Another surrealistic technicolour yawn masquerading as entertainment

Opening/closing ceremonies of major sporting events stopped being fascinating a long time ago. I think it was the Lillehammer 1994 Winter Olympics where they irretrievably crossed the boundary into the realm of surrealistic technicolour yawns masquerading as cultural ballets. After Sydney 2000 (the one where Captain Cook discovered Australia on choreographed bicycles) I thought that wanky, over-indulgent sports ceremonies could go no further. Cape Town 2003, the opening ceremony of the Cricket World Cup, in fact proved that.

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Boof playing pretend Australian captain

The ICC are holding their annual meeting of all the Test captains at Lord’s on Monday. Eight of the ten Test captains will be there. The West Indies will be unrepresented, with Carl Hooper apparently unavailable.

More interesting is the fact that the Australian Test captain won’t be there. Steve Waugh isn’t making the trip, and so Australia will be represented at the meeting by none other than Darren Lehmann!

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Made for TV, not for people

Made-for-television cricket. We’ve seen a lot of it in the past five years dished out in the name of “globalising” the sport. Televised but meaningless one-day matches dished up for an insatiable market from the “emerging” regions of world cricket. Singapore, Toronto, Kuala Lumpur, Kathmandu, and even a park in northern Los Angeles have all played host to an array of TV-oriented “spectaculars”. Add to that list the name of Melbourne.

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When it’s ok to be controversial

Case Study A:
Adam Gilchrist speaks at a football club members luncheon.. asked whether he thinks Muttiah Muralitharan throws the ball, replies that Murali’s action “is probably not quite within [the rules]”.

Official Reaction:
The Australian Cricket Board charges Gilchrist with bringing the game into disrepute and issue a statement saying that they do not support his opinions.

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It’s all just a commodity

So South Africa won the Australian one-day triseries for 2001-02. They defeated New Zealand 2-0 in the best-of-three final, and congratulations to them. We should be thankful to them, too, for sparing us from an episode that would have shown us just a little more evidence that cricket is nothing but a commodity for television.

Game three of the finals was all set to be another day-night clash at the venue where night cricket all began, the Sydney Cricket Ground. Yes, what was meant to be: A 2.30pm start on a Sunday afternoon. Thirty to forty thousand chanting, screaming fans, a live nationwide telecast into evening prime-time, a ratings bonanza for the National Nine Network, and an Australian team with a shot at the title.

But there came to be a problem with this. Australia failed to make the finals, for only the third time in the 23-year history of the competition. The alarm bells were ringing at the Packer family’s Channel Nine at the beginning of the week. A Sunday night’s TV schedule taken up with a sporting event involving <i>two</i> overseas teams, and no Aussies in sight? And a chance that the game might not happen at all.

The solution? For Channel Nine to move their television program, er, cricket match to a less ratings-dependant timeslot. In other words, to get it changed from a day-night game to a day game, with the customary 10am morning start. Nine approached the Australian Cricket Board early last week with the request to shift the timing of the third final. The ACB, after consultation with other affected parties, including the South African and New Zealand camps, and the local state (New South Wales) association, agreed. The first international cricket match in Australia to be rescheduled because of television programming concerns was all set.

Thankfully, the South Africans won the finals in two: an eight-wicket rout at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in front of 20,000 spectators and 80,000 empty seats, and a hail-struck second final at the SCG where about ten thousand of the sell-out crowd didn’t bother turning up. The farce of rescheduled third final never came to be. South Africa proved they were the best team of a tri-series which didn’t rise to any great heights, beating a New Zealand team which had a better-than-expected tour of Australia, but ran out of puff when it mattered most.

And it was the tournament where the wheel came off the home side’s World Cup defence strategy.

The series had its share of outstanding individual performances on the field. Chris Cairns’ superb match-winning century against South Africa at the Gabba was one, Michael Bevan’s hundred, less spectacular but just as significant, against the Kiwis in Melbourne was another. The bowling of Shane Bond, who wasn’t even in the tour squad at the start of the season, was a revelation for New Zealand, the 26 year-old fast bowler’s 21 wickets for the VB Series putting him well ahead of any other player.

It was a series which, for me, was better remembered for other things. Glenn McGrath receiving a one-match suspension for an indiscretion while – of all things – batting, was just the start.

Visiting captains Stephen Fleming and Shaun Pollock complained that the tournament itinerary favoured Australia. There is no doubt that the dates and venues of the match-ups was set (as they are every year) to maximise the drawing power at the gate of the Australians. But hey, who was that team that came last again?

There were the divided opinions on the bonus point system, already familiar in Australian state competition but new to international play. The divisions grew wider after Fleming’s admission that he deliberately conceded a bonus point when his side was losing to South Africa in Perth.

And there was the running battle of Steve Waugh versus the South African press corps. An embattled figure with Australia’s 14-into-11 rotation policy crashing to Earth, and with his own form coming under question, Waugh’s off-the-cuff asides at press conference were being pounced upon. An apology was forthcoming after an apparent remark that doctors “didn’t find a brain” when they did a CAT scan on South Africa’s Steve Elworthy. A comment, as he was leaving a difficult press conference, that the media were a bunch of “cockheads”, met compassion from the ACB’s chief executive. Maybe because, by their very nature of their jobs, the media are.

If there’s good to be had from the 2001-02 international season from an Australian point of view, it is that the New Zealand cricket team can now be seen as credible rivals to the Australians, not unlike (politics permitting) India and Pakistan. There are so many sports in which Australia and New Zealand are bitter, but healthy rivals, and the instigation of a cricketing equivalent of rugby’s annual Bledisloe Cup between the Trans-Tasman foes would, if it were to happen, be a ratings bonanza for the Nine Network.

Oops, there’s that talk of TV ratings again.

As a postscript, an ironic observation that I couldn’t help making: the potential third final was bumped from the TV schedule by the Keanu Reeves science-fiction movie “The Matrix”, which was filmed at Fox Studios Australia, literally right next door to the SCG.

Pakistan to replace WI on Sri Lankan tour

Pakistan will play one Test and three one-day internationals in Sri Lanka in January following the cancellation of the West Indies’ tour.

The West Indies Women’s Cricket Federation decided last month that they would not proceed with their tour of Sri Lanka and Pakistan because of security concerns related to geopolitical instability in the south Asian region.

The Pakistanis have taken up the tour itinerary originally laid out for the West Indians. They will arrive in Sri Lanka on January 18. A four-day Test match at the Colts Ground, Colombo on January 20-23 will be followed by three ODIs – the first (January 26) at Asgiriya Stadium, Kandy, and the others (January 28 and 30) back at the Colts Ground.

In other Sri Lankan news, national team coach Guy de Alwis has resigned due to work committments. De Alwis, a wicketkeeper who had represented the Sri Lankan men in Tests and one-day internationals between 1983 and 1988, has been replaced by Nihal Kodituwakku.

WI shelve Asian tour but plan home triseries

The West Indies’ plans for their first international tour since the 1997 Women’s World Cup were shelved during November. The West Indies Women’s Cricket Federation cancelled its tour of Sri Lanka, scheduled for January, and abandoned tentative plans for a visit to Pakistan immediately afterwards.

The war in Afghanistan, and broader concerns about security in Sri Lanka and globally, were given as the reasons for the cancellation of the tour. Pakistan have since agreed to play the tour dates in Sri Lanka vacated by the West Indians.

Meanwhile, plans are afoot to bring all three teams – West Indies, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – together for a triangular series in the Caribbean in 2002. The West Indies Cricket Board’s (WICB) website reported recently that WIWCF treasurer Jocelyn Opadeyi had said that Pakistan had been invited to play five one-day internationals in the West Indies along with three Test matches. The Tests would, according to Opadeyi, be played in Trinidad & Tobago and St Vincent & The Grenadines.

If the Sri Lankans accept their invitation, it is likely that a triangular one-day series will be held in about March.

West Indian women’s cricket has been in the doldrums at an international level for many years due to the lack of financial support. They have not played in any full international competition since the 1997 World Cup in India, having failed to qualify for the 2000 tournament in New Zealand. They last played Test cricket in 1979, in England, while only two women’s Tests have ever been hosted in the Caribbean – both against Australia in Jamaica in 1976.

Top ten things you didn’t know about Martyn Ball

10. He played for Young England in 1989.

9. His nicknames (according to “The Cricketers’ Who’s Who”) are Benny and Barfo.

8. He is Gloucestershire’s only player on the Test leg of the Indian tour.

7. It took eight years at Gloucestershire before Ball was awarded his county cap.

6. The reason the England selectors selected him yesterday for the tour of India is that they wanted to replace Robert Croft with a “like-for-like replacement”. Yes, they wanted a bowler just like Robert Croft…

5. Or maybe it was because they both have two middle names – Martyn Charles John Ball and Robert Damien Bale Croft (and that reminds me to give a special cheerio to Philip Clive Roderick Tufnell)

4. In the 2001 English first-class season he scored 379 runs at a batting average of 29.15, with a top score of his three half-centuries of 68. (Now maybe this is the “like-for-like replacement” of Croft they were talking about.)

3. In his 14-year first-class career for Gloucestershire, Ball has taken 291 wickets for a career bowling average of 37.01

2. He was equal-46th leading wicket-taker in the 2001 English first-class season, with 34 wickets.

And the Number One thing you didn’t know about Martyn Ball is:

1. He exists!

Originally published on rec.sport.cricket following the news that Martyn Ball had been included in the England squad for their 2001-02 Test tour of India.