Missing something?

Right, well after I had scored quite freely off the new ball, it seems that I've got a bit bogged down in the middle overs. To whit, not many posts recently. There's a reason for that.

THERE'S NO BLOODY CRICKET ON.

A blog cannot live on love, life and art alone.

AND we're going to have to wait. The first test against the Injuns doesn't start until October 9th! Which means that the only thing we're going to read about in the coming weeks is Hayden's achilles tendon, McGain's shoulder and whether the Indian middle-order can cut it anymore. I really don't have the patience for any of that, and that's why this isn't purely a cricket blog. F'rinstance I know that the biggest news at the moment is that Durham have won their first County Championship, but I don't think I could blog about county cricket and stay sane.

Lately, the internet has been for email, Skype and football. I am now counting the days until it can be used for what is was intended.

And no, stop sniggering up the back, I do NOT mean porn.

12 days to go.

West Hammered

The entire West Ham set-up can go take a long walk off a short pier, as far as I'm concerned. All of them! Players, staff, supporters, catering staff, the lot. The fact that they escaped with only a £5.5 million fine after they fielded an ineligible player in Carlos Tevez affair in 2006/07 was a complete joke, particularly in light of the £25 million television deal that was struck that year. I'm more than pleased that Sheffield United have managed to win their case through the recent independent commissions' findings. They're after £30 million, but that's yet to be confirmed. I hope they get it all, AND the Hammers get docked points like they always should have. It looks like some of the Sheffield United players are going to sue as well! To be honest, I'm just a bit annoyed that other clubs like Fulham and Wigan withdrew their threats to take legal action as soon as they realised they weren't going to suffer through West Ham staying up. I guess this shows the darker side of commerce and sport - when football is run purely by money, there's no room for integrity or loyalty anywhere. IPL/ICL, anyone?

There is another reason. Bastards. I really hate it when we lose at home!

Holland Hijinks

OK, so I managed to get through the weekend without going online. I was surprised at how little seemed to happen whilst I was away. There was some sport played. There was a fair amount of column inches dedicated to the economic crisis, and when I got home I had seventeen emails. But really, nothing much happened. Probably proof that the internet isn't quite as essential to my life as I'd thought.

Had a great time away, actually. I was taking part in an orientation weekend for first-year students at my school. I had thought that it would be mostly attended by undergrads but that there would be a sprinkling of postgrad students and therefore people in their twenties, too, but when I got drafted into the "getting-to-know-you" games I realised my mistake. Most of the group I was with were just out of high school, and I was older than them by at least ten years! Whoops. Dancing with 18 year-old girls made me feel like just a BIT of a dirty old man, as did being part of the judging of the 1980s-inspired catwalk competition (yes really), but after I realised that the only person worried about my age was me, I decided to just go with it and enjoy myself.

As the weekend progressed I realised that my impression of what a weekend like this would entail was probably entirely based upon my experiences at home. Having attended a university college, as a rule, anything involving the word "orientation" also involved the words "kegs" and "sex". Yep, that's right, pretty much the Australian version of a fraternity. And even now I've realised that my image of how people get to know one another is based almost purely on this alcohol-fuelled, sexually aggressive, Australian model. Now I'm not for a moment suggesting that your average Australian goes to university and is met at the door with a slab of beer and a packet of condoms, but that's certainly what it felt like to me. And it certainly made me feel pretty darn out of place, not to mention inadequate, when at every social event imaginable all the talk was about who just had a "vom" and who just picked up, and that it was pretty clear if you weren't able to participate in either event you might not fit in. Thankfully, a fair amount of participation in the former was good enough to ensure that I wasn't a complete social pariah, but the latter left me completely cold - I just wasn't ready for it, for one thing.

So imagine my surprise when a bunch of 45 students headed to the woods for a good dollop of orientation, only to discover a virtual absence of all these things. Where was the double-fisted binge-drinking? The skolling competitions? The public chundering? The hip-grinding on the dancefloor and face-eating competitions? What was wrong with these kids? Didn't they know how to have fun? What were they, a bunch of poofters or something?

At no point did I see anyone more than merry. I think I witnessed ONE couple share a kiss - and do you know what they did? They left the dance floor and went outside, away from public view. I only saw it because I was on the way back from the bathroom. There was no machismo. No ritualistic, competitive drinking. No elbowing people aside to get to that "hot" girl who was momentarily without a dancing partner. No social heirarchy of who was good-looking and cool and who wasn't. It was almost like..... having a good time. It was NICE. It was FUN. It was CIVILISED. Who'd've thunk it.

I've thought a bit about it since (as you can probably tell), and tried to compare it to my own experience, and the reasons why it was so different from this. Is an Australian versus European comparison actually valid? Was my experience not a little more contextual than that? Is comparing three years at university college with an orientation weekend for a bunch of musicians really fair?

I think that there's something in those questions - but still, the cultural element cannot be ignored. And any sort of socio-ecomomic analysis will probably produce almost identical results for both sides. My college was VERY exclusive - it was the domain of the upper-middle class private schoolkid, who graduated with excellent marks. Talented, bright students from good families. And yet something in their make up meant that when you handed them a beer and said "have fun, kids" that they drank themselves into the gutter and slept around.

Maybe there really is something in the "cultural significance of alcohol in Europe" diatribe that we hear all the time. I don't know. Either way - I know where I would have preferred to have been eighteen!

The Day Carrot Went Out For Some Fresh Air

I have been spending an in-ordinate amount of time online lately. I'm kind've stuck in limbo, really - until some very important documents arrive from Australia, I can't finalise my enrolment, which means that I can't get a student card. Without a student card I can't do any singing practice, so I'm cooling my heels a fair bit, and spending an in-ordinate amount of time online! Thankfully I'm going away for the weekend, so I'll get to spend some time out of the house and away from my laptop. In fact, I'm going to see if I can impose a 48-hour internet ban on myself by consequence. So no sneaking off to the intenet terminal where I'm staying to check email, facebook or football scores, either. Wonder if I'll make it.

Since moving to Holland and using the internet a lot more, it's struck me how extraordinary it is, and how it's changed our lives remarkably in a very short space of time. In the past 24 hours I have -

- communicated with poeple all over the world
- watched and shared movie clips online
- had numerous (spoken) discussions online, also with people all over the world, including a forty-minute conversation with my bank in Australia, for free
- checked my bank balances in two separate countries, and I'll soon have the opportunity to do it in three
- organised international bank transfers between the same
- given 200+ people an instant update what I'm up to (facebook)
- published my ramblings to a potential audience of billions
- received complex electronically coded documentation by email
- looked at and shared photographs

Think that's the lot! And the remarkable thing is that all this is now so mundane. Remember when fax machines and mobiles were cool? No wonder I've spent so much time online - there's so much to do!

That said, if in ten years I can go from "the internet's for nerds" to it running my life for me, I hate to think what will happen in the next ten years. Maybe I really DO need some fresh air - I'd better stock up on it while I can!

See you in a day or two!

Robbo's Rant

Just for the record, I agree with just about every word of this.

At the risk of paraphrasing the man, what is it with Newcastle United? It feels like the go through managers once every six months or so. Why do people even bother signing up? It's a revolving door! Can't their board see that that's no way to run a business - much less a football club?

Had a bit of a giggle at the mention of the lack of silverware. Even Fulham won the Intertoto Cup in 2002! And before the last eight years we hadn't been in Top Flight football since the 60s!

(Although a quick browse on Wikipedia tells me that Newcastle won the Intertoto in 2001, too - but y'know, whatever. We haven't gone through six managers in five years.)

And despite this, the constant obsession people have with describing Newcastle as a "big club", implying that they should consistently be in the top four, always makes me laugh as well - for a club that should be top four, they've not done that much recently, have they? And the last man that got them there was Sir Bobby Robson, and what did they do to him? Sacked him, surprise, surprise, and at the beginning of a season after a 5th-place finish the year before.

Wouldn't it be funny to see them go down? I used to like them, but now, probably along with everyone else, I think they're a laughing stock.

In other breaking news, ADO Den Haag are top of the Dutch League! Wow. What a great start to the season. I'm right behind you, boys!

I didn't even know this team existed before last week. I don't even know where they play.

Spanky speaks!

Here's a turn-up - a Peter Roebuck article with a surprising lack of wankery.

In fact, you have to go to the fourth paragraph before you find any.

"But it is a mistake to curse the game with all its warts, for then one damns oneself."

And the sixteenth before you find a classical allusion!

"He had been a Gulliver tied up in doubt."

This IS an improvement.

Piss-taking aside, I think it's actually quite a good piece. Spanky presumes to know what's going in in Symonds' head a lot which I'm not sure he actually does, and I'm not quite sure that Symonds fishes with QUITE as much love-lorn poetry as Spanky thinks - "it is also part of his search for peace, outward and inward. Of course fishing does not bring inner peace as much as quietness" but on the whole, I agree with him on most counts. "Ask any captain worth his salt to choose between inflexible discipline and a maverick match-winner, and he'll find a way to accommodate the player. Of course it is not a carte blanche, but Symonds is a long way from becoming more trouble than he is worth" is a pretty decent summing-up of the situation, I'd say.

Well done, Spanky. Carry on like this, and you might even become readable.

Just for the record, I don't have QUITE as much of a fascination with Andrew Symonds as it might appear, but there's bugger-all else to write about cricket-wise at the moment, is there? I SUPPOSE I could write about the recent Bangladeshi ICL defection - but really - "Bangladesh team get even worse" is not that much of an interesting topic, now is it.

Men

OK, this is very interesting.

I've been reading Belle de Jour's blog for awhile. It might interest some to see that I'm prepared to advertise the fact that I read a blog by an ex-prostitute. I would answer that by saying that it's not WHAT she is that makes her interesting, but WHO she is. Both those terms are pretty much inter-changeable I know, but you'll understand once I've explained.

Belle is a real, honest, warts-and-all person, obviously highly intelligent, well-educated, and extremely intellectual. She has some really interesting things to say about sex, sexual identity, love, feminism, and what she thinks of societal and/or the media's views on the same. I will admit that when I first visited her site I was probably drawn there by a sense of voyeuristic interest rather than an intellectual one, but it has most definitely been the latter that has made me keep reading. I am not interested in her relationships, I'm not interested in the occasional blow-by-blow description of what she gets up to with the lights off, and neither am I interested in her show (and it's interesting that in the same post I've linked to she says that she wouldn't otherwise be, either). What I am interested in is her honesty, integrity, self-knowledge and above all willingness, without prejudice, to tell things how they are, based upon the breadth of her experience - which almost by definition is bound to be pretty eclectic.

I think that we would learn a lot by speaking more to sex-workers, and giving more people like Belle a legitimate voice. If you want to learn something about men and sex, speak to their wives. If you want to learn more, speak to prostitutes. Let's not forget that Belle described herself as a "high-class hooker" - i.e. one that caters for those that can afford it. And that doesn't just mean footballers and rock stars, either. It means your Dad. Your brother. Your boss. Middle-class men. Educated men. The so-called pillars of society.

(That's not to say that everyone visits prostitutes, of course. I haven't. But some have. And some will. If they didn't, people like Belle would have found a different line of work long ago).

What particularly interested me about this post was her closing remarks.

"Whatever else happens after this point T will always be in the category of Man to me - no, it's not simply about having the appropriate equipment. A Man does the right thing and has the right attitude and buys you a beer after a shite day and does not expect a fucking medal for emptying the rubbish. Sure they cry, but never for attention. They were my history teacher at school and my housemate at uni. They are not perfect and make no apologies for that. They are the ones played in films by Clive Owen and Shah Rukh Khan. They do what they say on the tin."

I think it might have been the Clive Owen reference that really sold me to her point. I had no idea who Shah Rukh Khan is, had to wikipedia him - but I know exactly what she means. I've seen Owen in a lot of his movies - Croupier, Gosford Park, Sin City, The Bourne Identity, Inside Man and Chidren of Men (think that's the lot), and without question what links them is directness, honesty, grounding, and unashamed masculinity. They know who they are, they know what they want, and they do it without apologising. In some cases, as is the case with the character in "Closer", this occasionally pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable, but in all cases "they do exactly what they say on the tin".

And they are Men! Male adults. Grown-ups. Mature, upright, self-aware human beings. And they don't compromise - this is not to say that they are action heroes that always know what the next move is - but they are decisive, and completely lacking in any self-consciousness. They are them, and no-one else.

Unfortunately this image has been allowed to become clouded in a post-feminist world (and this is no-one's fault, I'm not starting a gender debate here). No wonder, as Belle implies, there aren't very many of them about - it's bloody difficult! We are so self-acknowledging now, and there are so many rules, that it becomes very difficult to become a Man - or an adult at all, for that matter. Decisiveness has become ruthlessness. Self-awareness has become ego-centricity. Groundedness has become arrogance. Masculinity has become aggression. All the things that seem to make Man what he is have been re-shaped and re-named in the most pejorative way. It's no wonder Men are rare.

This segues nicely into some previously un-voiced thoughts on the Andrew Symonds affair. I think, to a point, that Symonds and his ilk are a refreshing change for the world, but don't let me make you think that he's worth emulating, or that the model I'm aspiring to is all hard-edged testosterone and physicality. What works for Clive Owen workd for Clive Owen - it might not work for you and me. What I'm looking for is honesty and forthrightness, and Symonds has very little of that. Symonds' persona is a sham. A fiction. It's not the real thing. It smacks of "I'm big, I'm Aussie, and I play cricket, therefore I must act in a certain way". No wonder he flies off the handle all the time - he can't keep up with himself! His is a classic case of over-compensation.

This is where Belle comes in again - "sure they cry, but never for attention." A good line. Again, the key word here is honesty - and integrity too, I think. This is another paradox of modern masculinity - we're SUPPOSED to talk about our feelings, and cry like big, sissy girls - but watch everyone's face drop when you do. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable is just as difficult as being prepared to stick to who you are in the face of condemnation. And there's plenty of that about - solid, grounded people are confronting. They can challenge and intimidate people just by being in the room, and people don't like it.

Belle's model of what Man is might be completely different to mine, for all I know. I'm glad that she's found something she likes, though - although it might be interesting to see if she can allow herself to do it. Falling in love for people in her line of work - or her previous line of work - is an occupational hazard to be avoided, and that's probably where her self-confessed "wall" comes from. No doubt, separating the real Belle from the working girl Belle will prove very difficult.

I'm reminded of a line that a friend uses as the sign-off on his email, and not just because of Belle. It's from The Princess Bride, of all places. "Beware! People in masks cannot be trusted".

It's Started

*Sigh*. England. Why are they ever thus? They win a couple of unimportant matches and all of a sudden they're World Champion Contenders.

The leading story on the smh website at the moment is an article by Scyld Berry, accompanied by a photo of Ricky Ponting in his best "Dubya" pose, with "Worried Man... Ricky Ponting" as the caption. Oh sure. I BET he's worried. Because after all, England have done SO well, lately, haven't they?

I was a little taken aback by the tone of the article, given that it's in the smh, until I finished it and saw "The Telegraph, London" as its source. So I went to The Telegraph website and found this, as well. Apparently Symonds was only getting his come-uppance when Harbhajan "called" him a monkey! Take that, boy! And back to the plantation where you belong.... I fail to see how you can hedge your bets on what was said and what wasn't, and then use it as justification for the behaviour. "We don't know what was said!! But he deserved it, either way!!!" Honestly. I expected better from a broadsheet. The first of the comments says it all - this is the sort of one-eyed, gutter journalism that England are reknowned for.

Let's examine the facts of England's so-called resurgance, shall we?

England are in rude health, to quote Berry in the Telegraph/smh. Riiiight. They lost this summer's Test series, their most successful captain ever, and their second in five years. Their new captain has won a dead-rubber Test, and the one-dayers against a depleted RSA side. Before that, they've lost home and away series pretty consistently since THAT 2005 series, and have basically been pretty ordinary for a long time. And what does precedence tell us about the side they've got at the moment? Flintoff is probably five minutes' away from his next injury. Harmison is probably 30 seconds away from his next crisis of confidence, and another form slump. These things might not happen - but my point is, let's see if they can keep the same XI on the field for more than one Test before they start crowing about how great they look.

An obvious implication is that they look great under Kevin Pieterson. Who has been captain for about five minutes, and more or less completely unproven. This is what the British press do, of course. They hover insanely between condemnation and hero-worship, and nothing in between. Someone new to the scene does well, and all of a sudden they're the Next Big Thing. You only need to look at what they've done with their 'keepers to see that. Each of Jones, Prior and Ambrose (and to a point, Nixon and Mustard) have been feted beyond measure after a handful of matches. And then, one-by-one they've disappointed, and become villians. I actually hope that Pieterson doesn't suffer the same fate, because I'm going to really look forward to us feeding his ego to him next summer. THEN they can do it to him.

Australia, meanwhile, haven't lost a series since 2005. The last one before that was in 2001. Regardless of whether you think we're worse off without Warne and McGrath, there has been no tangible difference in the results since they left. 2-0 against Sri Lanka. 2-1 against India. 3-0 against the Windies. No matter which way you look at it, the results favour Australia.

Next. Berry again, the IPL, and Australia's over-crowded schedule? Please. The IPL is Twenty20! Bowlers bowl four overs each, if that. Batsmen hit a few boundaries and get out. It's not physically demanding. Wear and tear does not come into it. Hayden's injury probably could have happened carrying the groceries as much as for his "demanding schedule". As for the rest, he fails to address the point that you don't need to use the same XI for every match.

What I love about both these articles is that they've taken complete red herrings and used them as justification for why England are going to win. England winning a one-day series? Symonds being (rightly) disciplined? Australia's "prissy" correctness? The schedule? Come on. As if any of those things are going to make a shred of difference.

I don't have a crystal ball. In fairness, though, neither do they. And it's just this sort of assumptive journalism that makes England such satisfying opponents to beat. For the record, I think it's going to be a good series, and I'm going to look forward to seeing it - but based on the sort of flimsy evidence that both these journos have given us, England are not, and cannot, in any way, shape or form, be seen as anything LIKE favourites at this point. One month does not a good team make.

There's one in every crowd

I like singing in choirs. It's not something that I want to do ALL the time, and I'd prefer to avoid being pigeon-holed as a choral singer if I can avoid it, but I've sung in choirs since I was seven years old, it's something I'm familiar with, and something that I enjoy, most of the time.

For awhile I avoided them. I was trying to find my "own" sound, and given that ensemble singing obliges you to blend and fit in with those around you, finding that in a choral situation is difficult. Choral singing also exercises a different part of your brain, too - it's very much a left-brain exercise that requires a lot of problem-solving (count, intonate, watch the conductor, let's see if we can decipher that tricky bit with the syncopation etc) and solo singing is very right-brain - it's almost closer to being an actor than it is being a musican. In solo singing you're communicating, emoting, maybe moving about on stage, and all the nuts and bolts of actually getting the notes right should be so well-learned that it's almost instinctual. Thus, I've found that choral singing, when you're learning how to be a right-brain singer as opposed to a left-brain one, can mess with you a bit. I guess a good analogy is trying to perform a task with your weaker hand. Until you've mastered it you probably don't want to do it with your stronger one, because you can confuse yourself, and next time you try to do it the other way around you've forgotten some of what you've learned.

Clear as mud? Thought so.

Anyway. Lately, I've found another reason why singing in choirs isn't always a good idea. To whit, THERE'S ALWAYS ONE DICKHEAD WHO TALKS TOO MUCH. Always. Without fail, there's some guy who sits there with his thumb up his arse and a self-righteous expression on his face, trying to give the impression that he knows everything. And I say "he" because that's nearly always the case as well. It's nearly always a man, and nearly always a tenor, as well. He asks questions designed to show everyone how clever he is. He second-guesses the conductor. He points out others' mistakes. He makes little self-depracating remarks that are designed to make you notice him. He's like the guy in the meeting who sits there and nods and goes "Mmm!" whenever the boss says anything. Ever wanted to punch that guy? REALLY hard? Oh my God, I have. Just SHUT THE FUCK UP, ALREADY.

I think it's borne out of a need for self-justification. Particularly in an artistic situation like a Conservatoire, people can be desperate to prove to others that they deserve to be there. Or that not only do they deserve to be there, but maybe that they're so Goddamned fantastic that they SHOULDN'T be there, because this is all so elementary to them. I think it's also driven by the fact that the arts are seen to be an "elite" past-time, so you attract people to it that use their singing (or acting or dancing or whatever) as some sort of exercise in self-grandiosement. "Look at me! I'm SINGING. And I know stuff! Aren't I clever?" And you'd think that when things get close to being at a professional level that people would learn to leave that sort of thing at the door a bit more. Unfortunately not. Sometimes it's worse.

I think it was Bill Watterson, of Calvin & Hobbes fame, who said "I like art. But it sure as hell attracts its fair share of pretentious blow-hards".

Hear bloody hear!

And on the seventh day, they rested

No-one posts on Sundays, or so it would seem! None of the blogs I follow did - not even the more prolific ones. So I didn't, either.

Un-written rule? Co-incidence?

Either way, it's kinda cool.

Fulham report

6th place with a rocket, you little ripper!! AND with a game in hand. That's away against United mind you, so let's not get too excited about that, and if Villa beat Tottenham away on Monday they'll take the place off us. But still, 6th place, you little ripper! Can't remember the last time we were in that high a position, not even early in the season. It doesn't help that we've started our last three seasons away from home and lost all three of them, of course.

A 2-1 victory over Bolton at home was enough to give us that. We were always going to beat Bolton - they haven't beaten us at home in the league since 1952 or something ridiculous, and we've beaten them seven times out of the last eight matches in all competitions. If it wasn't for teams like Bolton and Everton being utterly incapable of beating us away, we'd have gone down long ago I'm sure.

Still, I think that's four in a row at home in all competitions, which is a fair effort - could we be looking at Fortress Fulham once more? Now that Hodgson seems to have managed to break our away-fom-home bogey, we might just do ok this season. We've certainly got a big enough squad - 31 at last count, which is a far cry from the "bring your boots, you might get a game" days under Chris Coleman. We don't have very many internationals, either, which always helps.

Next game: away at Blackburn. That might be a bit of an ask, they just got creamed by Arsenal 4-0 at home and will be looking to bounce back. We got a point last time we played there, though - I reckon we'll do the same again.

Overall feelings? Cautiously optomistic.

And as if to prove my point....

This is published. If that doesn't give you a good insight into what the guy is like, then I don't know what does. You've got to be careful with these sorts of pieces as sometimes they can go with the tide of opinion (i.e. if public and journalistic opinion was behind Symonds there might have been a different take on it), but really - the guy's a dick.

It's interesting that he should be prepared to act in such a (self) destructive fashion after such a stop-start to his career. Just as he's done the hard work and learned how to be a successful player at all levels, he obviously feels entitled to throw his weight around. What chance a little humility, or dare I say it, professionalism? Lalor's article has it right, though - "He is also discovering that no matter how many runs you make or save, no matter how many wickets you take or defend, that your place in the Australian side is never a given." This is a very good thing, and something that has been at the core of all successful Australian sides. Recent history has shown that if you're not prepared to fit in with the team then you won't stay in it very long, either. Dean Jones and Stuart MacGill are similar examples.

It's interesting, too, to note the tone of the comments, and how quickly people's opinion can change. There's the odd "ya can't do this to Symmo!" remark, but on the whole, people are very critical. Australians can't stand people that put themselves ahead of the team. If the tall poppy syndrome wasn't coined with us in mind, it should have been! Probably the more intelligent comments are from those that are critical of his behaviour, but hope that he gets it together soon because he is a great talent.

I'd go along with that. I'm not so sure that he's that indispensable, though. There are others that can hit a cricket ball a long way, and whole careers have been forged around being good team men - just look at Andy Bichel.

With thanks to Tony for seeing it first.

Stop Press!

Tomorrow, SOMETHING SHORTER.

My take on the Andrew Symonds affair

Right, so my first cricket post. There's nothing else going on in cricket at the moment - probably why this is still making headlines.

I get the feeling that if you met Andrew Symonds, you probably wouldn't like him. There's no doubt in my mind that what makes Roy "Roy" is the sort of Aussie boof-headery that is charming when played out with a bat in his hand in front of 80,000 people at the MCG, but is genuinely obnoxious off it. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if he turned out to be your basic, pig-ignorant dickhead.

Sure, he's everyone's favourite action hero. The dreads, the zinc-cream, the swash, the buckle, the derring-do, the sheer bulk of him. He doesn't just hit a cricket ball to the fence, he beats it into submission. Even his forward defence carries a certain amount of menace, and it’s exactly this sort of physicality, his artlessness, and his single-minded aggression that make up someone that, if popular opinion is to be believed, is just about the most Australian man alive, and hugely popular on that basis.

But it’s not just the cricket, or the way he goes around it, is it. It’s the whole package. It’s the tall stories about fishing trips with Matt Hayden. The larrikin streak. The brushes with authority. And doesn’t the world just LOVE the fact that when “Symmo” gets in trouble it’s for having a few too many in Cardiff, or more recently for fishing, for crying out loud. How Australian is that? When AFL footballers are getting done for repeat drug abuse and involvement with organised crime (Ben Cousins take a bow), Symonds’ indiscretions seem like good, clean fun.

You only need to look at Jamie Pandaram’s article in the Age to get an idea of how he’s received. You can’t drop Roy! Roy’s a legend! A man’s man! A true Aussie battler! Etc! And naturally, Michael Clarke only disciplined him (the obvious implication being that he did it alone and uni-laterally, which is far from the truth) because he’s trying to make a name for himself, what with his tatts and his earring and peroxide blonde hair. The girl. And it’s just the sort of one-eyed parochialism that really annoys me.

Alex Brown, in his excellent article in Saturday’s SMH has a much more balanced view, in my book. There are a few lines that stick out for me.

"… at the opposite end of the spectrum, the more sinister side of this double-edged sword, goodwill is harder to detect. There, Symonds is a sook, a brute, a character for the too-hard basket. And in that pigeonhole he will stay - until his next century."

and

"Many - journalists, in particular - have witnessed his leery, bullying side at pubs and nightclubs, where alcohol and testosterone have contributed to open hostility. But it has been the Harbhajan Singh affair that has most embittered Symonds. The sense of betrayal at Cricket Australia's supposed lack of support during the Monkeygate controversy has consumed him, resulting in a lingering anger that has eroded his passion for the game."

Let’s have a look at these points one by one, shall we?

First of all, a sook? Our Roy? Surely not! Never in a million years!

Actually, I have no difficulty believing this at all. It was probably Uncle JRod who best summed up Symonds’ hypocrisy about the now-cancelled ICC Champions Trophy. It WAS just a bit interesting that he was perfectly happy to go to be paid in spades to go to India for the IPL, and play in Mumbai, a recent terrorist target - but as soon as the words “Pakistan” and “security” get mentioned, out came the statements to the press. JRod brings up the key word “Muslim” and someone else “no beer” which may or may not be being overly cynical, but you make your own mind up. Whatever his motives, he was going to kick up as much of a stink as he could.

Second, and by far the easiest to believe – “brute”, “leery, bullying side”, “open hostility”. You only have to look at the below to see that.



And just in case you think that I’m a COMPLETE prude, yeah, I laughed, too. It’s funny. I don’t have a great amount of sympathy for the guy, either – he probably doesn’t even want any. When you run naked onto the ‘Gabba in front of 40,000 people, you get all that you deserve. But all that said, it’s assault, isn’t it? I’m sure you wouldn’t find it anywhere in the players’ manual. The manner in which Symonds took that guy out smacks of exactly the sort of aggressive behaviour to which Brown refers. If he’s prepared to do that and nonchalantly lean on his bat like it’s all in a day’s work when he’s stone cold sober, imagine what he’s like with a few beers in him.

And finally, Monkeygate. What a can of worms that was! A real watershed moment – it even made the normally football-mad British tabloids sit up and take notice. I was actually at the game that day – not that I noticed it happen. I was probably at the bar.

Is this relevant to today’s situation? Brown obviously thinks it is. Cricinfo thinks it is. Just about every news story you come across mentions it. I suppose it must be – surely he wouldn’t be to all intents and purposes ruling himself out of the tour to India just because he’s been disciplined for missing a team meeting. Has he been betrayed, though? At the end of the day, no-one could prove anything! He and his mates got their day in court, it was his word against Harbhajan’s, and the ICC’s John Hansen ruled that the case couldn’t be proven. Surely Cricket Australia had done all they could to make sure that justice was done. There wasn’t much they COULD have done - it was out of their hands after all, and the BCCI’s posturing about calling off the tour was nothing more than that in my book and had nothing to do with Hansen’s ruling.

Does this not support the first point, then? If Symonds is still ticked off about Monkeygate, nine months on and after a full tour of the West Indies, surely this is sulking at its best? Was he genuinely waiting for his next disciplinary infringement before he showed the world how hard-done by he was? Is this not complete opportunism by that token?

I’ve worked with people like that. In any team, there are people that are prepared to take the rough with the smooth, and there are those that are not, and throw the toys out of the pram and scream “conspiracy!” at the slightest hint of injustice. Good management and communication are important at those times, but in an administration that seems outwardly as well-run as Cricket Australia, I can’t imagine that they didn’t go out of their way to talk to Symonds about the events after the Sydney Test and make sure that he wasn’t feeling too disenfranchised. After that it’s up to Symonds – and he might win a few cheap points with his fan-base and the more populist media by going into this hole that he’s put himself in, but he’s not fooling me, and I very much doubt that he’s fooling the Australian team, either.

As far as I’m concerned, just for the moment, they’re better off without him.

Carrot on Carrot

OK. So, me and blogging.

The blog: this is not a cricket blog per se. I will write a lot about cricket, I'm sure, given that I've been obsessed with it ever since I can remember, but I'll be writing about a lot more than just cricket.

Me: I'm in my late twenties, Australian, and currently a music student. I just started a postgraduate (of a sort) course in singing in a Dutch conservatoire. I'm a lyric tenor, and hope that doing this will lead to a stage career singing Monteverdi, Bach, Handel and Mozart, and maybe the likes of Rossini and Donizetti later on.

I've spent a fair amount of time in London, and up until recently had a high-pressure, full-time job in the West End that went pretty close to driving me insane, and ushered on the career-change that I've now embarked upon. Office jobs are good as a means to an end, but I don't think anyone really entered an office environment thinking "this is what I really want to do". Certainly not me, anyway. The endless pursuit of money, power and political gain are not things that sit easily with me, either. Greed is not good. I might elaborate on this later on - I might not.

I like just about every mainstream British or Australian sport you'd care to name, with the possible exception of AFL and Rugby League - I'll still watch them if you put them in front of me, though. I like how sport reflects life. I like how it takes talent, but above all how generally speaking, it takes determination, character, technique and discipline to succeed in it. Sport often helps me with my singing, and I find that as a performer, musician and artist that there are parallels with sport to be found in abundance. I'm a pretty poor sportsman myself, although growing up in Australia you don't get much choice but to play every sport under the sun, and I'm loosely capable of not embarassing myself at squash, tennis, basketball, swimming, hockey - usually anything that isn't a contact sport. Best sports are cricket, which I am fair to middling at, and golf, which if I played enough I could probably be quite good at. But, generally speaking, as a sportsman I'm a good spectator. It's the psychology, aesthetics and statistical analysis of sport that usually interest me. Oh, and I'm a Fulham FC fan.

Why a blog? I've always wanted one, actually, but until I quit my job I didn't have the time or the energy. Ever since a mate started and aborted one that Tony linked to in 2002, I've been a regular in the comments on aftergrogblog, and particularly when it's cricket-related. Even got my own, post once. Had to go to Moscow to do it, though!

I'm also kinda keen on the idea of becoming world-famous and being paid to write a blog, like dooce, but in all honesty, all this is is a chance to write down some ramblings. There's writing in the family - I'm pretty closely related to George Bernard Shaw and more distantly to Walter Scott, so maybe that has something to do with it.

And since I got gagged after the urbanfeminist disabled anonymous comments, she'd better watch out!

My promise to you, as a loyal reader: This blog is not an exercise in ego-centricity. I've written all of the above for context, and nothing else. Neither is this some sort of e-journal. I probably do enough soul-searching as it is, and don't need to inflict it on you. I'd also like to stay anonymous, within reason.

'Nuff said? Right. On with the show then.

Blogsville. Population: me (and a few others).

Right. If I remember my aftergrogblog correctly (the great-grandaddy of them all), the best way to start up one of these things is as follows.

Blogging.....

Blogging....

BLOG.

Ha-hah! Yes, that's right, finally got me a weblog. I tend to be amongst the last to catch on to teckanogical advances (only got my first i-pod last December), but I get there in the end.

So! I'm going to have to tinker with this a little, but I'm sure I'll become all-too prolific very soon, and be annoying the shit out of the viewers in no time (which, for those who didn't share my adolescence, is a 12th Man quote. More on him later).

In the interim, sit down, relax, put your feet up - make a comment (are they enabled, yet? Who knows?), pour yourself a drink and make yourself at home. I'll be with you shortly.