A Sobering Tale of Pasta Salads

I once ran into the Hampshire squad in the Chieveley Services on the M3 as I returned from a holiday in Cornwall in September 2005. Everything was as you would expect. John Crawley was showing Sean Ervine how to use the cashpoint. The rest of the squad gathered around the Burger King counter as Dimitri Mascarenhas held forth on the qualities of the Whopper meal. Only one player had detached himself from the group.

Simon Katich had joined up with the team after the conclusion of an eventually fruitless Ashes summer with the Australians. He was now passing listlessly through the aisles of M & S Simply Food. He tarried awhile by the chilled foods section. He appeared indecisive as to whether to choose between a honey and mustard pasta salad or a salmon and broccoli one. He looked grey and drawn, pinched in the face with cavernous shadows below the eyes. He was unable to pick and sloped sadly off.

It was strangely distressing to see a man reputed for his mental toughness reduced in this way. But having had their technical deficiencies so cruelly exposed and exploited over a summer would any athlete be able to pick a pasta salad in M & S Simply Food? I think not.

I’ve only seen one sportsman in this state since. It was Katich. On Monday.

Beware Australians Bearing Gifts

The rapid descent of Australian cricket into a quivering shambles has set the alarms bells ringing at Sportsthoughts headquarters. Is this a dastardly strategem designed to put the tourists off the scent? Will Brisbane be the arena for a battalion of honed Aussie cricketers to charge forth from a metaphorical Trojan Horse of shitness?

Recent form feels suspicious in its scope and creativity. There’s a roster of injuries that include spurious entries such as Simon Katich‘s poorly thumb. There was that pointless and ill-timed hoop-la surrounding the announcement of a 17-man squad; the ceremony was ruined by rain, the clouds probably seeded as part of some fiendish scheme to depress the nation further.

Even Michael Atherton arrived in Hobart this week stating that he found the atmosphere strange when he touched down in the country, although he may be confusing that for jetlag. His Australian counterparts are possibly involved in the conspiracy. Last night they waxed bizarrely rhapsodical about the technique of Usman Khawaja during an innings that had lasted one delivery up to that point. He’d left the ball. Khawaja is one of eight participating batsmen of the Australian squad that played first-class cricket yesterday. They managed a laughable 61 runs between them. I don’t buy it. There’s something up.

This isn’t a new tactic. England tried it last time they toured Australia, sklifully executing a imaginitive plot that including mental illness and in-fighting. The coup de grace was delivered with some panache by Steve Harmison and his iconicly rubbish first delivery at the Gabba. There was just one problem. They forgot to get out of the horse.

Something Kind Of Ooh

I wish that when I was in the careers office I had chosen to be a songwriter instead of amateur blogger. Mainly because if you pen just one successful pop song then you are set for a life spent supping Tropicana in your pants and not much else. I’m guessing that writing a winning blog post gets you nothing apart from minor kudos and possibly a few spelling corrections from your dad.

The other advantage is that when a lyricist is struggling for an apt word or two they can just indiscriminately sprinkle in a bar or two of indistinct noises. An oohoohooh here, a lalalala there. Bloggers can’t do this. It wouldn’t make any sense.

This becomes particularly problematic when you have to describe a day like today at Edgbaston when not very much happens. You have to feed off the scraps of action.

Well firstly Phil Hughes made social cricket media history by becoming the first man to announce his dropping from the team on Twitter. The indiscriminate use of capitals in the middle of his news suggests that his technique is not the only thing that is deficient about Hughes.

He was replaced at the top of the order by Shane Watson, which was a shock that most of us kind of expected. If that makes any sense.

I certainly understood the theory: Australia desperately needed an extra bowler. So they had to drop the batsman who has the least experience and form. And then slot the replacement into his position to cause minimum disruption to the rest of the batting order.

I wasn’t so keen on the practice. It’s a bit like putting a cucumber in your fruit salad. It is technically a fruit but it still leaves a strange taste in yor mouth. Shane Watson averages about 4 opening in first class cricket. And opening in test cricket is way different to opening in one-day cricket. Ask Nick Knight.

But now Watson is 62 not out and flying.

Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh la la la la la la la la.

CyberAussies

I had so much fun ambling around Phil Hughes’ website the other day, it occurred to me that similar pleasures were on offer on the sites of other members of the Australia squad. I reckon that I wiled away 10 minutes clicking about on the Hughes site, so by my calculations with a eleven blokes in a team there could be around another 100 minutes of entertainment available. Which is about half a Hollyoaks omnibus. So well worth it.

This is what I found, let’s start at the top:

Simon Katich: Katich doesn’t have website that I can find. He probably doesn’t know what the internet is, or if he does, he still calls it cyberspace.

Ricky Ponting: Richard seems to have bypassed the traditional website route and got himself one of those Facebook pages complete with a lovely picture of him and his new hair. His suspiciously regular updates are fulsomely commented on by people who obviously don’t know a lot about cricket. Like this obnoxious and agrammatical effort: “Im english but i can’t help but like you. Hope you guys come back in the next test and make it a really close contest, there is nothing like an Ashes test series! :)”. I couldn’t spot a single comment that said: ‘Ponting, you’re a cunt” which there clearly would be if an actual cricket fan had ventured their opinion, including Australian ones.

Mike Hussey: there’s a lot of interesting stuff on here about his career as Professor of Financial Economics at the University of Maine. In retrospect I think this might be a different Mike Hussey but if you’re at all interested in financial economics definitely worth a look.

Michael Clarke: I could only find a fansite that looks like it’s been written by someone who speaks in tongues. I also had never noticed that Clarke look strikingly similar to former Blue Peter presenter Stuart Miles so that is nice.

Marcus North: No. Clearly no. Although I did find a site for the Marcus North Shore cinema in Wisconsin. They’re currently running a season of flims about quite dull middle-order batsmen.

Brad Haddin: No. Nothing that even sounds lamely like Brad Haddin.

Mitchell Johnson: Nope. There is a Mitchell Johnson Financial Services though. And the first four results on the Google image search inadvertently creates the easiest odd one out round ever:

One of these men is an actual serial killer.

Nathan Hauritz, Peter Siddle, Ben Hilfenhaus: not so much as a Twitter account between them. Poor show.

So Phil Hughes is the only Australian cricketer in the Lords starting XI to have his own website which means that this post is a bit of a waste of time. Arguably they all are. I should have stuck to watching Hollyoaks.