Archive: Australia
Saturday, 16 September 2006
Unfortunately, John Howard was not in the House when Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage and Water, Anthony Albanese, gave the following solution for reducing greenhouse emissions, speaking in Federal Parliament on Wednesday:
Climate change is real and the threat of dangerous climate change is also real. What Labor would do is cut Australia’s greenhouse pollution by 60 per cent by 2050. We know that, if you have a target, it is like a one-day cricket target: you do not bat out the first 30 overs; you send out Adam Gilchrist to get some runs on the board early because it makes it easy to get to the target later on. That is what the business council’s Global Roundtable on Climate Change has said.
Friday, 14 July 2006
In the week in which Percy Sonn has ascended to the presidency of the ICC, comes the news that Northern Territory member of parliament Len Kiely has resigned from all his official posts following an action-packed day in the territory government’s corporate box on the opening day of the Australia A v Pakistan A game in Darwin on Tuesday.
Kiely was hosting a function in his capacity as acting speaker of the NT Legislative Assembly when, having been refused more alcohol late in the day, reportedly told a 61 year-old female security guard: “I have a very long tongue and I could use it on you and make you a very happy woman”.
It was reported that a total of 107 Crown Lager stubbies were consumed in the corporate box on Tuesday. It is not known whether this is a ground record for Marrara Oval.
Just as well they weren’t Darwin Stubbies.
Wednesday, 28 June 2006
Andrew Johns is, arguably, the greatest rugby league player of the last decade. As a kid he would, like all sportsminded schoolboys in Australia, have played a bit of cricket at school and over the summer. None of this, however, explains today’s revelation that Johns has been signed up to make two appearances in the New South Wales Twenty20 side for next season.
The decision to include Johns in the side for two games against South Australia (one in his home town of Newcastle on January 7, the other at Stadium Australia on January 10) has, it seems, been approved by the NSW Cricket Board, and confirmed by Cricket NSW chief executive Dave Gilbert. Johns, needless to say, is not one of the Blues’ contracted players for the 2006-07 season.
If this goes ahead, it marks a significant crossing-the-line for cricket between sport and show business. Will we have more Twenty20 matches where teams have their “designated celebrity” in the squad? Who can we expect to see? Socceroos? Wiggles? The cast of Home and Away? Evictees from Big Brother? Hmm, maybe we’ll be asked to SMS the name of the player we want dropped for the next game…
Maybe it’s not as absurd as it sounds. It may well be that the NSW Cricket Board have decided that (a) Twenty20 cricket is not to be taken seriously, and (b) they are aiming for an entirely different spectator base to that for the traditional forms of the game. Adding celebrity involvement to the game could be a way to get more bums on seats, more money at the gate, more revenue for Cricket New South Wales.
Financially it may be a stroke of genius from CNSW chief executive Dave Gilbert. Cricket it’s not, at least proverbially speaking. This will be food for thought in England, where the 2006 Twenty20 Cup kicked off (oops, a football expression there) last night.
Monday, 19 June 2006
This just in from Cricket Australia:
Fifth 3 mobile Ashes Test (SCG) – SOLD OUT
The general public ticket allocation to the Fifth 3 mobile Ashes Test match at the SCG has sold out within 40 minutes this morning.
Tickets all matches in Sydney, including days 1 – 4 of the Test match, went on sale from 9am today through Ticketek (via web, over the phone and through outlets).
A small amount of tickets still remain to the other international matches scheduled for the SCG this summer including:
- Aus v Eng, Twenty20, 9 Jan 2007
- Aus v NZ, ODI, 21 Jan 2007
- Aus v Eng, ODI, 2 Feb
- Second ODI Final
For additional ticketing information, please visit www.cricket.com.au.
Thursday, 1 June 2006
Looks like I’m not.
Duly registered as a member of the Australian Cricket Family, I logged onto the Cricket Australia website at 9am this morning to try and get some tickets for the Sydney Test against England in January. The link took me through to Ticketek’s booking website, which told me:
Friday, 26 May 2006
Today, Friday May 26, is National Sorry Day in Australia. Instituted in 1997, it is the annual commemoration of the tens of thousands of indigenous Australian children who were forcibly removed from their homes as children.
It’s not a holiday, but it is certainly a day when all Australians should stop to reflect on the destruction of indigenous society and culture over the past two and a quarter centuries, and which is still happening, not just in the Northern Territory but all across the country.
More information about National Sorry Day can be found on the NSD Committee’s website.
Why am I writing about this in my cricket blog? Because the cricketing establishment is just one part of white Australian society which has given our indigenous brethren a raw deal over the decades. Out of over 500 Test and one-day international cricketers for Australia, both male and female, only two - Faith Thomas (1958) and Jason Gillespie (1996-) are known to be of indigenous heritage.
That is far below the proportion of indigenous people to the total Australian population (believed to be around 2 per cent). Two is also the number of indigenous bowlers no-balled for throwing in first-class cricket, namely Jack Marsh and Eddie Gilbert - now that’s way above 2 per cent of all the Australian first-class bowlers who have been called.
Although Cricket Australia’s indigenous programs are inching towards the 21st century, there are still very few playing first-class cricket and no one likely to make an imminent breakthrough to the Australian side. Compare that with the progress made in rugby league, Australian rules and rugby union.
Even Sir Donald Bradman showed little interest in the development of indigenous cricket in his lifetime, the Bradman Foundation setting up such a program in his name following his death in 2001. It was claimed, posthumously, that Bradman was interested in indigenous issues because “his son knew an aboriginal boy and sometimes brought him home”.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that the first cricket team from Australia to tour England was an all-Aboriginal squad, in 1868. Not that they were treated as well as they could have been while in England. They were treated as a bit of a novelty at some venues, being required to give boomerang and spear-throwing exhibitions during breaks in play, for example. One (King Cole) died of illness while on tour. Only two went on to play intercolonial first-class cricket after returning to Australia.
It wasn’t until 2003 that formal recognition of the 1868 team began to roll. During his acceptance speech for induction to the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame, Ian Chappell proposed that the members of the 1868 team should retrospectively be granted full international status.
While none of their matches on the 1868 were of first-class status, Cricket Australia took the idea on board, eventually coming up with the idea of allocating player numbers and special caps as recognition of their place of full Australian representatives.
The official presentation was made during the 2004 Boxing Day between Australia and Pakistan at the MCG. One of the descendents of the touring team was present to accept a cap at the ceremony, for which Faith Thomas was also present. The official numbers are allocated with a prefix of “AUS” to distinguish them from Test and ODI player numbers.
Earlier this month, Cricket Australia announced that they would “fly the Aboriginal flag at cricket grounds across the country” every May 13, to mark the anniversary of the day the 1868 tourists landed in England. Except that this year, they did it on May 12 because the 13th was a Saturday, and apparently they didn’t fly the Torres Strait Islander flag. A curious gesture buried deep in cricket’s off-season.
CricketArchive, whose database of match scorecards is vastly superior to CricInfo’s, has been adding scorecards from the 1868 tour to their website. There’s still more research and data entry to be done (their archival work is huge and highly commendable), but it’s worth commemorating indigenous Australia today by noting the match between the Australian Aborigines and Surrey which concluded at The Oval on this day in 1868. (This particular scorecard was added to CricketArchive just this week.)
For more information about the disgraceful treatment we continue to serve up to our indigenous brethren, I recommend taking a look at the indigenous news section on the ABC website, especially the situation in Wadeye. And then think about the prominent self-styled “cricket tragic” who refuses to join the rest of Australia in saying Sorry.
Footnote: the 1868 Australian Aboriginal touring team, with their cap numbers, is as follows (their names on tour given in brackets):
- AUS 1: Arrahmunyarrimun (Peter),
- AUS 2: Ballrinjarrimin (Sundown),
- AUS 3: Bonnibarngeet (Tiger),
- AUS 4: Brimbunyah (Red Cap),
- AUS 5: Bripumyarrimin (King Cole),
- AUS 6: Bullchanach (Bullocky),
- AUS 7: Charles Lawrence (the English-born captain/coach),
- AUS 8: Grongarrong (Mosquito),
- AUS 9: Jarrawuk (Twopenny),
- AUS 10: Jumgumjenanuke (Dick-a-Dick),
- AUS 11: Lytejerbillijun (Jim Crow),
- AUS 12: Pripumuarraman (Charles Dumas),
- AUS 13: Unaarrimin (Johnny Mullagh),
- AUS 14: Yellanach (Johnny Cuzens).
Wednesday, 19 April 2006
…they let Jason Gillespie score a double century.
Dizzy!
Jason Gillespie, 102 not out in a Test innings for Australia. Yes, it’s against Bangladesh, you’ve got a problem with that?
He’s done what Dennis Lillee, Merv Hughes, Geoff Lawson, Paul Reiffel, Damien Fleming, Brett Lee and other fast bowlers before him have failed to do since Ray Lindwall in 1955… break the 80 barrier and score a Test match ton.
Monday, 17 April 2006
Dear readers, opening the newspaper you must have been first taken by surprise, then by anger. The second Test between Bangladesh and Australia has got underway in Chittagong on Sunday, but no coverage on that.
Dear readers, we beg your apology for this. In fact, we have been forced to deprive you. We too love cricket as much as you do. But to protest the medieval barbarism that police carried out on the journalists, we did not have any way out other than this.
It was not possible for us to file reports while fellow journalists languished in hospital, victims of brutal police assault. To protest this unjust police torture the journalists immediately held a meeting and decided to boycott the Bangladesh-Australia series until the incident was fairly investigated and the guilty police officials were punished. All the national newspapers of the country, local newspapers in Chittagong and all private television channels will carry only the scoreboard of the series. We sincerely feel sorry for the readers for this inconvenience. At the same time we hope that you will also stand by us in this protest by perceiving the whole situation from a pragmatic standpoint.
- from the sports section of the Daily Star, 17.4.06
 Of all the reports I have seen over the years of crowd disturbances at sporting events, this has to be one of the most amazing, and I’m not talking just cricket.
It all started before the game when photographer Shamsul Haq Tanku was reportedly assaulted by police after his request to bring his auto-rickshaw onto the perimeter of the field was refused. The story continues as told by Nabila Ahmed of the Fairfax press and by the Daily Star’s Chittagong correspondents.
The extraordinary media protest and police reaction have, so far at least, received little coverage in Australia, where there has been more interest in the fact that Australia dismissed Bangladesh cheaply. The headline on the AAP wire report as posted to News Limited’s Fox Sports website, treats it all rather flippantly. If you read the report from Sportal on the Cricket Australia site, the only dramatic event all day was the controversy of Aftab Ahmed’s dismissal.
And you really have to laugh at not just the selection but the layout of the ABC’s picture gallery of Day One action.
I trust we’ll hear a lot more about this disgraceful episode. Cricket grounds need to be a safe place not just for players and spectators, but for the workforce who make their living at the Test in varying capacities. That said, it’s a kneejerk over-reaction to say at this stage that international cricket should be banished from Chittagong because of this.
Friday, 14 April 2006
After his heroic backs-to-the-wall matchwinning knock to get Australia out of jail against cricketing powerhouse Bangladesh, there is a question begging to be asked of Ponting comma RT full stop:
Is Punter the greatest Tasmanian of all time? Greater than Boonie? Greater than Joe Lyons? Greater than Truganini? Greater than Peter Cundall? Greater than Errol Flynn himself?
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