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By Will 3 months ago, 126 Comments »
Children, children. Is anyone else finding the constant spat between Australia and India nothing short of pathetic? I read that India have complained for Matthew Hayden calling Harbhajan Singh “mad boy”, and Hayden’s followed it up with the less than timely statement that the same bloke is an “obnoxious weed“. Isn’t Hayden meant to be one of Australia’s church-going, cross-bearing, holier than thou ministers? And who gives a flying toss if Singh was called a “mad boy”? It isn’t racist, other than to the mentally fragile, and in no way could be considered offensive. At most, it is merely dismissive. Perhaps that’s why it upset them so much: they want a real fight.
When Australia tour England next year, they will share and enjoy every vulgar insult under the sun. Captains’ virility will be called into question by a short-leg (apologies for the pun there). The opening batsmen’s mothers might be mentioned, and you can bet that every Englishmen will, in the eyes of the Australians, not deserve to be out there. Everyone will laugh about it and we’ll all go home chuckling.
Why, then, do these two countries have such a problem with eachother?
Pathetic. The sooner this tour’s over, the better.
126 Comments »Twenty20 sledging match
By Will 3 months ago, 1 Comment »
“Each team has only 20 seconds to insult the opposition”. Witty animation from Nicholson at The Australian.
Ishant Sharma to Ricky Ponting (video)
By Will 4 months ago, 5 Comments »
I managed to catch some of the highlights today of India’s rather epic win over Australia, and what an effort from Ishant Sharma. His long spell to Ricky Ponting, which lasted about an hour, was skilful fast bowling and must have been mesmeric to watch live. It reminded me of Andrew Flintoff’s over to Ponting at Edgbaston in 2005, but this was a sustained examination of the batsman’s technique - not just six crackerjack deliveries. Some brief highlights of it, and the rest of the fourth day’s play from Perth, are below:
If you can’t see them, click here or here.
5 Comments »Australia v India, 3rd Test, Perth, 4th day
By Will 4 months ago, 15 Comments »
So the fourth day of the third Test and India are superbly placed to cause an upset. Australia need another 348 runs to win; India, another eight wickets. If Australia chase the runs down, it’ll be the second-highest run chase in the history of the game…while also handing them their 17th win in a row. It’s all rather massive.
I’m going to attempt to get up for the final session of the day, if the Test is still alive. In the meantime, check the scorecard and leave your comments below.
15 Comments »The fading of the Australian aura
By Will 4 months ago, 12 Comments »
If Australia are to win their 17th game on the trot, treading into territory no team has ever tiptoed, they will have to score 413 runs to beat India. It will be the second-highest run chase in the history of the game. Consequently, every Indian and anti-Australia fan is salivating at the prospect of Ricky Ponting’s remarkable winning run being cut short. Is this the end of a dynasty?
Robert Craddock, who my colleague (hello Gnasher) refers to as Crash Craddock, thinks there is enough evidence to suggest the Australian aura is diminishing:
Since the start of the Sydney Test, India has stood toe-to-toe and eyeball-to-eyeball with Australia, highlighting some deficiencies and cutting down some lofty reputations.
Australia is still outstanding, but it is not what it was and nor could it expect to be after the retirement of a handful of long-serving champions.
The champs are not chumps but India has proved one thing — they are gettable.
The rest of the world will feed off the brazen Indian uprising in a series in which the great Ricky Ponting has averaged just 16, Michael Clarke just 23 and, shock of all shocks, a four-pronged Australian pace battery in this Test has been completely outbowled by three unsung Indian rivals.
The thought that Australia’s world dominance is coming to an end is always an enticing prospect, but champion teams tend to bounce back off the ropes quicker than most. After the 2005 Ashes, Ponting set out to really put his mark on the team and has done so brilliantly, if not so appealingly for the rest of the world. Or, indeed, for cricket itself. “Win at all costs” is a mantra most teams would like to obey, but only Australia have had the tools and balls to execute it in the past 20 years. In doing so, it hasn’t endeared them to the rest of the world; their cricket is pure, their method is not. As Mike Atherton said last week, “being nice will always be associated with losing in Ponting’s mind”.
I’m not convinced this is the end of Australia’s dynasty or aura - call it what you will. India have upset them in many ways, and although the rumpus of the past few weeks scarred cricket irrevocably, it does at least show Australia’s softer underbelly. Not that I’m advocating racism or severe sledging as the solution to beating them…
They hate teams fighting tooth and nail, eyeball to eyeball, and yet it is what they apparently crave from touring teams. England did it in 2005, winding up Ponting and co so much that they lost all composure and focus. The same has happened with India, albeit in far more contensious circumstances. It’s almost as though they’ve forgotten what it is like to be challenged, on or off the pitch, much in the same way England have forgotten how to win.
The thought of India winning is less than appealing on a personal level - I hope and pray they are gracious, for their (and the media’s) sake - but the prospect of Australia’s winning run coming to an end is far sweeter.
12 Comments »Listening to Australia v India
By Will 4 months ago, 14 Comments »
For those without TV or radio, here’s ABC’s stream. They claim it doesn’t work for those outside Australia, but I’m hearing it loud and clear:
http://abc.net.au/streaming/cricket/cricket.ram
14 Comments »Where’s the charm?
By Will 4 months ago, 3 Comments »
A fine and balanced piece by John Benaud in today’s Independent on Sunday. So good, in fact, that I’m pasting it below.
3 Comments »Cricket is always having crises. Books are written and entitled, inevitably, ‘Cricket At The Crossroads’. You’ll recall Bodyline, the World Series Cricket breakaway… and in between the occasional tuppenny bunger, like pathetic over-rates, chucking and so on. Generally, there’s a good guy and a bad guy, and in the above real-deal controversies Douglas Jardine and Kerry Packer were nasties.
The India captain Anil Kumble’s self-indulgent hijacking of “good guy” Australia captain Bill Woodfull’s line “only one team is playing cricket”, uttered during the 1932-33 Bodyline series, was immediately spotted by us cynics with “ocker” accents as code for: “My team have just lost a Test nobody thought they could and I’d like you all to bag nasty Australia and their captain instead of me, in case back home they think we’re the bad guys and torch our houses.”
Ponting is tactically dull, abrasive, prone to snap and a sometimes ungracious winner, but of more urgent concern than any character study of him is the bunch of no-hopers who wander/administer aimlessly under the abbreviatedanonymity of “The ICC”.
One can only guess how embarrassing it must be to have anyone know you are officially part of the International Cricket Council and your claim to fame is the absolute shambles that passes for world cricket in 2008. Put the chief executive, Malcolm Speed, and his team in the dock and even Rumpole’s most junior solicitor could win, his case rested on the evidence of the World Cup last year.
Laws have been changed to accommodate bowlers who throw; the Darrell Hair case remains impossible to fathom, at least for those of us who played and understood the spirit of the game before the ICC lawyers measured out their runs; the crooks of Zimbabwe are rewarded with ongoing recognition; and now a talented umpire who has a bad game can be sent home.
There was a time when the greatest insult to an Australian cricketer was to mention the phrase “no sheep in the top paddock”. After the SCG Test the words “monkey” and “bastard” are apparently offensive. Speed and Co have a new challenge: compile a dictionary of words that are offensive to the modern cricketer, or his culture.
Before they make bigger asses of themselves they should recall the Collis King incident, Mount Smart Stadium, New Zealand, 1978. King, a most talented West Indian all-rounder then playing in World Series Cricket, took a terrible blow to the right groin and collapsed. The physio applied the magic “freeze” spray, but to no avail, and the stretcher arrived. This roused King, who looked down at his “magic-sprayed” groin, sat up abruptly and announced: “Jesus, I’m turning white; quick, spray me all over!”
Past players think modern cricket has no sense of humour, subtlety, finesse and characters, and little goodwill; that it lacks a certain class, charm even. Here’s proof: in 1961, Australia’s Richie Benaud and West Indies’ Frank Worrell agreed pre-series to “have some fun”.
In 2008, when Ponting and Kumble met before the start of the series, it was to discuss how best to defuse an evolving problem: fielders claiming catches that bounce. Cheating.
The ICC, with a little pressure from the odd cricket board, will surely find a way to legalise that in no time.
Harbhajan gets the monkey off his back
By Will 4 months ago, 7 Comments »
Here’s Harbhajan Singh signing a fan’s t-shirt, and enjoying a rare lull from the media melee during India’s tour match against an Invitational XI in Canberra. But what’s that word on the front of the t-shirt?
It begins with an M and ends in a Y!
7 Comments »Does India run the game?
By Will 4 months ago, 108 Comments »
I find the sacking of Steve Bucknor a real worry. He was at fault numerous times in the Sydney Test, and from this bystander’s perspective didn’t appear to handle the pressure at all competantly. But what right do India have to threaten the abandonment of a tour unless an official is replaced?
Where does this end? What if his replacement in the next Test - Billy Bowden - has a similar shocker, and makes six or seven errors which, India feel, cost them the next Test? Will he too be stood down at the bequest of an agitated India?
India alone contribute 70% of the game’s finances, and in that respect they do run the game. Heck - three New Zealanders have been banned from appearing in a film by their employers, the BCCI, because of their involvement in the Indian Cricket League!
This sets a horrible precedent. Will umpires who are sent to officiate in India Tests now decline or go on strike? Why would they want to work on a Test in which they don’t have the full backing of their employer?
So, does India run cricket now or not? Oh, and incidentally - India say the tour will go ahead, but only if the ICC overturn the banning of Harbhajan Singh. This is an utter outrage. How can they be allowed to behave in this way?
Does India run the game?
- Yes (63%, 233 Votes)
- No (37%, 135 Votes)
Total Voters: 368
Loading …On effigies, cheating and monkeys
By Jonathan Liew 4 months ago, 56 Comments »
This has all the makings of an Asia-Rest of the World showdown that has been threatening a denouement for several years now. I really hope not.
But first things first: fire and the burning of effigies don’t exactly have the same significance they might have in Britain or Australia. Fire is an intrinsic part of Indian culture - at a Hindu wedding, for example, a fire sacrifice is made, and the bride and groom have to walk around it seven times. And nobody really takes the death threats seriously. And the donkey thing - well, that was just funny. Some of Benson’s Kent team mates will have had a good chuckle at that.
As for cheating - well, there’s no evidence anybody deliberately cheated. Walking is nice, but not compulsory, and while some of the appealing and catch-claiming was pure, cynical gamesmanship, it wasn’t illegal. It’s therefore a disciplinary issue alone, to be discussed at length in an air-conditioned room with plenty of cold drinks available.
And the ‘racist slur’ - it doesn’t really matter if the word ‘monkey’ is racist or not. We can’t be sure it was said. There was certainly enough evidence to charge Harbhajan (and possibly Symonds too) with verbal abuse, but Mike Proctor and the ICC are really going to wish they hadn’t opened up the whole ‘racist’ can of worms. How - I mean, honestly, how - did they think this was going to end?
But however wronged India may feel, they’re forgetting rule number one of cricket - get on the field and play. You can get angry afterwards. Let’s hope that the TV companies have a quiet word with the BCCI. Perhaps money can achieve what diplomacy clearly can’t.
56 Comments »Video of Harbhajan and Symonds sledging
By Will 4 months ago, 41 Comments »
Well why not? Here are the winning pair in their now infamous day three tussle. The best line is from Ian Chappell right at the end, when he says “I’m not sure Matthew Hayden would be my choice as UN peace-keeper”. Hayden was an intermediary, stepping in to break things up.
Click here if you can’t see the video above.
41 Comments »Harbhajan banned; India apoplectic
By Will 4 months ago, 57 Comments »
So Harbhajan Singh has been banned for three Tests after calling Andrew Symonds a monkey. This is the correct decision, but the fallout could be quite monstrously messy.
There are already reports (from the never-really-to-be-trusted Press Trust of India) that India are considering abandoning their tour of Australia. Judging by the splenetic feedback we received today at Cricinfo (much of it was unprintable and vile), the issue many people have isn’t with Harbhajan but the umpires. I watched a TV news channel in India hold an impromptu discussion surrounding it. “Umpired out in Sydney” screamed the headline. “India fall victim of umpires” read another. One member of the audience said that if Bucknor were to visit India, he wouldn’t return alive. It was greeted with warm applause.
Yes, India, I’m afraid you were victim of some absolutely horrific umpiring decisions and I’m sure Mark Benson and Steve Bucknor will be penalised accordingly. But do not expect players to walk: this is not part of cricketers’ clauses in their contract. It is up to the umpires to adjudge whether a player is out or not and, if they say it’s not out - then live with it. There is a vast amount of luck involved in sport; what comes around goes around.
Frankly, I find the BCCI’s decision to demand an investigation into the umpiring pathetic. Every other country has series like these, where decisions go against them, but everything related to Indian cricket seems to be magnified to an extraordinary level; that they are victimised and the whole cricket world is against them, when it is not. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Indian government get involved in the next few days.
Equally, the attitude of Ricky Ponting and some of the Australians was extraordinary in the extreme. Appealing to Benson for Dravid’s wicket, which was turned down, Ponting sunk to his knees and was muttering away as though nothing had gone Australia’s way in the entire Test. Come off it, Ricky. In situations like these, when you’ve clearly had the immense rub of the green, some diplomacy and dignity would count for rather a lot.
What a shambles. Happy new year everyone.
57 Comments »Symonds was called a ‘monkey’ by Harbhajan
By Will 4 months ago, 98 Comments »
This is very messy indeed. Apparently - and this is to be taken with a bucketful of salt - Harbhajan Singh called Andrew Symonds a monkey during their altercation yesterday. This is according to Chetan Chauhan, the India team manager, who also says the term “monkey” isn’t derogatory in India. That may be the case, but neither is it a glowing term of endearment; given the history between the pair, this excuse is pretty pathetic and smacks of a management desperately bailing themselves out. The whole affair needs nipping in the bud immediately, beginning with banning Harbhajan for the default period of such an offence (I think it’s either two Tests or four ODIs).
The problem some people will have, I imagine, is one of double standards; that Australia are allowed to sledge and no one else is. Sledging isn’t (or shouldn’t be) racist. Harbhajan’s alleged term isn’t a sledge, it’s a racist slur.
It’s pretty depressing that it should overshadow what has been a fascinating Test by all accounts. Worse still, what impact will this case have on the future of international cricket? Last year, I went to a number of Associate matches in Kenya and Ireland. And before each game, a variant of the following rule (clause 3.3 of the ICC Code of Conduct) was read out (at most of Kenya’s venues, but only some in Ireland because the PA often forgot):
…language or gestures that offends, insults, humiliates, intimidates, threatens, disparages or vilifies another person on the basis of that person’s race, religion, colour, descent or national or ethic origin…
How crap and depressing it would be if this became standard practice at all international games. But, in the world we live in these days, this could easily become the norm.
Your thoughts on the issue are welcome.
98 Comments »Video highlights of VVS Laxman’s hundred against Australia
By Will 4 months ago, 3 Comments »
This is only a short glimpse - one over, in fact - but he takes 18 off Mitchell Johnson and it’s well worth watching. Do post a link to the full highlights if you see them lurking on tinterweb.
Match scorecard here.
3 Comments »Australia’s lone pessimist speaks out
By Scott 4 months ago, 4 Comments »
Happy New Year from a thoroughly sun-drenched and baked Adelaide, where we’ve just finished our 4th 40 Celsius day in a row. Any English readers who wish to swap some cold and rain, please leave a note in the comments.
 Meanwhile, the media hereabouts are starting to get stuck into the Indian team after their performance in Melbourne. Steve Waugh came out and said that Australia could stretch their winning run, currently at 15 Tests, to 30, if they continue their current form. If Steve Waugh thinks that, I shudder to think what Glenn McGrath thinks.
I was glad to see that Ricky Ponting has generally looked to just win the next game and not come out with any big statements of this nature. I think Australia will have their work cut out for them to hold India in Sydney. It is worth remembering when you look back at India’s poor performance in Melbourne that they’d only been in the country a little over a week, and their one warm-up fixture was washed out. I certainly expect India to put up a much better showing on a ground that suits their game. There will be a lot of runs and it will be hard work for the Australian bowlers to get India out this time around.
I actually think India have a good chance of winning at Sydney- they have two quality spinners, and good enough fast bowling, and some quality batsmen. They just have to bat first, perform with the bat, and put the Australian batsman under some real pressure when India bowl. Australian batsman haven’t had to deal with pressure for a while, and if that happens it will be a real test for them.Anil Kumble’s team has one injury worry though that could put a spanner in the works, with a cloud over Zaheer Khan. Zaheer bowled well in Melbourne and would be sorely missed.
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