cricket with balls

So, the international season in Australia has come to an end, and I’m drinking to it. Not because of the unbeaten Aussie summer. Thrashing two mediocre teams is hardly cause for celebration. No, because it means the end of the most annoying experiment in cricket viewing since, well, ever.

Bloody heart rate monitors.

What, I mean what, is the point of this idiocy? The whole point of introducing any sort of technology into a sport is to make it in some way better for the spectator. HawkEye, HotSpot, slo-mo cameras, they all serve this purpose. But what is the freaking point of a heart rate monitor?

It is not as if most of us are incapable of noticing that your heart rate goes up when you are running and it is no great logical feat to suss out that it might go up a bit more if you run and then hurl a small projectile 22 yards.

And it’s not even as if they put them on the interesting players, fer chrissakes. What is the use of putting a heart rate monitor on Mitchell Johnson, unless it is to give his mother heart failure of her own? How about sticking one on Chris Gayle, so that we can tell if he is really that laid back, or just clinically dead? Or on Shane Watson, to see if he actually is 98% straw? Hell, if we are being really interesting, strap it to Steve Smith and see if he’s yet mature enough to walk past a woman on the boundary without all of the blood rushing to his groin?

No, the only conceivable use for this technology is to fix it to the commentators. Watch Mark Nicholas’ bpm rise every time he passes a mirror. Measure Warne’s excitement as a tray of pies goes by. Do what the heck you like with it, just get it off my tv screen.

I can never remember a time when Watson was mistaken for a Harvard professor.

But goading Chris Gayle, what sort of idiot does that?

He lost 15% of his match fee for it, but his real punishment should be opening the bowling anytime Australia plays the Windies.

There is no sound of the scream in this clip, count yourself lucky, as Watson’s roar was more like a camp version of the Wilhelm scream.

I can’t find it on youtube, but on one of the stump mics you can hear an Australian player say something like, “that was the best wicket celebration ever”.

Without seeing that player’s face, I’d like to think he was taking the piss.

After seeing his team dragged through the mud by the Australian media only to then play very well, Chris Gayle has decided to start his own bad press.

But not even the Australian press could make a blow this low.

“At the moment when Hauritz is bowling to me, it’s like I’m bowling to myself.”

Settle down Chris, your bowling isn’t that bad.

Nathan’s life hasn’t really been beer and skittles for a while now.

He missed the Oval, got out bowled at Adelaide, and now it looks like he has to prove he really belongs by bowling on a wicket that isn’t generally set up for spinners.

But to get dissed by a part timer, that is harsh.

Especially one who takes his bowling as seriously as Gayle.

With all this going on even I feel sorry for Hauritz.

So for the whole Waca test I will try not to stick the boot in to Little Nathan any more.

It is the least I can do.

There seem to be two reasons why Chris Gayle turned in the innings of his life in this test.

The first one seems to be anger. Just because he wears shades all the time and smiles alot doesn’t mean Gayle can’t get angry.

From time to time he looks fucken filthy, and perhaps, just perhaps, being told he was in charge of a team that was the worst thing to happen to test cricket since the front foot no ball rule fired him up. On the eve of day one he apparently gave a testicle swinging speech to his men, and they sure played well on day one.

The other seems to be the Adelaide pitch. Having used all his “a” material in his match eve speech, on day four he used his bat.  But he couldn’t smite and slog, as the pitch would not allow him. So he seemed to mature mild innings, and he got the sort of results you’d expect from the wing commander Strauss.

Not that he usually seems to care about the surface when he is hitting away, but perhaps he sensed that he was the only one who would be able to score there, and he would do that better if he wasn’t out.

Australia kept waiting for the old Gayle to come out, and they had plenty of men on the boundary waiting for the catch. Instead he just pushed the ball around, put away the bad balls and made sure he was there at the end.

No other West Indies batsmen could get past 27, making his 165 look like Yao Ming in China.

With the way he bats Gayle has created a shitty situation for himself.  When he goes out hitting, people say he is reckless, when he tries to push the ball around and gets out they tell him to trust his natural instincts.

As captain, he can’t really win, so choosing to bat in a way so alien from his slap happy days was risky.

It could have been reviewed like people reviewed Kevin Smith’s Jersey Girl.  The press would have said while Smith’s intentions were good; the film lacked a sense of Kevin Smithness to it.  We’re is the pop culture smut. Or, in this case, the raw aggression and macho hitting. It is easy to be typecast and pigeon holed, and it takes something special to break free.

This was special and Gayle pulled it off.  It must have been like an outer body experience for him, looking down on himself saying, “who is this motherfucker scoring all these fucken singles?”

He also probably owes Chanderpaul money, for infringing on his trademark Windies innings.

An innings of that class probably deserved better than a draw.

I think of my book as Mallrats.

Frankly I am shocked.

I thought the IPL was a principled cricket league that believed in more than just the money.

Ok no one will say that.

The powers that Bcci, are just not content with merely adding advertising to the commentary, they have decided to add a 7.5 minute ad break to each innings.

L Ron (Big Al Stanford) must be pissed he never thought of his.

The over rates in last years IPL were dreadful, a supposed 3 hour game pushed to 4 repeatedly, can’t see how adding an ad’s break will speed that up.

Probably wont be good for the hamstrings on the older players either, 7 and a half minutes standing around in that brisk autumn air, and then diving for a ball at mid wicket.

But if the do tear a hamstring, the IPL can then superimpose an ad for deep heat onto the hamstring during the replays.

Hopefully the time will be used wisely, 5 minutes of advertising followed by a public service announcement about the health problems cricketers can face when they share boxes.

There are still several advertising options the IPL hasn’t thought of.

The best would would be giving players a name sponsor.

SMS datechat Shane Warne sends one down.

DC Comics Gatuam Gambhir is looking super today.

That is a huge one from Viagra’s Chris Gayle.

What a rip snorter from Columbia’s Shoaib Ahktar.

A divine shot from Catholic Church Matthew Hayden.

See, Lalit, you can do way more.

You can even put sticky take on the players faces, although some players do that for free.