Russell Jackson
Can cricket hold on to its multi-sport players?
Young players often pick cricket over the richer football codes for the love of the game. It is a risky proposition for them, though
Russell Jackson
01-May-2015
Victoria batting allrounder Alex Keath lost his state contract this week. Were it any other player, it might not have rated much of a mention, but Keath is unique. Five years ago he was being trumpeted as Victorian cricket's major coup; their first high-profile win over AFL football in the battle for young talent. Now he's not considered to be in the best 28 cricketers in Victoria.
Perhaps the talent drain to Australian Rules is a little overplayed by that code's media because there's a clear obstacle in measuring the impact once a talented junior cricketer disappears into the AFL system; none has the schedule space, contractual leeway and perhaps even inclination to prove during summer that they were anything out of the ordinary.
In fairness, you'd suppose that the current situation isn't the death knell for Keath's prospects in cricket. Plenty of players have reached Test level with greater and more frequent knocks on their confidence and status than this. Comparative to players of his youth and experience, he was also well rewarded in his original five-year deal with the Bushrangers, earning far more than any cricketer his age could hope to in state ranks. Still, on average, cricket can't hope to compete with the premium football codes in a remuneration sense.
Full postWanted: Faulkner the Test allrounder
He has played very little first-class cricket of late to prove his worth despite showing an aptitude for the longer format during earlier seasons
Russell Jackson
13-Apr-2015
Can Australia produce a world-class Test allrounder in the current cricket climate? Can any country? Watching James Faulkner pick up his Man-of-the-Match award after the World Cup final in Melbourne I continued to doubt it. Australia's selectors duly left him out of their Test squads for the upcoming West Indies and Ashes tours.
Like Glenn Maxwell - another prodigiously talented, in-demand limited-overs player who was left out of those touring parties - Faulkner simply doesn't play enough first-class cricket to properly stake his claim. When he's not representing his country in one-day internationals and T20s he's playing in the Big Bash League and the IPL. In generations past, when only one of those four options was available to him, he'd have been sought-after commodity, flitting between county cricket and the Sheffield Shield, thus developing and refining his Test weaponry.
When Faulkner made his Test debut in the fifth match of the 2013 Ashes in England, it felt like the beginning of something. He made a pair of 20s and took six wickets, four of them in an impressive first-innings showing and three of them English top-order scalps. He has never been picked in the XI again. Compounding this absence from the Test set-up, in the two years since that game he has played only seven first-class matches, five for Tasmania and two for Australia A during the winter of 2014.
Full postWhy ball-tracking can't be trusted
In the absence of information on how the technology works, it's hard for some of us to shake doubts about why what we're seeing with our eyes differs significantly from the reading of a computer
Russell Jackson
26-Mar-2015
I don't trust the data. Don't worry, this isn't another Peter Moores thinkpiece. It's Hawk-Eye or ball-tracker or whatever you want to call it. I don't trust it. I don't trust the readings it gives.
This isn't a flat-earth theory, though flat earth does come into it, I suppose. How can six cameras really predict the movement of a ball (a non-perfect sphere prone to going out of shape at that) off a surface that is neither flat nor stable? A ball that is influenced by constantly changing amounts of torque, grip, flight, speed and spin, not to mention moisture.
When Hawk-Eye, a prediction system with a known and well-publicised propensity for minor error (2.2 millimetres is the most recent publicly available figure) shows a fraction less than a half of the ball clipping leg stump after an lbw appeal, can we take that information at face value and make a decision based upon it?
Full postHayden the hard yakker
Aka the finest wordsmith from the planet of Australia
Russell Jackson
13-Mar-2015
We really should have seen it coming - Matthew Hayden's star turn at this World Cup. All the elements of his unconventional genius were there - the botched insults (remember Harbhajan the "obnoxious weed"?), the way in post-game interviews he tended to put the English language through a tumble dryer, words clanging around endlessly until big Haydos ran out of breath.
When Hayden was appointed to the Cricket Australia board, Gideon Haigh noted that he brought with him "the experience of 103 Tests and numberless unintelligible press conferences". Bursting through the corporate gates with zeal, our man had no time for naysayers, but he did acknowledge the hurdles ahead:
"The game is definitely at the coalface of anticipated change," stated the earthy Queenslander, then mostly known for his run-making feats and prodigious output of cookbooks. Might the publishers have missed his calling as a corporate soothsayer? Soon he was talking the globalisation of brands and strategic imperatives. If he hadn't lobbed at CA, surely the interest of the ECB would have been piqued.
Full postShapoor Zadran, cult hero
The Afghanistan fast bowler is an example of the exuberance the Associates bring to the table, but sadly they'll probably not be seen in four years' time
Russell Jackson
26-Feb-2015
There is no greater liar than the memory of the sports fan. That's why, as has been the case at probably all of the last four World Cups, this one has added healthily to the literary genre of cricket nostalgia. In the realm of nostalgia, facts blur.
Falling within the 28-40-year-old cricket fan demographic as I do, I place more stock than I should in cult heroes of the 1992 World Cup. My mental image - and that apparently shared with literally millions of others - is of offspinning opener Dipak Patel celebrating wickets, and the pinch-hitting Mark Greatbatch cutting a glorious six at Eden Park. In my memory, he gave every single delivery that treatment.
Never mind that Patel took only eight wickets in nine games, placing him behind 19 other bowlers (poor, neglected Anderson Cummins…), nor that he didn't always open the bowling. It doesn't matter that Greatbatch's apparently whiplash-inducing 313 runs came at what would now be considered a middling strike rate of 87.92; these men still feel deserving of our adulation.
Full postWhatever happened to the wacky warm-up?
Back in the day, World Cup warm-ups used to be played against obscure and exotic teams
Russell Jackson
13-Feb-2015
In the interests of pushing esoteric World Cup discussions into new realms, I tender to you the theory that no sporting contest has offered up as many exotic warm-up fixtures over the years as this tournament.
This year, of course, it's been understated in all senses other than a few eye-catching results. Sadly the appearance of up to 15 players per side has been as wacky as it has gotten, but what I'd pay to set a time machine to 1992 and watch rookie Victorian legspinner Shane Warne taking on and eventually dismissing Sachin Tendulkar in the Victorian country town of Benalla. Actually, I'd have been there for the sight of Sachin trapping stocky opening batsman Paul Nobes in front alone.
As in most other senses, the 1992 World Cup really delivered when it came to obscure practice games. The Peter Anderson-led Queensland 2nd XI thrashing Zimbabwe at the Gabba, anyone? The Manly President's XI, with a bowling attack boasting Phil Alley, taking on Sri Lanka? GA Gooch's XI v AJ Stewart's XI at the Village Green? The Bradman XI against the South Africans in Bowral?
Full postIs cricket really vulnerable to physical altercations?
Cricket has had relatively few ugly on-field incidents when compared to other sports, so to start fearing the worst because of the verbal abuse going round is to take things too far
Russell Jackson
30-Jan-2015
Here's something that cricket people never admit in the sledging debate: over the past two decades this sport has spawned an entire literary genre in celebration of sledging. There's stacks of these books. People buy them and people read them, too. Most of them are rubbish, of course, but people do actually buy them in sufficient quantities that they keep getting published. That's not much of a moral high ground to start on.
Fans who don't mind a bit of sledging are always quick to remind us that it's been around since our distant ancestors first picked up bats and balls, but it's actually only been in the last 40 years that it's been written about at length. There is an irony at play here for those who are broadly anti-sledging but still keep track of what's written about it; the more you read, the more wearying it is when each new outbreak of sledging debate occurs. To borrow a John Cooper Clarkism, it bloody gets you bloody down.
Everyone had another crack at it in the weeks following Australia's recent Test series against India, which is fair enough, but as far as I could see only Ian Chappell said something I genuinely didn't expect when he warned that an escalation in sledging might soon result in a physical altercation on the field. You can never underestimate Chappell's thoughts on the game, nor the weight they carry, because they are well considered and come from a place of knowledge and passion.
Full postMeet Ricky the broadcaster
Ponting's debut on Channel Ten and his grilling of Kevin Pietersen hold out hope that cricket has found a high-calibre new TV voice
Russell Jackson
16-Jan-2015
There's now a pretty clear and not unpleasant path laid out for most Australian Test captains once they call stumps: release an autobiography that's the size of a house brick but light on controversy, take your pick of the many corporates eager to strike up an alliance, and slip into the comfort of the Channel Nine commentary booth.
Richie Benaud, Bill Lawry, the Chappells, Mark Taylor, all partook in that rite. Allan Border politely declined Nine's overtures and joked recently that it probably cost him a fortune. Steve Waugh marches to the beat of his own drum and thus is rarely seen outside of book signings. Michael Clarke has broken new ground this summer by grabbing the microphone before he's actually done as his country's cricket leader.
Perhaps we can be thankful that Ricky Ponting forged a new path altogether, signing with the Ten network for their nascent free-to-air coverage of the Big Bash League. Last season it became immediately apparent that he had a knack for insight, a tendency perhaps at odds with the current modus operandi at Nine.
Full postJust what is the Australian way?
It's not as easily defined as just saying it is about playing positive, aggressive cricket at all times
Russell Jackson
02-Jan-2015
There's often a bit of an overreach at play whenever the cricket commentariat lays its boots into "ugly" winners, particularly so in Australia. If Australian sides that are in the habit of losing get a raw deal, it's nothing in comparison to the reaction when they win in ways that don't fit within a narrow band of acceptable character traits: aggressive but respectful, attacking but not foolhardy, hard but fair, a little bit of larrikinism but don't get out playing a T20 shot.
You also know that Australian cricket is in a decent state of either self-satisfaction or complacency when the debates about the right and wrong way to win surface. Remember the early 2000s, when a certain percentage of Australians became so riddled with the cricket-fan version of white guilt that they started hating their countrymen for the way in which they eviscerated everyone before them?
Then there were smaller knock-on arguments - is it too arrogant to bat Adam Gilchrist at six and pick five bowlers? I always think of that one now whenever Australian cricket experiences some fresh sort of turbulence. Remember when that was our biggest concern?
Full postWhy Steven Smith's here to stay
He has experienced captaincy at every level. Most admirably, he has managed to reinvent his game to succeed at the highest level
Russell Jackson
20-Dec-2014
"Steven Smith fidget" - 375,000 Google search results. "Steven Smith skittish" - 160,000 Google search results. Not the most important statistics to consider when assessing candidacy for the Australian Test captaincy, but interesting nonetheless.
By definition, neither of those words screams confidence and stability. Perhaps you think Derek Randall, but probably not Mike Brearley. Yet we were reminded often in the past week that Australia's 45th Test captain - the man taking on the leadership job often referred to as the second most important his country has - was so confident of his path in life that he ignored a not-inconsiderable societal taboo and left school early, essentially narrowing his options to one.
When Steven Smith's mates lolled about on gap years and slept through university lectures, Smith was entering the less-forgiving world of professional cricket. He did at least play like a boy. He still does, in some respects: the joyful spirit of his batting, the terrier fielding, the mixed bag of novelty spin almost exclusively comprising wicket balls and boundary balls.
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