The Surfer
The hum of harmony
Ah, cricketing harmony, that’s what we like to see and that’s what we got, at last, with the Perth Test
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
Ah, cricketing harmony, that’s what we like to see and that’s what we got, at last, with the Perth Test. It’s also what Mike Coward likes, as he recounts on Fox Sports and he knows the reason why it came to pass:
The game is indebted to victorious captain Anil Kumble and his vanquished counterpart Ricky Ponting.
The Australian rounds up the Indian newspapers’ reaction and looks at its problem child, causing upset for another reason here.
Michael Jeh, writing in the ABC News website, emphasises that any form of sledging blackens cricket's name.
Full postAustralia haven't lost their edge
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
Shane Warne dismisses suggestions that Australia lost the Perth Test due to their changed attitude on the field. He states they were outdone by a team that played better in the Daily Telegraph.
Maybe they were not as aggressive in their body language in Perth as they normally are, but I think that was the nature of this Test, in which they were behind for most of the game.
Hayden saved partner's life
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
Phil Jaques may be Matthew Hayden's opening partner following the retirement of Justin Langer, but it wouldn't have been so if not for Hayden's timely intervention. No, Hayden didn't use his muscle power to threaten the selectors to pick Jaques, but instead pulled his team-mate out of trouble.
The incident occurred during a boot camp in 2006, when Jaques had a misunderstanding with an instructor during an abseiling [rappelling] expedition. He is quoted in the Age:
Full postMiller versus Keegan
Geoff Miller’s appointment as national selector is, according to Mike Atherton in today’s Sunday Telegraph , a good choice
Will Luke
25-Feb-2013
Geoff Miller’s appointment as national selector is, according to Mike Atherton in today’s Sunday Telegraph, a good choice. “He knows the game,” Atherton said, “having played it at the highest level; he is not so big a name that he will become a distraction, and, in my dealings with him, he has shown the right mix of honesty, straightforwardness and discretion.” However, the difference between the announcement of England’s new chief selector, and Kevin Keegan’s return to St James’ Park, could not be greater:
There was no clearer demonstration of the divergent paths that cricket and football have taken these last two decades than on Friday afternoon. At St James' Park, amidst a whirligig of cameras and flashing lights and before a throng of reporters, Newcastle welcomed Kevin Keegan back from exile. At a desolate-looking Lord's, meanwhile, five cameras (one hand-held) and a dozen scribes sat at the feet of Geoff Miller, England's new chairman of selectors, now the so-called national selector. Even the biscuits, kindly laid on, were barely touched.
It is interesting to speculate, had such twin events occurred on a wintry Friday afternoon 20 years ago, what the relative glitz factor might have been. Maybe Newcastle would still have been the more powerful magnet. But the satellite-induced football revolution had barely begun, England's cricketers held the Ashes and cricket could boast the biggest name in English sport in Ian Botham. The contrast would not have been so acute.
He adds a cautionary note to the ECB’s communications department, too. “The relative lack of media interest in Miller's ascension could also have been because notice of the press conference was not given until two hours beforehand (memo to the communications department: not everyone can afford to live within an hour of London).”
Full postButcher than butch
The Observer's Will Buckley likens the Australian team to the famed writer, the late Norman Mailer, who was described by another novelist, Jim Lewis, as being "the greatest lesbian writer since Gertrude Stein." According to Buckley, this was
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
The Observer's Will Buckley likens the Australian team to the famed writer, the late Norman Mailer, who was described by another novelist, Jim Lewis, as being "the greatest lesbian writer since Gertrude Stein." According to Buckley, this was because "Mailer was so aggressively heterosexual that he had crossed the line from macho to butch."
For Mailer, substitute the Australian cricket XI, who can lay fair claim to being the greatest lesbian sports team since Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova doubled up to win a Wimbledon and a couple of US Opens. Ricky Ponting's men are that butch. They are butcher than Terry Butcher at his butchest.
Not that this was always the case. A quarter of a century ago Australia were losing the Ashes and Kim Hughes was in tears, a double humiliation that convinced the Australian selectors to stop selecting curly blonds as captain and start picking Mailer clones. Allan Border, Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh and now Ricky Ponting, all hewn from the same baggy green cloth. Has there ever been a ballsier quartet in all of sport?
Full postMustard keen to catch selectors' eyes
Tim Ambrose might be the selectors' first choice as Test keeper for the forthcoming New Zealand series, but Phil Mustard - rather oddly bracketed as a one-day opener-cum-keeper - is determined to force his way in, as Richard Rae finds out
Will Luke
25-Feb-2013
Tim Ambrose might be the selectors' first choice as Test keeper for the forthcoming New Zealand series, but Phil Mustard - rather oddly bracketed as a one-day opener-cum-keeper - is determined to force his way in, as Richard Rae finds out in today's Guardian.
In New Zealand the one-day matches are also before the Tests, and Mustard, described last season by Shane Warne as "the best wicketkeeper/batsman in England", is confident he can score enough runs and keep wicket well enough to secure his place for the five-day matches.
Kumble finally gets his due
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
Peter Roebuck pays tribute to Anil Kumble in the Sydney Morning Herald, and says in hindsight India will question its delay in appreciating its champion cricketer.
In so many ways Kumble has been the rock of the team, a constant in the raging seas of life. He has been a Churchillian bowler, prepared to fight them on the beaches and on the fields and never to give up.
India's keeper of faith
In a team full of forceful personalities with no shortage of alpha males, Laxman is an ephemeral presence, writes Sharda Ugra in her blog Free Hit .
Nishi Narayanan
25-Feb-2013
In a team full of forceful personalities with no shortage of alpha males, Laxman is an ephemeral presence, writes Sharda Ugra in her blog Free Hit.
Laxman's walk to the crease is all purposeful, rolling-shouldered, Johnnie Walker advert. Once there, he combines a stillness of demeanour with a bustle of run-seeking. Unlike in Sydney, his innings at Perth wasn't filled with strokes that picked the ball 13 cms from outside off and sent the disoriented thing to mid-wicket, but he could still look like he was batting for pleasure. At the end-of-day press conference, he remarked bafflingly that he enjoyed playing under pressure. Perhaps he thinks the words are synonyms.
Australia's castle ready to be stormed
A fascinating fourth day is shaping up at the WACA and Robert Craddock writes in the Daily Telegraph that if Australia are beatable in Perth, they are beatable anywhere.
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
A fascinating fourth day is shaping up at the WACA and Robert Craddock writes in the Daily Telegraph that if Australia are beatable in Perth, they are beatable anywhere.
If India can storm the castle, unchallenged for 16 Tests, you can bet within months other nations will be bursting through the barricades and crash-tackle an Australian side that will soon tour Pakistan, India and the West Indies.
Mike Coward in the Weekend Australian believes that India appeared in a better frame of mind than Australia after the Sydney saga, and the Age’s Greg Baum also explores that theme by observing Australia in the field.
Full postHayden's absence costs Australia
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
The Sydney Morning Herald points out that Australia are perhaps lagging behind in Perth due to the unavailability of Matthew Hayden, who's out due to a hamstring injury.
Matthew Hayden's absence from "the leather lounge" - as he describes his customary spot in the Australian slips cordon - has been almost as costly for Australia as his temporary vacation from the top of the order in the third Test against India.