The gravel in your sporting ice cream.
Can Piswiddle win the ashes? – Mitchell and Webb cricketing stupidity ahoy
Some guy wandering around booting footballs into places he shouldn’t, brilliantly.
Little Gary Neville takes life awfully seriously – here he is refusing to shake hands with old mate Peter Schmichael, who went to play for the other guys. He doesn’t look too bothered, though.
Photoshop comp – Unpopular movie-based video games. Har.
Having embraced this revolutionary scanner technology, I’m going to fire up some photos from the vault. You can click on the photos to make them bigger.
This was one one of my best sporting days out ever – New Zealand v Australia in the 1999 Cricket World Cup in Cardiff. Me and three of me besht mates made the train trip from London the night before, and after an evening out dodging short, angry Welsh men wound up to punching point by pissed antipodeans trying to steal their girlfriends, we woke up and made our way to the ground. Possibly the biggest cheer of the day came early when then-Wales Rugby coach Graham Henry (still the Great Redeemer at that stage) and Raewyn came past trying to find their seat.
We had great seats, if a little side-on. Behind us sat an English cricket boffin in a ‘I got dressed in the dark’ pink shirt. He’d bought his hand written notebook of handy stats, and scribbled away happily all day. We’d get questions like “Whatever happened to random under-20 player that toured England seven years ago we didn’t have a fucking clue about? I thought he might have been playing?”. Bless.
Behind us and to the side – an Aussie wearing only a mullet and Aussie flag boxers – I shit you not. He had an amazing array of songs and chants and mixed it up all day, not repeating himself once*. We soon discovered the beer tent, and spent most of the accumulation period getting fairly arseholed under the warm Cardiff sun. I forget what we were having, but it was served in proper plastic pint glasses. Very civilised.
As for the match, Geoff Allot took out the openers, and except for Lehmann’s Micheal Beven-impressions, the Aussies had nothing, really. 213 was the target and the between-innings beer queue murmurings were cautiously optimistic. Until we came out and started losing wickets. The Aussies were going through us like Kim Hughes goes through tissues, until Roger Twose and Chris Cairns started turning things around, taking singles until they caught and passed the run rate, and started playing shots. In the haze, I can remember Cairns twice hitting Warne back over his head into the river running behind the ground. Glorious. Cairns went with a dozen or so to go, but we were all but there.
When the winning runs were hit, there was nothing to do but run on the field. I turned to shake hands with Pink Shirt, and he waved me on, saying “Enjoy it lads”. We bloody did, getting the obligatory ‘lying on the pitch!’ (above), and the ‘in front of the scoreboard on the day we wasted the Aussies! The bloody Aussies!’ (below) photo ops. Then it was back to the train station for the three hour journey home with the Aussie fans. Nice.
Then we lost to Pakistan in the semi, the Aussies somehow won theirs, and they only went and won the bloody thing. Still, I’ll always have Cardiff.
*this isn’t true.
Me no blog much lately. New baby and all that.
Tell ya what though, it’s great for watching sport. Unless that sport is cricket. Here’s Kevin Pietersen making Scott Styris look like a one dimensional medium pace journeyman who’s retired from all non-pyjama cricket in a ‘come get me’ shout to any cashed-up Indian league after a one dimensional medium pace journeyman. At least ‘Scotty’ isn’t the first he’s done it to.
And hey, cruising youtube I stumbled on this guy – he does Macca’s Warney stance and captain Dan’s pull and cut shots. It’s brilliant – and handily, 2 minute’s distraction from the fact we’re getting flogged at any and every format going. If we had a hit against England at the local indoor cricket centre, we’d be leaving with tails between legs. It’s bloody depressing. I even found myself reading Adam Parore and silently nodding, for god’s sake. Yes, it’s that bad.
What’s the solution? Fark knows. Hopefully once the wee man (he looks like a batsman, not like the old man) settles in a bit, a bit more smart arse-bloggery will help a bit. Righto.
I’m taking on other Cricket bloggers in Sportsfreak‘s Cricket tipping competition – the IPL of cricket tipping. I tip like Wendell Sailor trying to find the hotel loo in the dark after a three day bender, generally, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this, for two reasons:
1. On the *actually remembering to make picks* front, I’m shocking. This is also my achilles heel in the Virtual Super 14 (I only lasted one week this year before forgetting). I’ve already deleted the emailed questions for the first test.
2. I’d hate to jinx anyone. I’ve picked Ross Taylor to do well, so he’s bound to injure his wrist getting his passport out of his fanny pack or something.
Be the envy of all the freezing commuters on your bus with sportreview.net.nz’s IPL T-shirt (first T-shirt full stop!).
It works out to about $35 NZD including shipping (2009 update – exchange rate is now shit. Actual results may vary), fill yer boots.
Pure gold from Pulp Sport – Chris Martin (test average 2.55) brings you his Learn to Bat dvd. He’s just so serious.
Smug Shots is people, usually pissed, going up to footballers, usually in a bar or airport, and having their photo taken. That reminds me, I must dig out that photo of me with Glenn Osbourne.
Let’s face it – ten pin bowling isn’t cool, unless you’re The Dude. It’s all corporate team building and weird shoes smelling of watered down disinfectant and that. If I was going have a go, though, I’d be wanting to do something like this.
If you’re like me and spend all day in an office, you may enjoy Whack Your Boss. Disclaimer – I don’t want to whack MY boss. Annoy – yes. Whack – No.
Stephen Fleming loped over the boundary rope for New Zealand for the last time on Tuesday, having secured his test average of 40, and going out as undoubtedly our most successful captain ever, but leaving the sporting public torn. Depending on who you talk to he’s either going too early or he should have gone years ago. So which is it? The knockers may want to look away now…
Fleming famously asked Richard Boock to write his biography, after Boock spent the previous year waging a campaign against Fleming’s captaincy in the Herald as bizzare as it was savage. This was a typically pagmatic move. The book contains plenty of turmoil under its dreadfully cheesy cover, from Glenn Turner’s iron rule prompting Paroroe and Cairns’ hissy fit rebellions, the human ego Chris Cairns being in the dressing room generally, the Sri Lankan bombing and NZC’s disgraceful insistence the tour go ahead, and Dion Nash, Matthew Bell and Flem being hung out to dry for smoking grass in South Africa when others were involved. It’ll be interesting to read his side of the Bracewell era if he publishes another.
He was an atypical New Zealand batsman – graceful, not bludgeoning, preferring to guide the ball to the cover or straight boundary than slogging to cow corner. As the Napier radio commentators never tired of saying, it was typical that in his last test he passed 50 twice but missed out on 100s. I would have liked to see him ride it out for a few more years in the test team without the armband and rack up some big scores, and slyly digging at the opposition as a senior pro. He did this in Hamilton to great effect, hinting the Black Caps were the only team playing cricket going into the final day, helping pile pressure on England like a collector’s pin through a bug. We’ll miss his catching alright, and I was dying to see where his endorsements would head next, having flogged heat pumps like they were a new religion backed by country and western singers, and wandering Cuba Mall dressed as a giant deodorant can accosting passers-by. It could have only got better.
I was at the Oval in 1999 the day we clinched a test series win in England, it sparked the most productive period of his captaincy, taking in the the ICC trophy win, culminating in summer of 2001, when he toyed with Australia in Australia, knocking them out of their own Tri-Series, and so nearly winning a test series, which would have been the crowning glory.
Fleming was a thinking, pragmatic captain (Cricket with Balls went so far as to describe him as Noam Chomsky-like) and got the best out of the resources he had – this is New Zealand cricket after all, we don’t have a county championship to make professionals like England, or teams of potential Bradmans queueing up for their shot like Australia. Fleming was too intelligent, too sure of himself, too graceful in his strokeplay, too willing to say what he thought, and probably too handsome for yer average Kiwi to fully accept. He wasn’t the ‘gee, shucks’ humble bloke we love so much, and he copped it for that. If he’d been born in Sydney or Perth, the Aussies would have loved him.
Links on Flem
Fleming and Macca take to Shane Warne in 2001
The famous Richardson interview
THAT century v South Africa in 2003
Cricket? For the first time in my LIFE I switched from a test to watch Rugby League on Sunday afternoon, as we threw it away in the first innings. I’ll have more to say on this when I get a sec, but you should read Hamish McDougall and Paul Beige Brigade‘s roundups. Mike On Cricket has had excellent stat-y coverage throughout the series also.
Everyone loves Kevin Keegan, but depressingly predictably, he’s not the Geordie Messiah Newcastle fans were praying for, results-wise anyway. He’s not much of a cyclist, either. This clip comes complete with Alan Partridge-alike commentator and Kev’s insistence he’s OK, despite a mess of ripped flesh
Steve Nash is a big deal in the NBA – he’s also a Tottenham fan. Here’s a nice looking Nike TV spot he directed himself. You can see him kissing the Spurs badge midway through
Cross-linked from me other blog – The best muppet-based heavy metal primer you’ll see on the internet this week can be found here.
