really seems to like it, describes us as being ‘almost as good as Andrew Hughes’.

Shane Watson v England

Australia might have had a better chance in the first Twenty20 international if 10 of them hadn’t been shit.

The 11th player, Shane Watson, has suddenly found a world where hitting fifties and bowling straight medium-pace is quite handy. If he’d have found a competent team mate, Australia would have won.

They might also have won if they’d bothered catching anything in the first couple of overs of England’s innings. Our mate says they’ve been spending too much time with their hands in the boxes of chicken provided by Australian cricket’s official ‘restaurant’, KFC.

Anyway, England win again. It was exciting, but five minutes later we’re more interested in how our own chicken’s getting on in the crock pot. Only six hours to go…

Another reason why Australia lost the Ashes

Beer sales are down. Moisturiser sales are through the roof.

The metrosexualisation of Australian society has damaged the cricket team immeasurably.

No-one eats steak any more; they all eat scallops in an Indonesian-style jus. When Simon Katich isn’t in Sydney, male body hair in the city is down by a quarter.

In a recent survey, Australia was voted the ponciest country in the entire wo-

[Hubris overload. Hubris overload. Abort post. Abort post.]