Cricket and Why We Play It

Disclaimer: Americans can stop reading now. You will not understand. In fact, it might be best if everyone except Australians stopped reading now.

I am an Australian. If there is one thing that Australians are truly passionate about, it is not Vegemite, or Holdens, or Outback, but Cricket.

Opinion varies from Australian to Australian on why exactly we play cricket. There are two theories:

1. We play cricket to beat the English.


2. We play cricket to beat the New Zealanders.

I am a subscriber to both these theories, in the inverse order of that given above. The principal reason for playing cricket is to beat New Zealand at every opportunity available.

So you might understand if I am a bit tender at losing a one-day cricket series to New Zealand 3-0. I have a couple of things to say about this.

Any New Zealanders who read this will no doubt accuse me of sour grapes (especially when they get near the end). They are right. But they are therapeutic sour grapes.

Cricket and How To Lose At It

If Michael Hussey ever captains Australia again it will be too soon. Much too soon.

One of the fundamental characteristics of a good captain of a cricket team is that he knows how to create pressure. Some captains have it, some don't. The ones that don't will not last long. Hussey does not have it. Michael Vaughan has it. Andrew Flintoff is learning it. Ricky Ponting is pretty good at it. Steve Waugh was legendary. Michael Hussey couldn't create pressure in his car tyre, let alone on the cricket field.

It is absolutely critical that a team in the field be able to put pressure on the batsmen and dry runs up, at least for a little while. This is how wickets are taken - by pressuring the batsmen into taking risks.

Of course, every player in the field plays his part in creating pressure. But it is the captain who is responsible for it. He uses his bowlers. He uses his field. He creates pressure and he gets batsmen out.

During the debacle witnessed today, the New Zealanders only took risks because they got bored. There was not a moment of pressure applied to them at any stage of the game. The captain has to take responsibility for this.

Now some captains are really good and can defend almost any total, but these are few and far between. It helps to have a great team, of course. Only a very few captains will successfully defend 130 runs. There are some captains who can defend 220 pretty consistently. Most captains in international cricket can defend 290 without too much trouble. But any idiot with a team taken from the Dubbo animal shelter ought to be able to defend 346.

Fair enough, once you might have been unlucky. Sometimes the luck goes against you. Sometimes the other team just play blindingly well and there's nothing you can do. But losing two games in a row, one defending 336 and the other defending 346 is utterly inexcusable. No captain ought to keep his job after such a scandal.

Now there will undoubtably be some nancy-boy out there who wants to defend Michael Hussey, who will point out that New Zealand lost four wickets for forty runs in the first ten overs. Isn't that a sign that he can find wickets? No no no no no no no. That is a sign that there are some good bowlers in the side who can take wickets with the new ball. The failure to capitalise on that start is the truly staggering thing about today's performance. Anyone with a team from the Tanami Desert Home For Geriatric Persons Who Have Lost Everything Below Their Navals ought to be able to defend 346 from a start of 4/40 from ten overs.

Michael Hussey has got to go.

A Plea to the Australian Broadcasting Commission

The other thing to say about today's game is that the ABC needs to lift its game and get some commentators into New Zealand games.

Every cricket-plaing country on earth has produced commentators of a reasonable level of proficiency and professionalism, except New Zealand, it seems. India has produced the excellent Harsha Bhogle and Sunil Gavaskar. Pakistan of course has their own batting legend, Wasim Akram. Allan Donald very respectably represents South Africa. Jonathan Agnew of course is among the very best from the BBC.

Even our very own K.J. O'Keefe, despite being a one-eyed lunatic (one-eyed in the metaphorical sense) with a snort for a laugh, at least has insight into the game, realises that he's one-eyed, is self-deprecatingly humorous about it and gives the other side a fair go.

The best New Zealand can produce is Bryan Waddle. The best Bryan and his fellows can produce is six hours of theorising on how New Zealand might still win the match, no matter how dim it might look. I just want to go and be sick after the first innings of it, even when Australia have put on 336 and look unbeatable (not a typo, I didn't get to listen to the first half of today's game).

Even the pretence of even-handed commentary is absent, as made all too plain by the rather-too-audible wild cheers from the back of the commentary box during the last two overs of today's game. This, it seems, is the height of New Zealand professionalism.

A Piece of Prose from Yesterday

There comes a time on a Thursday afternoon, before Friday is imminent and when Saturday is as yet only the first blush of dawn on the horizon; when no email is arriving, when the notice board has nothing new; when the internet has been read and re-read, but the American and European news sites have pulled the covers up tight and gone to sleep for the night; when the investment made at lunch brings its drowsy return, and you realise that there are only so many cups of tea that can usefully be drunk in one day; and then you enter the long, dark tea-time of the soul.

Credit, of course, to Douglas Adams for the idea.