Flashback to '98, or, the best police line-up you've ever seen



After an ugly public battle the Labour party has a new leader, after a bloodless military coup Fiji has disposed its Prime Minister and after some gutless batting and a bad case of Warneyitis England crap the bed against Australia in the Ashes. What is this, 1998? What’s next, a completely unwarranted addition to the Rocky film series? Oh, wait…

There’s probably not too many adjectives left to describe the Aussies victory, but I’ll go with the understated, improbable. To quickly recap, going into day five, the Aussies needed to take 9 English wickets and then chase down whatever score the tourists made, plus the 50-odd runs they were already behind by, all on a pitch that had already yielded more than 1000 runs and that had seen the worlds two best bowlers return figures of about 2/250 between them. As I said, improbable.

But not impossible. You can never write the Australians off, can you? In the rare situations were they look in terrible shape they are able to keep coming, keep fighting and inevitably pull off the improbable. And at this, S.K. Warne has no peer.

He’s also a pretty good sledger, and seems to have the knack for combining idiotic schoolboy taunts with surprisingly insightful psychology:
• To Ian Bell, Warne said, “You don’t like being called ‘The Sherminator’, do you?” This is not only a pretty amusing and accurate look-a-like, but it also implies they’re going to keep going with it and almost forces the batsman to verbally engage Warne.
• To Geraint Jones, Warne asked if his Dad was coming out to help him bat after Jones’ father had publicly defended his son’s wicket-keeping ability in response to a previous Warne criticism.
• Trying to fire up Glenn McGrath to take the last English wicket, Warne, from first slip, reminded him of what they had waiting in the dressing rooms, and also let the tail-end batsmen know that Warne didn’t think they’d be there long; “C’mon McGrath, ham & pineapple Pigeon, ham & pineapple…”

And that is the beauty of Warne; he’s part naive schoolkid, part despicable lout, part admirable gamesman and part unrelenting sporting genius. He is recognisable and relatable on several levels. He’s also the best bowler the sport has ever seen. I will not doubt the Aussies again.

Some other observations:

England's loss, as some parts of the media have claimed, was not a result of Flintoff’s 1st innings declaration. They had batted for the best part of 2 days, got a huge score and sent the Aussies in at the end of day 2 a demoralised and tired outfit. They got early breakthroughs that night and seemed to have stranglehold on the match. Well, that is until they wrapped both hands around their own throats. No, the problem was that England’s batting was too negative in the second innings. If they had made as little as 50 more runs the Aussies would have be required to score at a run a ball. As it was, they had the underwhelming task of only 4.5 an over. There’s nothing like scoreboard pressure.

Ashley Giles is England’s best spinner? Really? We’re sure about this? What is there, 25, 30 million people over there, and the best they can come up with is a left arm finger spinner who doesn’t turn the ball, doesn’t land it consistently, doesn’t keep the runs down and does it all in the ugliest pair of sunglasses you’ve ever seen? No wonder Pieterson left South Africa.

I understand all the hysteria surrounding Ricky Ponting at the moment, I really do, but calling him the best since Bradman is going a bit far, I mean, I wouldn’t even call him the best batsmen of my generation. That honour goes to Brian Lara, who, despite the unfortunate name, looked absolutely unstoppable during his peak. You just couldn’t bowl anywhere to him. And there’s no way, when at his peak, that Lara would fall to Matthew Hoggard with the 2nd new ball when he’s on 142 like Ponting did. No frickin’ way.

With the Michael Clarke v Shane Watson debate seemingly settled for now, the pressure shifts squarely on to Damien Martyn. Mike Hussey was impressive again, and was moved up the order to no. 4 ahead of Martyn. The selectors seem hell bent on including an all-rounder in the Test team and although Watson is injured at the moment, and undeserving, I think we’ll see him in the team for one of the 4th or 5th ‘dead rubber’ tests. Geez, how long til footy season starts?