cricket with balls

You already know that Sachin is on the front of the cricket sadists’ quarterly. Now I am trying to garner more sales by sucking in more Sachin fans with this taste of what appeared in the last issue. This is long, and about Sachin, so take it or leave it.

Sachin playing in your lounge

In November of 2003 I was a shift worker who spent a fair chunk of the summer watching shield games at the MCG (G).  When I found out the Indians would be playing the Victorians at the G I was always going to head down to the match.  The first day I couldn’t get to the ground because of work. That day Sachin made 80 odd as India’s top order collapsed to the left arm swing of Matthew Inness and their tail succumbed to Australia’s next white hope of leg spinning (he was then), Cameron White.  When I heard about Sachin’s score I thought about how cool it would be to see him play an innings in that great ground with virtually no spectators.  Like getting Roy Orbison to sing in your lounge room.

On day two it was all Brad Hodge, a man I had seen make many big scores to empty grounds.  There was apparently some tension between the teams about it being a result game. Then there was another problem as India declared and no one seemed to know.  Out of spite Victoria decided to then try and bat for the last two days of the game as a lesson to the Indians.  Brad Hodge very nearly batted the final two days on his own.

On day two Hodge was just a class above the fairly poor Indian attack, on paper it wasn’t poor, Nehra, Khan, and Bhajji all played, they just bowled lots of rubbish.  Hodge was using this innings as a calling card, and once Brad Hodge is settled, not even a family of maniacs with chainsaws can get him out. When Ian Harvey joined him it was a terrific partnership.  It isn’t often you got to see Harvey make runs, so for a fan of his (he was my main dude) it was terrific to watch.

I enjoyed the Vics smashing the ball around, and since I had the next day off I decided I had to come back again to see Rahul, Virender and Sachin bat without a crowd.  I doubted Victoria could bat the whole two days.  On the first two days there wouldn’t have been more than 2,000 on either day, maybe even combined.  2,000 still sounds like a lot, but in the G it feels like five people.

When my girlfriend found out about my plans, she decided to come.  She was not a cricket fan; she did like drinking at one-day games, and somehow she convinced herself that this would be like that.  Like any good boyfriend I did my best to convince her that if she did come she would be bored to death, perhaps beyond that.   Her mind was made, so after the lunch session (I figured the Vics would bat on for a while) we went down to the ground.

The third day seemed to have even fewer fans at it.  I could feel my girlfriend’s irritation the moment she arrived.  She wanted atmosphere, and instead it was whisper quiet, she went off to get drinks straight away.  The crowd was made up of the usual shield cricket sickos (of which I include myself) and Indian students (these were the days they didn’t get beaten).  The Vics were still batting, Hodge was now over 200.  It took a while but eventually Sehwag got Hodge out and soon after the Indians came back into bat.

My girlfriend was pretty happy with the start of India’s innings as Sehwag played some shots, but he was soon out (a month later he did far better at the same ground to the tune of 195). This left Akash Chopra and Sadagoppan Ramesh at the crease.  I have always rated Chopra and Ramesh looked solid.  No one wanted them to bat.  As the afternoon went on all you could hear was the name Sachin being whispered.

In the first innings Sachin had batted at five; that now seemed like a long way away.  In those days Victoria would go in with two front line bowlers and four all rounders.  They weren’t rubbish bowlers, but Harvey, Moss, White and McDonald were all more than easy to handle for these two batsmen on a pitch that was pretty flat.  Added to that was the fact that Victoria were playing a first gamer, Brett Harrop who never played again, as one of their strike bowlers.  Their other front line bowler was Inness, who was notoriously an average old ball bowler. This was all explained to my girlfriend who sighed and yawned through most of the answer even though she asked the question about when Sachin was coming in and why Victoria looked crap.

Ramesh and Chopra were hardly lighting the place up. They were both defining the word dour in what was obviously now nothing more than a net practice.  The problem was I couldn’t leave.  What if a wicket fell straight away, I’d miss seeing Rahul, or worse still, what if two fell, I’ll miss Rahul and Sachin together.  Like most casual cricket fans my girlfriend knew little about any team that wasn’t her home team.  Yes she knew Sachin was good, but he wasn’t batting, and she didn’t care about waiting for him.

On one side I had the tedium of two young guys trying to prove their worth against an attack with military medium stamped on it, and on the other was a girlfriend complaining about every facet.  This is boring ,these seats are uncomfortable, I’m burning, I’m tired, let’s go see a film, this beer is terrible, can we move seats, why doesn’t he hit that for four, Victoria are shit and no one is here.

Being a cricket sadist, the more boring the cricket got and the more annoying my girlfriend got, the more I wanted to see it through.  After all, one wicket and I would see a batting legend; two wickets and I would see an Indian god.  It was worth the headache and constant moaning.

So I sat and waited. And waited. Waited.

I know I saw the ball that got Ramesh out, but I have no idea how it happened. The scorecard says McDonald got it; that should be right; but I have no idea.  By this stage the game was in its dusk period.  It would be over soon.  There were still about 300 people left at the ground, and these were the hardcore cricket fans, here for one reason. SRT.

Being that there was no real crowd you could easily look over to the change room. All of us were (except my girlfriend who was looking to see how tanned her arms were).  I could see movement, but there was no way to tell who it was.  A kid near me asked if it was Sachin; no one answered.  Eventually the player came out, and that familiar gait was there for everyone to see.

It was obviously Rahul Dravid.  The crowd of 300 hunched or left.  I left.  I love Rahul, even more so now than I did back then, but there was some perverse thrill to seeing Sachin in this empty ground.

I have seen Sachin bat many times before and since, on three continents, in world cup finals and test matches, but I still feel a little ripped off that he didn’t come into bat that day.  Not long after, my girlfriend and I split up; we never used that day as the reason, but we both knew.

Come on, buy the magazine, it has Sachin on it.

Apparently Yuvraj hates being called a water boy.

I can understand why, as Ceci has proved, he is a water distribution engineer.

As Radiohead almost said*, anyone can score a hundred. Anyone. Jrod’s done it. I’ve done it. Hell, even Monty Panesar has done it. All it takes is timing, a bit of good fortune, a lot of patience and, in my case, the rather benign bowling of your own grandfather.

Scoring a hundred is child’s play. Sachin Tendulkar has almost a hundred of them in international cricket alone, and he’s only 3′6″ in his stockinged feet. Scoring 99 is something special, though. Scoring 99 not out even more so. After all, given the number of hundreds that are scored around the world, how many of them are truly memorable? But a 99? Well, just about everyone remembers those. From Mike Atherton falling flat on his arse against Australia at Lord’s in 1993 (he never did make a hundred there), to Shane Warne butchering his chance of a maiden first class ton against New Zealand in 2001, 99s are the kind of innings that fix themselves in your memory.

An unbeaten 99 is even more special, because history shows it is almost never the fault of the guy who made the runs. Sometimes it is pure ineptness at the other end, like Dewald Pretorius failing to survive two balls from James Kirtley so that Andrew Hall could make his maiden international hundred. At others, it is pure selfishness, like Graham Thorpe denying Alex Tudor the first century by a nightwatchman in Test history, against New Zealand in 1999.

To this list, we can now add Michael Clarke. He may have benefited from the most significant drop in the annals of Australian cricket since Lara Bingle’s knickers hit Brendan Fevola’s shower room floor, but Clarke can take solace in the fact that the only thing which stood between him and a truly forgettable one day hundred was the selfishness of a cheese-faced toddler named Steven Smith. Really, he should be grateful.

(*Radiohead wrote a song called ‘Anyone Can Play Guitar’, and have since devoted their entire career to proving themselves wrong)

On Sunday I went down to the Whitgift school to watch India A take on West Indies A.

Whitgift is one of those rich ass English public school that has co much money they now host cricket matches as well.

There were only a few hundred people there, mainly London based Indians or Windians.

Where I was sitting there was about 14 people, and one of them was this old Indian cunt.

I say that, because he is the sort of fan who just fucking whinges.

He was talking about how the team was useless, how it was playing shit, how they should be attacking more, all that sort of crap to anyone who would listen.

It was boring, repetitive and mostly fucken wrong.

If the other end of the ground was open I would have carried my little plastic chair down there.

Eventually we had Manoj Tiwary fielding down in front of us.

He seemed like an ok guy to me, he told me who the bowler was after the announcer mumbled through it, signed autographs, and didn’t come across as a dick.

But our friend, the cunt, decided that he must still be a dick and said, “Why are you boys so poor, what is wrong with you?”

Had I been Tiwary I might have been tempted to turn around and say, “Listen here you poor excuse for a cumstaim, what the fuck have you ever done in your pathetic existence. Talk to me again and I’ll beat the hate out of you”.

Tiwary didn’t say that.

He said, “Actually we made 543, and some people think that is pretty good”.

I swear the guy didn’t even reply.

For the first time this angry pissy bloke didn’t have a thing to say, he just sat there like a child who been schooled by a sarcastic teacher.

It was great.

Because of this one comment I have become a Tiwary fan.

I put this big boy up on cricinfo, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t spread the love here:

If all cricketers were like Mike Hussey or AB de Villiers, cricket would be a little samey. Yes, there is a place for the overachieving accountant and the Christian-pop lovers in cricket, but cricket also needs diversity.

One great cricketing diversity has always been seen in waistbands. In normal life someone of WG Grace’s girth might have been a laughing stock, but in cricket he was one of the gods. Arjuna Ranatunga might have the body shape of a guy who owns a doughnut emporium in Idaho, but he also has a World Cup. And while Mike Gatting should be abused for being a tad portly, he is instead abused for his reverse sweep.

Yuvraj Singh is one of the best batsmen to watch in world cricket when he’s in form. He is ego personified. Yuvraj doesn’t just hit the ball, he lets it rebound off his aura. But now he has been dropped after a poor run of form and higher numbers on the scale. It seems unfair. In this world of political correctness gone crazy, a man can be pushed aside just because he enjoys his food and missed a few gym sessions.

When talking about Yuvraj’s axing, Kris Srikkanth might have mentioned form, but he quickly mentioned fitness afterwards. It was an axing based on form and physical form. There can be no doubt, size matters to the Indian selectors.

As an advocate of all body types, I’d like you to think about what cricket would miss if larger men had always been shunned:

Would legspin have come back into cricket if Shane Warne had not been allowed to play?

Imagine a world without Inzamam’s sublime batting and farcical running.

Minnow cricket could hardly stand up right if it were not kept balanced by Bermuda’s favourite son, Dwayne Leverlock.

How could anyone ever want to live knowing that the moustaches of David Boon and Merv Hughes were hidden from the world because of belly issues?

Think of the joy in Jesse Ryder laughing while he stood at the non-striker’s end on 99, watching Chris Martin bat?

Don’t tell me that seeing Ramesh Powar play international cricket didn’t fill you with glee.

These men have left a mark on international cricket just in the last couple of decades, and there is more where that came from. Cricket is not a game just for the athletically gifted. It is a game for the fat man who can hit, the large-bummed bowling athlete, and the round captain. It is a game that not only embraces standing still for long periods of time, but if you get hurt you can just stand there and hit while another man does the running for you. It also breaks for lunch and drinks.

It couldn’t possibly be more aimed at the ample-framed. Wicketkeepers need girth to ensure that no ball passes them. Batsmen need size to ensure balance. Fast bowlers need rump for power through the crease. And spinners need to be large to lull batsmen into a false sense of security.

This game of cricket cannot become a sizeist sport. The large-boned man must be placed up on a reinforced pedestal, because large men are cricket. Fat men are jollier, cooler, and less likely to talk about good areas or momentum than anyone else. So ridding the game of them is against the true spirit of cricket.

I don’t care if Yuvraj comes back with seven chins, cankles and washes himself with a rag on a stick, I just like to see him bat. His waist size has never had anything to do with it.