Outside The Line

An Unexpected 'Sheed

Its namesake may currently be battling Boston's Kevin Garnett in the Eastern Conference Finals for the title of "Most Intense, Inspirational, and Flawed Floor Leader" in the NBA, but at least the good old 'Sheed Award is back!

For those who don't know, the 'Sheed Award goes to anyone in the cricket world who, like Rasheed Wallace in the NBA, manages to go beyond the usual sporting cliches and manages to tell the world truths: uncomfortable truths, unacknowledged truths, interesting truths.

Today's honoree is actually a bit of a surprise. We tend to rag on him a bit (okay, a lot) but sometimes we just have to give Ian Chappell his due. When asked about the whole Baggy Green nonsense in a tour match in Jamaica, Chappelli tells it like it is:

"It is a $5 bit of cloth. I haven't got one, haven't had one since the day I finished. I don't need to look at an Australian cap to remind me of what I did."

Right on, sista! Another worthy winner. Congratulations on your award.

If You Want To Learn Something New About Cricket, Don't Go To A Chappelli Column

                                                      

Only Ian Chappell could go into a titty bar and come out complimenting a juggler.

That's the main thing that I could gather from his latest column for Cricinfo, in which he admonishes the Twenty20 format for being too simplistic and faddish, and advices it to "evolve and become more multi-dimensional". His recipe for how exactly to do that is unclear, but I think it involves removing everything that is not absolutely cricket-related from the stadium. He tells us from the start:

If I want to watch dancing girls, I go to the Moulin Rouge. If I want to drink, I go to a bar. If I want to listen to music, I go to a concert.

This of course raises a couple of important questions: first, what exactly are the Moulin Rouge girls dancing to, if not music?

Second, what kind of concerts does Ian Chappell attend? Did he happen to catch a reunited Rage Against The Machine at the latest Big Day Out by any chance? If he did, he must've been the only person there not drinking, since, you know, drinking is only to be done at bars. Did he mosh? Or is jumping only to be done on trampolines? Apparently, multi-tasking is verboten in a Chappell universe.

Let's just hope that juggler wasn't riding a unicycle as he performed his tricks.

A=A

Ian Chappell pens the prototypical "Contractual Obligation Column" for cricinfo, essentially saying nothing of any great worth or interest, yet somehow managing to pump out 700 words of it. Speaking of the need for players and administrators to cooperate, Chappell tell us that the game needs "both short and long-term plans", and that any cricket model should "run smoothly and economically, with a minimum of tinkering." Really Ian, you think? Thank god you were here to let us know.

This is the passage the editors chose to excerpt, so you can imagine how mesmerising the rest of the article must have been:

Players and administrators have to first decide what it is they are trying to achieve with each form of the game and then ensure that all three dovetail to produce the best and most viable international product.

(The entire article reminds me a little of a hack politician's stock speech, packed with those fuzzy focus-group buzzwords: hope, values, pride, freedom. In Chappelli-speak, these simply become vision, engagement, and a new model. Bland, inoffensive, and, by this point, completely meaningless.)