Russell Jackson
In praise of Margaret Hughes
The first woman to write to a high standard on the game was treated a bit like a circus freak when she appeared on the scene
Russell Jackson
30-Jan-2014
If cricket's female players have long been undersold, the women who have written about the game are subject to even greater historical neglect. The English writer Margaret Hughes stands out like no other.
First published in 1953, Hughes' semi-autobiographical debut book, All on a Summer's Day, was said by her friend and confidant Neville Cardus to be the first book about first-class cricket written by a woman, or as Cardus put it, "not written by a man". Most of the short obituaries after Hughes' death in 2005 quoted that line but not Cardus' follow-up, that Hughes "gives evidence of points of view and prejudice different from those jealously held by men".
Cardus offered Hughes the friendship and support so lacking elsewhere in the male-dominated confines of cricket writing. She once lamented of her colleagues on the circuit, "Ever since I wrote my first cricket book I have been treated as a freak, rather like the fat lady at the circus."
As Hughes sat in the Lord's press box, gawkers were brought around to have a look at her, "the same way they might be taken to see the Albert Memorial." The imposition was bracing. "That's the girl", they whisper in a hushed voice in case anyone might be listening, "who writes on cricket". The reaction is always the same," said Hughes. "What on earth can she know about cricket?" or "How odd! A woman interested in cricket!"
Full postHow does one measure T20 proficiency?
The traditional data range of cricket statistics is far too narrow and its focus sometimes irrelevant to the requirements of the shortest format
Russell Jackson
16-Jan-2014
Casting a critical eye over Network Ten's new Big Bash League coverage this summer, a number of things have struck me. First and foremost, the broadcast is a refreshing change-up from Channel 9's now relentless pursuit of vaudeville. Recent Australian greats Ricky Ponting and Adam Gilchrist have made a winning transition to the commentary box, and the dry, unscripted additions of Viv Richards have added something unique. In most senses including local ratings it has been a winner.
Still, and this isn't just down to Ten or any other T20 broadcast network, I think we're all missing a trick as fans. T20 statistics, based almost entirely on the same parameters as traditional cricket, are all but useless. Every time the broadcaster flashes them up I'm taken by how little they tell us about the shortest format. They also add nothing to the discussion surrounding individual players.
It's almost perverse really, that a game with such a long-standing fetish for numbers has done so little to adapt and shift the debate around short-form cricket. It puzzles me slightly that the rapid enthusiasts of T20 aren't taking steps to change this, because it could be central to building appeal for the game among traditionalists that goes beyond mere entertainment.
Full postWhat I read in 2013
There's a surge for immediacy in the modern media but sports books, especially cricket ones, help you slow down
Russell Jackson
03-Jan-2014
Over the past week I've had several of those anxious moments that become par for the course at year's end. The annual "best of" lists go up with all the books, films and cultural events that I've meant to have delighted in for the year. I panic a little. I've barely taken any of them in. Can I really only have seen one of the best 50 movies this year?
In the case of books, the primary reason that I've missed out on the mountains of new fiction that have hit the shelves isn't that I'm not reading. It's that I mainly read cricket books. I try not to analyse this too deeply, but the ratio definitely does skew ludicrously in the direction of cricket. There's probably not anything drastically wrong with this situation, but it's also probably not much good for the cultivation of ideas beyond watching and writing about cricket.
I tried to go broader this year, I really did. Another terrible Ian McEwan, a decent Julian Barnes, a pile of varied biographies, two aborted attempts at Murakami's IQ84, and Michael Chabon's new one, which despite its provocative positioning on the nightstand sits untouched so far. Otherwise, non-fiction and cricket have reigned supreme for another predictable year.
Full postProject Snow and what might have been
Cricket nearly reached an impasse in the mid-1990s and there was a possibility the game would split into two factions
Russell Jackson
19-Dec-2013
As pointless an exercise as it may be, sometimes I like to imagine the world as it would have been if certain events had or hadn't occurred. In the case of international cricket, one of those "sliding doors" I can't help but wonder about is "Project Snow", a dramatic and initially secretive affair that occurred in the wake of a London meeting of the ICC member nations in mid-1996.
After what former Australian Cricket Board CEO Graham Halbish described as a "decidedly ugly" gathering of the world's cricket leaders, the agitated heads of Australian, English, New Zealand and West Indies cricket turned into the cricketing version of Doomsday Preppers, formulating a plan to counter what they saw as a realistic attempt by India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to seize total control of the game's interests.
"International cricket was in crisis and heading deeper into the mire," claimed Halbish in his 2003 tell-all, Run Out. Is this sounding a little bit familiar? From that moment until Halbish's abrupt sacking in January 1997, Project Snow really was a living, breathing thing. Well, it was a document in the safe keeping of its four conspirators anyway. In Australia, Halbish's copy was locked inside a safe in the offices of the Australian Cricket Board's lawyer.
Full postThe little cricket magazine that endured
The ABC Cricket Book was a faithful companion to generations of Australian kids growing up with the game
Russell Jackson
20-Nov-2013
It must have been a cold winter night in 1993. Huddled under the covers of my bed in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, I was listening to Neville Oliver on a faux wood-panelled PYE radio that I'd just purloined from my Dad's shed. Making off with the "spare TV" definitely would have aroused suspicions, so it was just me, the clandestine radio arrangement and a small but intriguing magazine: my first ABC Cricket Book.
It seems an odd and anachronistic little thing now, the ABC Cricket Book. Its statistical tables and the biographical info on the competing teams have long been superseded by online resources, chief among them this very website. I still buy it every year, though. To even contemplate the potential that it might disappear one day fills me with dread, which is both stupid and absolutely honest in equal measure. Each one links me to a moment in time, to a summer or a winter, to who and what the Australian Test team was, but also to who I was myself.
To understand its appeal fully you really just need to cast your mind back to the early '90s, before the internet had replaced the printed word as the primary source of gathering information. I hadn't come across my first Wisden at that point, so the ABC Cricket Book seemed the most sober and respectable way to settle debates with my brothers as we watched the cricket. Each one is now a fascinating and sometimes amusing time capsule.
Full postReeling from the Sharmageddon
Just when you thought you were bored of all the ODIs, Australia and India served up an utterly bonkers match in Bangalore
Russell Jackson
08-Nov-2013
It's easy to become jaded by one-day international cricket. As I write, there have been 1375 ODI games played in the last ten years. A hundred and forty per year. Even if you had an understanding partner, a completely clear schedule and an unquenchable thirst for the game, you just wouldn't have enough time for all that cricket.
A by-product of the ODI's ubiquity and the concurrent rise of T20 cricket is that a lot gets lost amongst the noise. No small measure of it comes from doomsdayers warning of the imminent death of ODI cricket at the hands of the 20-over game. Running shotgun to this supposed format cannibalisation is the theory that ODI cricket is actually killing itself. Flat wickets, short boundaries, bat technology, and batsmen aping the T20 tempo are the chief suspects.
As I sat down to watch the series-ending game of Australia and India's recent ODI series at the Chinnaswamy Stadium there was a fair chance that it would be no different, just another in a forgettable and interchangeable cluster of one-dayers. By any objective measurement it was an absolute freak show and I don't think I'll forget it soon. It was as though David Lynch had directed a game of cricket (red umpire-uniforms and all) but was clocked on the head halfway through India's innings and replaced by Michael Bay. It was ridiculous, it was explosive, and you had to double-take and live-pause to make sure it was all really happening. It was Sharmageddon.
Full postShane Watson and the art of self-analysis
The insularity of his approach might not necessarily mark him out as the most likeable cricketer but it makes him an endlessly interesting one
Russell Jackson
25-Oct-2013
For cricket fans of a certain disposition there is nothing more appealing than a headline that starts "Shane Watson sits down and discusses his struggles… " So obviously I found myself immediately drawn to this interview with Australia's most introspective cricketer. It also prompted me to conduct my own little statistical analysis.
In it Watson uses the word "team" only once, "we" (in the context of the Australian team) gets an airing on three occasions, while variants of "I", "my" and "me" are trotted out 84 times. I guess a certain amount of the skew here can be attributed to normal speech patterns and the fact that he was being asked to talk about himself. Nevertheless Watson's penchant for self-analysis, often at the exclusion of his team-mates, remains intriguing. If you're the kind of sports follower who groans every time a player slips into management-speak and rote "team-first" clichés, Watto is kind of refreshing in his own way.
Maybe this self-referential streak is not entirely strange; humans are prone to self-interest and sportspeople doubly so. During the recent Ashes series, Gideon Haigh saw Watson "approaching his continued underperformance at Test level with an intensity that prevents him remedying it". He really should have played golf or tennis, individual sports that are a perfect platform for self-diagnosis, self-flagellation and self-help. If he were an artist or film director, maybe this propensity for navel-gazing would be more appealing, productive even. Yet within the environs of team sport it paints him into a corner, and Pat Howard's observation that he is a team player "sometimes" is a hard image to shake.
Full postWhat's happening to Australia's cricket grounds?
Local venues taught kids to love cricket, but they're vanishing fast, victims of development and commerce
Russell Jackson
11-Oct-2013
In the past few weeks I've been making the first tentative steps to assess the feasibility of a cricket comeback. Having played in only one of the past eight Australian summers, this presents challenges on a number of levels, not least the unwillingness of my body to cope with the jolt away from sedentary habits. The pain has been more than physical, though.
Walking around my new neighborhood, I embarked on a search for cricket nets in which to conduct a solo bowling session under the cloak of anonymity and solitude, away from prying eyes and flailing bats. It proved a fruitless mission. Within a five-kilometre radius of my home (20 minutes north of the Melbourne CBD) there were only two ovals.
The first was more heavily fortified with barbed wire than nearby HM Pentridge Prison in its heyday and featured no nets anyway. The other was a tiny speck of a thing that I imagined to have once been created for the use of the primary school it abutted. I say imagine because it was in a derelict state; the pitch long separated from its astroturf matting and now just a cracked concrete strip. It certainly wasn't the most accommodating prospect for the shiny Kookaburra four-piece I'd brought along.
Full postWhat do they know of cliches...
Cricket clichés find their most obvious and oft-parodied home in commentary boxes but we're all guilty of them from time to time
Russell Jackson
27-Sep-2013
As is the case with most of the sports we love and talk about, cricket long ago fell victim to a variety of enduring and evolving clichés. We're all guilty of indulging in them from time to time if we're honest with ourselves.
I guess you should consider this a kind of warning shot or manifesto for my appearances on the Cordon. Maybe it can even act as a warning to myself. "Is that really something you think or is it just something that everyone says?" Feel free to give me a nudge when I lapse.
Cricket clichés find their most obvious and oft-parodied home in the various commentary boxes of the game's major broadcasters. Often they fall into the category of "groupthink", where one ex-player's prattling or agenda comes to be accepted as the prevailing wisdom. A great example of this is the popular theory that, "Ishant Sharma is a better bowler than his figures suggest." Sorry to spoil the party, but aside from a couple of spells to one RT Ponting, Ishant is exactly the bowler his average suggests. A Test bowling average approaching 38 is a bit unlucky if you're a freewheeling rookie on the receiving end of some bad slips fielding, not if you're a 51-Test veteran. We have enough of a statistical sample size now; enough of this nonsense.
Full postMark Cosgrove and the stigma of obesity
What is worse for the image of Australian cricket - cricketers overweight of body, or cricketers underweight of runs?
Russell Jackson
04-Jun-2013
Heading into this year-long festival of Ashes, I'm willing to finally concede that I can no longer take comfort in thoughts like, "Will Glenn McGrath predict a 5-0 whitewash again?" or "Will every Aussie in the top six make a ton at Lord's?" like I did in days gone by. Those have been replaced by less palatable alternatives like, "Will any Aussie batsman make a hundred at Lord's?" and "Is the darkness creeping slowly and inevitably closer by the day?" It's just the way things are now for Australians.
But I've also been thinking about the players that made the Ashes squad and those who didn't. John Inverarity probably did as well as he might have, given the options at his disposal. He also finally picked Chris Rogers, and everyone knows that picking ginger blokes with glasses who are really, really good at batting is a good thing to do when you are a national cricket selector.
In a weird way, after the initial rush of relief at Rogers' elevation, I just started to worry about the rest of Australia's batsmen even more than I would if he wasn't there. His sturdy batsmanship and measured demeanour took flight in my imagination and immediately rendered some of his colleagues an assortment of hapless, skittish liabilities. I pictured Phillip Hughes crouched down at the crease with his head swiveling about like a drunk driver trying to slowly navigate his way home through the back streets. I imagined Constable Anderson chuckling away at the sight for a few minutes before collaring him; drunk drivers are a liability after all, even if they are sometimes entertaining to watch.
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