Is it tough be an Aussie or are they out to get us?
Roar Guru By Rickety Knees, 20 Jul 2009 Rickety Knees is a Roar Guru
- Tagged:
- Cricket, Jonathan Kaplan, rugby, The Ashes, wallabies
It has been a tough weekend for this cricket and rugby tragic. I have been through the pain of watching both the Wallabies and the Australian cricket team being put the sword.
My mind goes back to the Wallabies v All Blacks in Hong Kong last year when referee Alan Lewis had an absolute howler of a game (in favour of the All Blacks).
Then there is Jonathan Kaplan – where any Australian team (S14 or Wallabies) should not bother turning up. Followed by Craig Joubert – though he is more a home town specialist (liking to please the locals).
I have just come away from watching the second Ashes test – Ponting and Hughes in my opinion get bad decisions in the first innings.
Bopara gets the benefit of the doubt. Second innings and Katich is given out off a no ball, and Strauss claims a catch off Hughes which clearly bounced in front of him and Hughes is given out (no referral).
Clearly the rub-of-the-green, or the bounce-of-the-ball or whatever euphemism might apply – it just seems to me that neither the Wallabies nor the cricketers can’t take a trick right now.
Australians can be brash and abrasive and as a demographically small nation we certainly punch above our weight, but is there something about us that subliminally turns officials around the world against us, or is this writer paranoid?
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July 20th 2009 @ 4:54pm
Choppy said | July 20th 2009 @ 4:54pm | Report comment
Sorry I went off a bit early there, but this shows that he certainly should not have been given out caught.
I could live with the Bopara decision as long as the process was consistent with the Hughes’s but it clearly wasn’t and someone needs to be accountable for it.
July 20th 2009 @ 5:02pm
Brett McKay said | July 20th 2009 @ 5:02pm | Report comment
James, that’s correct, and that’s what happened. However, what also should have happend is (as Chop has just posted) the third ump should have said bat hit shoe, and not ball.
Once that all happens, he can’t then turn around and say “oh and by the way, he’s plumb LBW”..
July 20th 2009 @ 5:58pm
katzilla said | July 20th 2009 @ 5:58pm | Report comment
‘we certainly punch above our weight’
That comment is possibly the worst cliche associated with Australian Sport.
You guys were hard done by the last few days, but thats the rub and you have the players to negate issues like that. None of those poor decisions would have made a difference if half of your batsmen hadn’t made poor shot selections in the first innings. Or if Mitchell Johnson wasn’t ‘Spraying weeds’ in Buckingham Palace. The amount of talent you have in your team is so much more then England. Bad runs of calls go against every nation. Ultimately just like your rugby players your just not turning up at crucial points and now bad Umpiring is compounding the issue where it really shouldn’t.
July 20th 2009 @ 8:08pm
Brett McKay said | July 20th 2009 @ 8:08pm | Report comment
Sheek, I’ve just stumbled across something you said above, and it could well be the thing we finally disagree on:
“What a great beer ad. One of the best ever, congrats VB. Your traditional ads were good for a long time too. And not a bad drop at all.”
Not a bad drop?!? VB?!?! Sheek, say it ain’t so!!!
July 20th 2009 @ 11:55pm
jonno said | July 20th 2009 @ 11:55pm | Report comment
Poor playing in cricket tends to attract poor decisions. If you are continually missing the ball or being hit on the pads then dont be surprised if a decision goes against you. As to catching, that is another thing again.
We were done over by the Umpires, no doubt. But the real issue is public relations. We really have get a terrible rap overseas for just about everything. And I am afraid that everyone from the government to cricket boards do nothing about it.
July 21st 2009 @ 12:25am
Whiteline said | July 21st 2009 @ 12:25am | Report comment
Jonno – spot on mate. I assume (and I know that can be dangerous) that those who are on this blog have either played or watched a hell of a lot of cricket over the years…this being the case you’d hope that we’d all realise that over the course of a test match the better wins just about everytime regardless of decisions which may be deemed incorrect.
The aussies were comprehensively outplayed. Flintoff bowled a fuller length which proved decisive.
July 21st 2009 @ 10:43am
Rickety Knees said | July 21st 2009 @ 10:43am | Report comment
England certainly deserved to win – they won 10 out of the 13 sessions played and Andrew Flintoff produced the best spell of fast bowling to win a test match that I have seen. The final margin was a bit over 100 – we can only speculate what might have been had Hughes, Katich and Hussey not been incorrectly given out ….. bring on the referral system which was used in the last AUS V SA series but won’t come into effect until after this series ????????????
July 21st 2009 @ 1:57pm
Choppy said | July 21st 2009 @ 1:57pm | Report comment
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25812080-5013406,00.html
ENGLAND captain Andrew Strauss last night conceded his controversial slips catch in the Lord’s Test may have hit the ground in front of him.
While Strauss firmly maintains he grasped a clean catch off Phillip Hughes, he admitted video replays may have revealed a different story.
“On the slow motion it looks like it hit the ground,” Strauss said.
“But I still maintain that I caught that ball. At times it looks like it hasn’t carried but I still firmly believe it did.
“This is one of the real problems with technology as it is.
“I don’t know what the solution is to be honest with you.”
July 21st 2009 @ 3:23pm
jonno said | July 21st 2009 @ 3:23pm | Report comment
Strauss is turning out to be a real dirty Captain. Look at the way Flintoff was rested off field between spells. Against the spirit and laws of the game. Love the way he blames technology.
Anyone else imagining this but is Flintoff a reall tosser? For a guy who averages over 31 he seems to be really up himself.
July 21st 2009 @ 3:46pm
Choppy said | July 21st 2009 @ 3:46pm | Report comment
Rickety,
You are right the Australians were outplayed given the decisions made, BUT if you speculate how many runs players incorrectly given out would have made then the 119 runs would’ve been close, very close.
As for the referral system, the reason it’s not in for this series is because the poms didn’t want it and as home country apparently until it’s part of law it has to be a unanimous decision. I’ve asked the question previously on this site why wouldn’t a team want the referral system? Maybe it’s my ever increasing paranoia, but I suspect it’s because they know there will be stinking decisions and if they get more than their fair share then all the better for them.