cricket with balls

Cricket Australia (CA) has given two very high profile Australian cricketers life bans to prove that they are serious about cleaning up the game of cricket.

The decision follows a breach of team rules and ICC regulations during an Ashes test match that Australia went on to lose.

CA Chief Executive Officer James Sutherland said Dennis Lillee and Rodney Marsh would be given life bans from playing cricket from Australia and would the ICC would be informed of this decision immediately.

Pending ICC approval, the players will be allowed to work in cricket, but their playing future is over.

Australia’s test against the English at Headingley in 1981 was the game where both men have now confirmed they did make a bet on England to win that game. Against all odds England came back to win after the follow on had been enforced. At the time the bet was seen as a harmless prank, but cricket has changed since then.

Mr Sutherland said the decision to suspend Lillee and Marsh was regrettable.

“The breach of team rules of itself was a major offence, but in the current circumstances we thought we needed to show World Cricket and the PCB that you have to take these issues seriously” Mr Sutherland said.

“I am disappointed in Dennis and Rod, but I am also disappointed for them after all the work they have done with Australian cricket’s support in the last 29 years – - and CA will be encouraging and supporting them in the future”.

The life ban decision was discussed by CA’s Board which met this evening prior to a scheduled full-day Board meeting in Melbourne tomorrow. A CA management recommendation to the board in turn followed a unanimous recommendation from the team’s leadership group.

Lillee and Marsh are keen to continue working in cricket but are obviously upset they will never play cricket for their country again.

In other news, the ECB have asked the great-granddaughter of WG Grace to Lord’s to answer questions on odd occurences from tests in the 1800s.

This was a press release given to cwb, and only cwb for some reason.  Perhaps that means it’s fake, who knows.

I know you see yourself as the K-Mart Lalit Modi.  There is no doubt you want to leave your mark on the game of cricket as a modern administracrat that can move and shake with the best of them.  But there are better ways to do this than by taking a dump on something important.

Like you, my career in Shield cricket was tragically shorter than I wanted.  While you got 4 games with the Vics, I played none at all.  This hurts me, so I can imagine that it hurts you too.  But you can deal with heartbreak in better ways than by destroying your old flame.

You’re obviously a modern man.  You’ve probably got a blackberry, an iphone, home and work laptops and a pedometer.  But that doesn’t mean that old things are shit and can be discarded.

James, you and I are not so different.  We both put pants on before leaving the home.  We both love cricket.  We’ve both watched Victoria win a Shield final.

That is where we differ, for me, the Shield Final is the pinnacle, a game of cricket as good as first class cricket can get.  Where two sides play off to prove their worth, the odds stacked in the favour of one side, buy giving 22 players a chance of proving that they are test worthy.

For you it is the wrapping around a Quarter Pounder.

The 2007/08 Final sucked balls for Victoria, but the selectors were watching.  Hughes and Siddle jumped older players, Bryce’s performance put him down the list, Beau Casson got test out of it and Simon Katich proved his rebirth was not some fluke. It was a cracking game of cricket, NSWales at near full strength, Victoria proving they were a hell of a side.  It went 5 days, there was a result, Stuart MacGill told Nick Jewell to stop being a drama queen.

James, how could you deny anyone this?

The shield season is not exactly long at the moment; teams only play 10 games each.  It breaks down like this:

3 in October

8 in November

5 in December

2 in January

6 in February

6 in March

1 final in March

If you can play 6 matches at the start of March, you can play 6 at the end of October. Start the season a week earlier and you could have 8 matches in October and you can scrap the January games.  If you can play 8 in November, you can play 8 in February.  And surely you could fit in a boxing day game once a year, or the day after boxing day. Then it would be:

8 in October

8 in November

6 in December

8 in February

1 final March.

January, when most Australian cricket fans are really interested, becomes your 2020 month.  The rest of the season is for proper cricket.  And March is your final.  Having it at least two weeks earlier than it is now.  No first class cricket is lost, and most importantly, the final is still there.  If you think this is cramming cricket in a bit much, then jettison a few one dayers, have all teams play each other once, and play two sides in their region twice.  If that is even an issue, which I doubt.

The final doesn’t have to go, and neither do any games.  Australian domestic cricketers will play at least 30 days less than their English brethren, and that doesn’t need to change, it just needs to be re-jigged.

Forget being the modern man, the bitter man, or the cut price Australian Lalit man, and just try and do what is best for the game.  And if you think that is cutting the shield season, then perhaps it is you who is not best for the game, and you should trot off into the commercial world to re-brand some breakfast cereal.

Yours truly,

Jrod

Cricket has a filthy new word.

One that only some slick suited cricket administracrat could have come up with.

I blame James Sutherland, but I blame James Sutherland for most things.

The filthy fucken phrase is Stakeholder (sometimes shareholder).

Just typing it makes me feel like i just fisted a banker.

It refers to you and me, players, administracrats, officials, and anyone who likes cricket from what i can tell.

But it shouldn’t, because it is fucken stupid.

Stakeholder, for those lucky enough to not know, means people with an interest in the game, in general it is a financial term, but thanks to the suits it has seeped its way into sports.

I am not a cricket stakeholder, I am a cricket fan, a cricket writer, a cricket blogger, a cricket sado-masochist.

So when Aaron Redmond, assisted by Neil Broom, was outed for getting drunk before a game then giving money away to Indians living on the street, he apologised to everyone for his actions.

Instead of saying I am sorry to the NZC, the blackcaps, and i don’t know, children who wear his number on their back, he just said stakeholders.

“We also wish to apologise to other stakeholders in the game including the fans for our inappropriate behaviour while on tour,”

And from that moment on it was pretty fucken obvious he hadn’t written the apology, rendering it invalid.

When you are contractually obliged to apologise, it doesn’t mean much, but then using a wanky phrase that has been written by someone else, what is the point.

Bloody James Sutherland.

You poor bastards.

It’s right behind you, it’s smiling, it’s wearing a suit, and it tears up contracts like you or I rub one out.

They call it a cricket official.

We call them Administracrats.

Billy Walsh calls them suits.

They are the fuckers who get off on power while making people with talent lick every last drop of sweat off their small tightly bunched testicles.

And Ricky Ponting and Tim Neilsen just got the worst news you can get in professional sport, an official defending them to the media.

It’s sport speak for, you guys better win or you are out on your asses.

The great machine has already started their next wave.

There is a private investigator going through Simon Katich’s trash as we speak.

James Sutherland has already promised to make the Australian cricket team Christian for Tom Moody.

Lawyers are already amending Clarke’s contract from FAC, to FACE.

Publicists are prepping old cricketers with pre prepared statements of how they always thought Katich would be better.

An editor is preparing footage of Ricky winning the toss and bowling, bringing on White & Hussey, and his stroppy jumps of disappointment in Perth as we speak.

That is how this works.

Ofcourse I could be reading too much into Mr Sutherland’s nice comments, and Tim’s sudden contract extension, and everything is fine.

Dandy even, no wins in 6 matches, and Tim gets more money, and Ricky gets CA’s number one douche bag in his corner.

It all makes perfect sense.

cricketwithballs

…
Some times I wonder why cricket needs its Administracrats.

Surely a trained monkey (non racist monkey reference) with a crayon could make fewer errors.

But then they say something that makes me sit up and listen.

“Test cricket is what is being played, it is not tiddlywinks.”

Says head Cricket Australian Administracrat James “I was never much chop as a bowler” Sutherland.

Brilliant observation, tiddlywinks is an indoor game played with sets of small discs called “winks” lying on a surface, usually a flat mat. Players use a larger disc called a “squidger” to pop a wink into flight by pressing down on one side of the wink. The objective of the game is to cause the winks to land either on top of opponents’ winks, or ultimately inside a pot or cup.

The main point of difference I can see between cricket and Tiddlywinks is that it’s not played over 5 days.

The North American Tiddlywinks Association have hired slander experts to see if James Sutherland was attacking their great game by mentioning it in the same sentence as cricket.

However Rick(y) & Anil have played tiddlywinks before, it ended up in controversy at a hotel in Jamaica. Anil suggested Rick(y) had played an illegal flop womp move and accused him of not playing in the spirit of the winks. He demanded that the concierge come in and sort the mess out. Rick(y) got very defensive and suggested that his flop womp was not in question and smacked the concierge with a chair for questioning him about it, or any sneaky carnovsky plays from earlier in the game.

Hitting someone with a chair in Tiddlywinks is called a Boondock and gets you three squops.

A tremendous brouhaha ensued.

And for those who think I made up all these words and are questioning my integrity, visit Tiddlywinks wiki page if you don’t believe me.

Also, If you are questioning my integrity, then you should not be here, someone hand me a chair so I can smack you upside your head, you dirty integrity doubter.