Yup, that NZ could have won despite everything says it all.

Yeah, so why did Carey throw it? When:
He was in his ground at the time. – no sign of possible stumping.
He was not setting out for a run – not a run out.

So what cause did he have to throw? Cummins and Carey said they had noticed him “going for a walk out of his crease” – you know, as batsmen do when the ball is dead, several times before, and cooked up the plan. So Bairstow had the basic expectation that the ball was dead, and everyone thought it dead, but the Australians saw an opportunity to renege on that basic expectation and exploit it.

Carey threw the ball, not because of any actual stroke of cricket or battle of bat and ball, any mastery, but by exploiting the dead ball habits and expectations that had been established – and changing them.

Look, I’ve watched for decades. I hadn’t seen this game, but saw this, and am only commenting because I can’t believe the standards have fallen so low that this is even in dispute.
My country had probably the dopiest cricketers ever, were probably “wandering out of their crease all the time” – as everyone does – but no Australian, or South African or test cricketer ever saw a need to pull such a d*ckish move against NZ because A) they were not that desperate, and b) their role models were never that d*ckish (well, they learned to rise above for a while after the Underarm) so c) they would not sink that low.

Celebrate getting a cheap one over the poms, winding them up, whatever way you want not enjoy it. But it was still also a shameful breach of the spirit of the game. I feel sad to see Australians so desperate to justify this; I know there is a lot of scary stuff in the world right now, and I hope everything is all right in your lives that you need such low blows to feel good about yourselves. But that’s my last comment on it.

Waiting for them to fall over in the playing of a shot, yes, I’m sure.

. Especially since the field are in charge of the rhythm of the game, the one sanctuary the batsman has is their routine expectations. Those accorded them over the day, the game, the history of the game.
With a keeper up, the batsman has no expectation to be safe.
Yes, with a keeper back, the batsman has a greater expectation to be safe.
Or used to because, yes, it was a cunning and desperate hail mary considering Bairstow was in his crease at the time, totally within the rules, totally out of keeping with the spirit of the game. Oh, there’s going to be such “fun” now. Where would we be without such continual contributions from the “great” “sporting” nation of Australia.

I never said I gave the legal view of a stumping.

Yes. The ball was live and in motion when Bairstow, after checking his ground – which is his due diligence, went to check the pitch. In a test match. You can call that a stumping, clearly. But there are only two in-game reasons for leaving your crease.

It is not arrogance that made him walk out of his crease, because that is all that all batsmen have felt entitled to do forever. Trying to spin the Australians lack of moral fibre as Bairstow’s weakness is unbecoming. But sadly, expected I guess. He’s certainly learned something. It seems we all are.

That’s a valid question, on who the onus lies.
And I should rephrase my earlier post. The wicket was within The rules as written of “fielders and batsmen all considering the ball dead” – “in the view of the bowlers end umpire”.
Was it a stumping? No, he had never left his ground, and made his mark. A stumping requires being drawn out of his ground in process of making his shot. Was it a run out? No, he was seeking no run.
Was the keeper entitled by law to imagine the ball was live and there was a legitimate dismissal available? Rules as written, apparently so.
Umpires could have saved things by ruling not out. They botched that.
In test cricket, you stump a batsman who clearly thinks the ball is dead, is not in the spirit of the game. Batsmen playing for hours on hours over days deserve that simple courtesy. Or used to.
Without that basic respect, they have to now be on alert for catchee catchee monkey games. “Ok, the keeper is throwing it back… wait, they have thrown it to silly mid off in a clever ploy! They throw down the stumps!”
Or the batsmen – look at the fun they can now have running sneaky singles now because they made the fielding side think the ball was dead. “balls not dead till I say yahtzee”: Bowlers end bat can make that known to the umpire before the ball is even bowled.
All three players now have to raise their hands to signal the ball dead, I guess. That is the only world where this dismissal is legit.
That BS belong is the shorter versions. “It’s not cricket.”

Heh. Cute.

They do when the non-striker is backing up too far – bowlers stop and hold the ball over the bails as a warning. In 1 day cricket they might just do the run out, but never test cricket. And that is wen the batsman is trying to get an advantage.

Or maybe they don’t play like this in Australia any more. That would explain a lot.

…. Sure.

The point being he played it awkwardly for whatever reason, checked his ground then went for a look.

It’s not a stumping if the ball is dead.
No one cares how quick he throws it. The batsman looked at his foot, in ground, then walked out to check the pitch. The ball was dead.

It didn’t look like good sportsmanship to me. Bairstow ducked under a bouncer – a low bouncer he only just got under – and like every batsman I have ever who has seen the ball doing something unexpected off the pitch, went to take a look at it.
Is it more meditative, ritual, than practical? Probably. Was there EVER a chance of a run? No. Was the ball dead to him? 100%.

Aussies’ only defence is they left it in the hands of the umpires, who botched it terribly. But on any viewing, the call from the dressing room should have been to drop the appeal.

Desperate, cheap, and against the spirit. The consequences for batsmen and umpires going going forward will necessitate a rules clarification before long.

Yes, a “hometown ref”: only because of SuperCovid rugby, the ABs knowing how to play to this ref better.
There can be no coincidence that the ABs let the Wallabies have such huge possession advantage; the reward for such conservative play at contesting the ball is that when they did challenge, they were more accurate and correct than the Wallabies, in the ref’s eyes.
Expect the same with Gardner.

Anyway, well played the Wallabies, great to see the ABs and Foster have their noses rapped. Ioane’s non-try a fitting metaphor for how the ABs approached this game.

Tend to agree, Big Daddy.
This is really silly and sad. The article and comments, I mean.
Refusing a flu shot is not necessarily anti vax. At least half the vaccinated people I know swear off the flu shot as snake oil, many saying it only makes their winter worse. Others say it works fine for them.
There is no exact science for “vax product is on the market so it must be perfect”, at the very least because everyone is different. Flu is the absolute worst example because it has so many strains.
Seriously, people who act like “vaccinations = perfect pure scientific solution = therefore force everyone to take them” are far scarier than any virus. And whatever their credentials or lack thereof, they a tend to write like they’re a child of 1930s Germany.
I suppose this is what happens when there is no sport being played.

As a Nix fan, we didn’t know the players, or the coach, and had been gutted by the departures since Rudan left. We were staring at our last season in the league, yet having to rebuild from scratch.
4 losses in the first 4 was understandable, expected. That they didn’t get any drubbings and then systematically ramped up and got better and better… deserves better than 7.

But hey, it’s all word games till the season gets canned.

Brave post! Hope it gets good discussion going.
I pick Redmayne over Young, because Redmayne has a red mane, but Young ain’t young.
I wonder who the opposing team would be..

I don’t see size of country as an issue right now – comparing NZ rugby v Aussie football would be very appropriate for scale. If/when football were more popular, then yes.
.
Playing each other twice, and then the top an lowest teams playing eacher 2 more isn’t enough?
With funding low, your big Australian grassroots can still feed into the competition and allow it to grow into the 16-20 you’re talknig about. But with competitiveness, resources where its at, and the question of league winner/finals winner, I think this would still be a good interim solution.

Jesus wept. That french punch should have been yellow. Allowance to be suspended further after the game, if anything.
It was a “fiery” game, who knows what either side were up to across the pitch.
The scottish player was in no serious danger, unlike the shoulder charges, head highs, etc that the game has to stamp out.
A game and championship massacred by over-officiousness.

One way to do a premiership and Pro/rel is be creative, like the NPC rugby championship in NZ, where two divisions play as one.
For HAL, you do home and away for the 12 teams – 22 games – then the top 6 play for the premiership in another home and away, and the bottom 6 play for the “2nd div” championship – best of the rest.
That way you have a grading, enough time for players to get developed, equity of opportunity for owners teams and sponsors each season, yet the most deserving teams prosper. And we get to see our teams play home and away 32 times, and the last ten against teams of our calibre.
This is important because all those premier league competitions people are pointing to, they are circuses with the best players from around their country and the world. They do not perform the development function in the same way HAL must – players, culture and fanbase. The HAL wears many hats.

“Brisbane Roar have accumulated 20 points in 2020, more than any club including runaway leader Sydney FC”
For the stats fans among us
Roar have scored 20 points this year -from 10 games (30 possible) 👍
Sydney picked up 15 from 7 games (21 possible) 👍 👍
Nix scored 18 from 8 (24 possible) 👍 👍 👍

I don’t go to all the nix games purely –
a) ticket price,
b) plus it’s and hour trip there and back (via train, which costs way more than in Aus)
c) which, when you add the late kick off times, including on a Sunday
puts too many barriers for me to consistently go and take my kids.

Surely with streaming coming in, kick-off time can be there to please the people turning up to the game, and the home viewer can watch it at their convenience? Watching it live is not necessarily a premium product, it’s a problematic rigidity.

Focusing on the Nix, cos I do. ⚽ they have 5 away of 8 still to play.
Home: Roar, Adelaide, Victory – All good for a win, except persistent mental blocks against victory. MV fans forgive me for hoping they get over that by dealing a thrashing. 😊
Away –
Mariners – good for a win.
Newcastle, Wanderers – good games v 2 resurgent teams
Perth, Sydney – unlucky to have drawn these 2 to play away, twice. And our home games v them were in first 4 games (all lost), seems pretty crappy. 😡
Like MV, Perth seems a block at the moment, esp at distance. Sydney Nix have performed well against, but this time will be midweek in Sydney, in between playing Victory and Newcastle. If they get 5-6 points from that stretch they’ll be happy.
Nix to be on 44, heading into the last game v Wanderers. Should be enough to stop anyone below catching them.

Thank you for this excellent write up.
Hardly the career of a “drug cheat”. Hopefully the sour grapes and sour faces fade into history with Russophobia and she’s only remembered for her outstanding and resilient record.

Auckland has 4x the Wellington region’s population. Plus a Phoenix game is a football event in Auckland, also inflating the crowd. They would not be there to sustain even half 15k, week in and week out.

Nice thoughts, thank you.

Yeah, I apologise on behalf of NZers, too.
I thought they’d have backbone this time, instead they were the worst visitors we’d sent for a long while.

Yeah, agree w /paul. A bit too early to tar this team with the (justified) brush of the past.