Matt Cleary

Ten nightwatchmen who (mostly) went above their call of duty

16-Aug-2013

Miracle man
Scorer of the greatest watchmen innings of all time - 201 not out against Bangladesh, the most ridiculous innings ever. Yet analysts of nightwatchmen - and they are out there, extrapolating the numbers - feel that Jason Gillespie's 26-run, 165-ball vigil on a dusty Chennai track in 2004 against Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble was the more meritorious watchmen-esque innings. In nine innings as a "watchie" Gillespie lasted 425, 165, 145, 79, 73, 71, 43, 34 and 5 balls, doing the crease-occupation job for his team on all but one occasion.

First man
Pakistan's Nasim-ul-Ghani was the first nightwatchman to score a century when he amassed 101 against England at Lord's in 1962. Controversy rages (well, perhaps not rages) about the allrounder's status as a watchman given that he later opened the batting for Pakistan. But overall he averaged 16.6 in his 29 Tests - and in this match went in ahead of better-credentialed batsmen - which make for better than reasonable credentials for inclusion in this club.

The Mann
Australian legspinner Tony Mann was the second nightwatchman to score a Test hundred when he scored 105 against India in Perth in 1977-78. After coming in at No. 3 with Australia 13 for 1, Mann lasted 165 balls and a nudge over three hours, his innings the cornerstone of Australia's successful 342-run chase.

Full post

The games people play

Cricketers who could also swing a club or a foot or two

Matt Cleary

10-Aug-2013

Denis Compton
In the years immediately following World War II, with the Don nearing retirement and Neil Harvey a pup, Compton was one of the best batsmen in the world. And so he published a book entitled How To Play Association Football, an instructional tome about the things he'd learned playing left wing for Arsenal. In 54 games he scored 15 goals and helped the Gunners to a 2-0 win over Liverpool in the 1950 FA Cup. Over roughly the same period he played 78 Tests for England and scored 5087 runs at 50.06.

WG Grace
Hard to imagine the great six-foot-three wombat-bearded Englishman flying over the jumps on a hot lap, but before he was known as "The Doctor", Grace was a champion 400m hurdler. A naturally athletic man, Grace trained for cricket and athletics by running around with the beagles on fox hunts. Aged 18 he scored 224 not out for England in a game against Surrey, leaving halfway through to win an England quarter-mile hurdle championship at Crystal Palace.

Don Bradman
After a decade of dismantling Test bowling attacks and racking up batting numbers like an incredible Abacus with arms, the Don decided to take up competitive squash and promptly won the 1939 South Australian squash championship. He was also excellent at billiards, competitive at tennis, and even as he went into his 80s often "broke his age" at Adelaide's Kooyonga Golf Club. And all because he used to whack a golf ball against a corrugated iron water tank with a cricket stump. Kids, your lesson is clear: get out and start whackin'.

Full post

Why Dharmasena gave Khawaja out

Let us compile a list of the most implausible reasons shall we?

Matt Cleary

02-Aug-2013

Possible reasons third umpire Kumar Dharmasena ruled Australian batsman Usman Khawaja out on review during day one of the third Test of the Ashes from Old Trafford include:

He wasn't allowed to use Snicko
He doesn't trust Hot Spot, considering it new-fangled elec-trickery
He doesn't trust his eyes nor his ears
He didn't want to disagree with the on-field umpire, thinking it might be rude
He was watching Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon
He was crocheting a massive throw rug
He had nipped out to buy the newspaper and cigarettes
He had been kidnapped by extremists and his body replaced with a felafel
He'd had a drug overdose and was "on the nod", brought back to life only after an injection of adrenaline into his heart, like that bit in Pulp Fiction
He hit the wrong button
He is not actually a Test cricket umpire but rather a plumber from Hull
He agreed Khawaja was out

Granted, none of these make any sense. Dharmasena's made a howler in a system that uses technology to specifically erase howlers. He's watched 30-odd slow-motion replays and decided nothing he's seen contradicted the umpire. I mean… where to start?

Full post

Bring the angst

For Australia, it's a time of bitter introspection about what has gone wrong

Matt Cleary

26-Jul-2013

There was a time in recent memory when Australia's cricket team was so strong that people became bored. Sure, we roared for the achievements of Warne, Gilchrist, McGrath, the Waughs, and all the rest, as they plundered cricket nation states like rapacious Vikings insatiably hungry for Christian gold. Sure, we did that.

But we didn't really roar when they won. It was expected. It wasn't news. There was no wow factor. It was just what the Australian cricket team did.

Which is why those two series against India in 2001 and England in 2005 were so brilliant, and memorable. Australia lost but the host nations played inspired Test cricket to beat us. And Test cricket ruled the world. (And when they came to Australia, we flogged them like so many horse thieves.)

Full post

If Gilchrist is good, is Waugh bad?

The DRS has opened up a whole other barrel of monkeys with machine guns, hasn't it?

Matt Cleary

19-Jul-2013

Walking? Who would do that? Why would you do that? Batters bat, bowlers bowl and fielders field. Everyone appeals, umpires decide. And if a batter finds an umpire who hasn't seen him hit the ball to first slip, then that is good luck for him and bad luck for the other team, and there is no more to see here, let's move on muttering. There will be times a batsman doesn't hit the ball and is fired out. And if his mates have used up the DRS appeals, he can tell his story walkin'.

That's how the game has been for a thousand years. Apart from the DRS thing. But more on it later.

For now we'll confront this jibber-jabber about Stuart Broad being somehow "dishonourable" or "cheating" because he waited for Aleem Dar to make a decision.

Full post

For the love of Vicious

He doesn't do enough in the air or off the pitch - except for when he does

Matt Cleary

12-Jul-2013

So I was sitting there on the couch with my man Simsy, watching the early skirmishes of day one of the first Ashes Test from Trent Bridge in Nottingham. It was about 9.30 in the evening, Sydney time, and we were luxuriating after a fine feed of roast pork, nursing glasses of shiraz. And, in the ways of men, particularly men of a sporting bent, we were stroking our mental goat beards and opining.

The subject of our plonk-fuelled quorum was Peter Siddle, the Victorian woodsman whose opening four overs had just gone for 27 runs. Joe Root and Jon Trott had picked him off easily, the latter, particularly, getting in behind him, and across his stumps with imperious ease. And in our know-it-all way, we two sports journalists and goat-beard strokers, made a case against the feisty big rust-nut from Gippsland. It would not have made edifying listening had Sids been hiding in the cupboard.

"There's a sameness about his work on unhelpful decks," said I. "He's not doing enough in the air or off the wicket to trouble these top batsmen.

Full post

My Australian XI for Trent Bridge

Thought only selectors make shocking picks? How about having no frontline spinner for the first Ashes Test?

Matt Cleary

05-Jul-2013

And so with the tension barely bearable, my Australian team for the first Ashes Test is:

Simon Katich, but given the Australian selectors retired him to keep Michael Hussey and Ricky Ponting, and because he didn't get on with the captain, and because he was 35, we'll go with Chris Rogers, 35, at pole, because he has plundered 19,572 runs, many of them in England, at 50.38 with 60 hundreds, 90 fifties and a highest-score of 319. He, friends, will do.

Shane Watson Yes, Mighty Thor, the classically proportioned ball whacker, equally capable of 50s, 60s, or even 70s at a good rate. I asked him once why he struggled to convert his scores into hundreds, Watto said it was because he cares too much about the outcome. I asked a sports psychiatrist about it and he said words to the effect that this was garden-variety choking. Watto, like many of us, is a sensitive soul. But Watto, unlike many of us, beats the cricket ball like it's shot out of a cannon. He is too good not to score hundreds in England this Test series. He will score hundreds. And when he goes big, he will go massive. Go him.

Full post

Boof Lehmann, top bloke

Ask a few of the kilt-raising, cricket-hating Scots who met him in Worcester in 1999 and they'd agree wholeheartedly with the assessment

Matt Cleary

01-Jul-2013

In long-ago 1999, I took some Scottish mates to the fine old English town of Worcester for the Scotland versus Australia World Cup pool match. Top little England cricket ground at Worcester: church steeples by the banks of the Severn, English oak trees, quaint things, ye olde stuff.

Whatever the appeal of the town, I had to convince my Scottish mates to come along. They were no fans of cricket. Indeed it would not be overstating things to say that they hated the game, equating it to all things effete and English, the people who invaded their villages and stole their horses, or other things from Olden Times.

That said, the lads did rather like dressing up in kilts and painting their faces, and drinking a lot of beer, and singing songs, and leaping about. So we took a train from London for a couple of days' "craic" in Worcester. And there we sang songs and leapt about, and camped in tents by the river. And they were very good times.

Full post

The smartest cricketers XI

A team featuring an Oxford graduate, a farm boy from Dungog, and an artistic wicketkeeper. And Shane Warne

Matt Cleary

21-Jun-2013

Ranjit Fernando
In the World Cup in 1975, Jeff Thomson was bowling faster than anyone ever had and he sent Sri Lanka's Sunil Wettimuny and Duleep Mendis to hospital after hitting the first on the head and smashing the second's instep with his famous "sandshoe crusher". But opener Fernando decided on a novel approach to self-preservation: "I kept smiling at Thomson, hoping to keep him in a good mood." It might not have worked but Fernando walked off unscathed (though he was bowled by Thomson for 22).

Geoff Boycott
While he could kill entire stadiums with batting more boring than the creep of prehistoric moss, Boycott realised it was impossible to score runs when you weren't at the crease. This, curiously, is not obvious to all batsmen. Boycott, though, learned how to occupy the crease. And occupy it. And continue occupying it until the United Nations needed to send in tanks to remove him. Boycott saw his role as a batsman as being around long enough to ensure his team did not lose. Significantly, of his 108 Tests, only 20 ended in defeat.

Douglas Jardine
With his fingers steepled like those of a cunning, ruthless and evil train baron, Jardine devised field placements and bowling methods so cunning, ruthless and evil that they halved Bradman's batting average and won England the 1932-33 Ashes 4-1. Bodyline - or "fast leg theory" as Jardine called it - was so effective it was outlawed. Yet in 1933, Jardine scored 127 - his only Test century - against a West Indies team that was employing these very tactics. So Jardine proved himself smart enough to employ Bodyline and also beat it. He also went to Oxford and learned things.

Full post

What's not fun about watching first-class cricket?

It's important to attend a game or two for the sake of your health and happiness. Get to it

Matt Cleary

14-Jun-2013

I have not watched a single ball of this ICC Champions Trophy. I don't know what it is. A mini-World Cup? What's the point of it? Is it not just another cash cow, more "product" for television stations to sell advertisements on, for bookmakers to run markets about, for players to make a buck playing yet more of these interminable, never-ending short-form games?

Rhetorical questions for another time.

For now I'm going into bat for "slow" cricket. Long-form cricket. First-class and Test cricket that is played across days and has a narrative more detailed - and, you know, interesting - than how many sixes Chris Gayle can whack in an hour.

Full post

1 2 3 4

Showing 11 - 20 of 35