Category: Sport

Roebuck v Swanson – for real

The other day I ran a little comparison of the writing styles of Peter Roebuck and Will Swanton. The Herald has gone one better. They’ve got them head to head in a debate on the referral system.

“Batsmen growling about referrals ought to be taken as seriously as bankers complaining about bankruptcy. Now, suddenly, the poor dears fear they might occasionally be given out leg before wicket. Not the least attraction of referrals is that it will reduce the blight of pad play, a negative tactic introduced by Poms incapable of reading Sonny Ramadhin. For decades pads have been used as a second line of defence. Gentlemen, the game is up. Now these blokes will have to use their bats.” – Roebuck

Day three had howlers everywhere. By the players, mostly. South African captain Graeme Smith and wicketkeeper Mark Boucher did not have the faintest clue what they were doing. Boucher kept crossing his arms in front of his face – let’s go to the video – but he kept getting it wrong. He ended up looking like an A-grade, card-carrying twit. Rules that make great players look like A-grade, card-carrying twits should be avoided. The players are the game, not the ICC. – Swanton

March 3, 2009

Gimmicks Pay

I”ve mentioned my feelings on Hawkeye in tennis umpiring – now technology is encroaching on cricket – for good or for not-so-good who can tell… in the meantime the failure of the system in South Africa has been a nice little earner for Channel Nine.

“On the controversial video umpire front, the Herald understands the South African Broadcasting Corporation will agree to pay a seven-figure sum to purchase the hot spot and snickometer technology – as used in Australia by Channel 9 – for the remaining two Tests.”

March 2, 2009

League Cup of their own

Manchester United also took out the League Cup last night in penalties. That picture is them celebrating the winning penalty. What a night to be me. Both my teams took out semi-meaningless silverware. Man U are also seven points clear in the Premiership with a game in hand.

March 2, 2009

A Manly win

Manly won the World Club Challenge last night – the first NRL team to do so in the last five years. They’re also only the sixth team to do it in 17 years of WCC matches. Only two have been played in Australia.

Bodes well for a good season for the mighty Sea Eagles. Who are also the deservedly the bookmaker’s favourites this year.

March 2, 2009

Roebuck v Swanton

The SMH’s two best cricket columnists go head to head today with accounts from the first test in South Africa. I’ve always been a fan of Roebuck – but I think Swanton is gaining the ascendancy as the Herald’s best cricket scribe. 

Sportswriting remains the one place in the English language where a penchant for wordplay, particularly for cliche, simile, metaphor and analogy delivered without apology – is not a curse but a blessing. 

Here are some examples from today:
Swanton:

“The overnight total was sneakily strong on a ground where you could bowl an apple and get swing and seam.”

“Michael Clarke came in, full of pep. Then again, Clarke could be stabbed in a dark Johannesburg alley and remain full of pep.”

Roebuck

“Despite encountering the daunting combination of Dale Steyn in full flight, a shaky score on the board and the sort of light featured in the more disreputable discos, North looked confident as he took guard. “

“From the outset the new man’s work on the leg-side was efficient. Anything heading towards his pads was neatly tucked with a bat as straight as a Roman road.”

“Given the chance to drive through the covers, he does so with an unexpected flash. Bending, he pushes his hands at the ball and dispatches with a bat as loose as a drunkard’s tie. It’s the only shot he does not control and the ball hurries away, sometimes off the meat, sometimes off the grizzle.”

February 28, 2009

Political football

Murray Hurst, The LNP candidate for Townsville has a problem. He’s been pigeon holed as “the former North Queensland Cowboys coach”. Which he was. In 2001. After that he was a councilor at Thuringowa City Council – a much more credible position if you’re running for election. Unfortunately Mr Hurst has a problem. His campaign strategy seems to be to remind people that he was the Cowboys Coach.

“In many ways it’s like a rugby league team at the highest level,” said Mr Hurst, who coached the Cowboys in the 2001 and 2002 NRL seasons.

“You’ve got to worry about your own backyard without being overly concerned about who you are facing in the election.

“It’s always a case that you’ve got to have a good team behind you. Obviously now with a new opponent, one I didn’t expect, it may be different but it’s me and my team against the Labor Party.

In this interview from the Brisbane Times he goes on to talk about important stuff. Like infrastructure spending and health. But it’s too late. The horse has bolted. If you’re reading this Murray – and no doubt your crack campaign team has a google alert set up to tell you when people are mentioning your name – no more football analogies. This is an election campaign.

February 25, 2009

Benaud steps down

Sad. But now I guess we’ll see how accurate the 12th Man’s portrayal of the handover process was.

I’ll never be able to think of Benaud as anything but a constipated turtle thanks to someone who made that comment in my youth, but cricket won’t be the same without him.

Oh well, as long as Bill Lawry doesn’t get more air time out of this I’ll be ok.

February 18, 2009

Chelsea say goodbye to Premier League for this year

Chelsea have just sacked manager Luiz Felipe Scolari – considered by many to be in the top tier of managers world wide. Talk about impatient. This is bound to kill their season. It’s incredible – they’ve had some of the best managers in the world in recent years, and they’ve sacked them all. It’s a poison chalice.  Who’d want to be the next manager of Chelsea? Really.

February 10, 2009

On cricket

There have been a whole lot of posts around the internet about the predicament facing the Australian Cricket Team. Australia’s pre-eminent cultural institution. I have, until now, resisted throwing in my two cents. 

Much has been made over the departure of past heroes. The Gilchrists, Warnes, McGraths and now Haydens of this world are irreplacable. What makes me sad is that Australia has arguably the strongest domestic competition worldwide with imports kept to a minimum (they’re pretty much non existant – unlike county cricket in England) and young players being developed through government funded programs.

We really should be doing better at bringing young players into the national fold. Michael Hussey should have been in the national team years before the selectors got the balls to pick him. Same goes for Phil Jacques. Brad Hodge must surely feel like the unluckiest man in Australian cricket. Simon Katich has done what few have managed to do and resurrected his career from selector induced oblivion. 

Australia is blooding players too late. Debutants are often aged over 30 (eg 36 going on 37 year old spinner Bryce McGain) and longevity isn’t a possibility. Longevity and tenure has also been a problem. Half of these players retiring now are players I’ve watched my entire cricket watching life. The selectors need to be a little bold and courageous. Tenure needs to be an attitude of the past. Domestic players need to feel like they’ve got a real chance of breaking into the test team on the basis of performance. Underperforming veterans should be axed. We can’t afford to be sentimental about selections – any more than we are when voting for politicians. If there’s a better option there they need to be in the team.  

Michael Clarke’s decision to forego the big bucks in India to have some rest and focus on his international career is laudable. It’s a pattern that needs to be established on a wider level. Australian cricket will not survive at a test and 50 overs level if IPL dollars are the holy grail for up and coming cricketers.

Ricky Ponting is a terrible captain, but a terrific batsmen. This presents a terrible problem. How do you remove the captaincy mantle without slapping him in the face and having some effect on his batting.

That’s the batting side of things covered – our bowlers are in dire straits. They can not take a wicket. The lower echelons seem incapable of doing any better. We’ve seen about 6 no name players make inauspicious debuts this season. Who’d ever heard of Bollinger, Siddle or Hilfenhaus before they got a crack? And don’t get me started on spinners. How can there be such a scarcity of bowlers in the ranks? The quest for the perfect one day all rounder because of England’s ashes triumph on the back of Andy Flintoff has filtered down to the state level. Other than those players who made their test debuts this year can anyone name a bowler at state level? Didn’t think so.  How is Nathan Bracken, rated the world’s best one day player because of his economy rate, not suitable for a test berth? 

I also blame 20/20 cricket for the downfall.  But that’s another post for another time. End of rant.

February 8, 2009

Fowler signs

Robbie Fowler has signed for the North Queensland Fury. You heard it here second.

February 4, 2009

Hit for headline writers

There’s a set formula for writing hackneyed cricket headlines that goes as follows:

“{Subject} hits {players name} for {six} or {actual figure based on the story}.”

You can alternate that with a passive voice format for variety. But very rarely should you ever leave that trusty formula completely. Unless you want to be interesting and engaging.

Case in point: CA hits Symonds for $4000

Ok, so I may be exaggerating- the SMH to its credit doesn’t have a whole lot of those. At the moment. But it’s such cliched headline writing.

January 29, 2009

ATP: Equal pay for equal work

ATP in that heading stands for Another Tennis Post – there’ve been a few of them, and given the amount of tennis we’re currently watching there’ll no doubt be more. 

We’ve just watched Dokic go down fighting against Safina. It was a hard fought game – but in all honesty pretty boring to watch. Here’s the thing. I don’t like watching women’s tennis. And I’m sick to death of the special treatment they get and their cries for equal pay.

I’m not against the idea of women getting paid the same amount as men – in any sport. What I am against is the preferential treatment of women in tennis. Why should we have to wait until after 10.00pm to see arguably the best player ever to play the game? Why are the women’s games played first? They’re boring, they don’t play with the same power and precision as the men and their serves are a good 40km slower. Sure, there’s the eye candy factor, and the Aussie “home girl hero” factor tonight – but at the end of the day I’d rather watch the men first and then the women (at the end of the day). 

Here’s the rub – women want equal prizemoney in the grandslams – and yet they play much fewer sets – a woman winning the tournament in straight sets throughout her fixtures will play 14 sets – a man winning in straight sets will play 21. If a woman is forced to play the maximum number of sets available she’ll play 21, a man 35.

A set generally takes somewhere between 20 minutes and an hour to play – if you take the average of 40 minutes and the middle ground for number of sets played throughout the tournament a male champion is likely to play about 18 hours of tennis. This is pretty conservative. Because in theory as games get tougher and closer throughout the tournament they last longer. You can realistically expect a mix of three, four and five set games. A woman champion playing seven games is, using the same methodology, likely to play about 11 hours of tennis. 

I’d say pay rates are pretty fair – especially given pay loading for having to play at less desirable times. You could argue that having the men’s games earlier would rate better and create more television revenues for the game. On that basis this quest for equality is actually robbing the coffers and there’s no business case for increasing women’s prize money.

January 27, 2009

Bird’s eye view

We’ve been watching a lot of tennis lately. Tennis is one of those games that you watch and find yourself thinking “it doesn’t look that hard” which progresses to “we should do that for a job.” The answer to those statements is “it is” and “we shouldn’t”. 

I did have tennis lessons as a child. I spent more time running punishment laps of the tennis court than holding a racquet – and subsequently don’t know my forehand from my forehead. Robyn is much more proficient when it comes to the skills involved but I’ve got the edge on brute strength and am prone to hitting the ball as hard as I can male, so we’re pretty evenly matched when we play. The Australian Open inspires a renewed vigour for the game every year – last year we bought racquets so maybe this year we’ll buy some sweat bands or something.

But I digress. I wanted to mention Hawkeye – which is an interesting case of technology driven by television companies being integrated into sport. Traditionally television companies interactions with sport have been to the detriment of tradition – eg World Series Cricket, Super League and 20/20 cricket.

Progress is not always good. Especially when it comes to eliminating human error in judicial administration of the rules of the game.

Cricket coverage lead the way in terms of calling umpire’s decisions into question – snicko, cricket’s hawkeye for LBWs, and hotspot – not to mention ultra slow motion repetitions of run out decisions.

The bane of Rugby League watching in recent years has been the time taken for video referee decisions.  

The desire for accuracy is in my mind an imperative based not on ensuring the players get a fair go – but insuring that the punters do. I mean punters in the literal “gambling” sense – not just fans. The amount of money riding on every game of professional sport could fund the bailout of a small financial institution so it’s increasingly important to get things right.

Robyn is all for Hawkeye in tennis – she says it encourages players to boldly aim for the lines – knowing they can make a challenge if a call doesn’t go the right way. I’m not sold, and neither it seems are the players. Particularly after hawkeye was thawrted by a bit of shade today.

Two final comments on this long post – firstly – did you know Hawkeye was invented by a man named Hawkins? I always thought the name was based on hawk’s legendary optic capacity and the fact that you’re getting a “birds eye view”. 

Secondly, I think Birdseye’s decision to sponsor Hawkeye was a brilliant piece of product endorsement. 

Here endeth the lesson.

January 25, 2009

Late night ramble

We just enjoyed watching Safin v Federer in the third round of the Australian Open. I am a Safin fan, and I like Federer and Robyn is a Federer fan and likes Safin so it was a fun game to watch. It should have gone for longer but I’m glad it didn’t because now it’s late and time for bed. 

But before bed I’d like to plug Chris’s new blog. He’s called it “toph-online” probably because he still wants us to call him “Toph”. Anyway, it’s two days old and he’s mostly blogged about Obama – but who hasn’t mostly blogged about Obama this week. Welcome to the blogosphere Chris. Here’s a cheap plug.

January 23, 2009

Sport’s psychology

Great little article from Paul Sheehan at the SMH on the way the sports invented by a country speaks to its culture and the psychology of its populace…

Can you imagine the Americans coming up with a game where the score was commonly 0-0 or 1-0? Or inventing a game that could be played over five days, with numerous meal breaks, and end in a draw?

It’s actually a promo for the Superbowl, this year featuring an Australian. While Sheehan seems to be lauding the excitement contained in US sport he neglects to mention that the Superbowl is essentially two coaches playing chess with the pieces wearing body armour. Chess has built in timed pauses  in which the players make their moves. The superbowl is the same, only the pauses also allow advertisers to get the best bang for their buck.

January 22, 2009