Roar Rookie
Joined December 2013
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Favourite quotes: "Life is a metaphor for cricket" and "In the summer we watched cricket, in the winter we read about it"
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In the moments after Ben Stokes' Headingley miracle, asterisks were already forming in the minds of cricket's more pedantic observers. "Ah yes, bravo Ben.…
Sometime during 1932, just months before the infamous Bodyline series, England's captain Douglas Jardine went to the home of a shady former cricketer called…
Cricket's World Cup is a strange beast. It goes for too long. The format is wrong. There are too few elite teams, but too…
In an irony that has largely gone unnoticed, Phillip Hughes' fatal injury came one year and one day after Michael Clarke told England tailender…
The literary critic George Steiner wrote that prodigies exist in three fields only: music, maths and chess. He might have added cricket to that…
“It's not the despair,” implores John Cleese's character in the movie Clockwise as he slumps on a roadside while wearing a monastic frock, in…
During the Bodyline series, Australian captain Bill Woodfull came under pressure to retaliate against England's brutal tactics that threatened to maim his batsmen. Ever…
One indication can be found here:
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/cutsandglances/index.php/theaustralian/comments/cricket_casualties/
I’d be very surprised if that many fatalities had occurred across all football codes, at all levels, even in the past 120 years.
Another bumper summer? No thanks
it is blatantly hypocritical of those who defended Clarke’s threat last summer to express shock and surprise when a cricket ball does actually kill someone. Quod erat demonstrandum. The piece as a whole is not ironic, but deadly serious.
Another bumper summer? No thanks
His natural angle also makes it a lot easier to aim at the batsman’s ribs. Even the very quickest bowlers tend to bowl many of their deliveries in the 140-143kph range, especially as they build up to top speed. Johnson seems to bowl fewer of these and seems able to hit top speed with considerably less build up. This was certainly the case last summer at least.
Another bumper summer? No thanks
I never said ban bouncers, only that I would be willing to be persuaded that they should be banned, which is a very different thing. It may well be that doing so would be at too high a cost to the game. The key point of the whole piece is that umpires seem reluctant to exercise Law 42 even when bowling becomes clearly intimidatory. Furthermore, it is blatantly hypocritical of those who defended Clarke’s threat last summer to express shock and surprise when a cricket ball does actually kill someone.
Another bumper summer? No thanks
The proviso here is “it seems.” Of course England don’t always lose… who’d be literal-minded enough to believe that? But England has a habit of giving that impression – the team raises expectations and then utterly dashes them. Adelaide 2006 is only the most striking example – there are plenty of others.
Why else do England fans – of both cricket and football – sing ‘the Great Escape’ theme? England has a tradition of celebrating escapes and ‘strategic withdrawals’ (a la Dunkirk). You yourself wrote, in a previous post on Joe Root’s defiant innings, about the inconsistency of England’s batsmen. That is precisely the problem.
For a more detailed contrast between the sporting spirits of Australia and England, I recommend the essay ‘On Australianism’ by that great English cricket writer and commentator, John Arlott.
England’s Ashes: a premature post-mortem
Author’s note: the misspelling of Asif Iqbal’s name, and the name of Donald Bradman in a previous piece, were not my mistakes but were presumably made while the articles were being put online. Neither was in my original submissions. I have asked the website to fix both but, as of this writing, am waiting for a response.
Another bumper summer? No thanks