Lango At Poets At The Pub

I recently made my first appearance at Poets at the Pub in Newcastle. Recorded at the Northern Star Hotel in Hamilton, I presented four original poems, all of which will appear in my soon to be released book of poems, "Six Nines".

Visitors to The Cricket Tragics may view my performances by following the links at the bottom of the page under "Langos Lean Links".

Sex Please, We're Not British (Any More)

The Hindustan Times has released a secret document prepared by Paddy Upton for the Indian cricket team and circulated by coach Gary Kirsten, calling on the Indian players to bonk until they drop as part of their best practice preparation for the Champions Trophy. It encourages players by claiming that performance before performance increases testosterone which has a positive effect on strength, energy, aggression and competitiveness.

Plastered across the front page of the Hindustan Times, one wonders if it was increasing the players circulation or their own that spurred on their basic urge in printing the article.

Upton's thesis even caters for ugly players, assuring them that an adherence to the Steven Stills lyrics "if you can't be with the one you love, then love the one you're with" is akin to taking performance enhancing tugs.

None of this comes as any surprise in Australia, where for decades panel vans have been parked on the boundary's edge of suburban grounds on the day of the grand final. One team mate had a standard booking at the local hotel on a Friday night, where a constant changing stream of amateur psychologists, fresh from the Miss World contest, assisted him in his match preparation. Our theory, expressed downstairs in the bar, was that beer was a reasonable substitute and probably cheaper than the hired help. He played for NSW but probably ended up with thick glasses and a bad back.

As dedicated players, we spent much of six Saturday hours in the sun thinking, talking and swearing about sex, in order, no doubt, to enhance out cricketing performance. How wise we were and all the more surprising none of us wore the Baggy Green.

Then again, Shane Warne has been showing us the way for years in regard to text before sex before Test . Whilst all other bowlers can recall their match winning "pfeiffer's", each of Warnie's five wicket halls has a different girls name.

Its a nice concept but smacks a bit of having your cake and eating it too and leaves big question marks over the definition of performance. How any Indian cricketer expects to hold the Champions Trophy above his head with dead legs and a silly grin is beyond me and should they become proficient in this training schedule, the cigarette afterwards will almost certainly and eventually kill them.

If only John Dyson had known!

http://www.smh.com.au/news/sport/cricket/2009/09/24/1253385065038.html

The Captaincy Poll & The Quiz

The Captaincy poll finally closed and 50% of respondents thought it was time for Simon Katich to take over the role in Tests for Australia. Rather pointedly, only 13% thought Clarke the heir apparent was the man for the job. The rest are happy losing important series under Punter's misdirection.

A new Quiz question awaits.

Test Cricket - Martin Crowe To The Rescue?

Kiwi Martin Crowe has stepped forward with a plan to "rescue" Test cricket by conducting a Championship of knock-out games over a year between all playing nations. The games would be played under lights, using a pink ball, with quarter-finals played across the world and the final to be played at Lords.

This, he believes, will bring the crowds back to the longest form of the game.

Of course, TV rights remain a problem. The pink ball remains a problem. Overcoming the objections of the "real" money in cricket remains a problem. I remain a problem.

Crowds are down? So what? Why is it when crowds diminish cricket officials always think we have to change the game? The problem with cricket is we have allowed grubby little businessmen on the sub-continent to rise to positions of power and influence and dictate terms in the game. Burned by Packer thirty years ago, the ICC and member boards have bent over for the IPL and even smoked cigarettes with it afterwards. The problem with cricket is we have too much of it. We have flooded the market and given it too much choice instead of promoting what we have. The problem with cricket is we have allowed players to become an undisputed power and unseemly behaviour is met with a wet slap on the wrist with a dead fish. Reference Harbajhan and Symonds for further information. The problem is with cricket is we no longer revere the game, we blindly worship its gladiators without rebuke and allow its administrators to stay in the counting house, stacking rupes/dollars/pounds to the ceiling.

Marty wants us to find heroes? We've just seen another great Ashes series which held our interest through the winter nights and it seemed to be chock full of heroes to me and none of them in coloured clothing, with numbers on their back or floodlight. You don't spell cricket b-a-s-e-b-a-l-l. The Twenty20 genii has been let from the bottle and the ICC is still wondering on its three wishes.

Golden rule reminder to the ICC and all of its wonderkind committees ... if you sleep with tarts you wake up with a rash!

Read the SMH article through this link. http://www.smh.com.au/news/sport/cricket/we-need-a-champion--the-scheme-to-rescue-tests/2009/09/20/1253384904005.html

How To Play Blind Cricket

The Skithouse team give us an insight into how cricket is played by blind athletes, with their fantastic hearing and their cat-like reflexes. Many thanks to Simon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEb2lgGBEvU

Peter Cosgrove - The Don Bradman Oration

Should any of you be of doubt about my thoughts and passions about our great game, I suggest you view this outstanding address by Australian hero, Peter Cosgrove.

Speaking in January 2008, at the time of the height of the moral decline of Australian cricket - the unsavoury SCG match against India - his speech gives us the rich history which scaffolds our game today and addresses much of his context to all of us - the local cricketer playing on his local park.

I commend it to you.

http://www.cricketaustralia.tv/page/CALogin/OffFieldActionFeaturesAustralia/0,,12377~1217318,00.html

Doing My First Lines

It's not cricket news but I have signed with a publisher to produce my first book of poetry! A life long ambition - to be published - it will become a reality over the next few months. The collection will feature 42 poems and a collection of my black and white photography.

I have led a blessed life, full of many highlights but none as fulfilling or exciting as this. The birth and growth to adulthood of my children and the ongoing ride with my wife are greater achievements but everything else falls in behind this ... including that first century or that first pfeiffer which secured a premiership!

Ricky Won't Lose That Number

Australia skipper, Ricky Ponting, has stepped down from national Twenty20 commitments, siting the need to maintain his freshness if he is to have longevity in the game. In particular, he has his sights set on a third Ashes tour as Captain. Clearly, he wants the record he shares with Billy Murdoch to be his alone. Without jest, he wants to still be there in 2013 and not a burnt out husk sitting in the corner of an endless dressing room with the number 14 fading on the back of a collection of sponsors logos, occasionally separated by yellow.

Likewise, the decision to maintain playing status in one day cricket, where a rotation of players including the captain, has been happening for some time.

It's a sensible step and one that all players must eventually do and it highlights the broader issue which has been floating about ever since one day games started making money for the Packers. Players can serve two or now three masters in the games of cricket but they can't do it forever. Two types of player recognise that fact - the player to whom reputation is everything and the player to whom money is everything.

There is too much cricket being played at an international level and too little attention being given to tending the grass roots. There are also too many varieties , with the addition of Twenty 20 cricket in the last few years - a development which shows us we are so lazy as punters that we can't even be bothered to play our own backyard cricket anymore but would rather watch the stars doing it in our stead.

The big game - Test cricket - has survived and been made stronger by the money from one day cricket, true and the players remain committed to it being the form they would rather play, even if Chris Gayle finds it "a chore". Changes in over rates and a desire for results which started from Australia under Mark Taylor and soon spread to South Africa and India, has infected the world to the point that even England prefer to win than draw. That attitude brings a level of unpredictability to Test cricket that had died and makes it far more interesting to the consumer. Fielding is better, bowling lines are tighter and shot making improved all as a result of 50 over cricket.

What will Twenty20 bring us?

Money from and entertainment for the feeble minded whose attention span mostly carries them through an SMS but not always, which is why they sit with mates. This is a puerile waste of a cricket ball but at least Mum's roses will now have a chance to grow and that patch on the back lawn might get a covering of grass. It is the greatest possible confidence boost we could gain in Ponting that he would choose to no longer player this hit and giggle farce and concentrate on real and unreal cricket.

It's time for more separation. Different squads - completely different - for one day and Twenty20 games, not because some blokes can't play all but because they shouldn't play all. Some of the skills may be similar but the approach and mindset are totally different. We are supposed to be a great cricket nation - forget the No 4 thing - so we should have more than enough resources.

But we won't.

Why?

Marketing. We create a brand in one form of the game and spectators want to see that brand in all forms.

It lacks brains or long term planning but when did the pursuit of the holy dollar ever have much of either. Remember, they are appealing to a short term market both in terms of how long the consumer will be in the market to watch Twenty20 and how long they concentrate when they are there. They want to make their puppets dance.

Ricky Ponting has cut the strings. I say, well done!

Hey Maan ... What's Wrong Wit Da West Indies?

To understand wotzup in the Caribbean, you have to combine a knowledge of geography, history, politics, human nature and leadership. An understanding of the pervasiveness of American culture and how it seeps into the holes left by human weakness might also aid your clarity.

The West Indies are a loose federation of 27 islands which roughly encircle the Caribbean Sea, south east of the Gulf of Mexico. Just about everyone has had a hand in discovering, exploring and exploiting them, most notably the British, which is why cricket, that symbol of Empire, has been played on the islands there. The West Indies team is selected from the member nations from within that group of twenty seven. Therefore, when players pull on that maroon cap, they are not representing their country but a disparate group of countries.

Traditionally, this was always the reason the West Indies could produce fine cricketers but not necessarily fine cricket teams. Apart from selection disputes and the jockeying for power among the nations who make up the West Indies Cricket Board, before 1960 there was rarely a sense of oneness.

This changed when Barbadian Frank Worrell became the first indigenous West Indian cricketer to captain the team in 1960, possibly because of his colour which was certainly a rallying point for some but especially because of his skills in man management. At his disposal for two watershed tours of Australia and England were some of the greatest names in West Indies cricket history including the greatest cricketer of all time and all nations, Gary Sobers, but there was more to it than that. Worrell insisted on standards of behaviour and instilled desires in his men usually associated with belief in nationhood not just self. Worrell's impact spread beyond his team and cricket was changed in both Australia and England by those tours. We could certainly do with the level of sportsmanship he epitomised.

After cricket, he managed West Indian teams for a short while and became a senator representing Trinidad & Jamaica where his belief in federation may have had far reaching affects, had he not died of leukaemia, tragically early at 42.

Unfortunately, his gains were largely lost and his world class team were shadows by the time they reached Australia in 1968-69. By the mid 70's, under the captaincy of Clive Lloyd, they were again a loose collection of talent which occasionally blasted opponents out of the water but couldn't sustain their performances. In 75-76, they were flogged 5-1 by Australia, in Greg Chappell's first series as captain, a series memorable for three things: the mastery of Chappell's batting; the emergence of a brash, swaggering kid called Viv Richards; and a sustained pace battery from that sheila Lillian Thomson. Noting how uncomfortable the Aussies had been on a fast Perth track when Andy Roberts took 7fa and blasted them out with the support of young teenager on his first tour called Holding, Lloyd went away and formulated the basic blueprint for a West Indian dominance that would choke world cricket for the following eighteen years.

The engine room of his plans were four very fast, very hostile bowlers who sustained the attack by bowling only 12 overs an hour, an aggressive batting lineup that scored runs quickly and captaincy which was relentless, thorough and completely supportive of its players. Whilst the names changed over the years, the impact remained the same with the exception of the captaincy. Man management is a gift. Worrell had it, Lloyd had it but his successors didn't. Gradually, under Richards, Richie Richardson and Lara, things became unstuck, with the turning point being Richardson's ungracious response when Mark Taylor's Australians finally unseated the West Indies in 1994-95. His spiteful claim that the Australians were not that good a side, made to the media after the presentation of the Frank Worrell Trophy to Taylor, was not the legacy that either Worrell or Lloyd left him.

By the late nineties, success on the cricket field was harder to come by and usually based on individual performances, often from Lara, but hedonism had replaced pride or team spirit and quality players were becoming harder to find thanks to the lure of American college contracts. Young lads from the Caribbean were being snapped up on lucrative contracts in sports such as basketball and baseball for figures poor boys from financially deprived cultures could only dream of but cricketers would never see. These opportunities became the dominant force and the preferred future for island kids, as more and more of the American black culture was soaking into the pours of of West Indian skins, in much the same way that it had from the Empire following the second world war. In the seventies, before their own cricket heroes completely covered the horizon, a Jamaican 12 year old could tell you all there was to know about the Chappell's or Walters or Lillee and English cricketers were their second favourite. It was much the same adulation that Indian kids have now for our players. Twenty years later, in the late nineties, it was all Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan and the number 23 on shirts wasn't hero worship for Shane Warne!

Off the field, the WIBC was struggling. Poor results, declining incomes because those results and the all pervading lure of and interest in American sports - a new colonialism - and bad management by the Board had led to increasing argument among member countries which was concerned less with resolution and more with a power struggle for control. The damage this was doing to an already wounded beast may not have been apparent as the noughties started but the lack of fruit on the tree is all too apparent now and stems from a lack of judicious pruning.

In 2006, the then President of the WIBC, Ken Gordon, a moderate, commissioned an investigation into West Indies cricket, to be headed by PJ Patterson (not the fast bowler). The report, handed to the Board in 2007, called for wide ranging changes among its 65 recommendations and was hailed across the Caribbean and beyond in other cricket playing nations, as a clear, workable, and important document upon which the West Indies could anchor their survival.

The new President, Julian Hunte (no relation to the rather superior, Conrad Hunte) has chosen to lead the WIBC in a different direction and has adopted only 47 of the recommendations, completely ignoring the major reform that was the centrepiece of the report. That reform would have seen the formation of the West Indies Cricket Council, a representative body of all of the cricket playing nations of the West Indies, with a Chairman elected by that body. It would be the supreme controlling body of cricket in the Caribbean and the current WICB would become a paired down, executive body, answerable to the new WICC. Strangely, President Hunte and his group have been unwilling to relinquish power. Hunte is a former union official who now owns his own insurance company and is a career politician. He has no cricket playing background.

Member nations are showing signs they have had enough. Trinidad and Tobago boycotted the recent AGM of the Board, which amounts to a very large rebuke from a very powerful player in the politics and cricket of the Caribbean.

Add to the mix Dinanath Ramnarine, a disenchanted former Test leg spinner of average ability, who retired from cricket at 29 because he spent the last two years of his career in the Test wilderness with no explanation from officials. His belief was that he was scrapped for being an outspoken critic of the WICB. In 2002, he was elected President of the West Indies Players Association and has taken a rather nondescript and ineffective organisation to a point of real power in West Indies cricket. His rise coincided with the furore over the Marlon Samuals suspension. He has a "no prisoners" approach to negotiating over players pay and conditions , which included leading players withdrawing their services for a 2005 tour of Sri Lanka. As Tony Cozier says "The upshot has been fees and conditions from the WICB for leading players which were unthinkable when he took over." He became so dangerous to the WICB that Hunte offered him a seat on the Board but as with all such marriages of convenience, the annulling came sooner than later and was bloody. Ramnarine resigned has been a more effective voice of the players since.

Dinanath Ramnarine and the WIPA want to establish better pay, better conditions and the same superannuation provisions now available for most of the leading teams in world cricket. It's the theory of "if your pay peanuts, you get monkeys", although he wouldn't want to say that around Andrew Symonds. Not surprisingly, Julian Hunte and his reactionary WIBC, don't want change, don't want to invest in the players and now, see it as imperative that this challenge to their power base from the WIPA is fought off. In the process, they are killing a a game already badly in need of a transfusion in this part of the cricket world.

Thirty years behind England and Australia, this dispute has at its core the same sort of power struggle which fractured cricket in the late 70's, with the exception that Kerry Packer never sought to control the game, just the TV rights. Ultimately, no matter what happened, the game was never in jeopardy in England or Australia. That's not the case in the West Indies.

John Dyson was scrapped because he was seen to be a players man and was pointing to the need for change at the top - something the Patterson Report had done clearly. Media in the Caribbean have been very critical of the WICB and have placed great pressure on the Board for Patterson's recommendations to be fully implemented. In many ways, the player's dispute is a distracting sidelight to the main game.

The Board have not chosen leading players for the Champions Trophy and negotiations have fallen apart again, in the last few days, even after a high level negotiator was approved by both sides. What this means for the approaching tour of Australia is anyone's guess but one would think it likely a truce may be negotiated as a tour of Australia is the best trip a West Indian cricketer can make and certainly the most lucrative. Chris Gayle has enough pride to want to tilt at the Australians, especially when they are vulnerable and Chanderpaul likes our tracks, especially without Warne. Mind you, with people that bloody minded on either side of this dispute and human nature what it is, perhaps we had better invest some time in reading the player bios so we know who we are looking at this summer.

Some links you might like to follow:
http://www.cricinfo.com/westindies/content/story/422960.html
http://www.cricinfo.com/westindies/content/story/420221.html
http://www.cricinfo.com/westindies/content/story/419969.html
http://downthewicket.blogspot.com/

Latest Player Rankings

The latest player rankings have been announced following the Test Series just completed between Sri Lanka and New Zealand, They are as follows:

Batsmen
1. Kumar Sangakkara (SL)
2. Gautam Gambir (Ind)
3. Mahela Jayawardena (SL)
4. Shivnarine Chanderpaul (WI)
5. Mohammad Yousef (Pak)
6. Michael Clarke (Aust)
7. Younus Khan (Pak)
8. Graeme Smith (SA)
9. Ricky Ponting (Aust)
10. Jaques Kallis (SA)

Bowlers
1. Dale Steyn (SA)
2. Muttaih Muralidaran (SL)
3. Mitchell Johnson (Aust)
4. Makhaya Ntini (SA)
5. Harbhajan Singh (Ind)
6. Stuart Clark (Aust)
7. Paul Harris (SA)
8. Zaheer Khan (Ind)
9. Jimmy Anderson (Eng)
10. Graeme Swann (Eng)

In the history of these rankings, this must be Australia worst representation because outside the top ten, only Katich sneaks into the next ten at 19th - symptomatic of the batting collapses witnessed against England. Of the bowlers, the out of work Brett Lee is at 12th and Peter Siddle at 13th but then its a long way to Ben Hilfenhaus at position 34.

The dominance of South Africa and Sri Lanka at the top of the team rankings in underlined by the prominent position their batsmen and bowlers have in the rankings, with South Africa having three bowlers in the top ten. Mind you, its hard to imagine Paul Harris as the 7th best bowler in the world! Then again, Mitch Johnson sits at three.

With pointers to the summer, contractual negotiations not withstanding, the Australia public get another chance to see an aging West Indies batting line up in which Shivnarine Chanderpaul continues star. Their problem, like Pakistan's, will be bowling Australia out. With bowlers well down the list, Jerome Taylor (15), Fidel Edwards (24) and DJ Bravo (31) and Australia smarting, they will serve as retribution. Pakistan with Danish Kaneria (17) who bowls better than his pastry name sounds and Umar Gul (20) are a long way ahead of other Pakistani bowlers. In the batting, it will be a pleasure to see the two stars of world batting for the last few years, Mohammad Yousef and Younus Khan, taking on the Australia bowling attack at Melbourne, Sydney and Hobart.

For a full look through the rankings, follow the links at the bas of the page.