cricket with balls

Ricky Ponting claims that when he showers an alien by the name of Pinky gives him a special directors commentary of Schindler’s List from the right side of Steve Spielberg’s brain.

Ricky Ponting claims he was the lindberg baby.

Ricky Ponting claims that in a previous life he was Jesus’ butler.

Ricky Ponting claims that with the conditions in his team’s favour that winning 5-0 is possible when asked it as a direct question.

OK, so hardly the same thing, but from the headlines you’d swear he was running around the press conference tongue kissing the journalists with his own shit marking out a 5-0 win on his chest.

It is possible Australia win 5 zip, it is also possible England win it 5 zip.

Other things that are possible:

Shane Watson outing himself as a lover of plush toys.

Luke Wright using a deft touch with the bat to beat Australia in the deciding test.

Nathan Hauritz taking off his shirt and doing the Warne dance when Australia win a test.

Andrew Strauss getting caught with his dick in an exhaust pipe.

Australia or England winning 4-1 or 4-0.

If you asked me if these were possible, I’d say yes.

I probably wouldn’t say, “There’s no reason why not. It’s all in our (their) hands.”

I’d probably say, “none of these events are likely to happen, but there is a slim possibility that if you fucked Tony Greig in the eyeball for an hour straight you’d get nothing more than a sore dick as he is clearly an indestructible mother fucker, but what is more likely is that you’d end up with eye ball under your foreskin and if you have a big dick, just a touch of brain wedged in there too… and eyelashes, I ’spose”.

Anything is possible.

It is also possible that a captain in the twilight stage of a long career could be asked such an obviously inflammatory question and fuck it up. If the conditions favoured it.

The worst possible scenario has happened to the English cricket team, they have lost cricket’s most valuable ethereal element, ‘momentum’.

Sure they won the series, but what is the point of a win if you can’t take buckets of momentum with you.

Australia winning two one dayers in a row has meant that they can claim to have the momentum as the take the field in the first ashes test.

Yes I understand that we are in July and the Ashes don’t starat till November and don’t finish till January, but momentum is momentum.

It is possible that Australia could lose the momentum, I suppose, but then they could win it back, and lose it again, and then win it back, before losing it.

I think the key to momentum is having it for longer than the other team do and using it to win matches with.

You need to get momentum to win games and you need to win games to get momentum.

Australia has done this, and with no matches between now and Novmember there is no possible way for England to get the momentum back.  It is simply gone for months.

They could, theoretically, beat Pakistan four nil and watch Australi lose 4 bil to Pakistan and India.

That would get back some momentum for them, but would it be enough momentum, or even the right kind of momentum.

The thing with momentum is that we never know how to correctly weigh its important.  Australia beating England is a huge momentum gathering event, but was it even enough to counter the momentum of England’s T20 win, was that win enough to out weigh Australia’s win in the Champion’s Trophy and 7 match ODI series, and were those two enough to trump England’s Ashes wins which had allegedly got the momentum back from Australia’s 5-nill win of the 06/07 Ashes.

We haven’t even talked about the 05 Ashes yet.

That is how tricky momentum can be. After finishing that long paragraph I lost my momentum. But I could get it back. I could write another really sharp and ironic sentence that went on forever and made you feel a little dizzy. Then, poof, momentum back. It just isn’t happening for me though.  That paragraph took it out of me, and the momentum is lost for now.

That is just how it works.

Australia have it now, but they won’t have it for ever.  No one can.

Momentum is a fickle mistress.

Stephen Finn is the new Glenn McGrath. Of that there can be no doubt.

He bowls, has hair, skin and toe nails, is tall, thin, gets bounce, bowls a decent line and doesn’t swing the ball.

How could he possibly be more like McGrath?

England did it; they created the perfect McGrath clone, one that can torment Australia for years with bounce, consistency and wickets.

All their problems are over, the sun is shining, squirrels are humping cats, huzzah.

The problem is that he isn’t the only one out there. As Tony put it, “Australia have promoted the real new Glenn McGrath”.

The Australian NSP (wank speak for selectors) couldn’t just sit around and watch England bring out the new McGrath, so they brought out their own.

Josh Hazelwood, who is tall, bounce, etc, you know, pretty much the same thing as Finn without the test wickets against Bangladesh.

The ashes has started early, my friends.

This McGrath off is getting serious.

Finn has the thinness, Hazelwood has the county NSWales back round.

Australia didn’t need to pick Hazelwood, they had other options, Hilfenhaus and George could have gone, but both men are not like McGrath.

They did it just to show that they aren’t afraid of showing their new McGrath to England, even though England are hiding their new McGrath.

Ofcourse in order to be a real McGrath off, their should be a reality game show.

Finn and Hazelwood would have to go head to head in a bunch of McGrath events.

They’ll have to try and pick up an English flight attendant.

Try and hit a gnat’s ass at 20 yards.

Get hair cuts to see which one can truly pull off the 8 year old boy’s hair cut.

One pig will be released, they both have to go after it in the most boring way they can, but they still have to kill it.

And finally a tea pot competition to see which player can pull of the angry face the best.

Only then can we finally know who should be ruined by the name “the new McGrath”.

Andrew Flintoff just gave an interview to BBC Radio, in which he admitted that he was planning for the possibility that he might not be able to come back from his current knee problem.

This is, quite possibly, the most interesting thing that Flintoff has ever said in an interview – certainly in an interview given whilst sober. Previously, he’s always been hugely bullish about his prospects of coming back from any operation. It seems that the op he had the day after the Oval Test failing and having to have a second, more major, one has knocked his confidence, even in himself.

It is also clear that either he doesn’t contemplate coming back as a batsman only, or that the knee is so bad that, if it can’t be fixed, it is pretty well going to prevent him doing anything.

The next interesting thing that he said was that whatever he does, it won’t be commentary. Which is good news for everyone as (a) his time as England captain revealed that he wasn’t one of the game’s greatest thinkers or tacticians and (b) we won’t have to listen to his dull northern monotone clogging up our airwaves.

32 is hellishly early to have to end your career, though – especially in this day and age. Strange to think, too, that both he and Brett Lee, the couple who provided one of crickets iconic moments of the last decade, could be going out of the game together, too.

When Australia were losing the Ashes there was a lot of talk of the statistical mugging Australia was giving England while still managing to quite beautifully lose the series.

This series has a similar story.

England had one batsman average over 45.

Even Bell and Cook who apparently came of age could only muster 44 and 41 between them.

Trott might be from South Africa, but there is no statistical proof that he even went, his average of 27 is even bad for an English number 3.

Then the two highest paid batsmen combined to average 49.

As world’s greatest hack Nigel Henderson pointed out to me, why are people talking about Daryl Harper.

Because it is funny and he is shit.

But once they stop chuckling at Daryl looking at the carnage of this series will not be pretty.

The bowling is not that much better, their bowling unit got more wickets than in the Ashes, but their averages do not inspire moans of pleasure.

Swann was the top wicket taker with 21, but his average was 31, Morkel took 19 wickets at 21.

Anderson took 16 wickets, which is respectable, at 34, Steyn took 15 at 23.

Had it not been for their new Jesus (I move on just that quick), the man who saved them twice and then was crucified, England could have gone down 3-1.

However, when you swim out of that faecic quagmire look at the actual scoreline. Not bad.  The Ashes scoreline worked for England as well. Had England been offered these two results going in they would have taken them.

Somehow England have invented a style of play that means that very few players have to do anything, the rest turn up for the food, and yet they still remain competitive.

That is something I really can admire.

Dis-organised shitness with positive results, sort of like this website.