Outside The Line

As Good As Wigs And Catchphrases, But A Win's A Win

                           

This is probably a sign of how bleak and grey things looked in the cricket world: last week, on the eve of the third Test match between Australia and India --€“ a crucial match from a still-competitive series, already full of controversy and tension, between arguably the two most popular teams in the world at the momeny -- the entire Outside The Line brains trust chose to go road tripping and camping by the beach, rather than staying at home, following the action on TV, and writing about it.

It wasn'€™t that we didn'€™t care about the outcome of the series (we did), or that our continual wish to see Australia derailed from its record-breaking tracks had somehow abated (it hadn'€™t). It was more an act of protest. (Against what, we'€™re not exactly sure. Against Australia and the arrogance of incumbency. Against the subjective dogmatism and hubris of modern umpiring. Against bigotry as the refuge of the hack. Against bullying tactics and high school jock ethics. Against business as usual.)

Regardless of our original plans, we still ended up following most the action in some form or another: radio updates as we played poker inside the tent, selective portions of inspired Indian batting on the widescreen of the nearby pub, cricinfo reports, etc. Cricket seems to permeate the air of coastal Australia in the summer, and even if you go out of your way to avoid it, you still can't stop yourself from absorbing some of it: 

• We couldn'€™t help but notice, for example, how seriously Stuart Clark is taking the "New McGrath" moniker these days --€“ shaking his head on the way back to his mark after every delivery, trying to stare batsmen down on his follow-through, always looking awkward and out of place in post-wicket celebrations, etc.

• The first three wickets of the Australian innings: three left-handed batsmen being dismissed by two left-handed Indian bowlers. Given that only between 7-10 % of the population as a whole is left-handed, that series of dismissals must represent either a freakish statistical oddity... or the future of world cricket.
  
  It's no secret that left-handers have dominated the batting scene for the last decade. In the past few years, however, we'€™ve also seen a lot of southpaw bowlers rising in the ranks. Except for the West Indies, every major international team nowadays includes at least one left-arm bowler. Three teams (Australia, India, England) include two left-armers on a regular basis. One team, Bangladesh, is often seen going in with three lefties in their lineup (as well as a few part-time left-arm spinners). It's clear that a lot of those players are not "natural" left-handers, but instead developed their skills with practice and at some point discovered the untapped potential of left-arm bowling in a landscape dominated by left-handed batters with iffy techniques. As such, expect the trend to continue.
  
  
• At one point, my friend Geot referred to Shaun Tait as “lumbersome,” which I’m pretty sure is not a real word, but somehow seems remarkably accurate in his case.
  
  
• Before any Indian fans get ahead of themselves, and start believing that their team's spirited fightback in this series is a harbinger of great times to come, may I just remind them that for most of last week's (and probably this week's) Test match, India had Virender Sehwag standing at point in the field. Sehwag! You're building a dynasty on that foundation? As Ricky Gervais' alter-alter-alter-ego, Mr. Stokes from When The Whistle Blows, would say, "Are you 'aving a laff?!?!"
  
  

Heraclitus To Hillary, And Everything In Between

There seem to be as many cable news channels as there are sports channels, so in between all the cricket this weekend, I caught some of the coverage on the recent campaigning and debates in the US presidential race. The Republican side, chock-full of belligerent whackos and schmaltzy panderers, is a lot more interesting to watch (for the freakshow factor), but this time I was caught by a theme on which all the Democrat candidates seemed to focus – change. The idea of change, the nature of change, who the most efficient agents of change would be, etc.

It made me think of Heraclitus and his theory of constant flux. Sometimes it seems as if the lack of permanence is all that is real in this world; as if everywhere you look, all you can see is change:

• Brisbane, e.g., has greeted me with an entire week of grey, rainy days -- I don’t know what to do with myself. If it wasn’t for the mosquitoes, the constant traffic on the streets and the creepy procession of shirtless joggers by the river, I’d think I was still in Dunedin.

• Just wondering…when did Rahul Dravid become Aakash Chopra?

• The emergence of Brad Hogg as the new anti-hero of the masses is just about the only positive I could gather from the first couple of Tests. He truly is a repulsive creature. I was a little concerned, after Glenn McGrath’s retirement and the post-World Cup player exodus, that there’d be no truly odious player left in the Australian team -- no one to affect you on a visceral level, keep you glued to the screen and force you to truly hate, with every fibre of your being. The weights-room eunuchs and statistical oddities of the new generation -- the Michael Hussey’s and Stuart Clark’s -- could never do that for you. You need someone special; someone working at a whole different level of repugnance.
  
  Enter GB Hogg. From the tongue, to the puffed-out chest, to the rodent face, to the forced jocularity on the field, to the Left-Arm-Grubber approach to spin bowling, Hogg seems almost designed to make your bile rise and get you screaming abuse at your TV as yet another wicket falls to his name. It’s a shame he’s so old already, because I could see him fueling my hating fantasies for years to come.

• I wasn’t fully aware of this, but it seems that the Australian cricket team is quickly morphing into some sort of talent agency/marketing firm/touring entertainment troupe. Every ad throughout the game’s coverage on TV involved some combination of Australian cricketers looking discomfited and acting wooden, selling everything from mobiles phones and utility trucks to fizzy drinks and chicken sandwiches. I’d call the whole bunch of them cheap whores, but that would be an insult to dedicated sex workers everywhere.
  
  (As far as unintentional comedy goes, however, you can’t go past the ad for Wolf Blass wines, where Stuart McGill, Mike Hussey, and Brad Hodge are standing  inside something that looks like either the set of a ski lodge from a bad 1980s teen movie or the underground lair of the cheapest Bond villain in history. All three of them are wearing tuxedos, and appear to be in somewhat of a festive mood; but there are no girls around, no music, and all they seem to be doing is sipping chardonnay and complimenting each other on particular highlights in their careers. It couldn’t look any gayer if Rufus Wainwright was sitting at a piano in the corner, playing a selection of Broadway showtunes.)

But what cricket this week has also shown us is that, all things considered, Heraclitus and the Democrats were wrong. All is not change, and change is not all. Some things are just bound to stay the same:

• He’s been away from the international scene for about 4 years, but it’s nice to see that Neil McKenzie still looks as awkward, uncomfortable and unreliable at the crease as always. He’s like the anti-Steve Waugh – a man you would NEVER trust to bat for your life. And yet he remains strangely endearing, with that furrowed muppet face of his, and the collection of nervous tics and idiosyncrasies.

• And speaking of idiosyncrasies … when all is said and done, I think there’s a good chance Shiv Chanderpaul might end up as one of the top-5 batsman of the decade. To do what he has done, and continues to do, for a team like the West Indies, is nothing short of spectacular. And he just keeps getting better: since Brian Lara retired last year, Chanderpaul has batted 9 times in Tests, been dismissed only 5 of those, scored 3 centuries and 5 fifties, and averaged 139. In one-dayers during the same period, he averages 129. For the whole of 2007, including the World Cup, he averaged 76 in ODIs, with 4 hundreds and 4 fifties.
  
  
• Another view that’s clear and unchanging: there are few experiences as joyous for a cricket fan as watching a Laxman/Dravid partnership. They have now become a genre in themselves. It doesn’t matter what form they take, what context they are in, who the dominant player is, they seem to go beyond normal categories of the mind. They trigger thoughts, memories, feelings; all unique, and all related only to each other. As the sportswriter’s cliché goes, they are transcendent. They go beyond the normal and the expected. When those two are at the crease, there are no predictions -- they’ve stretched the plausible, so they’ve made everything possible.

• Forget about the talent gap, or the preparation gap, or the psychological gap… the biggest factor assisting the Australian team in their domination at the moment is the Appeal Gap. Simply put: Australia is getting an unfair advantage from the effects of their constant, exaggerated appealing. They are intimidating umpires into ruling in their favour, and forcing them to base decisions on the harmony of choreographed hollering, rather than the merit of deliveries.
  
  Normally, this gives the Australians a one- or two-wicket advantage. This time around, it was closer to four or five, which made it all so much more gut-wrenching. Dravid’s should never have been a wicket, nor should Ganguly’s. Hussey and Symonds both hit balls off the middle of the bat into Dhoni’s gloves, but were given not-out simply because the Indians haven’t quite learned how to scream in unison.
  
  Sadly, it seems as if that’s how cricket is being decided these days: who can yell the best. If that’s the case, count me out -- I’ve got better things to do with my time. And I’m tired of waiting for change, when it’s clear that none is on the way.
  
  

A Head Full Of Ideas That Are Driving Me Insane (SL-Aus Preview)

Tomorrow, at the Gabba in Brisbane, Sri Lanka and Australia will play the first Test of the newly-christened Warne-Muralitharan Trophy series. (Yes, that's what it's called. What I'd like to know is why the Australian name always comes first in those bilateral series... Chappell-Hadlee, Border-Gavaskar, etc.) I have refrained from commenting on Sri Lanka's tour so far, since I was waiting to see how they'd fare in the warm-up watches. I waited because I understood the grave importance of this series, not only for the balance of power in cricket, but also for my own future enjoyment of the game.

See, I have a conflict of allegiances here. I happen to be both pro-Sri Lanka and virulently anti-Australia, and I'm not sure which of my positions should take precedence. That might not make a lot of sense at first, since the two views seem perfectly complimentary, yet there is a certain logic behind it. If we were to take this series in isolation, then sure, I'm all for Sri Lanka, and will cheer for them every step of the way. But looking at a cricket series in isolation is not only pointless, it is also virtually impossible -- it would involve consciously erasing all previous knowledge about the game from the mind, as well as any future hopes or expectations. It would turn the game into a purely superficial spectacle, devoid of the richness of history and narrative context that make cricket such a fascinating game to follow. (And believe me, if mindless sensory thrills are what I'm searching for, Test cricket would be waaaaayyyyy down on my list of places to look.)

So what is the context of this series? What does it represent? The most obvious (and important) point is that it will be the first series without Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath leading the Australian bowling attack. This is no small matter -- the two of them combined for more than 1,200 Test wickets, led their team to international domination for almost a decade and a half, and virtually destroyed the careers of countless players, from Jimmy Adams to Darryl Cullinan to every Pakistani opener since 2000. They (Warne and McGrath) were the ying and yang of the Australian Machine... one a blonde virtuoso playboy with a flair for the theatrical, the other a pulseless country savant with cocked wrists and a ridiculous haircut. On paper, they seemed like the oddest of couples, yet they complimented each other on the field better than any pair this side of Jordan and Pippen.

Now they're both gone, and for the first time since, um... forever... Australia go into a series with arguably the weaker of the two bowling attacks. Mitchell Johnson has yet to play a Test, Brett Lee is older than he looks and has never really dazzled in Tests, and Stuart Clarke is a glorified extra at best. (As for Stewie McGill, let's just say that, like Shooter McGavin, Muralitharan eats pieces of shit like him for breakfast.)

 

And yet, I have the strange suspicion that none of that will matter, since the Sri Lankan batting looks so frightfully out of form. Normally, that wouldn't be such a major concern, since the team has a good mental outlook and usually finds a way to stay competitive in any contest through sneaky 40-run partnerships in the lower middle order and dedication by the tail. However, this is Australia we're dealing with here, and I don't think a bunch of quiet first-innings 280's will be enough to deal with a batting backbone of Hayden-Ponting-Hussey-Gilchrist. It just seems like too much of an ask. (Sangakkara's torn hamstring would generally piss me off, but it wouldn't really be a tour of Oz without some sort of punch-to-the-balls injury like that to the touring team.) Unless Murali and Malinga somehow come up with three or four freakish displays of Pantheon-level classic bowling, I don't think Sri Lanka have enough to win it.

Which is why, as much as it pains me to say it, I think the best hope for the future (a bright, just future, with competitive cricket played all around the world and no one team ever dominating all others) might be for Sri Lanka to lose this series somewhat comprehensively. If they go out there and play hard, keep it tight, never give anything away, test the Australians and make them work hard for every run and wicket... they'll probably still lose. But at the same time, they'd also be helping Australia immensely -- to move on after Warne and McGrath, to give the youngsters valuable challenges and experience, and to take mid-tier Test players (like Michael Clarke and Andrew Symonds) to a whole new level. Australia would only come back stronger, and the chance for world cricket to turn over a new leaf would have vanished.

On the other hand, if Sri Lanka get pummeled two-nil, with Hayden and Ponting hitting unmemorable centuries and McGill bagging a couple of profligate 10-for's, nothing will have changed. The fans would get (even more) cocky and arrogant, McGill would stay in the squad, Bracken would stay out of it... and as a whole, Australia would gently let down its guard. Then, India can come in undetected and land the killer blow that would make the entire Australian cricket establishment see stars for months.

No, actually, you know what... I can't do it. There is no possible way I could cheer for Australia to beat Sri Lanka. (Especially after the scars of the World Cup final.) So I guess all that's left to do now, like Maggie's farmhand, is to fold my hands and pray for rain. May we see a dark cloud hover above the entire Australian eastern seaboard and make it pour down relentlessly for two weeks or so. Not only would it wash out both Tests in the series (more on the categorical idiocy of holding 2-Test series later), but it might also help alleviate the drought that's plagued the country for the past decade or seven.

You can't say I'm totally anti-Australia, after all.