Future Australian Captains: let’s not have any.

1 Corinthians 13:9. For we know partially and we prophesy partially...

And we never bloody learn, apparently. For goodness’ sake, one Test ago we (meaning The Press and a few bloggers) were agonising over whether Clarke’s appointment as Future Australian Captain (FAC) made him unpopular and  whether or not he is now popular enough to have a bandwagon. If he does, 329 runs and beating India will get a lot of people on it.

For the last six? seven? or so* years, Clarke has had to work in the blinding intensity of the public focus that came with that early anointing. Despite all the afore-mentioned angst, it has taken mere days for David Warner to emerge as the next FAC, helped along by Mickey Arthur. Do they not have the Future Saffer Captain issue in SA, or is Arthur already peddling the official CA let’s-anoint-someone-who-does-well-in-the-focus-groups? The perception of favour didn’t help Clarke on the field or in the press, whatever it did for his bank account, and it may well have hindered him in both.  My favourite theory as to why Clarke was hard to connect to, coming across in press conferences as bland and party-line, is that he was well aware of the damage that could be done to chances at captaincy with a stray comment or controversy.

The perception is that Clarke has had a number of controversies, but once you eliminate the FAC status, speculation about form slumps, and stories that do or don’t match his allegedly-bogan background (they usually involve money and subtle snobbery, reverse or otherwise), you’re left with a relationship that went wrong (he who is without sin, etc) and a fight with Simon Katich which he didn’t start. Katich, let’s remember, left a burgeoning cricket career in WA to further his own chances, so he’s not exactly the shining cricket purist himself.**  Clarke hasn’t (that we know of) been in fights in nightclubs, talked to bookies, had dodgy drug test results or in fact done anything except perhaps be a bit too controlled in press conferences and too much / not enough of a bogan to fit stereotypes. I was actually rather relieved when he took a bit of personal leave because it showed that he was, in fact, human.

We don’t know, and never will, what harm Clarke’s status did to any other potential FACs in the team.  For all Steve (we are not worthy) Waugh’s team had a miraculous collection of talent, it also had a number of blokes he could turn to in the field for thoughts on the game and its state at any given time.  How many of the next generation never bothered to develop the mythical and terribly clichéd cricket brain because they never expected to be captain, with the golden boy constantly in front of them?  How much of Katich’s angst came from that frustration?

Look, I don’t love Clarke.   I was pretty cynical about his declaration at 329, thinking he must have known that would play as humility. He has since said that wasn’t the case, and he was focussed on winning, so we’ll go with that. To be fair, no good captain would put their own milestones ahead of the team’s, and, love him or no, I do think he is a good captain. I can’t quite decide whether the changes in opinion come from a greater freedom to be himself, an improved PR firm (no streaks in the hair, I note, and Channel 9 playing Western Sydney backyard cricket footage), some stunning cricket, or all of the above.

Passing the FAC mantle on to David Warner, though, is not good for Warner, the team, or the next generation of cricketers. Surely they should all aim for captaincy, at least at first, and think they have a chance? Why saddle a talent like Warner with all that expectation and extra focus? Does he not have enough to do, working out how to be a T20 star and a Test opener? Why make him also work out, all at once, how to: 

• comment on the current captain’s form in press conferences, 
• balance relationships in all of his dressing-rooms, 
• deal with people calling for his head at the slightest slump in form, 
• shut off the glare of the spotlight, and the positive and negative things that go with it, 
• enjoy the fruits of his success without being called a tosser, 
• respond gracefully when the person who called you a tosser calls you insecure for wanting respect,  
• and, somewhere in there, have a life? 

He'd learn those things eventually anyway, being an Australian cricketer, a Test opener and playing in the IPL. Shouldn’t we be rewarding his talent with room and respect and space to grow?  We have Warney to satisfy our national quota of cricket stories in the social pages, not to mention some fresh international imports thanks to the BBL - how about we just let Warner be Warner, and worry about who will be captain next when we actually need one?

* vagueness due to Wikipedia blackout, cricinfo not having FAC appointment as one of its stats

** YES I’m still bitter.  

1 Corinthians 13:7* (Love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Gruelling stuff.

Love bears all things: three days outside in Melbourne weather.  Every morning I arrived at the MCG wearing boots, jeans and a jumper with a fur-trimmed hood.  The last week of December, technically midsummer, but I longed for my beanie. I kept my hat on, even when I had my hood up, as it said ‘Australia’ and I didn’t want there to be any confusion about who I was supporting.   The first day stayed that cold, the second day oscillated between the bone-slicing wind and the skin-scorching sun, and on the third the sun finally won.  It wasn’t the heat – I'm West Australian, I can take a bit of warmth – but the searing bite of the UV in every sunbeam that drove us back into the shade. Despite multiple coatings of suncream, I was pink for a few days, thanks to reflections off the grass and the extra thin ozone layer in these parts.

Love believes all things: one of the disarming things about cricket is that belief is always possible – until everyone is out, you just never know. Even now, I believe that we could’ve bowled England out if we’d had a go at a damp pitch under a cloudy sky. I believe that our batsmen have the skill and the talent to have kept on batting, if they’d had the form, the will and the discipline to go with it. I believe that on the mornings of days two and three it was still possible for us to win.  (Probable? Not so much.) I believe that if Mitchell Johnson had got out of bed on the right side he could’ve taken a hat-trick. During the match, I believed that this might be the partnership that won the game. That this next one might draw the game. That these guys – no, wait, these guys – could at least put it into five days. That these next guys could put it into four days… oh, thank goodness.

Love hopes all things: I hoped for form, will and discipline for our batsmen. I hoped for Hilfy to take a hat-trick, because his economy and work rate deserved it. I hoped Punter would have a Waugh-at-the-SCG cap’n’s knock, and save our collective and individual dignities and the match all at once.  I hoped Hughes and Smith would give us hope for the future. (They gave me a little. I had wanted it in centuries, but will take the small Pandoran glimmer that was their second inningses.)  I hoped Watson would not give everyone else more evidence for disliking him - and then I hoped it would rain. Now, I hope the selectors take a good, hard look at themselves. I hope Cricket Australia find someone who can decode the mysteries of swing, or at the very least, nick the English dossier on it. I hope we get pitches like this one, and the one at the WACA, more often, regardless of our form. I hope the cricket boards of other countries (including ours!) can somehow manage to do what the ECB have done - although I'm not sure if even they know exactly how they've done it. Mind you, I also hope the ECB do something about county cricket.

Love endures all things: love endures all out for 98, stays til the last ball, and makes sure it’s in time for the first ball the next day, and the day after that. It is heart-sick that it has to go to work and miss the last hour, despite the expected cataclysmic result and subsequent grave-dancing. Love endures England batting for days, and since this is love of cricket, and not merely love of Australian cricket, it somehow, around the heartache, enjoys Trott’s batting, (no, really – but then I like Watson, so, you know, odd) KP’s defiance, the ebb and flow of the bowling, the mysterious impact of the weather**, Bresnan’s incredulous joy.  Love endures the Barmy Army and the annoying way their tunes get stuck in your head, the equally annoying way we’ve never really come up with anything to counter them,*** and the really, really annoying way they make you laugh. Love endures the captain losing it in an undignified, unprofessional and unwarranted fashion, and although it definitely doesn’t approve, it admires the grit with which he carries on, and the defiant response of the home crowd the next morning when the Barmy Army boos him.

I love cricket. Even when it hurts.

* I am intending to come back to the other six verses, this just needed to be written now.

** God was clearly on England’s side: the sun came out when they started batting, and the only time – I swear, the only time – it went away again while they were batting was during drinks breaks.

*** Now’s our chance: the Barmies were formed in England’s doldrums, after all, and it takes heartbreak to fuel creativity. At the very least, we must be able to come up with something better than ‘Your next queen is Camilla Parker-Bowles.’

Special Bonus: Me on Steve Waugh.

Ah, the good old days. I found this paragraph, which I must've written for some competition or other - the question was probably 'Why do you love Steve Waugh?'  I have one of my housemate's answers on file as well, so I wasn't just writing random panegyrics to Steve... not that there's anything wrong with that.

I love Steve because he is a stubborn, competitive and occasionally ruthless captain who has lead our team in carving a swathe of devastation through international cricket. Despite the nay-sayers bemoaning the lack of competitiveness, we love to win, and Steve gave us lots of wins. We will excuse a man much who succeeds, and fortunately Steve has not given us much to forgive him for. What he has given us is years of beautiful cricket as a player and as a captain. When he finally goes he’ll be sadly missed, but I know that his mark on Australian cricket will live on.

I probably wouldn't call his cricket 'beautiful' these days, but then again, I like Shane Watson, so maybe I would.

I miss Steve, and one of my highlights of being at Lords last year is that I walked past him.

An Introduction to Cricket, Shakespeare and the Bible. (A Series in Fourteen Parts)

This originated as the first post of a quite ambitious series, but then got so involved that it evolved into the introduction, and the now-even-more-ambitious series starts next time. With impeccable timing, I’m starting a series on my love of cricket just as my team has been historically humbled by Pakistan. In England, at that, possibly to ensure I get the maximum amount of grief from my English acquaintances. And a few Indian folk, never ones to miss an opportunity. But, as usual, I digress.

Following some email conversations several months ago, I was idly wondering how I could prove to someone (the ACB? torturers? my logically-trained sister?) that what I feel for cricket is not merely ‘like,’ or ‘fanatical like,’ or even ‘potentially pathological obsession,’ but is in fact love. My four years of undergraduate Arts training sprang to the fore, or, more realistically, ambled by on the way to Tav and pointed out that I needed to do some research and define my terms. Here follows an account of my extensive research on the important topic of like vs love, a prequel to testing the hypothesis that I do actually love cricket. The team are doing their level best to test the attachment out there in the real world, so I thought I’d work through the issue in theory.

According to Wordcount, love is the 384th most used word, just after economic (rather sad, really) and before means. (The word after this is upon, so according to Wordcount ‘love means upon’ – make of that what you will.) Like is 67th, which didn’t help one of my starting premises that we use love more than like. Moving on to google, a simple search for love turns up 1.81m results (I have no comments on their quality or suitability for viewing by children – or adults, for that matter) while like gets 3.27m. That premise is therefore officially dead.

What persists is a further premise that we use the word love when we could say like, or (even better) enjoy, appreciate, take pleasure in, am happy upon/with/about/in/beside etc etc. Love is sometimes used for emphasis, but google agrees with me that love is employed a little too often, returning roughly 2.4m results for ‘love overused,’ most of which seem to involve a phrase along the lines of ‘the word love is overused these days / today / nowadays.’* To give this some context, a search for ‘like love’ returns 364m results – like can mean a lot of things, not to mention its use on Facebook, google, You Tube et al to indicate approval. ‘Like vs love’ returns 204m, most of which seem to be discussions on how to tell if you simply like someone or do in fact love them.

The difference between the two is much debated - to quote the Shakespearean classic, 10 Things I Hate About You:

"See, there’s a difference between like and love. Because I like my Skechers, but I love my  Prada backpack."
"But I love my Skechers."
"That’s because you don’t have a Prada backpack."

I have some Skechers which I am attached to, but if pressed, would happily admit I don’t love. Having never owned a Prada backpack, I can’t comment on that particular criteria, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t love it either. I might say I loved it in casual conversation, but it wouldn’t show up in any serious list of things I love. For all I’m trying to find out if cricket would be there, most of the 'things' on that list would be people.

So, extensive research covered, I need a definition of love to test my hypothesis on. When in doubt, go back to first principles: the OED, Shakespeare, and the Bible. The OED has several definitions of love, one of which is “a great interest and pleasure in something,” but where’s the fun in that? That’s barely even one post to prove my point: “I have great interest in and take pleasure from cricket, therefore I love it.” Heck, it’s scarcely a paragraph. I’m going for something more rounded.

While Shakespeare deals with the subject at length in several genres, he doesn’t give us a reliable definition of what love is.** Complexity does not lend itself to consistency. He comes closest in Sonnet 116 which contains negative definitions: “Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds” and “Love's not Time's fool” - but I’m all about positivity. Not so much about academic rigour or consistency, as you may have gathered.*** The sonnet does say that love “is an ever-fixéd mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark”, and I’ll come back to that at some point in the series.

This is a pretty good start, but I’d like more to work with; if I’m going get fourteen posts out of this subject, it's clear I need to go to the Bible. Yes, fourteen, although I reserve the right, ala The Wheel of Time, to extend the series if necessary. Or reduce it, for any reason deemed acceptable by The Management. If it’s any comfort, future posts might be shorter than this one and at my current rate it will take me more than a year to finish the series. That’s a long time in cricket.

The Bible, conveniently, has a lot to say about love. God is love, for starters, but proving that God = love = cricket is a little beyond even me. (Mind you, that would make going to the cricket on a Sunday a sacramental event, and I could take time off to go to Tests for religious reasons… hmm.) Amongst it all is a whole chapter on what love IS, and it’s quite definite. So, risking my immortal soul, excommunication, or at the very least some narky comments and suggestions that I attend theology classes, I am going to work my way through 1 Corinthians 13 and test my love of cricket against it, hopefully proving in the process that I love cricket in the, err, Biblical sense. (Ahem.) Please bear in mind that this may be one of those wholesome family stories where I learn some important lessons along the way and turn out to be completely wrong, since, all evidence to the contrary, I really don't know what I'll end up concluding.


* Is this true? A question for another day, or another blog, but for all I know, the Ancient Greeks wandered around all, y’know, “I totally love what you’ve done with your hair!” and “Are those Athenian leather? Oh. My. Gods. I love them!” Or: “Oh I love, love, love Sophocles: have you seen his latest? So much gore - totally classic!” The Greeks may have sounded like the great Jane Austen work Clueless – you heard it here first.


** Thousands of academics would disagree, but then they would turn around and disagree with each other about what he meant, thereby proving my point. If he’d defined it, they wouldn’t be arguing. Well, some of them would argue on principle, but not thousands of them.


*** I’m stealing borrowing Rohan’s idea of acknowledging my shortcomings at the beginning of the series and thereby giving myself an out for the rest of it. I haven’t framed it as a disclaimer, per se, but you get the gist.

Vale Amy.

One of my favourite bloggers, Amy S, is dead.

http://amy-cricket.blogspot.com/

Amy wrote well, had a quirky, occasionally dark sense of humour, posted amazing volumes of information (reading about her life, I think she must have got very little sleep!) and had that rare trifecta: she loved cricket, had some idea of what she was talking about *and* she could write about it. From discussions in comments and the odd email exchange, she also followed AFL and had a keen interest in politics, which is where she ended up working.

A smart, funny, sports-loving woman working in our government; I wonder what she would have done.