Outside The Line

How About We Just Pick Captains Again And Start Over?

So is this what the future holds for international cricket? 30-year-old Australian players who could never get a game for their own country moving to bottom-of-the-table teams just to get internationals? Will we soon see David Hussey anchoring the middle order for Bangladesh, or Matthew Inness opening the bowling for Zimbabwe?

My favourite bit from the interview -- with Brendan Nash, the ex-Queensland batsman now trying to get into the West Indies team -- was his answer to this question:

What are the major differences between Australian and West Indian cricket?
The on-field stuff like the lack of facilities to train or play on. The culture is also a lot more laid-back...

Yeah, you know, that "on-field stuff"... as in, actually having a field on which to play.Yeah, that one might be the biggie. In Australia, they have that. In the West Indies, they don't. Gee, I wonder which of the team has been doing better recently?

And does this mean we are headed for a world where Australia play Australia A and Australia B to see who's best in the world? Ugh. Should I just go back to sleep for a half-decade or so?

(But hey, if it makes the West Indies relevant again, bring on the Aussies, I say! Isn't Shane Warne available again? Shit, where's Allen Stanford and his money when you need them?)

Every Innings Is Like New Scar Tissue

Was Marlon Samuels once molested by cricket? Not by 'a cricket player', I mean by the sport of cricket itself. Did cricket touch Samuels inappropriately when he was a little boy growing up in Jamaica? Did cricket offer him some Jesus Juice and free candy to get in its van and "play confessional", as the Catholic priests might call it?

I ask this because only the trauma of abuse could possibly make a person prone to self-sabotaging his own career to the extent that Samuels has done. First he gets banned from bowling for regularly bending his arm more than a darts player, now he's been found guilty of giving away pitch information and other match details to an Indian bookmaker is 2007, and is said to be facing a minimum 2-year ban.

So now he's going to have two concurrent bans. Are there any other ways for his subconscious to lash out and get him into more trouble? Has anyone tested his urine yet? I bet you'll find it'd test positive for everything from human growth hormone to asbestos --  it's clear that the guy just wants out, even if he doesn't quite know it. Help him move on from his trauma and get on with his life, will you, ICC? Leniency will only make things worse. Just let him go...

Thirty-five!!!

I missed this when it happened, but apparently Marlon Samuels has gotten himself banned from bowling. That's funny enough by itself, but the real kicker is the actual level of the transgression. The angle of straightening of his right arm upon delivery was... 27 degrees for his off-breaks, 35 degrees for his quicker balls. Thirty-five!!! Want to see what that looks like?

Ultimately, that might go down as the perfect embodiment of his career. Marlon Samuels: a guy too lazy to even straighten an arm.

The Beach And Weed Always Help, Though

Some positive, constructive cricket news for once: Jamaica holds the first competitive match in the Caribbean under lights. Hopefully the rest of the islands will follow and they can finally bring West Indies cricket into the new century. ("The 20th century?", I hear you ask? Baby steps, remember.) The lack of lights became a huge problem, among so many others, during the ODI World Cup in March, because it forced that ridiculous early scheduling of all the games. Who wants to watch sport at 9 o'clock in the morning? Following the Cup in Tobago became almost like a full-time job for us, with militant 9-to-5 hours required daily (and no weekends) for more than a month. And Malcolm Speed still wonders why the tournament was a bust?

I'll Save The Crow For After The Entrees, p. II

Well there go my prognosticating skills... my pick for World Cup runners-up, the West Indies, are the first team eliminated from the tournament. I suppose even in a game where bowlers are treated like dirty jizz rags, it still helps to have at least one real bowler in your squad.

Morality is for Chumps

It would have been a fitting end to Brian Lara's career: achieving a moral victory after a disappointing campaign by pounding on a lacklustre English team in an inconsequential match. It wasn't to be; his team lost after he was run out on 18 by Kevin Pietersen, a man who seems set to enjoy a similar career to Lara's, full of individual accolades masking the collective mediocrity of those around him.

Then again, perhaps the need to search for a moral victory epitomises the Lara years better than anything else.

How did Steve's head not explode out of his helmet after this?

An old classic. And to think that Dwayne Smith sometimes opens the bowling for the West Indies nowadays...