Ashes Poetry - cricket

npower Ashes Poetry 2009

2008-12-19T17:03:00.022+10:00

Hi, just to give you a taste of npower Ashes Poetry 2009.

From Wednesday 8th July I'll be at Cardiff, Lords', Edgbaston, Headingley and Oval to chronicle the series.

About the same as last time, a poem a day, but with a shorter prefacial talk/blog (due to broadcasting constraints with the time-zones working against me while in England instead of Australia)

www.ashespoetry.net should be powered by a http://wordpress.org/ application which will give a much better performance - ease of accessing old scores (if not settling them!) .... newsletter ... starting up this June with Cellophane, the first poem of the series

If you want to know more (a three page digest in Word of the plan ahead,with a bonus poem commissioned by BBC Radio 5Live about Darren Gough on its last page) please come back to me on david@fineandandy.co.uk

Dr Fiffle-Faffle predicts Lord Mandelson will not have taken over Lords' by the end of the series but it could be a damned close-run thing.

Play!

Five-Nil - Brisbane ~ First Test

2007-03-16T03:58:00.000+10:00

Courage Of Convictions

Some good, some bad, and some ordinary
people the wrong side of the law to hold
their breath against the creak of deck, rope and
canvas; fixed blank stars slowly alter course
to form a rough southern cross. Realign antipodes

Of lives, destiny and political aspirations.
Now history. Not then. No recompense,
No going back to a dense world of pre-Dickensian
poverty and country-house cricket, a betting game
played for highish stakes fixed by judge and jury
to add to their amusement. A stay of execution
meant no return till the end of each testing sentence

Whose surf, shore and hinterland are unknown,
prime and aboriginal – not the first southern cross,
secret rivers more muddied and altered by distant secrets.
Imprisoned by nothing but the land’s fresh horizons
how could all survive, endure and flourish?

Today twenty-two flannelled fools replay
Australia, set to court failure
on no other grounds.

Kate Grenville’s novel The Secret River, published 2005 about William Thornhill, a convict sent from London to New South Wales less than two hundred years ago.

‘We’re the right side, we’re the right side, we’re the right side over here.
We’re the left side, we’re the left side, we’re the left side over here.
We’re the middle, we’re the middle, we’re the middle over here.
You’re the convicts, You’re the convicts, you’re the convicts over there.’
Barmy Army Chant 2006-7 Ashes Series

Woolloongabba

Woolloongabba they come from far
they come from far to play to play
Woolloongabba Woolloongabba

Waters whirling winds in our hearts
Wind still whirling whirling waters
Whirling fight talk place noisome boys
Warriors outdo warriors outdo out do

place to talk fight die share and drown
warrior-boy lacerated placentas
of fight-talk-hope in whirling waters
Woolloongabba Woolloongabba

According to Cricket Australia’s official guide to the Ashes Series, The Gabba, venue of the First Test at Brisbane, derives its name from Woolloongabba, which may mean “whirling waters” or “fight talk place” in the Aboriginal language of Woolloongabba

The Blacksmith and The Dancer
End of Day One Australia 346 for 3 A Flintoff 2 for 42 R T Ponting 137no

Down they come, twenty-four hammering blows
Run up against the anvil, crease to crease;
England’s finest, leader of tall strong men
Pounds a flat pitch to make something from nothing.

Thor’s great maul hurls down from the north
Red-hot ingots which bounce and spit
Off the anvil to thud pain and fury
Even into the cuffed gloves of his keeper
Three pitches distant from the beginning.

Those in the middle dodge hurtling force,
The smell of singed leather beneath noses
Sears their minds long after danger passes
Till an opener edges heat and is gone.

The dancer comes. Small, slick-quick tip-toe feet
A ballet pump or conductor’s baton
In his hands against Thor’s redoubled thunder
Strong enough to break his own braw bones
In full pursuit of forging victories.

The dancer banishes other tradesmen.
No interest but the blacksmith’s anvil,
Each hammerblow a pirouette, paso
Doble, cock a snook at the once red-hot ingot

Dulled with dancer’s taps as worn floors
For clubbing once clubbing has been done.
Sore feet and hours from Hobart unto Accrington,
The dancer and the blacksmith each know the score;
One or the other of them must be broken.
.
The dancer needs the smith to play
As the smith the dancer’s touch
To end the dancer’s say.

Glen’s Song
Day Three England 157 all out GD McGrath 6-50

Every breath you take
And every move you make
Every small mistake, every risk you take
I’ll be watching you

Every single run
Every sledge when you turn
Every game we play, every ball you stay
I’ll be watching you

Oh, can’t you see
You belong to me?
How my hard heart aches
With every play and miss
Every waft you make
Every edge it takes
Every smile you fake, every aim I take
You’ll be watching me

Since you can’t play you’re lost without a trace
I yell alright, appeal straight in your face
You look askance, but your life you can’t replace
It feels so cold, walking back to your disgrace
Keep on trying, bunny, to touch my accuracy.

Every breath you take
And every move you make
Every small mistake, every risk you take
I’ll be watching you

With apologies to The Police ‘Every Breath You Take’

The Lap Of The Gods

Andy’s on the blower to his missus in Jakarta
To accelerate the thunder due tomorrow afternoon.
She knows a rain doctor who dries out golf courses
To pilot this bad weather which can’t come too soon.

The Barmy Army take the Gabba with gamps and umbrellas
To make the most of Ricky Ponting batting way past his bedtime.
Queensland and England desperately need precipitation,
State and nation wager all on the imminent arrival of their Cloud Nine.

Of course it doesn’t come on schedule, ignoring devout Christian prayer.
Level Four drought measures squeeze the last drops of moisture from the bone-dry air.
“Conserve natural resources, drink tinnies to piss on those dirty washed-out poms”
Won’t help out-of-town dried-up apple farmers avec ces pommes sans terre.

Maybe a scientific warning of incipient global warming
Could turn Brisbane’s Gabba into a tidal lagoon.
Climatic chronology and geomorphology
Might well lead to underwater cricket all too soon.

Tomorrow it’s onto Adelaide, Mighty Mighty England already one down.
Drought restrictions still enforced; one side or the other about to drown.

England 2nd innings 293-5 overnight, still over 300 runs behind.
“Only rain can save Australia now” Barmy Army chant
“All Sunday they prayed in churches in Queensland for rain” ABC producer

Five-Nil - Adelaide ~ 2nd Test

2007-03-16T03:49:00.000+10:00

The Adelaide Oval - 1st December 2006 – end of play England 1st innings 266/3

If you've not seen it for yourself
think Worcester New Road, the view
across the River Severn, Torrens,
sun catching the water in its safe
hands, cathedral behind, an inspiring
article of sporting faith,
then add some. Disneyland
which folk round here rate England's chances
between slim and Buckley's

We shall see, shan't we?

Paul Collingwood
98 not out overnight Adelaide, Second Test Day One.
ct Gilchrist b Clark 206

I shan't get out to this man,
It's not just I'm English and he's Australian,
I shan't get out to this man.
It's not just he's done me too often before,
(last match a century in reach, just needing a four)
It's hard enough to hit the ball, never mind score,
I shan't get out to this man.
Earplug his incessant chatter,
concentrate on being a batter.
But don't get too clever, over after over
I shan't get out to this man.

Even if I reach fifty or more,
will I ever feel secure?
Australia's most venomous creature
spits and coils with every ball,
I shan't get out to this man.
Bones soak under a long hot shower,
having defended hour after hour.
The splash of water reechoes the mantra,
I shan't get out to this man.

Catches Win Matches
Adelaide Day Three – end of play England 551-6 dec Australia 312-5

I swear I saw it come straight off the bat
A small red dot growing to fill the sky
and ready myself to hold its descent,
feet well apart, steady, hand-eye practiced
co-ordination triggered to make the catch.
Arms above my head, a high-board
diver sure to end the ball's spin, tuck
and revolutions with a perfect re-entry
to soft sweatless cushioned pail-like palms. Welcome
a mob of celebration. Mates stare. I dropped it.
I don't see how. A safe pair of hands,
maybe I lost it coming out of the stands,
the red and white flags of Saint George
a dragon of distraction that swallowed
opportunity in a fiery display of Engerland.

Ponting’s hook was dropped at the boundary when he was his own age, early thirties.
He completed a big century. That miss probably lost England any chance of winning.

Hoggard
Adelaide Day Four – end of play England 551-6 dec Australia 513 England 59-1

At times it must be like climbing onto the moors,
dog tugging the lead when mists and rain slip paws.
Hard to see, know where you are,
stumbling into rocks, bogs, uncertain of paths
that could lead to nowhere or circles,
worried you'll be out here beyond nightfall.
Whatever you do the elements take their toll,
sap the spirit till it seems easier to give up;
the familiar world twists cruelly strange.
You climb each hill, break its back before
it breaks yours, seven times
for one hundred and nine long runs, dogged
against these hounds you never let off the leash

Matthew Hoggard, a qualified vet, loves to take his collie onto the Yorkshire moors.

The Sick Team

Adelaide Day Five – Australia won by six wickets

Red Rose, thou are sick!
The Indivisible Warne
That beats you in flight
When you bat without gorm

Has spun out thy draw
Of English joy;
the Green Baggies’ will
Does thy life destroy

With apologies to William Blake The Sick Rose

O Rose, thou art sick!
The Invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of Crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Blake also wrote, of course, Jerusalem.

The English Disease

Like syphilitic medieval kings, England
suddenly went mad. No apparent cause,
no seeming attempt to stem noble pause
in bedlam's frenzy to lose without stand.
Fumbling wickets tumbled from their own hand,
Misery’s drubbing unconceived before
they gouged their own wounds to bone. Running sores
of needless cuts, hooks, pulls and slashes banned
by dressing room: empty-headed retarded
births within teeming middle of crisis
induced by syphilis's half-brother, hubris.
The day’s sure draw before all this started:
licentious defeats grow infectious,
chaste play's honour fouled by these haughty lechers.

Initiated by Greg Baum’s remark on venereal disease and England batsmen the following day in The Sydney Morning Herald

Return To Understand
The Adelaide Oval Wednesday 7th December 2007 – the Day After

return to understand
go back to the emptiness of defeat
you might learn something

seats tipped-up, crowd roar gone
a cockatoo, songbirds call above
drumble of traffic, clang of scaffolders
dismantling temporary stands
you demolished with your batting

A smear of dried ice-cream
stench of spilled beer around the bars
a nasal trail into the arena
its wicket perfect as it always has been

Why have I taken you here?
No flags of Saint George. No
Wigan, Norwich, Cheltenham
and Towcester turned to crumbs
under the Australian sun.
No sign of ourselves.

The scoreboard retells the story
168 for 4, a six wicket victory
they won't take down for a while

Taste the simplicity of defeat
ing yourself. Swallow its emptiness.
Stay till you understand
how never to fail yourselves again.

Day of The Dead

on the occasion of the 8th Baggy Green Dinner, Saturday 2nd December, 2006 Adelaide and in commemoration of the Fourth Test 1929

Seven days hard yakka, they rise from the Ashes,
individual heroes all in teams to test their
undivided mettle. Close finish at the close,
seven days hard yakka, still they rise for the occasion.

We worship the memory, the more their breaths are done
short or long in the field, Jackson to Bradman,
White to Hammond, all eleven of each side
split by a dozen runs after seven days hard yakka

in a field near a river watched by many,
attended by empire from a different era,
depression and bodyline still to come,
Adelaide will always welcome its heroes

whose ghostly sprigs clatter down
and up pavilion steps. Some quick, some slow,
some two at a time, some quiet, near funereal,
a tattoo as sure as any scorecard of exploits

to become players of today. You may say
they do not bear compare with yesteryears’
titans, god-bestowed elegance of performance
to mist over the grind of seven days hard yakka.

Turn for confirmation and you shall hear nothing.
Nothing from them, for other matters call
at the end of their days, boots, pads, bats
sweated armoury, undone yet not yet stowed away,

half-abandoned, stranded in an unwashed canvas
of labour against dressing room tiers
bear witness to these invisible spectres
off to share a few cool ones with posterity they created.

A Statto’s Note From The Fridaliser
“The highlight of England's second innings of 383 was a 262-run partnership for the third wicket between Hammond (177) and Douglas Jardine (98) - on the least controversial of his two tours of Australia.” Cric-info. Hammond’s 177 was the highest score by any English batsman at Adelaide until Collingwood’s 206

Five Nil - Perth ~ Third Test

2007-03-16T03:00:00.000+10:00

Perth Players

The Demon Panesar

You become yourself as you reach the crease
Gently poised paces, all limbs leaned to slight
Opponents’ fraught intent. Deft, accurate,
no whimsical flight; quick arm at its height
injects lethal charm to bewitch them out.
You need show no mercy until they leave.

5 for 94 Australia’s first innings of 244

Desert Island

Left, deserted, undefeated
how might you have done more?

Chance your arm, get out sooner
yet not your fault for other’s failures
to heed circumstances as found.

The innings end might seem a rescue
from a desert island you never wanted to leave
but like Robinson Crusoe you too had to depart
having grown accustomed to a place and its ways.

Mike Hussey 74 no out, top score of 244

Silence in Court

Australian fielders ceaselessly chatter between balls.

‘Will do, Ricky.’ ‘Test match cricket.’
‘On the money, Warnie.’ ‘Easy, Pigeon.’

It’s their way. Habitual as galahs
or car horns in the Eternal City,
as much to gull foreigners
as egg patriotism on.

The driving gavel of Pietersen
sends leather to the benches
and silence in court.

Kevin Pietersen, 70, top score of 215

The Art of Batsmanship by Matthew Hoggard MBE

1. Play Straight
2. No fancy stuff
3. Hold the stroke
4. Especially if you miss
5. Don’t forget to tell ’em
Sod off

Circus Tricks

A mid-off in the middle of the pool,
he waits for batters to toss a fish:
the lunge, leap, rush and scurry,
somersault, dive, fall, roll and parry,
comes up ball and applause in hand.

Only batters wonder
if they’ll run out of fish
especially if Symonds,
The Performing Seal,
hauls in a catch

Every Australian
wants to be Matthew Hayden.
Giant stride forward to meet the ball,
great arc of willow becomes a maul
to tonk the poms into the back
of burke, the outback and beyond.
Every Australian
Wants to be Matthew Hayden.

Second Innings Hayden hits 92.

Adam Gilchrist
Has often played and missed.
It’s when he connects
That the bowler regrets
ever bowling
into the hurdy-gurdy
whirligig six-hitting
machine.

Second dig Gillie hits 102 not out, the second fastest test century ever.

Grump, grump, grump I'm Glen McGrath,
Grump, grump, galumph, galgrumpalumph, I'm Glen McGrath,
I'll bend your ear from here to the dressing room
And back again, over after over till you edge or miss
The point of my delivery.

Essex Coastline

Harwich, Frinton, Clacton,
Brightlingsea, West Mersea,
Maldon, Burnham, Southend.
From the scapula of the Stour
to the humerous of the Naze
and the Thames phalanges

Alistair Cook
gets all Essex over the ball;
its coast the shape of his elbow
stretching across East Anglia.

Essex player Cook scored 116 second time round.

Those That Go Against You

In the cool shadowed privacy
of the dressing room sanctuary,
bats are hurled, windows smashed
with more force, anger and intent
than any maximum smite from the middle.

It never hit the bat.
Clearly missing the stumps.
The umpire’s finger,
not the acumen of the bowler,
sends you on your way.

Rage and fear routs the calm certainty
behind all due care and attention
in adjudication summoning
benefit of the doubt
not to give you out.

The quiet ones always seem to receive
the rough edge of the rub of the green,
standing as a suspect at the crease
in a line-up of an identity parade.

Umpires’ fingers sawed Andrew Strauss’s legs at least twice during the series.
In other words made a mistake in firing him out. He accepts this without demur.
Methinks he protesteth too little.

Captain’s Dilemma

I need to bat well
bowl well, field well,
take all my catches,
help choose the team,
set fields, raise morale
when we’re down,
enthuse, cajole, console
and kick arse, royally
whenever necessary
and appropriately.

Ensure I do all I can
to ensure we play as a team
where everyone does the best they can
to win, or at least draw.
What on earth have I let myself in for?

A task that Hercules
would leave for others
more knowing of a hero’s
frailty..

The English Ashes Hopes Blues

We don't need no Aussie Scoreboard to tell us the Ashes are gone.
We travelled here with the urn inside our hearts,
At Brisbane we didn’t get off to the best of starts,
On the final day the promised rain just didn’t come,
we don't need no Aussie Scoreboard to tell us the Ashes are gone.

Won the toss on a dead flat pitch at Adelaide,
Never mind dropped catches and poor selections
However well Paul Collingwood played
The rest of them threw it away in the second knock,
we don't need no Aussie Scoreboard to tell us the Ashes are gone.

Lost the toss at Perth but bowled them out for 244
Then our turn to bat and we didn’t match their score
Second innings Hussey, Clarke and Gilchrist all got tons
Now to save the Ashes we need to hit 560 runs,
we don't need no Aussie Scoreboard to tell us the Ashes are gone.

Ode To Contest

Behind the bowler’s arm, scoreboard obscured,
Cloudy day, rain forecast but unlikely,
England’s prayers rest with God Almighty.
Two tall hopes nearly out before they’ve scored,
Fred survives, a tide of drives floods the boards,
Stupendous risk for six hooked off Brett Lee,
None down at drinks, game on, yet unlikely.
Braced danger-laced half-centuries yield applause
That courts the final strike. Five quick blows
Ends it all. All Australia rejoices;
Reclaims their men who reclaimed the Ashes
Against time and England’s proudest voices
Stilled. Half by half by half each candle’s ghost
Bleakens the dark hearth burnt out by your host.

Cricket Australia

She reads a book in the driver’s seat
of a bright yellow Ford Falcon XR6.
Another down the road inspects cuticles
in a Pontiac Firebird GTO.
There’s a phillipino ready to go
in a 4x4 Nissan Murrango.
Outside the Waca
you can get high
on the air-conned fumes
of all their nail lacquer.

Flocks of self-preening birds
in their beaus’ muscle cars,
smoothly smoothing feathers
waiting for their sweaty fellas
to come from watching cricket.
- it’s a mate’s thing.

Do they dare mention
what they watched on television?
Adverts for penile dysfunction
to the blokes they promised
to love, honour and obey?

Or better just to ride his mean machine
in hope of greater things to come
from their green and golden cockatoo’s coxcomb?

How dare they ask the question,
however well intentioned,
without ruffling their sweaty fellas’ plumage?

Books in burly hands in the privacy
of their partners’ Micras, would these great
Australian men wait quite so patiently
for their girls’ return from the best of five
Ann Summers’ lingerie party?

Five-Nil Poetry - Melbourne ~ 4th Test

2007-03-16T02:44:00.000+10:00

The G, The MCG aka Melbourne Cricket Ground

No village green or country paddock,
the mower misses the long grass wrapped
around the roller and peeling sight screens
pushed over for winter, benches tipped up,
in brass-plated memory of Roger or Ethel
who spent many a long afternoon
eskie or thermos to hand and oblivion
their world conversed by, yet reflected in the blank
replay lcd switched off from instant history
far above the swaying tree line
in Section Gods of this immense roman gladiatorial
arena past and future argue the toss with Janus
who should put thumbs up or down. At the heart of it all
lies an empty field; meadow hay scythed, grass grazed out.
Twenty-two yards, wicket to wicket,
tenth of a furlong, a chain
to tie bat to ball, a landscape
of former empire, medieval origins,
acres ploughed through the mind,
one hundred and five thousand assemble
here to worship.

Warne, Shane Keith
born 13 September 1969 test match debut January 1992
Upon passing his seventh hundred test match wicket
(To the jig, The Sailor’s Hornpipe)

Warnie’s balls turn square, KP hit ’em in the air.
A six or out, there is no doubt.
You get a funny feeling one side’ll be reeling
Ev’ry time Warnie’s balls turn square.

A leggie of Clarrie Grimmett’s accuracy (+ some hair)
The wrong ’un, hard to pick, howzat when flummoxed through the air,
The flipper and the toppie, zooter and the slider
Plus the chatter: yells with looks, asides and pleas,
(the only time the bloke’s down on his knees.)
A Clarence Darrow George Carman at the crease,
No umpire on earth however stoney could say no,
Another baffled if reluctant victim tries to dilly-dally but he has to go.

Next-man-in’s almost out before he’s in.
The legendary magician’s mesmeric legerdemain’s sure to snuff him.
He knows he’ll have to face a flighty camisole tease:
A sinner’s glimpse of fleshy orbed fruit rouged to tantalise
Unveils a hirsute off-the-shoulder Australian hero’s chest
Full of tricks the antipodean baccus of temptation doesn’t divest
Before the silly fool with bat and pads knows he’s transgressed
The blond cherubim’s spinning finger umps him to rest.

Warne, S. K., made his Ashes debut in 1993.
A burgeoning waistline ever since indicates increasingly adequate social activity.
Shoulder strapped, lucky charms, his daughter’s bracelet,
The bald truth’s patently clear, he should really try to face it;
Whatever schemes and dreams of schemes are whirling on within,
The top of his head is not quite what it used to be.
(In fact qua this rhyme, each attempted betting shop remedy to hold back follicular entropy,
His pate, contra fullsome midriffs, pulls or appeals, is ready to turn woefully thin.)
Harum-scarums with mobiles and diuretics,
His simple way with words schtums clever-dick critics,
Through thick and thin he’s always gone back
To his mark: A three-card trick-sy four-step run

That flummoxed Fat Gatt with the ball of last century,
At the lees of his career, the ikon’s tank’s pretty near empty.
Lo, he gambols past Strauss, A. J., namely Seven Hundred
And another One. (Parade-book poms mentioned in dispatches:
A walk-on, walk-off part to line-up in honour of his last five-for.)
Forget the waist and the hair or your age. Heed guru Terry Jenner’s old adage
If you’re good enough, you’re old enough - Let him rip his ripper one last rip:
We’re all sure to miss all its extra extra supradextrous wristily hot-digity extra
mischievous zip.

Admidst chuntering trundling, The Grauniad's Nietzsche-in-Chief
Metaphysical Mighty Mike Selvey sniffs
‘No game’s over till the fat boy spins.’
I’ll buy that, gimme me one more, Skip.
Good on yer, Warnie, hands ready on knees at slip,
Rub haloes with Saint Richie
At the end of any spell in the commentary box above.
May it please Father Time
To both Bless and Love
How your balls turned square!

V- 8 Batting

aussie cars come with muscle for extra hustle
to cover the ground across the states.

hear them burble, roar and hurtle
past bystanders awash with their dust.

in Queensland they understand
these unwritten rules of the road.

big blokes with big strokes
smack the ball and keep the score

accelerating towards a vanishing point
of vanquished oblivion

foot flat out down the wicket
the Hayden-Symonds 279

has all the go you need to show
a howling good motor

the poms innings defeat
looms large in its rear-view mirror.

Capitulation

Ghosts of ghosts of ghosts. The moving hand
Having writ will move on. Each stroke of the pen
Is a mark to be recorded but not taken back.
It is edgier than the blade.

The English batsmen, nothing to lose
Having lost the greatest prize, play at playing.
Their strokes not worthy of themselves
nor their imagination. Out.

Bat under arm, an envelope sealed of a letter
They never wished to write:
An imposition in detention,
It is signed, sealed and delivered.
The long slow empty walk to a lost pavilion.

Ghosts of ghosts of ghosts,
The originals swear under their breaths
To weep real enough tears.

Fifty Ways To Lose The Ashes
(after Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover – Paul Simon)

It’s bad to be defeated
All too easily.
We travelled here with such high hopes
To end in misery.
It could have been much worse though how
I cannot see.
There must be fifty ways
To lose the Ashes.

A negative strategy made it
Harder to win,
And by the same token opponents
Reckon you’re about to give in.
We bent right over
So you could give our arse a good kicking,
There must be fifty ways
To lose the Ashes.
Fifty ways to lose the Ashes.

chorus:

Play the Australians.
Pick Geraint Jones
Ahead of Chris Read.
Don’t prepare for the Gabba,
Ignore Monty Panesar,
Madness at Adelaide,
Led t(w)o the Waca.

Over a hundred thousand
Have paid to be at the MCG.
Even a fourth Aussie victory
Will seem a little empty,
Now there’s nothing we can do
To make the series live again.
A win is still a loss;
You don’t need to use
All those fifty ways.

Maybe it doesn’t matter
If we go and lose five nil.
We’ve already lost what we
aimed to fulfill. We can’t change
Those first three games,
There must be fifty ways
To lose the Ashes.
Fifty ways to lose the Ashes.

chorus:

Play the Australians.
Pick Geraint Jones
Ahead of Chris Read.
Don’t prepare for the Gabba,
Ignore Monty Panesar,
Madness at Adelaide,
Led t(w)o the Waca.

Five-Nil Poetry - Sydney ~ 5th Test

2007-03-15T19:03:00.000+10:00

Harbour Bridge – 00 00 Monday 1st January 2007

Sydney
a city and land defined by sea, a far greater bridge:
Flinders’ circumnavigation barely left its moorings
from Donnington dominion. Seventy-five years
is nothing more than a life-time bearings.

Over and under, each passage changes yours
a fraction of a second or degrees more abruptly.
Switch clocks to a different time on the far shore;
the click of rail tracks, ferry boards and
circular quay calendar make each journey
a new year for someone far or near;
Greek, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Mediterranean, Slav, Thai
the city a pell-melled canteen of tongues,
not just UK nor colonial Australia,
an anglo-celtic nuptial ring,
a two century skin to countless millennia
of aboriginal lands: hard to come to terms with
what Cook first saw when missing harbour
or original cooks sixty thousand years earlier,
each passage bearing changed their being.

Every one of us history.

Today
after commissioned fireworks and similar paraphernalia
are dustcarted and dumped without the trace of sulphur,
the world becomes again what it was before,
edged on a little further from its origins.
Rail meets gunnel, steel the sea,
Kirribilli, Neutral Bay, Karra Point,
Mosman, Manly, Watson’s,
Pyrmont, Balmain, Parramatta,
all points compass Circular Quay.

Nothing’s left
in the dark seasons’ wind, rain, flood
tides and fogs, steamer horns stygian
clatter trains anchor chains stretch rust
knuckling the bridge under. Till there’s no memory
of loss to see. No arch, no towers, only the initial trade
from rock to rock to haul the heady scent of cargo;
oils, ghosts of spices, wheat, sheep, cattle, carts,
hides and fleeces, unwashed, chaffed, settlers too,
awash within the pattern book of antiquity’s development
the bridge paid its tolls to. Behind these knolls
spectral churches ring in celestial didgeridoo.

From the mist
watch the ferries dance their first footings
to dawn’s indigenous tune.

Stuart Clark

Not that you’d notice him for seeing,
the sort of bloke in the office
who always comes to work on time
to a tidy desk all parts done efficiently
yesterday.
Pays the drinks kitty and sweepstake
promptly
and tells the sharpest stories about the bosses
secretly
(not that you notice him for seeing.)

The sort of bloke troubled mothers of errant daughters
pray they’d bring home and yet leave them well alone.
That bank managers take to, perhaps trusting too much too.
Eyes that remember distant birthdays and colours of others eyes.
The sort of waiter you can ask what’s best on the menu,
tip well, and instinctively say thank you to,
and instantaneously forget in our ever-rushed lives
too busy to notice him for seeing.

Nothing too complicated nor too much
to do for others. As his arm comes over
batsmen fear any minor deviations
- not that you’d notice them for seeing.

An Old Scorebox Operator Laments

The game isn’t what it used to be,
nor the creaking knees for climbing creaking stairs
to ring the changes, today they score too damn quickly
for me. Joints need regular lubrication and maintenance,
mine, not just the machinery.

O how I yearn my Slasher MacKay
and Bill Lawry. You could open, pour, lubricate a long cool one
before they dreamt of hitting off the square. Put your feet up.
O my MacKay and my Lawry of not so long ago!
Maybe fifty between lunch and tea, maybe.
Well-oiled by then, time enough
to find the papers, makings,
roll a gasper to inhale each ball
safe in the surety it’d die on my lips

before they turned the old scoreboard over.

Last week they pinned a sign above my head.
‘Living legends don’t smoke’ without mention
to Boof or Warnie - two of the worst.
Gilchrist, Symonds. Hayden and Langer
started it all under the gimlet eye of Waugh.
They score too damn quickly. Rickety
old me ricketing up those rickety stairs,
reels, numbers and boards. And sometimes
I forget to move on the score;
lost, staring at the beauty of it all.

Thnx Justin, Glen and Shane

No tears in their eyes
As they say their goodbyes.

Emotional men. Their passions controlled
Their destinies to excel themselves
For mates and their country.
Weeping publicly is for Oscar ceremonies,
Not the proud bearers of the Baggy Green.

Tears came alright
At times of uncertainty, injury,
Loss of form and controversy.
They wussed from our eyes
Alone, facing torment
To achieve after failure.
Each sob made us stronger,
Bolder, harder, far older
And yet more kind,
Appreciative of hard yakka.

Thank you, Australia

No tear in our eyes
As we say our good byes.

Cartwheels

Dad, spend more time with us.
Pick up from school, act the fool,
be the long one instead of mum
when we don’t do what we should’ve done.

You’ve missed us, we’ve missed you.
Watch us grow up,
achieve the new.

Run, skip and dance
from dreams and memory
to your final match, here.

Born after you first tugged down
the baggie green:
stare beneath its brow
at the games we play on the pitch,
your last catch
our farewell to you.

Shane, Glen, Justin
your turn to watch,
spectate, not make the spectacle.

Our turn to show
what we can do,
a little girl
her blue dress cartwheel

Cartwheel Cartwheel Cartwheel.

Sydney Day Four – Endings

2007-01-05T17:50:00.000+10:00

Defeat is all but inevitable. The crushing five-nil loss an ice-berg dwarfing the Titanic.

But Professor Fiffle-Faffle has devised equipment to help England supporters in the one day games for the rest of the tour – The Rose-Tinted Raybans

They turn blue caps into green, and green into blue – and they work for Australians too, as their team of world-beaters disintegrates before their eyes. A prototype has already been tested by the England team manager but alas he remains ever dismal.

The game is quickly over. Third ball Pietersen half-forward hangs his bat out to edge McGrath to Gilchrist. John Arlott once described a beaten batsman as looking like a Henry Moore statue. KP is one of those ghost buccaneers crewing The Black Pearl from Pirates of The Caribbean, all powers drained from body and soul.

England yet to score, Read calls Panesar for a quick single, Monty run out by a foot, failing to ground his bat as Symonds’ throw uproots off-stump.

My ticket states Obstructed Brewongle, which sounds too painful for words, so playing seat-hookey I’m surrounded by blokes in check shirts, the Paddington Chess Club, who don’t play chess. It is a means to secure bookings at pubs and clubs – chess players aren’t reckoned to wreck the joint or welch on bills. I see their point, thinking of the look I received at the desk of the Bowls Club Sydney (an honoured guest at the 23rd dinner of the Sydney Cricket Writers) when asked where I was staying in Sydney. Don’t think the Redfern Ex-Crims Association would find it quite as easy as the PCC to make bookings. Their Chief Oppo, King Louis and their blues singer Delilah sign my hat. I like the Paddington Chess Club, there is something of Guys and Dolls, Damon Runyon, about them. When I get back to Blighty must put them in touch with the Serious Cricket Watchers Society, of which I’m the founder member.

Couple of streaky fours, Read ct Ponting b Lee 4, “That’s how to do it, Justin,” his captain might say “Remember the next time you play.” England +20 for 8

Billy the Trumpet plays ‘Yesterday’

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday

Half the problem with English cricket is a belief only in yesterday.

From about that time Billy goes into the Manfred Mann number Pretty Flamingo…

Win Back The Ashes

Back home you’re sure to ask how we lost the Ashes
Were our players not as good?
Didn’t they play as they should?
All quite true, doesn’t say why we lost the Ashes.
Negativity wasn’t right
It let them tonk us out of sight.
It’s a dream all of Australia realised,
We should try it, cos then we wouldn’t be so surprised
At what might come true.

One sweet day we’ll learn how to win back the Ashes
Then Australia will envy us
Instead of saying we’re pretty wuss

Let’s fight back to win the Ashes
Win back the Ashes.

Mahmood lbw McGrath 4. Caught on the crease, not moving forward or back. My elder brother Daniel who nearly exploded yesterday because the English batsmen hadn’t learnt from earlier mistakes is probably seeking succour in eating his teatime sandwich as the end nears. (‘Teatime sandwich?’ Yes, Aussie Bloke, the Fines are incurable optimists, gluttons for punishment as well as nosh) England still + 20 but for 9

Drinks. Crowd Security stop Delilah singing the Chess Club song. As Peter White whose house in Redfern I’m staying in (where the first Prime Minister of Australia grew up, Bowls Club Sydney, please note) said this morning ‘It ends not with a bang but a whimper’ T S Eliot, I say. The Wasteland, we concur, apt for the current state of English cricket, and its writer’s name is an anagram for toilets, which more or less sums up summing up the cricket from an England perspective. I wrote a blues at Perth when the Ashes were finally lost

The English Ashes Hopes Blues

We don't need no Aussie Scoreboard to tell us the Ashes are gone.

The Aussie version would start

The Australian Ashes Blues

You don't need no Aussie Scoreboard to tell you the Ashes are gone,
But winning 5-0 doesn’t smack of triumphalism.
You thought you were pretty good, but were up against the best
Came here underprepared, andwe just did the rest.
You don't need no Aussie Scoreboard to tell you the Ashes are gone.

It’s Australia’s Day now. A few Harmie blows delay the inevitable, Anderson skying McGrath. England all out + 45.

Langer and Hayden come out to knock them off. At first it’s hard yakka. About as hard as the ball Harmison bruises Langer with. Justin must be thinking ‘No more analgesic sprays, ice-packs, and tenderness turning over in bed.’

‘It’s an absolute privilege and honour to wear the baggie green cap one hundred and five times and I’ll really miss it,’ he says at the ceremony afterwards, and his cap is about old and faded as Steve Waugh’s.

When this Ashes Tour is Over (tune of What A Friend We Have In Jesus)

When this Ashes tour is over
No more cricketing for me,
I shall put my commentator’s mike on
To give expert summary on tv.

No more ducking Stevie Harmison,
No more edging Hoggie over the slips,
I shall kiss the gold of my green baggie,
God, I’ll miss this whence it leaves my lips.

(Sung with great feeling and Welsh choralness A modification of the lyrics of When This Lousy War is Over, from “Oh What A Lovely War”; Joan Littlewood, based on the original hymn by Joseph Scriven “What A Friend We Have In Jesus”)

‘It could go into the afternoon,’ I say to the bloke from Perth, who remembers Langer’s father, a good West Australia player too. ‘I hope not,’ he replies.

On cue Hayden on-drives Mahmood for six, and after a consultation with his opening partner to determine who shall have the honour of it, off-drives the winning hit. The crowd go crazy, in the middle they remove helmets and embrace like long-lost brothers after a hard-fought war has ended in victory.

The crowd stay behind to celebrate the 5-0 Strinewash, and the end of three great players’ careers. “Thnx” says the text painted in the turf

Thnx Justin, Glen and Shane

No tears in their eyes
As they say their goodbyes.

Emotional men. Their passions controlled
Their destinies to excel themselves
For mates and their country.
Weeping publicly is for Oscar ceremonies,
Not the proud bearers of the Baggy Green.

Tears came alright
At times of uncertainty, injury,
Loss of form and controversy.
They wussed from our eyes
Alone, facing torment
To achieve after failure.
Each sob made us stronger,
Bolder, harder, far older
And yet more kind,
Appreciative of hard yakka.

Thank you, Australia

No tear in our eyes
As we say our good byes.

Warne and McGrath – I want to write Shane and Glen, but I don’t know them, and more the point, they don’t know me – pose with their kids for the media. You can see that Shane will always be a kid. I think how important the Ashes are to both countries. In establishing Australia as a nation. Her first prime minister, Edmund Barton, brought up his first three children in the house where I typing this. Perhaps in a room which was a nursery. Australia as a state didn’t exist till 1901. Before then it was a set of separate states, and to bring them together was a hard-fought effort, certainly harder than the current series, which began in 1882. Cricket and the Ashes helped form Australia – and continues to do so. Will it help the development of England?

The ceremonies continue, where all pay homage to the support of the Barmy Army (What about your Fanatics, Australia?) with Captain Andrew Flintoff going over to bow to them.

Oblivious children of the Australian players gambol and frolic on empty parts of the paddock. I think of my own childhood, parents and also Freda, my brother Paul’s partner, her friends and family, grieving her sudden loss on Christmas Day. Her funeral is today. Think of her in heaven looking down upon us, smiling.

Cartwheels

Dad, spend more time with us.
Pick up from school, act the fool,
be the long one instead of mum
when we don’t do what we should’ve done.

You’ve missed us, we’ve missed you.
Watch us grow up,
achieve the new.

Run, skip and dance
from dreams and memory
to your final match, here.
Playing games on the pitch
our farewell to you.
A blue dress cartwheel
our turn to show
what we can do.

Cartwheel Cartwheel Cartwheel.

Sydney Day Three – life goes on

2007-01-04T23:34:00.000+10:00

Everything went well. No queues of Balfour's chicken and veg pies, straight into my seat in the Doug Walters ash-tray to watch Hussey edge Anderson to Read. Gilchrist nabbed five in the first innings, and three to Read makes eight out of fifteen snaffles to the keeper. Are we on for a world record? Have to put it into the Frindaliser, though what it means in terms of cricket, apart from Langer's contribution of three drops, I'm not sure. Perhaps that the wicket is that little bit bouncier than the batsmen reckon.

The Branson pickle Ashes farrago continues. In this morning's SMH is a story about a couple who flew Virgin to watch the cricket only for Virgin to mislay their luggage ("If you poms keep losing the Ashes, not surprising your airlines lose luggage." Aussie Bloke) It happens, Virgin paid for couple to buy some clothes to cover the hiatus, but couldn't find cricket tickets which the couple put in their stowed baggage - until the SMH published ("More fool them," says Aussie Bloke, "best sewn into your undies if they're not in the Bank of England soap-dish deposit box.")

Now it gets interesting. An unattributable source your intrepid Ashes poet in residence met this morning said Sir Richard Pickle wanted to make the announcement at tea on the centre of the hallowed turf. Apart from clashing with the Boonie/Beefie drag races, it's just not cricket - where Australia are 236 for 5, after fortyfive minutes, Gilchrist already 29 in the mood to Waca Waca. Panesar pegs back progress beating Symonds in the flight, clean bowled 48, 260 for six.

Warne sweeps the next ball for four, then six, not out off a glove when he was, and .....Australia cruise past England's 291 with 14 off a Harmison over, two overs to go before the new ball. Throughout this series England have sought to defend rather than attack with the old ball, a reversal of their approach in 2005. Australia have scored at about two runs a minute during the last half-hour.

I try to defend the MCC retaining the Ashes Urn with the Aussies behind me. 'Awe, we should have them, just to piss off you guys.' I imagine something of the same attitude exists at Lords.

Billy The Finger Bowden saws off Gilchrist's legs caught behind when the noise was the bat hitting the ground, not the ball 318 for 7

Billy Bowden
Pulls the crowd in
With extravagent gesture
And the crook of his index finger

Another keeper's victim, the Frindaliser whirrs - straight through after lunch Flintoff gets Lee ct Read, 10 dismissals out of 18. Warnie reaches his fifty, still to get a test match century. The Barmy Army make as much noise as they can but 'Warnie, Warnie' reverberates around the SCG when he gets to his fifty, a lacing off-drive off Anderson.

Panesar goes round the wicket, Warne hits to point, practices the shot, and then places again just fine of point for four. Couldn't England guess what was going to happen?

Clark skies Mamood for 38. 398 for 9

Enter the Gatorade truck to a standing ovation. McGrath joins Warne in a last stand effort of legends to get Warnie his maiden century. Warnie flip-flops down the pitch to Panesar, stumped the length of Bondi Beach by Read top score 71. Australia 398, another stumper victim. Eleven in the match to date. The Frindaliser, having frindled, Frindles on.

England start at -102 for none. Clarke top-edges Bing Lee for a skier -97 for none. Strauss ducks his head into a Bing bouncer and falls to deck. He seeems okay, readers, thank God they wear helmets.

Strauss lbw Clark 24, England -47 for 2

Bell ct Gilchrist b Lee 28, England -38 for 3. A needless flash, the Frindaliser whirrs.

Pietersen and Collingwood try to steady the ship without becoming becalmed. McGrath bowls eight overs, six maidens, none for six. Pietersen changes bats, has he ever been out to Stuart Clark, who induces Collingwood to edge to Hayden in the Gulley for 17, England -4 for 4. Pietersen and Flintoff at the crease, shades of the end at the Waca. The Frindaliser is unmoved.

Flintoff is stumped millimetres out of his ground off Warne for 7. England +11 for 5 in real money. Superb piece of work by Gilchrist, the Frindaliser goes into orbit.

Panesar comes in as a nightwatchman. In many ways the best day’s cricket of the series.

An Old Scorebox Operator Laments

The game isn’t what it used to be,
nor the creaking knees for climbing creaking stairs
to ring the changes, today they score too damn quickly
for me. Joints need regular lubrication and maintenance,
mine, not just the machinery.

O how I yearn my Slasher MacKay
and Bill Lawry. You could open, pour and drink a long cool one
before they dreamt of hitting off the square. Put your feet up.
O my MacKay and Lawry,
Maybe fifty between lunch and tea, maybe.
Time enough to find the papers, makings,
roll a gasper to inhale each ball
safe in the surity it’d die on my lips

before they turned the old scoreboard over.

Last week they pinned a sign above my head.
‘Living legends don’t smoke’ without mention
to Boof or Warnie - two of the worst.
Gilchrist, Symonds. Hayden and Langer
started it all under the gimlet eyes of Waugh.
They score too damn quickly. Rickety
old me ricketing up those rickety stairs,
reels, numbers and boards. And sometimes
I forget to move on the score
staring at the beauty of it all.

Sydney Day Two – whither the Ashes?

2007-01-04T01:14:00.000+10:00

Play started at 10.19, due to time added to compensate time lost yesterday. Why not 10.20 and have done with it? Spurious accuracy in the extreme. The final ov r of the day will have 4.7 b lls, of which 1.37 recurring runs will be scored. Even Professor Fiffle-Faffle, arch-fiend of dubious science acknowledges this to be t tal b ll cks.

Even though I set off ahead of myself I miss the first ball, where Langer drops another at slip. Certainly lives up to the position's name. Maybe his mates are repeating the crowd's Yabba-esque comment 'This is the last test you'll ever play, Langer.'

Yesterday I sat next to the Yabba stand, named after the great Sydney barracker who yelled from the Hill querying England captains about colonial insect and political life -'"Leave our flies alone, Jardine. They're the only friends you've got." and “Dexter, what about the Common Market?” Greg Baum in the SMH (Sydney Morning Herald) bemoaned the lack of wit among the fans, especially his own, the Fanatics. “They mistake noise for wit, identity for character, attention for fame.” Maybe the Beefy Booney game has become too sanitised for its own good.

I missed the oversanitised start of play because of the queues trying to get in and then round the ground. The SCG catering facilities are about as nonged as the MCG, only less variety, but they take the biscuit (except you'd have to queue for it to find they'd run out) when it comes to enabling patrons get to their seats. On the whole Australian test cricket stadia are good. Signs are poor, and hired staff don't know or can’t give correct directions either but the bag searching and electronic ticket scanning works well. Not today. Thundering great queues, and once in, thickets of cops standing around doing XXXX all except get in the way of your trek halfway round the ground to Bay 3 which is both not labelled and incorrectly labelled so Crowd Security directs me to Bay 4 instead. Crowd Security – you feel safe with them.

The Bradman Stand (and he had many with Ponsford, Morris, Hassett, Fingleton, McCabe, Woodfull, but always with himself) is appropriately non-alcoholic. The Don imbibed but hardly drank.

The SCG needs egress around here. The Doug Walters Stand, which by rights should have been smokers only, is about to go. If the SCG want some free heritage advice, I'd recommend moving and restoring the old scorebox obscured by the Doug Walters Ashtray, or even better building an entrance underneath it. Maybe they've already copped this. Aspicked minds think alike.

10.48 Collingwood edges the unspuriously accurate McGrath, ct Gilchrist 27. 245 for 5.

Flintoff drives Lee for a thumping four behind square. At times he makes the game look so simple.

Read survives an imperious LBW appeal from Lee before his captain scampers him through for two leg byes. Next ball, snick to Gilchrist 258 for 6. Mahmood first ball an edged pull to Hayden in the gully. Ditto for 7.

Next over hat-trick ball to Flintoff, the Edgbaston derring-do commiseration pair. Fast, outside off-stump, Freddie watches it go by. An over or two later two driven fours, one nearly bisecting Umpire Billy Bowden with the sound of a high velocity anti-tank rifle. Simple game.

This morning before setting off, but after arranging to meet the head of the British Council in Australia I performed the simple task of polishing my shoes. It was immensely enjoyable, the tactile sensation of rubbing in the polish, then buffing the leather up to a half-way decent shine. A simple game, refreshingly so compared to complex things like e-mails, audio files, mobile phone tariff rates and 10.19 starts.

In essence cricket is simple too. The feel and sound of bat upon ball, willow upon leather, especially if the macau cane handle is in your hands. I loved that almost regardless of the outcome. Emotion has to be tempered to realise ambits.

Gunn & Moore

From water’s edge
to the middle of the ground.
grown straight, selected,
sawn, planed, sanded,
steel and grit balance
out any natural flaws
for the ideal blade
Not left to season
alone but cared for
Well-oiled resilient power
behind the maker’s name

roughed out, air-dried
cleft pressed moulded
and cut for the splice
Of macau cane thrice
rubbered and bound
wedged, clamped, glued
together in steady time
to face being in the middle

Easy in your hands
raise, step back, twiddle,
survey the field, take guard
Ready to do your best
and accept the future

Use wisely without fear
the ball is no part of me.

Flintoff at his best plays the game simply. This series he's struggled with the bat, flailing in the main at balls he shouldn't go for. He just taken five runs off a Clark over, leaving Harmison just one ball to face. Lbw 2. 282 for 8.

Enter the Monty heralded by Billy The Trumpet, to be dropped at slip by, yes, Langer. Even Tufnell was better in the field, he only dropped aitches on a regular basis.

Flintoff half-charges Clark to edge a spectacular but not overly difficult catch to Gilchrist - fifth of the innings, two more than you dropped, Justin. This is the worst stroke of an excellent innings by Flintoff. Not just playing through the V for crushing fours but craftily placed twos, one of the few England batsmen to appreciate the spaces offered by large Australian grounds. His 89 is nearly worth a century, close to a captain's innings, just as he's close but not quite close enough to being a good skipper. It's Freddie going backwards, re-flowering into the player all Australia feared when he strode to the crease in 2005. Feared and admired.

Or something like that as sung by Shirley Bassey

Big Freddie

The minute you walked on the pitch
We could see you were a man of distinction, a real big cricketer.
Soft lad from Lancashire,
Would you let us whisper into your ear?
Stroke it between cover and point,
No need to throw your bat at every ball you see,
Hey big Freddie!
Hit a little six for me.

Would you like to have fun, fun, fun?
After they’ve won, won, won?
Thrash’em at their favourite pastime.
Sink their drinks for a good time.
.
The minute you walked off the pitch
We could see you were a man of distinction, a real big cricketer.
Soft lad from Lancashire,
You didn’t hear what we whispered in your ear.
Stroke it between cover and point,
No need to throw your bat at every ball you see,
Hey big Freddie!
Hey big Freddie!
Hey big Freddie!
Hit a winning six for me.

Warne does Panesar again in flight for another LBW, England all out 291, probably about at least fifty short of par on this wicket. Three of the top six got over forty, none made a century. QED

Australia face a single over before lunch, which makes t tal b ll cks of the t tal b ll cks of a 10.19 kick-off. Why not have lunch straight after England's out, like the old days? Spurious accuracy and tv ad schedules, that's why.

Talking of old days, I'm intrigued by the venerable roller used to roll wickets between innings. Apparently it's about eighty years old which means it rolled the track before Bradman went out to play his first first class innings, and straight back in after collecting a duck.

The Don's views on Australian pies aren't known. Mine are. I take it all back. They don't taste all the same, the market waiting for the special Pom flavour 'Humble.' Today, feeling peckish after an insufficient number of sandwich (one) I found myself in the inner sanctum of the members atop the Noble stand where queues are short to non-existant. Against my better judgement I fancied a pie. Let's face it, Barry Humphries has immortalised this tasty on the Sydney Writers Walk in Circular Quay:-

I think that I could not espy
A poem lovelier than a pie.
A banquet in a single course
Blushing with tomato sauce

Mea Culpea. Fancying a pie with a difference I plumped for the Chicken and Vegetable. Bad move, for me, if not the chicken and the vegetable, because their presence within the crust seemed entirely nominal. Australian pies do not taste all the same. The beef ones are more or less edible. Balfour's Chicken and Vegetable isn't. One bite nearly had me spraying the entirety of Bay Three, the roller and the pitch - Fine projectile vomits from boundary to boundary. Inside a Balfour's Chicken and Vegetable is reject material from the Alien films, a greenish gelatinous gristly goop of extraterrestial sweepings from the intergalactic slop-bucket at the Abbatoir At The End of the Universe. Nobody should be allowed, never mind forced to make, serve and least of all eat this crap. $4.20 straight into the bin marked highly dangerous industrial waste and pies. Balfour's Chicken and Vegetable Pie is an offence against humanity which all Australia should rise up against. Were I ever to enter politics here I'd stand on half-way decent pies, but without much chance of success. Australians are proud, forgiving and ultimately drongo about their pies Bazza McKenzie's lesser ego professes to love so much.

The guts of Australian pies
Puzzle other democracies.
Its electorate aren’t averse
To bull or a whole lot worse.

If the Australian pie industry, not to mention their cricket ground security and caterers off the pitch were to show the same dedication in the pursuit of quality as the Green Baggies do on, it would be far more of a pleasure even as a pom to watch them put us through the mincer.

Australia 87 for 1. Only wicket Langer playing with the same abandon he displayed in his slip catching, snicking one down the leg-side from Anderson, ct Read 27. Billy the Trumpet is reduced to playing the Grandstand and then Sports Report theme tunes - March of the Champions. My start of play stumps prediction of 214 for 4 would be a good result for England, even when Hayden, eschewing Melbourne perserverance, goes hard at a wide one from Harmison ct Collingwood 33. 109 for 2 at tea.

I watch David Gower, Nasser Hussein and David Lloyd bumble to Sky viewers back in England at four in the morning the difference between the two teams. Their hand gestures speak volumes, roughly translated 'country mile.' Elsewhere on the paddock, the Battle of the Tasches Handicap race is between Aussies dressed as blokes, and Poms in dresses. The ladies win hands down and go off beam, signal and course. Maybe that's where we went wrong in our preparation. If only Freddie and the boys had dressed as women rather than played like them. Which is very unfair, not least to women cricket in England and Australia, where the England team still retain the Ashes (see Grace Road, one of the first entries on www.ashespoetry.net)

The Monty comes to the crease and Ponting falls to a fractional run-out direct throw from Anderson for 45, when set like a train. Shades of Pratt at Nottingham. 118 for 3. Clarke directs a Harmison lifter to Read for 11, before a rain break and stumps at 188 for 4. Interesting, still in the Australians’ favour.

Not that the press are there; too busy listening to Sir Richard Branson bang on about the Ashes urn staying in Australia. Three things:-

1. If the English team had made a decent fist of it, they’d not be having this debate.
2. Branson Pickle’s doing this to drum up trade for Virgin Blue, his new kid on the runway to Quantas for domestic air.
3. What’s it got to do with the price of Branson Pickle anyway? Could you imagine a Freddie Laker, or Lord King putting his pennethworth in this?

I admit I might be biased because another of Branson’s enterprises, Virgin Mobile screwed me royally in sending a replacement sim card for my drop-kicked mobile into the Torrens after Adelaide, and still owe me about forty bucks.

More seriously the Ashes Urn isn’t a trophy like the FA Cup; it’s a bequest, a gift from the Darnley estate to the MCC. To demand it as of right from the Marylebone Cricket Club would be like expecting any Australian cricketer to return their baggy green caps after they were dropped or retired.

John Howard, art collector and Australian Premier has backed Branson’s pickled scheme. Maybe the MCC could make it conditional on Aboriginal lands and rights similarly respected? Never mind the Hon Ivo Bligh, what the first Australian touring party to England of 1868, all aboriginals, would make of this is hard to guess. I think the Premier has misjudged the mood of the nation. Tonking the Poms is good, drinking beer is better:-

The Legend Of The Golden Tinnie

Aussie Bloke here

You all know the Legend Of The Golden Tinnie. Back some time in the last century, 1989 as a matter of fact, another Aussie bloke David Boon drank 52 tinnies flying in to thrash the Poms where it matters, and to bring back the Ashes. Except they didn’t, of course, because the Shirts at the MCC lost the pawn ticket yonks ago and could we have what is rightfully ours? Could we cocoa.

You’ve probably seen the brohoa in the paper (There’s only one - The Daily Strine) that the Ashes have come to Oz, just at the time when we didn’t hold them. Guess they must have found the pawn ticket. Took ’em three blokes and a special hermetically sealed container with its own seat in business class, by your leave, to get it here. You could’ve bunged it in an eskie and still have room for three dozen cold ones. Talking of which – I’ll get to that later. Three blokes to mind a four inch high urn? No wonder their manufacturing base is jiggered, couldn’t even manage a press-up in a multi-gym. If they ever decide to give the Elgin marbles back to Greece, they’d have to tow the whole bloody country there. And they’ll probably dob in a knighthood. Arise, Sir Ashes Urn KGB. Be a republican, it’s simpler. Almost as good as being a publican.

Now the pom who flew the Ashes here, Sir Richard Tim-Tam Milo-Milo Lamington-Lamington Branson-Pickle – who’s still a virgin despite or because of all those names - doesn’t want to bung em back. Typical pom, if you ask me, shonky bludger, can’t even trust their own kind. No surprise they lost them in the first place.

Which brings me to the Legend of The Golden Tinnie. Where the VB is it? Number 53, the tinnie Boonie couldn’t drink, the golden one, when all other tinnies are silvery.

The Poms must’ve got their grubby mits on that too.

So have any of you people got any idea where the Golden Tinnie might be?

And more to point, how to get it back before the Poms drink it, the Grail of Australia, the Antipodean Ambrosia, the elixir of life, strength and strinedom ….to win back the Ashes in 2009.

God help us.

Sydney Day Four - Prediction end of series 2.18

2007-01-03T08:25:00.000+10:00

Day 2 England didn’t bat at all badly today, and at 4-234 have already made their second highest first innings score of the series. Wicket pretty good, should be aiming for 400 plus, especially with no Hoggard. Less than 350 and the 5-0 starts to ominise itself, weather pending.

Much will depend on how Collingwood and Flintoff fare against the new bunger, and whether Chris Read shows the same resilience with the bat as in the second dig at Melbourne.

Day 3 Not yet seen Tuffers starting to roll up the post-coital gasper.... bit of rsp, Australia 184 for 4.

Sticking with the same prediction tomorrow but the blue baggies this time.

Day 4 Unless the extraordinary occurs, the end is inevitable, just the timing seems in question 2.18 in the afternoon.

Sydney Day One – steady start

2007-01-02T22:37:00.000+10:00

It clarted it down this morning, yet play started at 11.40, surprisingly enough without a Barmy Army chorus of "Only rain can save Australia now."

Both teams were presented to the assembled throng in honour of McGrath, Warne and Langer, in order of height if not stature. The England team line up under the flag of St George, something possibly inconceivable a dozen years ago, and the rise of English nationalism as an artefact of Welsh and Scottish assemblies.

All occurs under the watchful flag of Southern Cross flying from the Members Pavilion, which, with its partner to the Final Test Match Ball, the Ladies Pavilion, are perhaps the most elegant cricket buildings on God's Own Earth. As Saint Agnew of Leicestershire would have it, think George Geary stand at Grace Road writ large and then some.

The Australian Opera Bloke who sings the English national anthem over the tannoy adds one of those raised half-octaves as a substitute for talent and fidelity, and in homage to the Aussie habit of making every sentence a question? Later in the day in an attempt to put him straight The Barmy Army sing God Save Your Queen, with the codicil to the tune of 'O my darling Clementine' "Your next Queen is Camilla Parker-Bowles," Tatler readers please note.

Oh, the cricket. England won the toss, elected to bat, and 32 for 0 at drinks, (where the Gatorade truck makes an unwelcome reappearance) At first Strauss set out to disprove the pen is edgier than the blade, especially against McGrath, who opened the bowling at the close of his career.

At 4 for 2 normal service seems resumed when Strauss and Cook are out after being set.

3.20 enter Warne. And the Aussies behind me sing something regarding male genitalia to the tune of Jingle Bells. I put them if not their genitalia straight:-

O Warnie’s balls, Warnies balls,
Warnie’s balls are there to be stroked,
O what fun when the poms have choked
To have Warnie’s balls to stroke

Bell and Pietersen do just that, batting straight through from lunch to tea to put on a hundred just afterwards.

It’s simple to tell
Kevin Pietersen
from Ian Bell

One is quite tall,
the other rather small

But at Sydney today
they both batted rather well

Until KP party-tricked down the wicket to an anticipatory McGrath and I was saying ‘Out’ as soon as the ball left his bat on its way to Mr Cricket midwicket Hussey. Not to be outdone next over Bell didn’t get far enough forward again, and was castled neck and crop inside edge through the gate to mix MetaMcGraths.167 for 4.

Collingwood and Flintoff bat through with some luck but no little judgement to close at 234 for 4, already England’s second highest first innings performance in the test series.

The day was meant to belong to the departing Green Baggies. As Cric Info’s Peter English put it ‘The teams walked out this morning to see the three players' names spray-painted on the ground in a mixture so thick the rain that delayed the start for 70 minutes could not wash it away. Each time McGrath or Warne touched the ball or walked to grab their caps they were cheered like returning heroes and at tea the trio stood at the balcony of the dressing room listening to Time to Say Goodbye. Only the title words are sung in English and the players were unable to mouth the lyrics of the Italian operatic rendition like they did for the national anthem in the morning.’

So my poem of the day is about Stuart Clark, Australia’s leading wicket taker and find of the series. McGrath Mk II in method, he’s not nearly such a demonstrative man. Quite the reverse. Towards the end of the day Flintoff drove him to the long on boundary, touch and go if it was a four or not. They nearly collided as each looked at the ball. Stuart dipped out of the way without a scowl or jibe which would have been de rigour for Glen or Brett. Nice sort of bloke.

Stuart Clark

Not that you’d notice him for seeing,
the sort of bloke in the office
who always comes to work on time
to a tidy desk all parts done efficiently
yesterday.
Pays the drinks kitty and sweepstake
promptly
and tells the sharpest stories about the bosses
secretly
(not that you notice him for seeing.)

The sort of bloke troubled mothers of errant daughters
pray they’d bring home and yet leave them well alone.
That bank managers take to, perhaps trusting too much too.
Eyes that remember distant birthdays and colours of others eyes.
The sort of waiter you can ask what’s best on the menu,
tip well, and instinctively say thank you to,
and instaneously forget in our ever-rushed lives
too busy to notice him for seeing.

Nothing too complicated nor too much
to do for others. As his arm comes over
batsmen fear any minor deviations
- not that you’d notice them for seeing.

Bowling Plan-Gate

2007-01-01T18:01:00.000+10:00

Everyone has blown hot and cold about the England’s bowling plans, not to say bowling going astray at the MCG last week.

Ian Botham blew hot, probably because he was angry about the England performance.

Angus Frasier blew cold, more important things in the world, probably because he was resigned to England’s performance.

Matthew Hoggard, the different player of the day wheeled out to face the media, made a joke about it, which would have been my reaction, certainly in public.

Their loss displays a great deal of slap-dashery. Why was it in the back pocket of a back room staff member? How did it fall out? How come its loss wasn’t noticed? I know exactly where my ticket, credit cards, wallet, door keys are all the time, and I’m meant to be an absent-minded wuss of a poet.

Its laxadasical loss contrasts sharply with the prescriptive nature of the object lost. (Spot the Irony Time)

The piece of paper is not a bowling plan. It is a list of potential weaknesses of Australian batsmen. A bowling plan is how to get a side out in the least amount of time and runs. If England thought they’d lost their bowling plan with that piece of paper, it is evidence of not understanding the difference between tactics, plans and strategy.

Apparently these sheets of paper are laminated and pinned up in the dressing room (they come colour-coded too) I was surprised by this. You won’t be surprised that as a poet I do not have an alphabet, definitions or rhymes, forms of metre pinned up in my wardrobe, or indeed study. It denies any sense of prior assimulation of thought to think things through on the pitch – hence the formulaic dispositions in the field. To cut to the chase, England are being encouraged to play like a bunch of robots. It brings to mind the Don Revie era of England soccer management, where players were given inch thick dossiers on the individual opponents. Both Revie and Duncan Fletcher were/are cautious not to say suspicious men, especially of players with talent to attempt and achieve the unexpected.

The dossier/bowling plan approach indicates an excessively defensive mind set. It sets the opposition’s qualities above your own. Each weakness in the ‘bowling plan’ is fairly common knowledge. I’m just a fan, and thought ‘Nothing new there’ I’d also have thought it would already be in the minds of the England cricket team. By placing them in the dressing room you deny the bowlers their strengths. ‘Don’t care what their weaknesses are, if I bowl it on or just outside offstump on a length, and move it a fraction….’ In other words, it’s an approach which denies self-belief and confidence. You can understand why Rod Marsh and Troy Cooley, both recent members of the England set-up have been critical of its current effects.

Regardless of individual players performances you can also see why England have lost four matches on the reel against a team fifteen months agao they came back from one-nil down to beat 2-1, nearly 3-1. Would this England team have managed to hold its nerve to win Edgbaston and Trent Bridge 2005?

What of the fifth and final test at the MCG? Is it a chance of token redemption or are final rites inevitable? Will it be a sly Tuffer’s post-coital gasper, or a fag-end of the most one-sided Ashes Series since Warwick Big Ship Armstrong Mcgrathed John Won't Hit Today Douglas's England side 5-0 in 1921-2

Showers are forecast, which might help lead to a draw. McGrath and Warne will be playing their last games, McGrath on his home pitch, perhaps Langer too. They will want to end on a high.

Signs aren’t good. Not least the England team going round Sydney Harbour to enjoy the fireworks in a luxury cruiser called the Morpheus. In classical times he was god of the underworld in whose arms you fell asleep to die.

Whether or not England fall asleep to lose, manage to salvage a draw or wake up to a New Year’s win, I hope they do one thing. At the end of the last day’s play they walk across and share the series with their supporters.

Melbourne Days 4&5+NYE

2006-12-31T19:11:00.000+10:00

“Due to no play being required on the fourth day of the Melbourne Test, Ticketmaster will give 100% refunds to all patrons.”

So much for no Melbourne Day Four and Five talks. Any complaints should be directed directly to the England Cricket Team.

What to do – here is a poem on Day Three Old Trafford, where doubtless Pakistanis with a yen to complain took it up with their team.

Old Trafford Triptych 3rd Day 2nd Test England vs Pakistan 2006

Looking Ahead

two days to spare
what will we do tomorrow?

lick wounds
savour the taste of victory
naughty boy nets
what will we do tomorrow?

cancel a thousand barm cakes
dismantle tents and portaloos
ask landladies, scratch our heads
for other things to do
return quarters early
to a backlog of diy
ring the temp agency for other jobs
just above the minimum wage
what will we do tomorrow?

get so stupendously blotto
tomorrow falls out of the question
absent-mindedly switch on to 1500 metre
long wave to wonder why life in Ambridge
hasn’t yet stopped.

what will we do tomorrow?
maybe the outcome was never in the balance
one thing for sure
unlike Macbeth it’s all over
before Birnam Wood and Dunsinane Hill
came against him.

"Any rubbish there at all?" asks the Virgin Blue steward onward to Sydney Test Five. England cricket team, I say, which is perhaps unfair because there is a chance of redemption or final rites in the fifth test. Will it be a sly Tuffer’s post-coital gasper, or a fag-end of the most one-sided Ashes Series since Warwick Big Ship Armstrong Mcgrathed John Won't Hit Today Douglas's England side 5-0 in 1921-2. Who can say but read BowlingPlanGate in tomorrow's www.ashespoetry.net

New Year’s Eve Sydney Harbour Bridge tonight appearing on Radio 5 Live’s Julian Worricker show, and here’s a poem to prove it. Have a good one, one and all, not least the England and Australian teams and all their followers.

Harbour Bridge – 00 00 Monday 1st January

Sydney
a city and land defined by sea, a far greater bridge:
Flinder’s circumnavigation never left its moorings
from Donnington’s dominion. Seventy-five years
is nothing more than a life-time bearings.

Over and under, each passage changes yours
a fraction of a second or degrees more abruptly.
The click of rail tracks, ferry
boards or calendar make each journey
a new year for someone far or near;
Greek, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Thai, Mediterrean, Slav,
the city is a restaurant of nationalities,
not just UK nor Australia.
A two century skin to countless millenia
of aboriginal lands: hard to come to terms with
what Cook first saw when missing harbour
or orginal cooks sixty thousand years earlier,
each passage changed their being.

Every one of us history.

Today
after commissioned fireworks and similar paraphenalia
are dustcarted and dumped with any scent of sulphur,
the world becomes again what it was before,
edged on a little further from its origins.
Rail meets gunnel, steel the sea,
Kirribilli, Neutral Bay, Karra Point,
Mosman, Manly, Watson’s,
Pyrmont, Balmain, Parramatta,
all points compass Circular Quay.

Nothing’s left.
In the wind, rain, flood tides
and fogs, steamer horns stygian
the clatter of trains anchor chains
knuckling the bridge under. The smell of oil, riches,
ghosts of spices, wheat, sheep, cattle,
hides and fleeces, unwashed, chaffed, settlers too,
awash within the pattern book of antiquity’s development
the bridge pays its tolls to.

Watch the ferries dance their first footings
to dawn’s indiginous tune.

Melbourne Day Three – Capitulation

2006-12-29T10:21:00.000+10:00

Sorry about late arrival of this piece. This was due to England’s performance yesterday, which means there will no further service on days four and five.

Just before setting off rung by Peter Baxter to appear on Test Match Special at lunchtime. Arrive at the MCG early enough to talk to staff about arranging clearance. Gwenne who takes me to the media centre mentions how she studied Dante at university. The Divine Comedies should be read by more, I say. Maybe the Inferno would make a better bet to describe England's plight.

Get to my seat just in time to see Symond's inning end with a waft to Harmison, caught Read. Interesting to compare Mahmood with Harmison, especially side-on. Stevo is like Meccano, an action all bolted together, angles and straight bits, which constantly needs nuts and bolts tightening up, tweaking, gears putting into mesh. Mahmood is slow springy silk drawn along a draper's counter, ruffled then smooth again in the final delivery. Worth perserving with, even if Warnie gives him some tonk.

The MCG is gladitorial. A third umpire decision really would be a hundred thousand thumbs or down to decide the batsman's fate. Warne makes merry, takes Australia to 419, England second dig 260 behind. ABC call for an interview at the ground before start of play tomorrow. It could be all over by then.

Over lunch I'm in the Test Match Special box with Jonathan Agnew. It's unnerving as it is an honour. Henry Blofeld says 'Cook comes forward and plays no stroke,' and instaneously I'm tucked safely away in bed in Bakewell tuned in earphone in ear.

Test Match Special

I met him at a match. Daddy played,
one of his last, mummy in charge of teas,
we both agreed he was quite a catch
to bowl out dad and make the winning hit.
Egg and cress with cuppa held with no delicacy;
gloved paws crushed the bone-china twixt my knees.

Asleep now, or maybe awake, ear-piece to ear,
(my Christmas present to him last year)
tows him from my side to Australia
so far away, his flannellette hirsuite back
brushes my nose, the texture of bat-pad or strange
marsupial. Was it so different at our nuptials?
The raised colonade of bats from church door
in the mirror-polish of the chauffeured car
didn’t quite put me at the top of the order.
Nets, committees, summer and winter tours,
coaching the juniors. At least, mum said,
you know what he’s up to – don’t you?

Where’s his head now? Next week in Sherbourne,
unjambing the utility door, on the list since the year before,
countless club accounts and planning applications
(on the cards since the year before,) grandsons’ birthdays,
(left or right handers; bats or bowlers.) Ungainly huddled,
drowsy he mumbles, sighs, then turns his head
to shadow the clock-radio’s score; three in the morning,
without warning he’ll yell ‘Shot! Stupid Fool! O no, not again’

- As if they’re listening to him down under, or me.
It’s only when it’s done, another Ashes series gone,
he rolls over, asking to be held like a small boy
lost in his mother’s arms.

Talking of ears, Glenn McGrath gives Strauss's a right mouthful as they walk off for their lunch. 'Might be a poem there' I say to Peter Baxter, the TMS producer, 'McGrath has this miserable demeanour.'

Grump, grump, grump I'm Glen McGrath,
Grump, grump, galumph, galgrumpalumph, I'm Glen McGrath,
I'll bend your ear from here to the dressing room
And back again, over after over till you edge or miss
The point of my delivery

Around me are some of the greats of the game.

Not just Jonathan Agnew, but summarising with Blowers is Ian Chappell, in whose stand I sat in at Adelaide, perhaps one of the shrewdest and rudest Australian cricketers ever. Geoff Boycott walks in and out and in the foyer Ian Botham is grabbing some lunch. Ahead of me Blowers interviews Dennis Amiss, who I last saw in the flesh score a double hundred thirty years ago against the West Indies at the Oval, and stiill finish on a losing side (http://www.cricinfo.com/link_to_database/ARCHIVE/1970S/1976/WI_IN_ENG/WI_ENG_T5_12-17AUG1976.html

Dennis's deft footwork nearly takes all the leads with him, and I take his seat, a right-hander with two left feet. Agnew is an excellent and perceptive interviewer. 'I know nothing about poetry,' he asks 'but why are in one poem some lines in pairs and in another they're not.' I explain about techniques such as internal rhymes in V-8 batting

aussie cars come with muscle for extra hustle

From V-8 batting back to my seat above the Barmy Army Heavy Division. We're 72 for 3. Cook played on to Clark, Bell lb to McGrath, not quite getting far enough forward, and Pietersen promoted up the order so he doesn't run out of partners, drives round a straight one from Clark. Both Bell and Pietersen tuck their bats under their arms in similar fashion as they return to the dressing rooms. The Army still make enough noise for Brett Lee to pause and acknowledge the Oooooo! as he starts his run-up. As each wicket falls, the Aussie Fanatics prepare their come-back anthem 'Four-nil' to the tune of Auld Lang Syne.

In the commentary box they wonder why the BA start singing when they do. One aspect is them noticing the tv cameras coming their way, the media leading the march. Another is perhaps why the mad thrash outside off-stump. Like English batsmen, they just have to, just a matter of when.

Does the Barmy Army help or hinder those in the middle? If England's fielding then probably yes. I remember standing with the Barmy Army during the last session of the last Ashes Test at Old Trafford. Everyone was on their feet cheering England on to take the last Australian wickets. Pietersen fielding in the deep urged us to make more noise, to help the team toward the extra effort of victory. Batting, not nearly so sure. You're so focused, concentrating on the task at hand, it's like every ball is a penalty kick; you divorce the crowd from your mind. Collingwood drives Lee to short-midoff. 75 for 4. So much for my TMS prediction 217 for 3 at stumps. Brett Lee extravagently bows towards the jeers from the Barmy Army.

Next to me is a cut-out Freddie Flintoff, while the real thing clouts Warnie for a two bounce four over square. Nick Whitlock, a poet from Cordite Poetry www.cordite.org.au rings and we arrange to meet at tea.

We agree to set the series into 11 line stanzas, one for each innings batting line up, he taking the Aussies, me the Poms. 'If you don't have to bat again, we've saved you some work.' I say.

England all out 161, two more than their first knock, knockers please note, an innings and ninety-nine runs defeat.

Capitulation

Ghosts of ghosts of ghosts. The moving hand
Having writ will move on. Each stroke of the pen
Is a mark to be recorded but not taken back.
It is edgier than the blade.

The English batsmen, nothing to lose
Having lost the greatest prize, play at playing.
Their strokes not worthy of themselves
nor their imagination. Out.

Bat under arm, an envelope sealed of a letter
They never wished to write:
An imposition in detention,
It is signed, sealed and delivered.
The long slow empty walk to a lost pavilion.

Ghosts of ghosts of ghosts,
The originals swear under their breaths
To weep real enough tears.

Melbourne Day Two – cards, cars and cakes

2006-12-27T20:35:00.000+10:00

Forgot to mention yesterday that Australia finished the day 2 for 48, Flintoff nearly getting a hat-trick. This is because I didn't have a scorecard. 'Scorecard? What the XXXX is a scorecard?' asks Aussie Bloke.

In England at any first class match, an up-to-date scorecard is printed and sold at the start of each day's play. Often they are reprinted for the intervals and close of innings. I remember the 1960s Cheltenham Festival had a scorecard printing tent, where under the canvas was an old-fashioned hot-lead printing press, doubtless steam-or-clockwork powered, which thumped the latest score out. You could hear its bangedy-crash-clatter reprise the strokes and wickets that had led to its activity. There was a distinct smell of oil, inks and paper, while if you were quick enough it'd smudge because the ink wasn't quite dry.

'We don't need scorecards,' says Aussie Bloke. 'We've got proper scoreboards.' Which is true, Australian scoreboards list all the players, bowling averages, balls faced, bail summons, divorce ratios - they don't need Bill Frindall either. Except Melbourne, where you have a two line entry below the replay screen which gives a fuller if not complete version which you can't quite read when it's not showing the Boonaza moment of the mouth, usually involving more Aussie Blokes.

'Who gives a XXXX about the score?' Aussie Bloke says. 'Us blokes are bound to win. - just a sec'

A Bloke goes for his mobile phone, as do thousands of other ABs. It's 3 mobile's advert which starts with the Green Baggies' mobile phones ringing. My mind wanders back to the Cheltenham Festival scorecards, which held the only advertising at the game - something like 'Acme Cleaners the acme for cleaning your acme.’

In contrast you can't move for advertising at the MCG. Armaguard to Toyota, including Florsheim Florsheim who probably took over Acme Acme years ago. Seems a shame none of them have thought to sponsor a half-way decent scorecard, because then I could tell you that Australia finished 111 behind England, the dreaded Nelson, without even one ball left.

Play's about to start. Laurel, my daughter, has just spilled her hot Milo I queued days for.

MCG criticism time

The food and non-alcoholic drinks outlets need a serious wake-up call straight up their collective backsides. There were more people behind the counter than in the queue, all doing nothing to administer to the queue's needs. It's just as bad outside the ground, where a van had six staff each arguing with each other about what none of them were doing, namely just one dealing with the customers, serving through a six inch wide slit.

'Real coffee,' they said. I agree. It was the poorest flat white I've tasted in Oz. There could be worse, but it'd have to resemble sump oil with extra sludge. The back-room boys at the MCG need to issue catering contracts which stipulate 'Don't let the queues start' and check they don't.

It’s peculiar that at the security over-kill Gabba, the service was the best to date. Memo to MCG Catering Contracts Department "Full body-search brain-inspection security checks for customer awareness monitoring required on a regular basis."

End of MCG criticism. Australia are scoring even more slowly than England yesterday. Sun comes out, Flintoff gets Ponting to sky a hook to Cook at mid-on for 7, 64 for 3. The blacksmith rivets the dancer back to the hutch. Flintoff and Hoggard are bowling their hearts out. With some luck England might restrict Australia to less than two hundred. A maiden from Hoggard, the crowd hushed.

Drinks, and Melbourne does not have the Inflatable Gatorade truck. Far more civilised and pukka. Well done, MCG

First ball after, Hoggard gets one to come back just enough to slip through and take Hussey's off stump for six. 79 for 4. Harmison's second ball lifts, Clarke edges to slip, ct Read 6, 84 for 5, the Barmy Army fill the MCG with who they are. "Mighty Mighty England"

Only Australia are, as throughout this series, just that significant iota better. Hayden and Symonds, seventeen balls to get off the mark, bat from lunch to tea taking the score to 228. 150 partnership follows, and the game gradually diminishes from England's view, a fast car accelerating away as the traffic lights change to green.

Never mind steam or clockwork powered printing presses, and sump-oil with extra sludge, the V-8 has a Queensland rego. Century-makers Hayden and Symonds are both from the north east state, big blokes who play big strokes. Symond's maiden test century comes with a six straight over bowler Collingwood's head. Double-ton stand brings them to 322 at the second new ball. From 84-5 England have been left standing, an inning's defeat looming in the trans-Australian Ashes race.

V- 8 Batting

aussie cars come with muscle for extra hustle
to cover the ground across the states.

hear them burble, roar and hurtle
past bystanders awash with their dust.

in Queensland they understand
these unwritten rules of the road.

big blokes with big strokes
smack the ball and keep the score

accelerating towards a vanishing point
of vanquished oblivion

foot flat out down the wicket
the Hayden-Symonds 279

has all the go you need
a howling good motor

the poms innings defeat
looms large in its rear-view mirror.

At 350 for 5, Andrew Strauss runs a big circle from slip to bowler back to slip again giving and taking catches to gee up the team. Captain Freddie claps his efforts from second slip before bowling another over. It seems to have some effect. Mahmood gets both Hayden and then wrecking truck Gilchrist to edge behind. 7 for 372. There might be a chance if England finish the innings quickly and bat out of their skins…. It might just delay the Parfitt moment. Whether or not bowling plans were nicked from their dressing room, the England team hasn’t stopped trying.

As an England supporter I suppose I should stick to humble pie but for lunch today we shared some of Connie’s Christmas Cake.

Cricket Is A Cake At Christmas

Months of preparation. Fruit grown,
picked, selected, dried, packed, distributed,
displayed, assessed, purchased, steeped in rum,
sherry, port and other essential spirits.

Nuts harvested too, shelled, roasted
with aromatics; mixed, stirred, egged,
wholemeal flours, light and dark
demerara sugars, nutmeg, cinnamon, mace,
caught and ground exotica to spice and seal
a well-lined, slow slow oven,
all well seasoned till done.

Moist, firm, flamboyant teams of flavours
compete for supremacy. Each morsel,
taste, touch and more their anticipation
are the cuts, pulls, drives, catches and saves
you came to consume and savour

Memories replaced with the cake
inside its tin, to store for coming seasons.

Melbourne Day One - Warnetics

2006-12-26T23:44:00.000+10:00

The MCG is huge. To give you an idea of its size, you could seat a packed-out Derby County, Coventry City and any other Championship Ground and still have room. 105,000 people. Pretty well the population of the Peak District. Fantastic.

And of course it comes with English weather, that intermittant fine veil-like haze of mist you can't quite see but brushes the skin with the dampness of impending decay. It has already delayed the start of play. According to The Age it snowed in Victoria yesterday, which is probably less feasible than snow in Buxton in July, or England winning the next two tests. Now it is coming down heavier. It'd be an irony if at the MCG rain were to save Australia.

You feel sorry for the English fans who've arrived for the last two tests. Not only is the weather about as bad as when they left - not seen a pair of shorts, never mind sun crème today - they've set off knowing the Ashes are lost, and the next two are by comparison, bun-fights. I remember Jonathan Agnew being asked on a phone-in about whether the series would still be live by Melbourne, where the questioner was contemplating going out for the last two tests. 'Oh yes,' said Aggers, 'England won't have lost the Ashes by then.'

In a way my work is done. Before leaving England Arts Council England dubbed me 'The Official Ashes Poet.' I had me down as a bloke who was writing some poetry about cricket, two of his many loves. However my task as Official Ashes Poet is now effectively over, since the series has been decided. Pacé Orwell, sport is war without weapons, it's like being a war artist once the war is over.

I shall just write poetry in and around the cricket. Or its lack at present. It's suddenly become much brighter - they've switched the floodlights on. They've also taken the covers off the pitch, England have won the toss and elected to bat. It takes two overs for their openers to put that bat on ball.

Rain brings an early lunch, 36 for 1, Cook caught Gilchrist bowled Lee, shouldering arms. The rain also brings the nap out of the mown outfield whose plaid of rhomboid squares gives the appearances of one of those woollen scarves the Queen wears at Balmoral. And they play Aussie Rules on this during the winter.

Melbourne Cricket Ground

No village green or country paddock,
the mower misses the long grass wrapped
around the roller and peeling sight screens
pushed over for winter, benches tipped up,
in brass-plated memory of Roger or Ethel
who spent many a long afternoon
pint or thermos to hand and oblivion
the world passed by. At the heart of it all
lies twenty-two yards, wicket to wicket,
tenth of a furlong, a chain
to tie bat to ball, a landscape
of former empire, medieval origins,
acres ploughed through the mind,
one hundred and five thousand assemble
to worship.

44 for 2. Bell lbw Clark 7. Between showers very English conditions, overcast, ball daring about, not a single bouncer to date. Between showers, and only one boundary to date.

A great blow for radical thought and Australian freedom, one of the security team throw back one of the crowd's beach balls. Melbourne, a city proud of its liberal virtues. Had it been Brisbane and The Gabba, they'd have probably neutered the poor security team member's progeny as well as deporting him for Un-Australian Activities. Strauss hits the second boundary of the day, an hour after lunch. Thin rations all round for Boxing Day but absorbing cricket.

101 for 2. Collingwood and Strauss play and miss to a fifty partnership and Strauss's first fifty of the series before Collingwood edges to second slip off one which Lee gets to lift. Next ball is the big one. Strauss plays round a straight one from Warne and is cleaned bowled. No complaints there, not least from the Melbourne crowd where their favourite prodigal nabs his seven hundredth test wicket. A three minute standing ovation from everyone English and Australian alike. I wonder what Shane feels. Relief, I imagine. Mission accomplished, and in accomplished style. Now he's reached his goal in front of his home crowd, retirement planned and announced and Ashes in the bag, Warne S K can enjoy himself, doubtless at England's expense. Ladies and Gentleman, Shane's seventh hundredth test wicket is in the MCG

Warne, Shane Keith born 13 September 1969 test match debut January 1992
(To the jig, The Sailor’s Hornpipe)

Warnie’s balls turn square, KP hits ’em in the air.
A six or out, there is no doubt.
You get a funny feeling one side’ll be reeling
Ev’ry time Warnie’s balls turn square.

A leggie with Clarrie Grimmett’s accuracy (plus extra hair)
The wrong ’un, hard to pick, and howzat when beaten through the air,
The flipper and the toppie, zooter and the slider
And the chatter: yells, looks, asides and pleas,
(the only time the bloke’s down on his knees,)
A Clarence Darrow George Carman at the crease
What umpire on earth however stoney could say no?
Another baffled though reluctant victim tries to dilly-dally but he has to go.

The next man in is almost out before he’s in.
The legendary magician will mesmerise him.
He knows he’ll have to face a flighty camisole tease:
A forbidden glimpse of flesh to tantalise
Reveals a hirsuite Superman medallioned Australian chest
Full of tricks the antipodean baccus of temptation doesn’t divest
Before the silly fool with bat and pads realises he’s transgressed
The blond cherubim’s spinning finger puts him to rest.

A waistline that indicates adequate social activity
Since an Ashes debut in 1993; Warne, S K.
Shoulder strapped, lucky charms, his daughter’s bracelet,
The facts are patently clear, he should really try to face it,
Whatever schemes and dreams of schemes are whirling on within,
The top of his head is not quite what it used to be,
(In fact, somewhat like this rhyme, going rather thin.)
Harum-scarums with mobiles and diuretics,
His simple way with words schtums clever dick critics,
Through thick and thin he’s always gone back
To his mark: a three-card trick-sy four-step run

That flummoxed Fat Gatt with the ball of last century,
At the lees of his career, the ikon’s tank is close enough to empty
Lo, he gambols past Strauss A J, namely number Seven Hundred
And yet another one. Forget the waist, hair and old age. Heed the old adage
If you’re good enough, you’re old enough. Let him rip his ripper one last rip,
As The Grauniad's Trundler-in-Chief Selvey opines
‘No game’s over till the fat boy spins.’
I’ll buy that, gimme me one more, Skip.
Good on yer, Warnie. May The Good Lord Bless
How your balls turned square!

117 for 4 at tea, another defeat, like a U-boat periscope sighted by an English convoy, starts to loom... Except Gilchrist misses stumping Pietersen off Warne. The other ships go down with scarcely a trace. HMS Flintoff flashing at Clark, MV Read driving at Warne, SS Mahmood caught behind for a duck, Collier Harmison holed out to Warne, Show Boat Pietersen short of the fence, Pedalo Panesar another swipe. 159 all out.

Hard graft against the swinging new ball done, the last eight wickets fell for 58 runs.

Here's a carol for Billy The Trumpet

I saw England collapse again
Collapse again, collapse again
I saw England collapse again
On Boxing Day in Melbourne

Warnie got 5 for 39,
5 for 39, 5 for 39
Warnie got 5 for 39
On Boxing Day in Melbourne

Bonjour Trieste

2006-12-26T23:32:00.001+10:00

A Survival Guide to the Loss of the Ashes, and similar English sporting failures.

Fifty Ways
(after Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover – Paul Simon)

It’s bad to be defeated
All too easily.
We travelled here with such high hopes
To end in misery.
It could have been much worse though how
I cannot see.
There must be fifty ways
To lose the Ashes.

A negative strategy made it
Harder to win,
And by the same token opponents
Reckon you’re about to give in.
We bent right over
So you could give our arse a good kicking,
There must be fifty ways
To lose the Ashes.
Fifty ways to lose the Ashes.

chorus:

Play the Australians.
Pick Geraint Jones
Ahead of Chris Read.
Don’t prepare for the Gabba,
Ignore Monty Panesar,
Madness at Adelaide,
Led t(w)o the Waca.

Over a hundred thousand
Have paid to be at the MCG.
Even a fourth Aussie victory
Will seem a little empty,
Now there’s nothing we can do
To make the series live again.
A win is still a loss;
You don’t need to use
All those fifty ways.

Maybe it doesn’t matter
If we go and lose five nil.
We’ve already lost what we
aimed to fulfill. We can’t change
Those first three games,
There must be fifty ways
To lose the Ashes
chorus:

Play the Australians.
Pick Geraint Jones
Ahead of Chris Read.
Don’t prepare for the Gabba,
Ignore Monty Panesar,
Madness at Adelaide,
Led t(w)o the Waca.

Australians need not go much further than this. Winning is joy shared by all, except the loser. Loss is more private, if not personal.

This guide should not be necessary. Not just because England at worst should have drawn Adelaide, but by now England supporters should have grown used to loss and disappointment, not just in tests, but also one day internationals, soccer, rugger (both codes, especially union) athletics (2012 here we come) Wimbledon and lest you've forgotten the Empire - which included Australia.

As nations we're sporting antipodes. England loses far more than we win, while Australia wins far more than they lose. Likewise expectations. England build expectations upon hopes upon dreams. Australians do their best.

So, how as an England supporter do you cope with loss and failure? Here I speak with some acumen and expertise. Not just as an England supporter, I'm a third generation Coventry City fan. Here are several methods, tried and tested, together with a context-based star rating.

The Grieving Process
This is the classical method of coming to terms to coming to terms. Shock, Disbelief, Anger, Guilt, Remorse, Sadness before moving onto the next Ashes Series. Hard work, soul searching, but may lead to personal growth, which in this context is wholly irrelevant ***

Alternate Realities
You need a smattering of relativity physics for this to work. There is an alternate world in the universe where Vaughan comes back with a fully fit team from Australia having retained the Ashes. A variation is Lady Luck - if only Giles had caught Ponting, Strauss not given out lb, Captain Cook not discovered Australia... Neither luck nor alternate realities hold much water in face of a three nil drubbing. *

DIY
Especially after the batting in the second innings at Adelaide, you start to think you could do at least as well as the players you support, especially if you've travelled round the world to do it. However 'My dead grandmother could play that Shane Warne with a stick of celery blindfold with both hands tied behind her back' doesn't quite have that ring of truth about it. **

Always Look On The Bright Side of Life
This is the Barmy Army Weltanschlung. For it to have any chance of working it requires copious consumption of alcohol. Indeed for the Barmy Army, win, draw or lose requires copious alcoholic consumption. Provides instant and oblivious if temporary relief. The morning after may well bring back the full horror of the situation. **

Temporary Transference of Cultural Identity
Desperate situations require desperate measures. You can deny you were ever interested in cricket, or supported England. You'll need a alternate pursuit and/or nationality. For example, tiddlewinks or my favourite, as someone with half-Russian blood, becoming a member of the MCC - Moscow Cricket Club. Be prepared for the guilt and loneliness of isolation, not to mention knowing when to time your return. *

Historiography Perhaps the most effective means of combating cricketing failure - the study of the past. It's a short but easy step to travel from the 2005 Ashes Victory to memories of Gatting, Botham, Brealey, Hutton and before you know it, you'll find yourself saying 'That Hammond's some player' or 'Should we play Ames or Duckworth?' It doesn't matter because cricket supporters will respect your knowledge and learning, even possibly forgiving the odd lapse of memory when it comes to buying your round.

Interestingly, the world of literature doesn't possess this depth and gravitas. Bonjour Trieste was written in the 1950s by Francoise Sagan as the sad end to the gay (both senses of the word) riviera life of the epoch and her own. Trieste, that Adriatic resort which can't decide if it's Italian or Slavonic. Today Sagan's excellent novel is out of print and forgotten. Not so great cricketers of class and the past. *****

Analysis of Failure

2006-12-26T07:21:00.001+10:00

This is for cricket lovers, especially English cricket supporters, who wonder why the Ashes were lost so readily after taking so long to regain.

Previous Performances

We did better than the last time down under. The 2002-3 team lasted eleven days in their attempt to wrest the Ashes. At least this time it was fifteen. Whether this understated fact is considered significant probably depends upon individual reader's expectations.

Selection - overall tour party

The tour party selection was good. No one has said no one who went shouldn't have and no one who didn't go should've. Maybe Robert Key can consider himself unlucky not to replace Marcus Trescothick instead of Ed Joyce, and some would argue that Neil Broad should've been called up once the pace attack seemed so toothless, but I can't remember the basic selection being so right, and agreed to be right. Odd that the media hasn't pointed this out, or may be it isn't...

Effort and The Media

The team did try their hardest. The Daily Mail and other papers to bang on about too many parties etc is, to use a very technical phrase most readily understood by those in the media, bollocks. Not only is it bollocks, it's hypocritical bollocks. This is the same paper that praised this team to the hilt and beyond, doubtless enthusing about Flintoff's drunken state the morning after the night before regaining the Ashes.

Not only is it hypocritical bollocks, it is also lamentable bollocks. A common problem all England teams in all sports face is media intrusion and expectation. This in turn creates stories which don't exist. My missus tells me that there is a dressing room fall-out because Flintoff doesn't like Panesar. This story doubtless arose because Fletcher said he wanted Panesar in at Adelaide, whereas apparently Flintoff didn't, thus breaking the cardinal rule that individual selector’s opinions are never ever discussed in public (it is a corporate decision) In turn journalists turn this into a "Freddie hates Monty" story, and regardless of substance it is difficult to deny ("Duncan denies Freddie hates Monty") Can you imagine the Australian press running such a story, regardless of how well or badly the team was doing? No. And if any paper tried, they'd be tried and found guilty of that most heinous sin, not backing the team.

There's no story in the first place, since there is no reason any two players should like or dislike each other. They are professional cricketers working together to do a job of work, and all professionals work with others they may or may not choose to otherwise be with.

Talking of being professional, sports journalists should stick to sport, rather than invade personal space. The hypocritical (does journos' personal lives ever come under press scrutiny?) and lamentable (does invasion of privacy help England teams?) bollockry that fills far too many column inches does nothing to support England teams. Worse it leaves less space for true sports journalism. The ability of the Australian media to support their team in times of difficulty is diametrically opposed by the ability of their English counterparts to do the exact opposite. Stick to the facts of the matter at hand, and write about them well.

Efficiency of Effort

England did try hard, very hard, if at times they were exceptionally trying.

We are now getting to the facts of the matter at hand. As detailed in 'Post Mortem' after the Adelaide Test, England teams handicap themselves by using a mental model of Anticipated Outcomes - 'We have won the Ashes, therefore we shall keep them' which is particular weak opposed to the Australian model of realising desires 'Let's get the Ashes back.'

Both the England team and media used this model, as have the England soccer teams and press with the World Cup since 1966.

In this instance, it meant a complete reversal of the strategy that won them the Ashes. Instead of going hard, realistically attacking at all times, outdoing the Aussies at their own game, England were excessively defensive, keen only to protect what they held, not to grind the opposition into the dust. Doubtless this strategy was discussed and agreed by England team management and was the primordinal error, since it made it almost impossible for them to retain the Ashes.

Australian Conditions

Insufficiently taken into account. "We beat them last series, therefore we should this series." Something which is quite hard to see on the box, the increased size of the grounds - which makes finding gaps different, and hitting boundaries and going arial harder - and the different nature of the wickets - more bounce, less lateral movement - means you need to adapt your game, never mind the sun and playing away. No amount of net practice will provide compared to time in the middle. In other words all the team were still experimenting during the First Test at the Gabba, and some still are at the Waca. (Not sure if Geraint Jones will ever have the game to bat successfully in Australia.)

Schedule

This comes down to schedule. England are playing not enough yet too much cricket. Before The Gabba they needed two hard four day State games in order to 'hit their straps.' Presumably this could have been arranged. It seems tour management believed this was unnecessary and also undesirable. In other words they underestimated the task at hand because they were already anticipating the outcome of retaining the Ashes.

Selection - match by match

Injuries and absences did make a difference, but not to the extent of a 2-1 winning side already 3-0 down. Put it another way, even with Siinon Jones, Trescothick and Vaughan avaiable, the negative strategy still would have played into Australian hands. The selection of Geraint Jones and Giles ahead of Read and Panesar was part and parcel of this negative ethos. As curiously was Flintoff as Captain - a great player in 2005, therefore best choice of captain in 2006-7. You’re only as good as the next ball.

Overall Rod Marsh is right. England have gone backwards since 2005. The question is how to go forwards again.

Where Next

Here I wish the solutions were as readily identifiable as the problems. I 'd go for achieving quality and potential. This would mean selecting players on the basis of the prime part of their game (ie Panesar and Read rather than Giles and Jones) It would also mean hard warm-up games so that the team was match rather than net-hardened. Taken together this should mean England are as well prepared as Australia. Together with an aggressive attacking attitude, playing to win, it should mean that England has a fighting chance. Without it there is no hope except relying on outrageous amounts of luck.

It'll be interesting to see whether England play with a different ethos in the last two tests.

Perth & Freemantle

2006-12-25T05:35:00.000+10:00

Sorry Western Australia, can't say I was taken too much by Perth.

"Sheffield has never much cared for its history and buildings, and one day it will regret it" Sheffield Telegraph 1907.

“Darkness insists that Sheffield is a city, a metropolis; daylight reduces it to its component parts, to a series of bloated villages, unfolding across the undulations, linked only by sewers and roads. Perhaps this is all Sheffield has become: an infrastructure in search of a city, a system of services and administrative units sprawling across an intractable landscape.”
Richard Burns, The Guardian 1991.

Unlike Adelaide, Perth has denied its grand design. True the civic vista along the Swan River still exists, but that's about it. For the rest, it is a hodge-podge of high-risers and malls dotted here and there without rhyme or reason, as though the civic planning authorities after a good night out came back to the office, stuck a map of the city on the wall and threw darts at it backwards over their shoulders. Where they stuck in, new development. It is appalling.

You can see glimpses of the 1890s to 1920s Perth here and there, rather like valuable antiques in a scrapyard. But the original gold-rush boom town, which all Australia, never mind Western Australia, admired, has been destroyed, buried and gone.

Worse it's been replaced by the worst of modernist male architecture.

This is the Fire Station. If ever a building wore raybans, this is it.

More recently Perth planners have acknowledged some sort of past but instead of locating and refining it, it's just a mantelpiece ornament.

This building is going up next to Rayban Fire Station. It gets the Totally Naff Retro-Facadism Award, and all the architects and planners involved in this slur upon their profession should be neutered to ensure no progeny devise anything similar.

They should also do penance by looking after homes and children for at least the time it takes to design and build this thing. You see, Perth is Malesville.

Outside St Martin's Business Centre, another phallic tower, this piece of pub(l)ic art is a monument to two centuries of businessmen. Forget the glass ceiling, women, you can't even get through the door.

The way Perth works reflects this abysmal architecture and city planning. There is no public transport to its International Airport. In case that didn't sink in, or you think I've made a gross typo, there is no public transport to its International Airport. Just a moment, congestion, global warming.....

Service is dire, almost as bad as England on a bad day. 'That bad, eh?' Not just my opinion, official surveys state levels of service in Perth are the worst in Australia. They put it down to the mining industry - West Australia is booming on providing the iron ore for far east economic development - taking the best people. Not so sure myself. Why isn't the same true in Brisbane? I reckon it's something to do with the extreme isolation of Western Australia. Not just the two hour time difference, but a basically male dominated society. There is nothing soft, cuddly, warm, graceful, feminine or caring about Perth, all the key attributes which lie behind good service. In Malesville feminism doesn't seem to have happened. Apparently Brits like to retire to Perth, maybe those who like a world where men are men and women don't count.

The construction sites are accidents waiting to happen. No one wears hard hats, no one obeys basic rules. Here's a site supervisor who can't be arsed to do up his bootlaces.

I used to be a field archaeologist and was a bit of a tartar about health and safety, hence no serious accidents on any site I was responsible for. Perth needs to do up its bootlaces and get its act together.

It wouldn't be so bad, (well no, it is that bad) except a dozen miles downriver is Fremantle, Perth's harbour, which remains a truly beautiful city. Imagine Tilbury and London reversed and you've got the picture.

Wouldn't you love seeing this at the start and end of your working day as you took the train to work?

If cities are works of art, pace Plato, Adelaide is Athens. Whatever Perth was, it's now become Sparta. It needs a Lysistrata to withold sex, especially to its architects and planners in order to bring any sense to the place. Aristophanes knew what he was talking about. In Lyistrata the men wore phalluses. In Perth they wear high-risers.

If as A N Whitehead said, the history of western philosophy are footnotes to Plato, then the history of western civilisation are scatological references to Aristophanes. Methinks the difference between contemporary Perth and Adelaide may well have something to do with the lack of (phallo-centric) party politics in Adelaide's local government.

Next stop Melbourne and Sydney.

Christmas in Australia

2006-12-24T18:24:00.000+10:00

21nd December 2006, Fremantle

Don't think I'm the right bloke to talk about spending Christmas anywhere. Someone who's a lapsed atheist of jewish descent isn't go to go overboard on the holy trinity son of god born in Bethlehem thing.

By and large I'm a pretty jovial chap most of the year, but Christmas with its enforced bonhomie and rampant commercialism bring out the best or worst in me. 362/365 I'm Mr Friendly-Face. Christmas is my time to be a thoroughly miserable git.

The weather's lousy. People you don't know at all come up as though you're life-long friends to wish you all the best, or worse they're people you do vaguely know and spend most of the time avoiding, or worst of all people you know don't give a monkey's about you send 'tra-la-la let's be merry' Christmas cards. 'Up yours' you feel like replying, only you can't be humbugged.

It's fair to say Christmas in Australia is upside down. The pagan side doesn't relate. In a pre-deepfreeze industrialised economy Yuletide was when you killed off the livestock you don't need for breeding purposes. So you might as well celebrate eating that big old cow or pig that's been manuring your front yard for the last two years. Likewise all those mince pies, fruit cakes and plum duffs you've been storing up for God knows how long. This went by the board with global refrigeration (which help precipitate global warming, all you irony-watchers) but in Australia you don't even have the weather for it, since it is height of their summer. Therefore you can forget all that traditional fair stodge rhubarb, which Australians do.

No point since the weather is fantastic. I'm missing the chestnuts roasting by an open fire, but not the crap weather it's an escape from.

As Ian Wood, another novelist who lives about five minutes down the road put it:- "Today in Bakewell the atmosphere is suffused with moisture and it is quite hard to see from one side of the road to the other. There is no sign of snow, but every chance of rain. And it is very cold."

Or as my archaeological mate, Ken wrote of the Freemantle sea-scape "What kind of parents are you that could so easily swap the fog, cold overcast and frost of a Sheffield day for that? With the added penalty that Laurel won't have access to my latest batch of onion bhajias. Well, I hope the sand doesn't get into the turkey too much."

The Australian shops and civic bods do try to do things English style. Here's Brisbane's Christmas tree, which is sixty foot high totally artificial and looks completely naff in sub-tropical weather apart from ten minutes of twilight. Whether it increases sales or lengths of people's grins or faces is anyone's guess. Santa gets a rough deal of it. He still has to wear the full monty, red fur coat, boots, gloves and ho-ho-beard. His red cheeks are due to too much sun, not sherry at the fireplace, because Queensland houses don't have fireplaces. You can buy blow-up Santas and Christmas Trees which probably sell as fast as they can get the puff to puff because Aussies love anything blow-up, and the bigger they blow-up the better, especially egos, so they can deflate them again.

Adelaide, being smart and cultured, doesn't do blow-up. Instead 'eight world famous sand artists with specially compressed and graded sand' spent at least three days producing this little lulu. Two of those days were dismantling it in search of one of the artists' car keys, which were discovered in his back pocket all along. A plea of justifiable homicide is likely to be accepted.

Car-keys aside, Aussies themselves don't seem to take Christmas too seriously. There is no mad shopping, shops running out of food at the one time of the year when everyone's larder and bellies are groaning at each other. And the bizarre ecologically bonkers habit of everyone giving everyone else a Christmas card (Did you see my ad in The Times 'David Fine is probably not sending cards this year.')

Instead Australia is travelling continent distances to be with their nearest and dearest they spend the rest of the year avoiding. You could almost taste the anticipated fear and loathing on the Quantas flight from Perth to Sydney. Flight delayed - two people didn't get on the plane for 'personal reasons.' You could feel two hundred others wishing they had the nerve to do the same.

But there is the magic, the real magic of an antipodean Christmas. The start of the summer holidays. Why manic overdulgence for six days when you can stretch out slobbing out over six weeks? Pace yourself. Seems far more civilised.

The churches don't really bother either, thank God. That false religious thing which intervenes in the Happy Adverse Stress Event Shop-till-You-Drop Season which the English know and love. Maybe Quantas could do 'Macho-Plastic Melt-down Freeze Your Nuts Off' Christmas Specials to the 'Old Country' Start now by joining the queue for queues. As Tom Wait put it 'If you want to go mad, you better get in line.'

If you don't, for all you Australians who wonder what rural England is really like at Christmas, read on, dear reader, read on.

It’s Cold Enough To Snow

the earth is close to silence.
dark, cold, ready to crack open,
frost the stubble upon a shepherd’s jaw.

one step and the earth is broken,
and once broken, ready to break once more.
watchful for signs, feet tread warily, willing
to concur or demur where others step before

but less clear the gifted senses: taste, touch or
ear. Give them compass to ensure
safe journey outside a windowed, tinselled whirled
as heaven goes about its business –

hard harked the dark to till the well-flocked stars
seeded by eternity’s calloused hand. In its sleep
unceremonied magic spells a land
where we rise, renewed, reborn upon this day:

a past is borne upon its back,
the world’s an ass to carry
a troubled sack of adventures
without these troubles annulled.

walk soft, slack reins, bite not the bit.

beneath our well-hidden soles
obedient earth shall still disobey:
across moor, copse, fields and hollows
it is cold enough to snow.

An Ashes Carol

2006-12-21T10:56:00.000+10:00

Everdismal Fletcher was more dismal than ever. Inside his gloomy hotel room he wondered how he could revive his own and his team’s spirits for the last two Tests. His Christmas Eve stocking lay empty. ‘A test indeed,’ he said to himself ‘we need poetry!’ Turning to his regular bedside companion “The Coach's Story: Ashes Regained”, Everdismal found The Man in The Glass, which he had read to the team before the final day at the Oval fifteen short months ago.

For it isn't your father or mother or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass.
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass

But then something strange happened, the words on the page began to change of their own accord, and Everdismal shivered in the air-conditioned room.

The Bloke Up Your Arse

For it isn't your sheila or mucker or strife
Whose judgment gets right up your arse.
The bastard whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one sledging you back to the past.

Don’t come the Plum Warner or W G
And make out you're real dinki di,
The bloke up your clacker’ll drop you down dunny
If you can't squiz him right in the eye.

The dial to appease, bugger the ECB,
Shall flip your quince to take the final Test.
We’ll sledge you till you’ve karked it, RIP
- ’cos us Aussies’ll have rippered all the rest.

Poms cringe before playing matches,
Shonky bludgers let loose the bowels of fear:
No drama, dead certs to throw up the Ashes,
They can’t cheat the green baggies between their ears.

The volume dropped from Everdismal’s trembling hand. In the glass before him was not a reflection of the room itself, but the ghostly apparition of a figure he once knew well but had not given a second’s cognisance for many a year. Together with the book, a question fell from his lips. ‘O terrible spectre, who art thou?’

In answer the ghost walked from the wardrobe mirror towards the bed, dragging great chains of microphone leads, earphone cans and satellite dishes.

‘Do you not recognise me, Everdismal Fletcher?’ the ghost asked in rounded Lancashire vowels. ‘I am your erstwhile predecessor, Accrington Bumble.’
‘Bumble,’ mumbled Everdismal. ‘This must be one of your dreadful practical jokes.’
‘Joke? This is no joke. What is more dreadful than to lose the Ashes inside fifteen months after spending eighteen years in an attempt to regain them?’ Accrington seemed more white and pearlescent than any of Mark Nicholas’s shirts. ‘I have come to give you one more chance before Christmas itself to heed the error of your ways.’
‘Errors? I still have the players' confidence; they still come to me on numerous occasions and still talk to me about tactics. I have the respect of the players and that's very important.’
‘Respect is not enough,’ thundered the Bumble, leads and cans rattling. ‘Even of the Australians. Enthusiasm and talent must come to the fore. No. Say no more, Everdismal Fletcher. Before the night is out you shall be visited by three further ghosts.’
‘David Graveney and the other two selectors?’
‘Enough. This is your last chance.’

And with that the spirit of Accrington Bumble vanished. A dodgy prawn, thought Everdismal, turning over in the air-conditioned coolness, yet he could scarcely sleep.

Rubbing his eyes at the wardrobe mirror, Everdismal thought he must be dreaming. At the end of the bed, sat a saintly figure in a cleric’s sunhat and whites, even his skin. ‘Michael Vaughan, that can’t be you – how’s the knee?’
‘You should ask him. I am the Ghost of Ashes Past. Are you ready for a journey?’

Without further ado, Everdismal was swept to Trafalgar Square where he and the Ghost of Ashes Past floated above an open-topped bus where the England team celebrated with the tumultuous crowds the regaining of the little urn after eighteen long hard years.

‘See how happy and enthusiastic they are, Everdismal,’ said the Ghost. ‘Even you’re smiling a little.’
‘Flintoff’s had far too much to drink. Not the way a future England captain should conduct – ’
‘Everdismal,’ the Ghost commanded.
‘Yes. I am smiling, a little.’

Suddenly the happy scene and joyous occasion were gone. ‘In an hour’s time you will be visited by a further spirit,’ said the Ghost of Ashes Past. ‘One you think you might know well, yet not at all.’

Everdismal could not sleep a wink, and the truth be told, did not try. ‘Enthusiasm, talent,’ he said to himself. ‘Bah, humbug. Application means results.’ It did not help the queasiness of his own spirit.

A huge jovial Santa Claus crashed through the glass, yet leaving it unshattered. Everdismal almost smiled. ‘I know who’s behind that suit. Freddie, come out, come out, wherever you are.’
‘The England skipper’s fast asleep with his wife and children, ready to enjoy Christmas Day, as all families should since I am also the Ghost of Ashes Present. What of you, Everdismal Fletcher?’
‘Me?’
‘Will the England team go out and enjoy the last two tests?’
‘Enjoy? They don’t have central contracts to enjoy themselves. This is Test Match cricket. The Ashes. Against Australia.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ laughed the Ghost of Ashes Present. ‘If you can’t enjoy thrashing the Aussies, what’s the point of turning up? Mend the error of your ways, Everdismal Fletcher. You could not retain by grimness what was won by enthusiasm and talent. It is not too late to change.’
‘Read for Jones?’
‘No. Well, yes. No, the error of your approach with two matches left.’

The jovial spectre turned to depart.
‘Don’t go,’ pleaded Everdismal. ‘I felt I was almost beginning to enjoy myself.’
‘So may others,’ replied Santa Claus. ‘Countless children to visit before the night is out – When a third and final ghost shall appear.’

Everdismal Fletcher nearly had a tear in his eye. Who would this third spectre be, and what might he bring? Past, Present…. just as he thought he saw the initial inklings of a Melbourne dawn, Everdismal realised it would be The Ghost of Ashes Future.

A bell tolled and a great vast shadow towered over him. The wraith was a gaunt thin skeleton, garbed but in a huge dark cloak, the width of the sky. Resting over his shoulder was a long keen scythe whose blade was sharp enough to shave off his pure white beard with but a single stroke.

‘You, you…’ stuttered the wretched Fletcher. ‘Accrington Bumble and the other two spirits were correct. You are The Ghost of Ashes Future.’

The shadow nodded.

‘The Grim Reaper… D…D..D…Death!!!’

The shadow nodded and shook his head. The blade of his scythe pointed to a distant scene. Atop the clock at Lords something was missing. Only the stumps remained.

‘Father Time.’

The shadow nodded but the blade of his scythe continued to point elsewhere. To a document entitled ‘P45’

‘And it has my name upon it! O Spirits I shall mend my ways. No more shall be I Everdismal Fletcher. The cricketing world will see a new man born upon this Christmas Day. For henceforth and herewith I shall be Neverdismal Fletcher, the life and soul of cricket!’

We shall see, shan’t we?

Warne S K

2006-12-21T10:52:00.000+10:00

born 13 September 1969 test match debut January 1992
Upon passing his seventh hundred test match wicket
(To the jig, The Sailor’s Hornpipe)

Warnie’s balls turn square, KP hits ’em in the air.
A six or out, there is no doubt.
You get a funny feeling one side’ll be reeling
Ev’ry time Warnie’s balls turn square.

A leggie with Clarrie Grimmett’s accuracy (plus extra hair)
The wrong ’un, hard to pick, and howzat when beaten through the air,
The flipper and the toppie, zooter and the slider
And the chatter: yells, looks, asides and pleas,
(the only time the bloke’s down on his knees,)
A Clarence Darrow George Carman at the crease
What umpire on earth however stoney could say no?
Another baffled though reluctant victim tries to dilly-dally but he has to go.

The next man in is almost out before he’s in.
The legendary magician will mesmerise him.
He knows he’ll have to face a flighty camisole tease:
A forbidden glimpse of flesh to tantalise
Reveals a hirsuite Superman medallioned Australian chest
Full of tricks the antipodean baccus of temptation doesn’t divest
Before the silly fool with bat and pads realises he’s transgressed
The blond cherubim’s spinning finger puts him to rest.

A waistline that indicates adequate social activity
Since an Ashes debut in 1993; Warne, S K.
Shoulder strapped, lucky charms, his daughter’s bracelet,
The facts are patently clear, he should really try to face it,
Whatever schemes and dreams of schemes are whirling on within,
The top of his head is not quite what it used to be,
(In fact, somewhat like this rhyme, going rather thin.)
Harum-scarums with mobiles and diuretics,
His simple way with words schtums clever dick critics,
Through thick and thin he’s always gone back
To his mark: a three-card trick-sy four-step run

That flummoxed Fat Gatt with the ball of last century,
At the lees of his career, the ikon’s tank is close enough to empty
Lo, he gambols past (A N Other) namely number Seven Hundred
And yet another one. Forget the waist, hair and old age. Heed the old adage
If you’re good enough, you’re old enough. Let him rip his ripper one last rip,
As The Grauniad's Trundler-in-Chief Selvey opines
‘No game’s over till the fat boy spins.’
I’ll buy that, gimme me one more, Skip.
Good on yer, Warnie. May The Good Lord Bless
How your balls turned square!

Fifty Ways To Lose The Ashes

2006-12-21T10:50:00.000+10:00

(after Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover – Paul Simon)

It’s bad to be defeated
All too easily.
We travelled here with such high hopes
To end in misery.
It could have been much worse though how
I cannot see.
There must be fifty ways
To lose the Ashes.

A negative strategy made it
Harder to win,
And by the same token opponents
Reckon you’re about to give in.
We bent right over
So you could give our arse a good kicking,
There must be fifty ways
To lose the Ashes.
Fifty ways to lose the Ashes.

chorus:

Play the Australians.
Pick Geraint Jones
Ahead of Chris Read.
Don’t prepare for the Gabba,
Ignore Monty Panesar,
Madness at Adelaide,
Led t(w)o the Waca.

Over a hundred thousand
Have paid to be at the MCG.
Even a fourth Aussie victory
Will seem a little empty,
Now there’s nothing we can do
To make the series live again.
A win is still a loss;
You don’t need to use
All those fifty ways.

Maybe it doesn’t matter
If we go and lose five nil.
We’ve already lost what we
aimed to fulfill. We can’t change
Those first three games,
There must be fifty ways
To lose the Ashes.
Fifty ways to lose the Ashes.

chorus:

Play the Australians.
Pick Geraint Jones
Ahead of Chris Read.
Don’t prepare for the Gabba,
Ignore Monty Panesar,
Madness at Adelaide,
Led t(w)o the Waca.

Perth Day Five - final lights

2006-12-18T22:55:00.000+10:00

England needs some English rain to keep the embers of the Ashes alive. The skies are overcast but not as overcast as England’s hopes.

First few overs Pietersen and Flintoff play and miss, then suddenly just before the half-hour Freddie goes beserk. Hitting straight and hard, no meaningless wafts. Thirteen off Lee’s first over, thirty-odd in two dozen or so balls, three hundred up. Enter Warne. As Trundler Selvey says in The Grauniad. "It isn't over till the Fat Boy spins."

Freddie hooks Lee over Hussey for six to raise the fifty partnership. KP has scored nine of them. Kerry O'Keefe burbles on about Perth's beautiful sunsets over the Indian Ocean. Sod that. Time to retune to Aggers. Drinks without a wicket loss

Sharp piece of work by Hussey at short-leg nearly runs out Pietersen. The third umpire takes the time I need to write half-a-dozen paras to come to a decision. Pure theatre. The agony is agony, not least for Pietersen; what will be the verdict, are you ready, stare at the replay screen with all the spectators, umpires, players, Pietersen and Hussey.

'3rd Umpires Decision'

NOT OUT

'Don't turn away, it's getting X-rated' says Mark Nicholas before the ads break. Pietersen on-drives Warne to the ropes for his fifty. Flintoff chinese-cuts McGrath for his. 335 for 5. Just over two hundred to get. A mere bagatelle.

Warne contines to yell, query and plead for everything. When and if he retires, a career as a barrister for the defence should appeal to the Clarence Darrow of the crease. The umpire is unmoved. Like the Little Britain "Computer says no." "Rudi Koertzen says no."

Two balls later Selvey's Fat Boy does Freddy with a drifting slider, cleaned bowled 51. The candle's half-guttering glow dims more weakly. Enter keeper Jones on a pair. Run-out à la Hussey by Ponting for, that’s right, a pair. Warnie thinks it's another lbw notch to his seven hundred target; he needs another two, otherwise Melbourne and home territory of the MCG. Geraint Jones’s slight figure returns to the pavilion still smaller, virtually no wax left in the candle’s tank as English fortunes contine to wane.

It's Parfitt time. Back in the sixties when I learned to play, watch and listen to cricket, I remember England in a hopeless jam and thinking 'Never mind, Parfitt's in at number seven." About the same time as Parfitt was out for crumbs, I realised my brain had gone throuigh exactly the same thought processes with Parfitt in the Test before. All due respect to the Middlesex left-handed batting all-rounder, there is no cure. To misquote Robert Palmer 'You might as well face it, you're addicted to loss.'

Sajid Mahmood's worth a few, I reckon, like Parfitt, could get through to tea. Lbw for four to a Stuart Clark yorker you could see swing in but were as near powerless as Mahmood to stop its inevitable progress. 8 for 345, score written the Australian way because this is Australia Day.

Warne's first ball to Harmison thuds the pad. Yell, query, plead. Rudi Koertzen says yes.

Enter The Monty. Mobile throbs in my shorts pocket. Channel Four Radio.

‘How’s it going?’
‘Not too bad. Monty’s in. If he can shield the strike from Pietersen we should be alright.’

We agree to do an interview some time after lunch. Won’t be more than half-an-hour I tell them.

Ever the optimist. It’s done with two balls after lunch. Monty cleaned bowled Warne, 699 test wickets since debut. The crowd go bonkers.

YAHOO, says the replay screen AUSTRALIA WIN BACK THE ASHES.

One of their players shouts into the microphone ‘You bloody beauty.’

Doesn’t matter that Yahoos in Swift’s Gulliver's Travels were ‘vile and savage creatures, filthy and with unpleasant habits, resembling human beings far too closely for the liking of Lemuel Gulliver’ (Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo_(literature) The Aussies have won back the Ashes

- As they’d delight telling the Dean of Dublin in no uncertain terms. I can’t quite share their enthusiasm and joy, never mind the ear-to-ear grins, but do appreciate their jubilation. A dad with his two boys in the row ahead will be able to talk long into their futures about the Monday before Christmas when they watched Australia regain the Ashes. I’m reminded of the time when Coventry won the FA Cup in 1987. I turned to my eldest brother Daniel, both of us close to tears in our eyes to match our ear-to-ear grins. ‘Nothing else to live for,’ he said.

What of the English fans? The Barmy Army, and the millions listening or watching at about four in the morning, cold, bleak, damp, miserable, needing about four layers just to get out of bed? Hard to say. A numbness. Acceptance of inevitability. The loss of all hope, as well as the Ashes. The Barmy Army stay mass-ranked, singing their best in the face of cataclysmic disaster. If the pubs run out of beer it’ll be a tragedy.

On the way home there is one of those strange moments that come to pass in unfamiliar lands. In the park west of the Waca is a model of the ground, flower-beds, petunias in the main, as the stands, players awning-pegs painted white and the six floodlight towers adaptation of plastic rakes, each ‘Made in Australia.’ I can just hear the Barmy Army, the last to leave, chant Engerland, Engerland, Engerland.

The English players must now feel about as small as the models in the park. I take the Channel Four call, and as we talk the park staff come and remove all the players and floodlights to leave nothing but a bare stage.

Shakespeare had it about right.

“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Ode To Contest – Third Test, Perth, England lose, and lose hold of the Ashes

Behind the bowler’s arm, scoreboard obscured,
Cloudy day, rain forecast but unlikely,
England’s prayers rest with God Almighty.
Two tall hopes nearly out before they’ve scored,
Fred survives, a tide of drives floods the boards,
Stupendous risk for six hooked off Brett Lee,
None down at drinks, game on, yet unlikely.
Braced danger-laced half-centuries yield applause
That courts the final strike. Five quick blows
Ends it all. All Australia rejoices;
Reclaims their men who reclaimed the Ashes
Against time and England’s proudest voices
Stilled. Half by half by half each candle’s ghost
Bleakens the dark hearth burnt out by your host.

Perth Day Four - Redemption?

2006-12-17T09:03:00.000+10:00

Forget Dr Fiffle-Faffle's fiffle-faffle.

Best hope is the poms to bowl like drains and bat like kings, relying on Ponting's Declaration Manifest to eke out a draw.

Will England's innings be a right royal procession?

With my lunch I take a copy of Noel Coward’s Mad Dogs and Englishman to amuse myself as 'Lost Hopes and Freddie's Men Get Out In The Aussie Sun', under the West Australian skies and Baggy Green cosh.

If the heat and cricket is too much for embattled pom supporters, they could stay in their hotel rooms to watch India vs South Africa or Sri Lanka vs New Zealand, not to mention Pakistan vs West Indies one-dayers. Their task is enormous but nothing is impossible. Earlier this year Australia posted a One Day International world record 434 off fifty overs. South Africa were cooked until their opener Hershelle Gibbs said in the dressing room 'You know, I think they're about a dozen runs short.' They won by one wicket and ball to spare. England need some Hershelle.

Back to reality, nipping ourside the hotel at eight am yesterday I caught (both hands) some blues guitar from the bar. 'Bit early for B B King,' I said to the barman. 'Probably,' he replied.

Is it a bit too early to write an Ashes Blues? After half-an-hour no wickets down, and with the humour of doomed men, we're reckoning any rain predicted for tomorrow might just save Australia as we close in on the run chase. I like blues, especially the lyrics, which are honest, heart-felt and straightforward. More contemporary poetry and poets should acknowledge and respect these qualities. As I said when the theme of National Poetry Day was song, can anyone come up with a better line of 20th century verse than John Lee Hooker's 'Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom.' e-mail me info@lit-net.org if you can.

Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom sums up Gilchrist's hundred yesterday. It won't be such a performance today. I once wrote a spoof blues which began

'I don't need no divorce lawyer to tell me my woman's gone.'

The English Ashes Hopes Blues

We don't need no Aussie Scoreboard to tell us the Ashes are gone.
We travelled here with the urn inside our hearts,
At Brisbane we didn’t get off to the best of starts,
On the final day the promised rain just didn’t come,
we don't need no Aussie Scoreboard to tell us the Ashes are gone.

Won the toss on a dead flat pitch at Adelaide,
Never mind dropped catches and poor selections
However well Paul Collingwood played
The rest of them threw it away in the second knock,
we don't need no Aussie Scoreboard to tell us the Ashes are gone.

Lost the toss at Perth but bowled them out for 244
Then our turn to bat and we didn’t match their score
Second innings Hussey, Clarke and Gilchrist all got tons
Now to save the Ashes we need to hit 560 runs,
we don't need no Aussie Scoreboard to tell us the Ashes are gone.

Ian Bell at least is showing some fight. Warne's first over sees a four over the top, bamboozled by a fizzing leggie, then down the wicket for a six. Which takes the target to less than five hundred and lunchtime comes with no further wickets down. Saint Herschelle, saviour of lost causes, must be looking kindly upon us.

The great escape continues after lunch. Even England's bogey 111 is circumnavigated by Bell's slightly dodgy loft of McGrath over mid-off. Denis Compton was once asked on tv why 111 was called Nelson. 'Simple really. One eye, one arm, and - ' 'Shut up, Dennis.'

Bell and Cook bat superbly, which starts to get under even some Aussies thick skins. At first all is quiet, and the Waca feels like a very hot weekend at Scarborough or Cheltenham Festivals. Then Warne starts to give the umpires his famed 'How can that not be out?' stare and verbal, which the Barmy Army enforce with richly ironic 'Oooooo!'
This leads to the Aussies clapping in Brett Lee but only for the over before the drinks interval, losing any momentum gained. Timing, chaps.

Two Aussies enfilade Barmy Army flanks waving the Southern Cross. It is suggested a white flag might be more appropriate, which is excellent advice since two Aussie police blokes escort them from the premises via their ear-holes. The bats of Bell and Cook re-establish the English county festival atmosphere. More tea, vicar?

Warne bowls a full toss which Bell smacks straight down Langer's throat for 87. 170 for 2. Keep dreaming.

After tea the diligent and worthy Stuart Clark has Collingwood caught at the wicket driving. 185 for 3. Stuart Clark has been the Australian’s Matthew Hoggard. Not super quick but very accurate, and aways doing something with the ball. A big difference between the teams. Of England pace-bowlers only Hoggard has consistently been sufficiently precise to keep the batsmen under pressure. (If anything it was the reverse last summer in England, and those cynics in the know might want to note the then England bowling coach Troy Cooley now being the Australian’s – not poached but because the ECB couldn’t agree a contract in time.)This is why the pitch seems so much easier when Australia are at the crease. It’s really noticable at the Waca where the pitch has some pace and bounce, which is good for accurate bowlers and stroke-playing batsmen. I like it. A combination of the Waca strip and Adelaide ground is my idea of cricketing heaven.

Only 370 to win; Kevin Pietersen your adopted country needs you. Three near-run outs ensue. The Green Baggies make it hard for Alistair Cook to reach his hundred, but the twenty-one year old gets there in the end. I like Cook. He plays correctly (you can see Graham Gooch has coached him) particularly how his elbow is always over the ball…

Essex Coastline

Harwich, Frinton, Clacton,
Brightlingsea, West Mersea,
Maldon, Burnham, Southend.
From the scapula of the Stour
to the humerous of the Naze
and the Thames phalanges

Alistair Cook
gets all Essex over the ball;
its coast the shape of his elbow.

His birthday is Christmas Day and is the first Englishman to score four hundreds before he's twenty-two. The best present he could give himself is a live Ashes Series going into Melbourne.

Looks difficult. Caught behind off McGrath for 116. 261 for 4, three hundred still to get.

The floodlights come on, but the lights in England are fading fast in the cloudy grey of the skies. Nightwatchman Matthew Hoggard walks out and back in again, clean-bowled two balls later. Flintoff enters like a champion to be beaten all ends up for his first two balls, which McGrath sends down with micrometer precision into the corridor of uncertainty. Now the Aussie crowd is making all the noise. Pietersen and Flintoff both need big hundreds tomorrow to silence them. At least you feel they’ll try.

Back at the hotel and Saint Herschelle bags a pair against the Indians. Storms are forecast in the next twentyfour hours. It hasn’t rained yet.

Perth Day Three – Blue Moon

2006-12-17T01:20:00.000+10:00

144- 2 another Ponting century and Aussie win in the offing, when he drives at a quick one from Harmison ct Jones 75. Hope once more springs eternal.

On the way in I bump into a waist-coated Liverpudlian widow from Adelaide and Paul Burnham, capo of The Barmy Army. 'Where have you been?' he asks. Busy writing the poetry. I'm not a natural Barmy Army-ite, probably don't drink enough and too much of a loner to need or want the company of other good sorts. Which they are. The banter between them and the Aussie Fanatics is good and good humoured. Everyone likes them, and the killjoys at Cricket Australia who banned Billy The Trumpet for the first two tests, never took this into account. In 1770 No Worries, the equivant of Sellar and Yeatman’s 1066 and All That, starting with Captain Cook's landing, the Barmy Army would go down as a good thing.

Most right-thinking people would object to the 'Show your tits for the lads' chant - would they oblige if the Ladies Pavilion responded to see what Willy Wavers and His Pals have got to sing about? Well, yes, they probably would. But they aren't racist, xenophoebic or too unkind. If you believe in mission statements, especially ungramatical, they more than fulfill theirs. 'We're the loyalest cricket supporters the world has ever had.'

162-2 Monty enters the attack. Perhaps the last throw of the Ashes dice.

Today is blistering. Even the metal case of my personal organiser/pocket lap-top is nearly too hot to touch. One thing the Waca does do well is provide free sun-crème, except they've run out by 12.30. We'll see if they have some by lunchtime. Jonathan Agnew in the commentary box yesterday (how do you think I appear so expert on the game?) was saying how well we were doing without any shade from a superhot sun. Not half as bad as six layers of thermos-flasks freezing your nuts off watching super-soppers soak up the day before play is officially abandoned half an hour before the official close.

Why start at 11.30, already close to the hottest part of the day? Seems most unfair on players, spectators and support staff alike. You know why? Money. In particular tv rights, which in cricket world wide went for 3.2 billion the other day - pounds, dollars Oz or US doesn't really matter unless you're counting. Every spectator without shade at the Waca is paying to suffer, just because Fox and Channel Nine can contest peaktime viewing. That's why the start time was put back an hour. Sports supporters are victims, which is partly why they drink so much. Even the Gatorade drinks cart is wilting in the heat. Cricket Australia, you wouldn't treat your dog like this, and if you did the RSPCA and its Australian equivalent would take you to court quicker than a slap of sun crème. Talking of which, let's see if the ground authorities have found some more...

.... Yep, and the players take an additional attritional drinks break because it's so hot. What was it that Noel Coward said? Mad Dogs And Englishmen Go Out in The Midday Sun. You won't believe this, it's almost as hot as Old Trafford.

Old Trafford Triptych 2nd Day 2nd Test England vs Pakistan 2006

Outlook

the opening of umbrellas
is a more accustomed barometer
at Old Trafford

legends state a glimse of the Peak District
means it’s about to pour
and if you can’t catch its haunches
it already is

sooner or later
it’s bound to happen
the number of umbrellas
instructs umpires
to stop play

today is different
beneath the scoreboard
papers and scorecards flicker and flick
fans for fans to fan themselves
against a hard hot sun
to sisyphus unsusurated air
towards a mirage of cool

viewed across the ground
a beast – farmyard, iguana
legendary minotaur flicks fur hair scales
along prone desperate flanks
to beat sense into senseless
unbeatable heat – flick flick flick

it stops
a shot for four
a wicket’s fall

in the stillness before
the betwitchéd beast suffers
unpenumbrated penance once more
is a certainty more permanent
than glacial rain, snow and ice
which shapes a distant peak district
under the same hard-nosed sun

the world watches cricket

England were hotter too then; a three day victory over Pakistan. Back in the here and now, the sinister twins (Hadyn and Hussey, both lefties) hit the two ton mark, each run a nail in England's Ashes coffin. Just going to tune into the radio and check Aggers hasn't melted. Poor fish.

Collingwood snaffles Hayden at slip for 92 off Panesar. 206 for 3. English hope, though faint, still springs re-eternal, though not as springy as Monty's coltish pitch-length prance of celebration. Maybe this leads to Flintoff and Harmison swopping size 13s. Man-thing, what the best of mates do.

Panesar is the real deal. He gives Clarke, a destroyer of Indian spinners a pace-bowler's going over each side of lunch.

Jones misjudges a skier from Hussey. Three o'clock, or six in the morning back in Blighty, Hussey and Clarke take Australia into a three hundred lead. Progress is remorseless. Hussey gets his maiden Ashes century

Mr Cricket’s Hundred

It must feel good
To become a statistic you devour
A first Ashes hundred on your home ground
the perfect rubic
It can’t get any better
but you’ll try all the same.

To be ct Jones, b Panesar 103.

The Monty strikes again, Symonds ct Collingwood for two. 365 for 5 Kevin Pietersen appears in front of us at long leg, a sun-cremed white wraith, pantomime ghost of England's cricketing hopes from Dicken's Christmas Carol. KP signs a few autographs and someone comes down to the picket to try and engage the wraith in conversation. Something about busting noses, who knows, but the bloke goes away saying 'He lost me me job, but a good mate.' Karl Marx was dead right about cult of personality. Why are people so desperate to touch fame?

Michael Clarke kisses the gold of the baggy green helmet upon reaching his century. Achievement and honour embrace.

As so often happens on a Test Match Saturday afternoon, events on and off the pitch diverge. Australia bat England into the dust. Gilchrist fast-forwards to a five hundred lead, with three massive sixes from a Panesar over. The Barmy Army chant as they never have done before all through the drinks interval. The band played on as The Titanic went down.

A mad six-hitting sea-monster Adam Gilchrist overturns lifeboats with the second fastest test century ever. (The first? Viv Richards, also on his home ground, Antigua, and against England.) He makes other mighty smiters, Flintoff and Pietersen, seem Lilliputian by comparison. Fantastic to watch, not too much fun to play against.

Adam Gilchrist
has often played and missed.
It’s when he connects
that the bowler regrets

ever bowling
into the hurdy-gurdy
whirligig six-hitting
machine.

Something of a surprise Ponting declares setting England 557 to win or bat two and bit days to draw. We did it in the first innings at Adelaide. That’s all Freddy needs to say in the dressing room.

Captain’s Dilemma

I need to bat well
bowl well, field well,
take all my catches,
help choose the team,
set fields, raise morale
when we’re down,
enthuse, cajole, console
and kick arse, royally
whenever necessary
and appropriately.

Ensure I do all I can
to ensure we play as a team
where everyone does the best they can
to win, or at least draw.

Christ, a task of Hercules.
What on earth have I let myself in for?
Must be a mug’s game.

Strauss lbw padding up to Lee second ball; according to the radio going over the top. Supporters around me say I should point out that not one Aussie was given out lbw.

Walking home the Barmy Army have a new chant to the tune of Blue Moon.

‘Two days, we’re going to bat for two days.’

Simple really.

Perth Day Three - prediction

2006-12-16T11:35:00.000+10:00

Forget Dr Fiffle-Faffle's fiffle-faffle.

Best hope is the poms to bowl like drains and bat like kings, relying on Ponting's Declaration Manifest to eke out a draw.

Such is life.

Perth Day Two - fate awaits

2006-12-16T09:34:00.002+10:00

A 11.30 kick off is leisurely, certainly compared to 10am at The Gabba. For fans this makes a big difference. It means more drinking in the evening, and yet more drinking in the morning too. Consequently a WACA crowd is by and large well-oiled, adequately inebriated, whimsically whacko and perpetually pissed throughout proceedings. The two advertising hoardings next to the scoreboard occasionally combine Johnny Walker and Some Hangovers Are For Life. Nobody gets drunk because they already are, which makes for an easy atmosphere.

It must be weird for the rest of Australia too - not that they aren't indulgers. For those on Eastern Standard Time, over half the population, play at the Waca starts at 1.30, or just after lunch, and finishes about nine, barbie embers cooling in the darkness.

There is a sense, probably greater than Brisbane, that Perth moves to a different time to the rest of Australia. It seems around ten years behind, maybe more, maybe less, and far less chic and far more bloke orientated. The Hip Guide To Perth from Tourism Western Australia seems to date from the last century, while the tv in my hotel room is proud to have four adult movie channels. I knew I should have packed flares.

'Come on, Coventry!' as a friendly greeting to Burnley compatriots in the row ahead. Colin from Essex asks my lunchtime prediction. '113 for 4' before patriotism gets the better of me, '113 for 3'

It's hard work. Collingwood out slashing, then Strauss to an iffy caught behind, to add to a dodgy one in Adelaide.

Those That Go Against You

In the cool shadowed privacy
of the dressing room sanctuary,
bats are hurled, windows smashed
with more force, anger and intent
than any maximum smite from the middle.

It never hit the bat.
Clearly missing the stumps.
The umpire’s finger,
not the acumen of the bowler,
sends you on your way.

Rage and fear routs the calm certainty
behind all due care and attention
in adjudication summoning
benefit of the doubt
not to give you out.

The quiet ones always seem to receive
the rough edge of the rub of the green.

Pietersen fairly comfortably, and Flintoff rather dangerously outside off-stump, get past the dandelion and burdock drinks cart and the Baggy Green verbals

Silence in Court

Australian fielders ceaselessly chatter between balls.

‘Will do, Ricky.’ ‘Test match cricket.’
‘On the money, Warnie.’ ‘Easy, Pigeon.’

It’s their way. Habitual as cockatoos
or car horns in the Eernal City,
as much to divert foreigners
as egg patriotism on.

The driving gavel of Pietersen
sends leather to the benches
and silence in court.

The Australians are livier in the field, feeding off the energy of the braided one.

Circus Tricks

A mid-off in the middle of the pool,
he waits for batters to toss a fish:
the lunge, leap, rush and scurry,
somersault, dive, fall, roll and parry,
comes up ball and applause in hand.

Only batters wonder
if they’ll run out of fish
especially if Symonds,
The Performing Seal,
takes a catch

113 for 3 my lunchtime prediction not too far out, before Freddie on borrowed time edges their performing seal and fifth bowler Symonds to slip, and this time Warne doesn't drop it. 107-5

Jones drives, ct Langer b Symonds 0. 114 for 6.

My Wolves supporter next to me has a spread bet that Pietersen will get more than 350 for the series. 'He better do it now.' Last night interviewed by Rod Quinn, we agree the team whose batsman gets a century should win.119 for 6, Lee's last over, it'll be good just to get to lunchtime.

After lunch Mahmood slashes unnecessarily but Hoggard gives good support to the Kevin Pietersen show.

The Art of Batsmanship by Matthew Hoggard OBE

1. Play Straight
2. No fancy stuff
3. Hold the stroke
4. Especially if you miss
5. Don’t forget to tell ’em
Sod off

Enter Warne, curiously held back, who does Hoggie with a leggie that bounces. 155 - 8. Pietersen goes for it, Warne into the stands, holes out to Symonds for 70. 175-9. Didn't quite make the Wolves' fan bet.

The Monty is at the crease. Together with Stevo Harmison, the last wicket puts on forty, with all the fun of the fair of dropped catches, swirling but safe skiers and outrageous play and misses. More to the point the last four wickets raise 101 runs, which again demonstrates the churlishness of inappropriate shot selection by members of the selection committee, Messrs Flintoff and Jones.

One thing for sure, unlike Adelaide this game doesn’t have draw etched all over it, and it ain't going to last five days unless both teams bat spectacularly well and bowl just as badly in the second knock.

Australia's small lead is significant. They'd fancy knocking England over for less than two hundred second dig, and England know it. In turn this means it'll be a hard game for England to win unless they skittle out the Green Baggies for around 150 or less.

In other words bowl their socks off. We shall see.

No such luck. Hoggard castles Langer through the gate first ball (cricket speak for clean bowled) Much in the same way Langer was bowled by Panesar. He doesn't get forward far enough.

That's it. Without too much trouble Hayden and Ponting – who else - complete fifties and at stumps Australia are 119 for 1, 148 ahead. While finishing this the room tv is tuned to India vs South Africa 1st Test. India 72-2, Dravid and Tendulkar conduct a master class how to defend against Pollock et al. The ground in Jo’burg is empty. Today the WACA was packed, and Billy The Trumpet was reduced to playing Carols.

We Two Kings

We two kings from Orient are,
Sajid Mahmood and Panesar.
From Pakistan and India,
Their parents give good cheer

O five for ninetyfour on day one,
You’ve done well, come on my son,
Both Monty and Sajid'll have to take plenty
Following your cricketing stars

Not even sure Santa can retain the Ashes for England, and I don’t think even my Wolves’ mate would get good odds.

Perth Day One – in the balance

2006-12-16T09:19:00.001+10:00

All confusion - the tickets say 10.30 start, the official Cricket Australia official Ashes Tour Book 11.00, we kick off at 11.30. The Waca (not Aborigine but Western Australian Cricket Association) is ramshackle. More Headingley with decent weather and palm trees. If The Gabba was the Strineship Enterprise, then The Waca is Thunderbirds Are Go. The Inverarity, Prindiville, but particularly the Lillee Marsh stand with its modernist concrete office block behind are straight off Tracy Island. 'Okay, Scott. We just got a distress call from the England cricketers in Australia, apparently their Ashes hopes are going up in smoke. Only International Rescue can help them now.'

Talking of which, England pick Mahmood and Panesar

We Two Kings

We two kings from Orient are,
Sajid Mahmood and Panesar.
From Pakistan and India,
Their parents give good cheer

The attacking option. Australia go one better and win the toss. As usual Langer and Hayden play their strokes and ride their luck.

22-0 - Billy the trumpeter starts, which at least gets Freddie's attention at second slip. If we win this game, there's a ready-made excuse, no, reason, for going two down in the first place - a lack of Billy The Trumpet, who needs to do a Josuah at the Aussie Walls of Jericho.

Trumpet Voluntary – to tune of Land of Hope and Glory

Land of hope and Billy
Trumpets cross Aussie Grounds
Proscribed at Adelaide and Gabba
At Perth we rose to your sound

Maybe it won't do the trick but the Barmy Army falsetto Aussie singing has everyone in good humour. 27-0.

Every Australian

Every Australian
wants to be Matthew Hayden.
Giant stride forward to meet the ball,
great arc of willow becomes a maul
to drive each pom into the back
of the outback and beyond.
Every Australian
Wants to be Matthew Hayden.

Not to be outdone, Langer hooks Flintoff for four - through midwicket, then a flashing coverdrive - straight over the keeper's head. 39-0 My start of play lunchtime prediction of 87-3 looks a tad optimistic, at least wickets wise

42-0 Stevo Harmison enters the attack, but at 47 the Great Australian Hayden flashes the great arc once too often and is caught Jones, bowled,that's right, Hoggard. It might be the last appearance of the Great Australian Hayden, who is an endangered species, but the real contest starts. Ponting The Magnificent.

Exit for 3, the Tasmanian Devil lbw Harmison, to one which could well be going down leg-side, which from a partisan point of view, makes the success taste all the sweeter. Contest now on, Harmison bowling with fire, Flintoff tight, for the first time in the series, the England attack has the Green Baggies on the back foot, literally as well as metaphorically. Runs dry up, Flintoff grasses a hard chance from Langer off Harmison, and enter Monty Panesar with a maiden. The signs are good. John Major won the bag of 3 mobile goodies. Not the John Major, President of Surrey, friend of Edwina (note the Derby connection) and keeper of the Grey Underpants. Or maybe it was the John Major, after all.

Whatever the signs, this is the real England, with fire in their belly. They might have left for the WACA before the Adelaide Test was finished but they’ve certainly arrived here.

Mahmood joins Monty, two kings from Orient are. Langer cleaned bowled Panesar 37, last ball before lunch. 69 for 3. A pearler of a delivery.

The Demon Panesar

You become yourself as you reach the crease
Gently poised paces, all limbs leaned to slight
Opponents’ fraught intent. Deft, accurate,
no whimsical flight; quick arm at its height
injects lethal charm to bewitch them out.
You need show no mercy until they leave.

At drinks I’d just untrousered ten Australian dollars - about threppence in the Queen's shilling - for a raffle to support Western Australian junior cricket. They might be needed sooner than anticipated....

Clarke and Hussey bat well after lunch, but at the drinks interval Harmison pouches at return catch from Clarke 121 for 4. In the roof terrace of Tracy Island the taches of Lillee and Marsh droop and might just detach themselves from the rest of their puppets' strings. Enter Symonds a pom turned Oz, who doubtless possesses more hair in one of his braids than Warnie has left naturally in his napper. The braids stop shaking after each of his successive straight sixes land in the crowd, braids vs turban. Hussey has a word between the braided one's braids shell-like, and the next ball is extravagantly cut into the keeper's gloves. Symonds ct Jones b Panesar 26. 172 for 5. Gilchrist bat-pads to short-leg for a duck. 172 for 6. I get grief from a Burnley supporter for the inaccuracy of my tea-time prediction of 165 for 6 being a few runs short. Mea culpa, we beat them last Saturday by a dodgy penalty.

214 - 7 Warne out à la Symonds, cutting to Jones. Hussey still there for a well-played fifty, especially his off-driving, a purist's delight. My 65 for 2 at stumps looks interesting.

Enter the Gatorade drinks cart, and I dream of another antipodean contest….the Gatorade cart and the Tizer truck go head-to-head for the honour of a final against the winner of Extra-fizzy Cream Soda versus Dandelion & Burdock. How we yearn for the olden days of Robinson's Barley Water and Rose's Lime Cordial. I should sarsaparilla.

234 - 8 Lee lbw Panesar 10. Monty’s bagged a fivefor.

We Two Kings

We two kings from Orient are,
Sajid Mahmood and Panesar.
From Pakistan and India,
Their parents give good cheer

O five for ninetyfour on day one,
You’ve done well, come on my son,
After Monty, Sajid will take plenty
Following your cricketing stars

244 all out. Harmison cleans up the tail, 4 for 48. Billy's trumpet has clearly tuned up the Harmoniser with plenty of bounce and lift. Hussey left stranded on 74, a little like Collingwood at Adelaide.

Desert Island

Left, deserted, undefeated
how might you have done more?

Chance your arm, get out sooner
yet not your fault for other’s failures
to heed circumstances as found.

The innings end might seem a rescue
from a desert island you never wanted to leave
but like Robinson Crusoe you too had to go
having grown accustomed to a place and its ways

England start well. Strauss smacks Lee's first two deliveries for four, just as Radio Derby ring for a live interview in the morning - far too much background noise to proceed. At least my Nokia 1100 didn't take any wickets.

36 for 1 Cook ct Langer b McGrath 15 The Aussie crowd no longer quite so quiet.

37 for 2 Bell ct Gilchrist b Lee 0. Ten overs to go, eight more runs to save the follow-on, England would buy 65 for 2 at stumps, ending on 51.

Walking home I see a women waiting in a car….

She reads a book in the driver’s seat
Of a bright yellow Ford Falcon XR6

Then realise there are dozens of them, not necessarily reading the same book. There’s a poem in there somewhere, not necessarily in the books they’re reading, but something on the lines of Cricket Widows.

Cherio.

Adelaide Poetry

2006-12-14T10:12:00.000+10:00

The Adelaide Oval - 1st December 2006 – end of play England 1st innings 266/3

If you've not seen it for yourself
think Worcester New Road, the view
across the River Severn, Torrens,
sun catching the water in its safe
hands, cathedral behind, an inspiring
article of sporting faith,
then add some. Disneyland
which folk round here rate England's chances
between slim and Buckley's

We shall see, shan't we?

The Wizard of Warne
We're off to see the wizard,
a wonderful wizard called Warne.
A spell-binding trickster of wrong-uns,
never one better for hair-loss in Oz.
He'll pluck England's Bell
like a rabbit from a hat;
sooner or later it's ring-a-ding-ding,
stumped, bowled, lb, caught HowZat!

From Barmy HQ, mentioned in dispatches

Mr Collingwood and Mr Bell
We think you've done rather well.
Two fifties on the stroke of tea
Suffices to retard their victory
March to the Promised Land
Of Ashes Regained,
While they may well be in retreat
Once Mr Pietersen takes a hand.

Paul Collingwood 98 not out overnight - went on to score a record-breaking 206

I shan't get out to this man,
It's not just I'm English and he's Australian,
I shan't get out to this man.
It's not just he's done me too often before,
(last match a century in reach, just needing a four)
It's hard enough to hit the ball, never mind score,
I shan't get out to this man.

Earplug his incessant chatter,
concentrate on being a batter.
But don't get too clever, over after over
I shan't get out to this man.
Even if I reach fifty or more,
will I ever feel secure?
Australia's most venomous creature
spits and coils with every ball,
I shan't get out to this man.

Bones soak under a long hot shower,
having defended hour after hour.
The splash of water reechoes the mantra,
I shan't get out to this man.

Adelaide Day Two – end of play England 551-6 dec Australia 28-1

Happy Birthday To You, Mr President

a cool morning’s start. blustery,
overcast, almost a two sweater day,
Collingwood’s very English century
made in very English conditions

i’ve come from the fun of the eighteenth
Test Match Brekkie. seven hundred in a room
Without views ending with scantily
clad New York, New York, all for charity

no charity here. Pietersen
laces McGrath’s first for three fours.
no back-handers or deceits however political
each bound to be found out for what they are
in these most English of conditions.

Record Heart Breakers

big tough antipodean arms,
sheep reivers, drove men used to labour,
held firm across broad chests,
hill people down for the day.

in silence they watch the Southern Cross
suffer. they eschew 3 blow-up fingers
to say Go Australia. they are australia.

jets cross the wicket, spectators
instructed how to inflate life-jackets
in case of emergencies. hill people
eyes remain motionless. fielders
motion to each other
across the paddock.

not waving but drowning

Adelaide Day Three – end of play England 551-6 dec Australia 312-5

Catches Win Matches
I swear I saw it come straight off the bat
A small red dot growing to fill the sky
and ready myself to hold its descent,
feet well apart, steady, hand-eye practiced
co-ordination triggered to make the catch.
Arms above my head, a high-board
diver sure to end the ball's spin, tuck
and revolutions with a perfect re-entry
to soft sweatless cushioned plams. Welcome
a mob of celebration. Mates stare. I dropped it.
I don't see how. A safe pair of hands,
maybe I lost it coming out of the stands,
the red and white flags of Saint George
a dragon of distraction that swallowed
opportunity in a fiery display of Engerland.

The Real Thing
At tea Team Boony and Team Beefy
contest the Battle of The ´Tasches.
A relay race to pad up, run away
and back again. As close to reality
as a rhyme is to fidelity.
None watch curatorial staff
re-line the crease, tend the pitch;
nor they us, the throng critical of players
once they resume the damning area.

Day of The Dead

on the occasion of the 8th Baggy Green Dinner, Saturday 2nd December, 2007 Adelaide and in commemoration of the Fourth Test 1929

Seven days hard yakka, they rise from the Ashes,
individual heroes all in teams to test their
undivided mettle. Close finish at the close,
seven days hard yakka, still they rise for the occasion.

We worship the memory, the more their breaths are done
short or long in the field, Jackson to Bradman,
White to Hammond, all eleven of each side
split by just a dozen runs after seven days hard yakka

in a field near a river watched by many,
attended by empire from a different era,
depression and bodyline still to come,
Adelaide will always welcome its heroes

whose ghostly boot-sprigs clatter down
and up pavilion steps. Some quick, some slow,
some two at a time, some quiet, near funereal,
a tattoo as sure as any scorecard of exploits

to become players of today. You may say
they do not bear compare with yesteryears’
titans, god-bestowed elegance of performance
to mist over the grind of seven days hard yakka.

Turn for confirmation and you shall hear nothing.
Nothing from them, for other matters call
at the end of their days, boots, bats, pads,
sweated armoury, undone yet not yet stowed away,

half-abandoned, stranded in an unwashed canvas
of labour against dressing room tiers
bear witness to these invisible spectres
off to share a few cool ones with posterity they created.
Adelaide Day Four – end of play England 551-6 dec Australia 513 England 59-1

River Crossing
From the Torrens I see thousands teem across Adelaide Bridge
All on their way to the Oval for cricket.
In other times it might be a rock concert
Or refugees fleeing a heartless enemy.
But this is cricket, two sides joining together
to cros a river, its waters placid
to the burbling viaduct of soles above.
I shall join them soon, become one of many,
Another anonymous ticketed ripple
Pouring into the Oval, filling it to the brim
Around about the start of play.
Lock-keepers inspect our holds for proscribed cargoes
Against clearly marked manifests.
We pass through, jostling gates
For the bridge to fall quiet as the river it spans.
At the far end of the day, bails lifted
Pulls the plug on our seats and we stream out,
No locks or gates to bar our progress.
Were the hopes and fears ferried inside our holds
Ever realised? Why else teem across the Adelaide Bridge.

Hoggard
At times it must be like climbing onto the moors,
dog tugging the lead when mists and ran come down.
Hard to see, know where you are,
stumbling into rocks, bogs, uncertain of paths
that could lead to nowhere or circles,
worried you'll be out here beyond nightfall.
Whatever you do the elements take their toll,
sap the spirit till it seems easier to give up
than go on. The familiar world twists cruelly strange.
You climb each hill, break its back before
it breaks yours, seven times
for one hundred and nine long runs, dogged
against these hounds you never let off the leash.
Adelaide Day Five England 551-6 dec Australia 513 England 129 Australia 168-4
Natural Break
sooner or later over five days
nature calls outside intervals
you leave the arena all a rush
hasten necessities
praying for quiet.
A roar, is it four
or a wicket fall
in midstream?
the hiatus afterwards tells all
a measure of time elapsed
for the next bat to take guard
or bowler to return to his mark

if only a force of nature
why is it never what you want?

A View From The Bridge
All is fine.
No reefs, hidden sounds, rip-tides, storms, fogs
or unanticipated conditions,
the sea a milkpond mirror,
the final day an easy cruise ahead.
Too easy. Captain and crew conspire
to foul propellors, drift off-course,
lose way, take incorrect bearings
till the SS Five Day Draw
is dead in the water,
listing badly,
holed below the waterline,
leak pouring in, pumps unable to cope,
doomed for the depths.
Aussie destroyers race from their stations,
each lacing boundary a torpedo
to dispatch the hulk to the bottom
with all due speed and efficiency,
leaving survivors to fend for themselves.

Captain Cook, W G Grace, Wilfred Rhodes, Hobbs and Sutcliffe, Percy Chapman, Wally Hammond, Douglas Jardine, Harold Larwood, Hedley Verity, Alec Bedser, Godfrey Evans, Sir Len Hutton, Jim Laker, Fred Truman, Ken Barrington, Ray Illingworth, John Snow, Derek Randall, Mike Brearley, Ian Botham, Bob Willis, Mike Atherton, Phil Tufnell and Dickie Bird, Your boys took one hell of a beating.

.
England Expects Every Man To Do Their Duty
The ground should be empty, dead,
Everyone gone, the last hour not taken;
England have batted out their draw.
The only Aussies remaining,
Paid to stay behind, clear up the mess,
The rubbish, plastic beakers and pie-wrappers,
Dross. They do a good professional job for little reward.
Two teams already gone, ready to go on to Perth,
Adelaide rush hour stuffed with traffic going home
To comment and criticism restricted to the pitch.
The ground is full, the CBD deserted,
England's collapse mimics Jessop's prowess
To empty offices. As wickets tumble
To false shots that'd earn official rebuke
in the workplace, Aussie workers scent blood.
Precious little work done this afternoon,
Collars and ties outweigh t-shirts and shorts
as gleeful witness the inevitable loss
four wickets delay. Englanders are so angry
no sorrow and little respect remains
for players who failed to play professionally.
They need to stay behind, clear up the mess
they created in each of our hearts and their own.

In Acerbic Rememberance
of
English Cricket
which died at The Adelaide Oval
on
Tuesday 6th December 2007
Bitterly lamented by a large circle
of sorrowing friends
and acquaintances
RIP
n.b. The body will be cremated
and its ashes retained by Australia
if its spirit fails to fight back

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Sick Team

Red Rose, thou are sick!
The Indivisible Warne
That beats you in flight
When you bat without gorm

Has spun out thy draw
Of English joy
And the Green Baggies
Does thy life destroy

With apologies to William Blake The Sick Rose

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The English Disease

Like syphilitic medieval kings, England
suddenly went mad. No apparent cause,
no seeming attempt to stem noble pause
in bedlam's frenzy to lose without stand.
Fumbling wickets tumbled from their own hand,
Misery’s drubbing unconceived before
they gouged their own wounds to bone. Running sores
of needless cuts, hooks, pulls and slashes banned
by dressing room: empty-headed retarded
births within teeming middle of crisis
induced by syphilis's half-brother, hubris.
The day’s sure draw before all this started:
licentious defeats grow infectious,
chaste play's honour fouled by these haughty lechers.

inspired by Greg Baum, Sydney Morning Herald, report of proceedings
- "Like medieval royals with syphilis, they went suddenly mad"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Adelaide Oval Wednesday 7th December 2007

return to understand
go back to the emptiness of defeat
you might learn something

seats tipped-up, crowd roar gone
a cockatoo, songbirds call above
drumble of traffic, clang of scaffolders
dismantling temporary stands
you demolished with your batting

A smear of dried ice-cream
stench of spilled beer around the bars
a nasal trail into the arena
its wicket perfect as it always has been

Why have I taken you here?
No flags of Saint George. No
Wigan, Norwich, Cheltenham
No sign of ourselves.

The scoreboard retells the story
168 for 4, a six wicket victory
they won't take down for a while

Taste the simplicity of defeat
ing yourself. Swallow its emptiness.
Stay till you understand
how never to fail yourselves again.

Brisbane Poetry

2006-12-14T09:15:00.000+10:00

Courage Of Convictions

Some good, some bad, and some ordinary
people the wrong side of the law to hold
their breath against the creak of deck, rope and
canvas; fixed blank stars slowly alter course

Of lives, destiny and political
aspirations. Now history. Not then.
No going back. No return to the old
Till the end of each testing sentence

Whose surf, shore and hinterland are unknown,
prime and aboriginal. Imprisoned
by nothing but the land’s fresh horizons
how could all survive, endure and flourish?

Today twenty-two flannelled fools replay
Australia, set to court failure
on no other grounds.

Woolloongabba

Woolloongabba they come from far
they come from far to play to play
Woolloongabba Woolloongabba
Waters whirling winds in our hearts
Wind still whirling whirling waters
Whirling fight talk place noisome boys
Warriors outdo warriors

place to talk fight die and share
drowning placentas whirling waters
Woolloongabba Woolloongabba

First Ball 10.00am local time, Day One The Gabba, Brisbane

The toss, decision to bat or bowl, team selection
and media games, noises off the field.
Set and survey, bat makes mark, bowler back to his

play

admidst the hush, arm comes over, bat into line,
each grooved, almost automatic. Whatever its outcome

wicket, boundary boards, full face or edge, play
and miss, a middled middling dot in the scorebook

the glance between bat and ball as the field resumes
its mark for five more balls and many more
over five five day matches will tell all
they’ll know before sledge or smile
who has won the very first ball

Steve Harmison bowled a wide fielded at second slip by captain Freddie Flintoff

Brisbane Test End of Day One Australia 346 for 3 A Flintoff 2 for 42 R T Ponting 137no

The Blacksmith and The Dancer

Down they come, twentyfour hammering blows
Run up against the anvil of the crease,
England’s finest, leader of tall strong men
Pounds a flat pitch to make something from nothing.

Red-hot ignots bounce and spit from the anvil
Of Thor from the north to thud pain and fury
Even into the gloves of his own keeper
Three pitches distant from the beginning.

Those in the middle dodge hurtling force,
The smell of singed leather beneath noses
Sears their minds long after danger passes
Till an opener edges heat and is gone.

The dancer comes. Small, slick-quick tip-toe feet
A ballet pump or conductor’s baton
In his hands against Thor’s redoubled thunder
Strong enough to break his own braw bones
In full pursuit of forging victories.

The dancer banishes other tradesmen.
No interest but the blacksmith’s anvil,
Each hammerblow a pirouette, paso
Doble, cock a snook at the once red-hot ignot

Now dulled with dancers’ taps as worn floors
For clubbing once clubbing has been done.
Sore feet and hours from Hobart unto Accrington,
The dancer and the blacksmith each know the score.

The dancer needs the smith to play
As the smith the dancer’s touch
To end the dancer’s say.

Brisbane 1st Test Day 2

Up Against It Australia 4-407 Hussey bowled Flintoff
Each wicket a point on an English chart
Of hopes on a voyage round Australia.
No reefs, storms, rip-tides, sand-bars and currents,
Just a long lonely barren ocean of sweat
In the sun before the next wicket’s fall.
Cool, below decks, thieves plot their destiny

End of Day Two. England 42-3 chasing 602-9.
I imagine Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the Test Match Special Radio commentary box saying ‘England have a real mountain to climb.’

The Ascent of Mount Gabba
Six hundred and two is far more than a stiff climb.
Inside the poms’ dressing room it’s squidgy bum time;
Advance party leave base-camp, equipment checked
Against endless fury they’ll face beyond tent flaps;
Those inside hope against hope they will be some time.
28
Just out of sight, twenty eight steps taken well in hand,
One falls, hooked off a precipice overhung with risk.
28-1
Rescue party sent, immediate slip to slip
Second to second, rescuers can but observe.
28-2
Elements ancient magnificent accuracy
Of dispatch. Furies howl and yell,
scenting more blood
42
Not much further on, base camp
abandoned, useless
They hold onto each other, forced alone, a fall.
42-3

In the coldness of heat they find purchase enough
To sleep the night amid dreams of their dead.

Brisbane 1st Test Day 3 Australia 602 England all out 157 Australia 181/1

On The Third Day of Play (to The Twelve Days of Christmas)

On the third day of play the Gabba gave to me
A blow up babe in custody.
On the third day of play the Gabba gave to me
Two big balls
And a blow up babe in custody.

And so on, till

Twelve crowd ejections
Eleven top selections
Tending to win
Nine tired bowlers
Eight ways in
Seven poms out
Six hundred lead
Five for McGrath
Four tall pylons
Three English Ducks
Two big balls
And a blow up babe in custody

Brisbane 1st Test Day 4 England 2nd innings 293/5 needing over 300 more runs

The Lap Of The Gods

Andy’s on the blower to his missus in Jakata
To accelerate the thunder due tomorrow afternoon.
She knows a rain doctor who dries out golf courses
To pilot this bad weather which can’t come too soon.

The Barmy Army take the Gabba with gamps and umbrellas
To make the most of Ricky Ponting batting way past his bedtime.
Queensland and England desperately need precipitation,
State and nation rest all on the imminent arrival of their Cloud Nine.

Brisbane 1st Test Day 5 Australia won by 277 runs

The Final Ball
five days hard cricket
pretty well going to plan
every run and every wicket
charts our course set on victory
no thought of commiseration
just a job well done
the emptiness of loss
is all too hard to bear
winning hard enough
but losing’s just begun

Poetry -writing & reading

2006-12-14T08:59:00.000+10:00

Poetry is just about the most environmentally positive art-form around, especially when viewed on the internet or listened to on the radio. It's also one of the oldest. No one quite knows how human communication developed, but as a prehistorian I'd put my money on song and dance - it's memorable and effective, and the idea that Singing in The Rain goes back to neanderthal times has a certain zing to it.

Poetry comes from song. If there isn't a lyrical quality, something of a voice when you read a poem as text, then there is something seriously missing. Without that voice, however fine, noble, witty and otherwise cultured the words, to my mind it isn't poetry, and you might as well

Ditch
the line
br
eaks

and treat as prose, good or bad, but not poetry.

Rhymes, rhythm, alliteration (all an a or otherwise o-s, likewise lots of linked up letters by sound) assonance (internal rhymes happen all the time) .... all these poetical tools can help the writer and reader share the poem's song.

The simplest way to appreciate a poem to its fullest extent is to read it out aloud. You'll soon find its voice, or discover it hasn't one. This is why traditional poetry rhymes or is alliterative (Beowulf and other scandinavian stuff) It comes from an oral tradition, so how else do you remember something which isn't written down?

I'm a greedy sort of poet. I'll use any sort of device or form which will help get what I want to say in my head across to you as a voice inside yours - sonnets, rhymes, hexameter, pentameters, rhymes, half-rhymes, metaphors, allusions, similes - like a batsman or bowler with all sorts of strokes or balls for differing occasions, you don't have to use them all at once. Indeed their greatest effect is by surprise, or building up.

By inclination I write free verse - no fixed rhythmic pattern and/or rhyming scheme. Robert Frost, the great Americn poet, and perhaps their most elegant, said 'Writing free verse is like playing tennis without a net.' True, but to use free verse well you still need to attend to rhythm and rhymes to give that voice, that sense of arrested by song, which means it's actually harder to do than using a standard form - to use Frost's simile, you need to erect your own net by the shots you play.

On this gig - a poem a day, and I'm off now to the WACA for the first day of the third test, ready to chronicle England's great fightback (ho, ho)

Here's my notes of what's to follow on, (as in Australia, after Freddie wins the toss - more ho, ho)

Aussie more traditional. Both sounds and meaning., Patterson vs the Queen.

Traditional forms
Paul Cameraman
Peter Parry

Perth Preview

2006-12-14T08:50:00.000+10:00

Heard mixed reports about Perth. Some people say 'If you like Adelaide, you'll love Perth, it's so old.'

Others say 'Just like Brisbane, boom town, very American.'

You can see the open-cast mining scares and spoil-tips from the air as we come in to land.

Not sure what to expect. Perth is long way away from the Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide triangle, the traditional urban heart of Australia. It's four hours plus from Sydney, which is further than Moscow from London.

There is a two hour time difference too. Being so isolated means it'll probably find its own way of doing things. Guaranteed to be warm, with the cooling westerly breeze from the sea known as the Freemantle Doctor, named after its port. I wonder how much it's changed since our blacksmith in Bakewell, Peter Evans, was there. Before I left we were talking about my trip - he likes poetry, even mine. I listed the test match cities. 'Been to all those places,' he said. 'Merchant navy, after the wall. Pubs were weird. They shut at six. I've never seen so much beer drunk so quickly in all my life.'

Today the Aussies don't seem to drink that much. In Adelaide and Brisbane there wasn't a binge culture of getting totally rat-arsed on a Friday and Saturday night, which seems to be the done thing with the young in Britain - every third person between 18 and 30 gets drunk every fortnight - perhaps because they're so pressured at work, drink is the only easy release. Maybe complusory one hour lunch-breaks would help to stop drinking wreck so many people's lives.

Aussie beer helps. Most of it has as much life and body as the Turin Shroud. It's probably the one thing we Brits beat those Aussies at hands down. The others?

Queues. We're very good at queuing, which Cricket Australia might note, since the sale of Test Match tickets was basically about ten million people all trying to dive off the virtual equivalent of Sydney Harbour Bridge into Sydney Harbour. Chaos, bedlam, misery and the odd splash of success. A ballot system, as per the ECB with their allocation, would have been so much simpler.

Castles and soccer. Although with both we've had something of a head start. Any others to add to the list - give us a shout.

Pies. Aussie pies, whatever the flavour, all taste the same. You realise why Rod Marsh called English fast-medium bowlers from the last two decades of the last century 'pie-chuckers.' Athough they each had different names, they all served up the same sort of dross.

Back to the cricket. What will the Third Test hold? On the face of it, England are in an all but impossible position. However teams have come back from losing the first two tests of an Ashes series, according to my brother Daniel - Australia in 1934. England probably need to win the toss or bowl like demons because indications are the pitch will be slow and good but take turn later on. Warne is six short of seven hundred victims, round about the same as the entire England attack put together. They certainly need some luck, tough talking, with someone like Terry Butcher in the Italia 90 dressing room forcing them on with talk of 'Fighting Tigers.'

It would be a good game to win, since it would bury the dreadful loss at Adelaide straight away.

Just don't queue up to bet your shirt, pies, beer or castle on it.

Professor Fiffle-Faffle predicts England will occupy the crease for longer than Australia, and are two-to-one on to score less runs.

Bradelaide - A Tale of Two Cities

2006-12-12T16:59:00.000+10:00

For the England cricket team and supporters, the first two test matches of this series have been the worst of times, and the worst of times.

The game at The Gabba was bad enough, the team clearly underprepared, but they'd batted well from the second innings at Brisbane till the last morning at Adelaide where they threw all their hard work away. Perth will be a challenge to say the least.

What of the cities themselves? For players, supporters and I guess journalists there's a tendency on tour just to see the games and then do a swift bit of sight-seeing. I'm the exception. I've not really gone sight-seeing. This is me. For years I was a field and landscape archaeologist so spent my time wandering around England and Europe digging up things. Consequently I tend to like to get a feel for a place and some sense of belonging. Doing that tourist thing doesn't do it for me.

You may have noticed in the poems and talks that I tend to focus on people and place - how else does The Gabba cricket ground become the Strineship Enterprise, "to boldly be more Australian where no Australian has been before?" Consequently Bradelaide is an ironic concatenation of two very different cities. Indeed more different than most cities in one country, apart from the USA.

Superficially all cities in a country are more or less the same since the road-signs, chain-stores, ways of speaking tend to be shared. I feel that for many England cricket players, supporters and possibly journalists, especially first-timers, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, Sydney aren't going to feel very much different because they'll travel together, go to the same sort of bars, not to mention spend most of the time watching or playing cricket - twentyfive days out forty, including Christmas and New Year. I feel the same - here to watch the cricket, not discover Australia.

Certainly I feel underprepared to talk about Australia since I've researched the cricket, not the country. Curiously I've done this half-deliberately. Learnt enough to understand how the different states established themselves, how the country grew from settlements to colony, territories to nation.

How the landscape and ecology is some of the most ancient on the planet, imperceptibly altered from Aborigine times which start up to 70,000 years ago (Whatever you read, add 5,000 years for the earliest settlement. Archaeologists keep pushing the dates back - when I studied it in the 1970s, it was around 20,000 years ago, and seemed to go back ten millennia every time I opened a periodical in the university stacks - by the time I shuffle off this mortal coil, humankind will have originated in Australia before the Big Bang. You heard it here first, folks.) How the Europeanisation of Australia has devasted the landscape, ecology, never mind the indiginous cultures. How Australia isn't one country but six states and the northern territory. How big it is. And how all the cities, apart from Canberra, (which was built like Washington as a capital to stop any of the other city-states from getting too uppity) are on the coast.

Australia in one para: ping-culture for your microwave. The UK is easier. An enormous bus-stop full of history and people sheltering from the rain. Fair enough?

This might sound perverse but having read Bill Bryson's Down Under before coming here (about six years ago when I was crook) you start to realise it's quite superficial too. The differences between people's attitudes in different states and cities doesn't come across. Bill picks up on the sameness, the giant inflatables and big sheep, prawn.... obvious targets.... newness of the country... ditto... aboriginal ancestry and future... no real answers....

Strange because Notes From A Small Country hits the money regarding contemporary English social class, mores and nuance. It may be something to do with Bill himself, who, by how he writes is rude about people who he thinks are rude to him. He lauds the Brits for being fair, taking it on the chin, but isn't that fair himself in dishing it out on said chin. It's witty but also cheeky because it doesn't give them the chance to say what they think of him. (Not that much, I suspect.)

This tactic doesn't work in Australia because no one is rude in the first place. Everyone I've met is interested in what you do and have to say. They make eye-contact, listen to you carefully and chose how to reply with thought and feeling. You never get the left-hand of change from the check-out clerk whose head is 180 degrees in the opposite direction talking to her colleague 'I don't know, he's alright, isn't he, but I don't know, he's alright, isn't he, but I...'

She wouldn't last two minutes here. The average time it takes to gain a waiter's attention in Oz is measured in seconds, not hours in England. Walking into an empty high street shop from Southampton to Sunderland and the dozens of staff behind the counter immediately avoid eye-contact so you're forced to ask 'Sorry to trouble you, could you help me? I'm looking for a book on positive body language and communication' In Brisbane and Adelaide at least, they look at you and each other to vie who'll say 'G'day. How can we help?'

Brisbane

God's own country for restaurant and shop service, what else is Brisbane like? Very American. It reminds me of Pittsburgh, downtown squeezed into the bend of a river. Also American with skyscrapers vying with each other like those three dimension bar-charts grey-suits love to display with powerpoint - 'and here we can see that the predicted sales-returns percentages across the global market-share demographically almost match our competitors.' In other words we're lagging behind.

Brisbane isn't. It's a boom town. Mining for the far east economies is the back-bone of the city. It and Perth are fastest growing in Australia. From being the newest of the cities - originally part of NSW, it didn't start to grow till after WWI - it also has a different climate, sub-tropical all year round. Thus Queensland is big on fruit, especially bananas which is taking a hammering due to droughts. It's also a genuinely outdoor city. Walk through the fabulous park in the evening into the city and the sound of cicidas is replaced by buzz of conversation outside all the pubs, bars, restaurants. People sit on benches and talk - don't see that in Britain these days.

Brisbane is best viewed from its river. The architecture works well then. Close up, it's downtown USAville, and the remains of the old Brisbane - verandas, colonial style details - is pretty well gone, vestigial. They tell me that it's due to wood and termites, which is probably true, because you get two-legged insects in cities throughout the world. How come the old wooden houses have survived on the river edge, where you've damp as well as termites.....

If you like the anonymity and ease of American cities, Brisbane is for you. A 7-11 at every corner (which is confusing if you're jet-lagged and assume like I did there is only one) and never more than two minutes from a MacDonalds, KFC or your favourite fast-sludge outlet of choice. There doesn't seem to be a distinct chinatown or specific districts. I guess what sums it up for me is that the City Treasury, clearly a building based on financial probitity is now the biggest and most expensive casino in town.

All the same I liked Brisbane. It's efficient and the people are friendly - except for the Gabba security staff where I and pretty well everyone else at the Test Match felt like suspects. The police and the cricket authorities had to run a press conference afterwards to state that they were really happy with how the security went. What else would they say? If it went that well you wouldn't need to have a press conference, would you, because there wouldn't be a story, would there? The last time I recall a major press conference around the security of a sporting event was 1988, after the Hillsborough disaster.

People also seem to be looking over their shoulders. Couldn't figure out why till someone mentioned Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, State Premier 1968 to 1987. 'What was he like?' I asked someone in the safety of the Adelaide Oval. 'Oh, George W Bush, but dimmer. A lot dimmer. A real red-neck.' Apparently he ran a police state where hippies were beaten up for wearing too many beads, namely two. In the end the regime was exposed by Phil Dickie on an ABC tv programme, Four Corners - similar to BBC's Panorama - which demonstrated inconvertably Bjelke-Petersen was as corrupt as he was vicious -never mind bungs, or brown envelopes of notes being exchanged in shady soccer transfers in UK motorway service stations, this was supermarket trolleysof dodgy money, which Petersen swore blind had nothing to do with him.

The junior cops at the end of that regime are Queensland's top security officials today. People don't jay-walk. They don't look right, no car for about half-a-mile, then left, no car for about half-a-mile, and walk across. They wait for b-b-b-b-b-b-b buzzer and the green go sign. Struck me as nuts. Everyone takes lunch in Bradelaide - a good thing because the UK habit of grab a sandwich between e-mails leads to neither enjoying the sandwich nor e-mails. More seriously it leads to the notion that the busier you are the more productive you are, which is lamentable tosh - if a fly buzzes about twice as fast another fly, is it a better fly for all that buzzing?

Back to Brisbane, everyone heads out of their offices for their God-given Australian lunchhour - the chinese quick-foods are good -and spend most of their sixty minutes waiting for the b-b-b-b-b-b-b and the green go sign.

'Why don't you jay-walk?' I ask.
'You'll get fined.'
Not seen any notices saying this.
'How much is it?' I continue, figuring out whether it's worth it.
'Dunno, mate.'
'Do you know anyone who has been fined.'
'Oh no, mate. You don't want to get fined, do you?'

This might be the final vestiges of Bjelke-Petersen's police state. Let's hope so. All the difference between a $20 dollar fine, and $2000 medicare bill for helping the police with their enquiries. There was a mixture of awe, fear not to mention a tinge of envy in other pedestrians as I walked across empty streets without the green. The next time I go back to Brisbane I shall wear a t-shirt which reads:-

Ned Kelly jay-walked

As well as the Strineship Gabba, alhough it has theatres, museums, cinemas, concert halls, Brisbane isn't a work of art. There are isolated pieces of art in the city rather than a grand design. Before moving onto Adelaide, here's a one which caught my eye.

It's Analdo Pomordoro's Forms of Myth about Agammenon. When I visited the dead remains of Mycenae, one of the first cities, and Agammenon's home, I struck by how much had been lost, yet by being lost, still remained to be discovered....

MYCENAE

up a hill, and down again column a trail of ants
pincers focus cameras at the Lion's Gate entranced

an entomology of the Gods

my antennae twitch at a tired american's call

Just a pile of rock

Is that it? Is nothing else left? Is that all?

why did he come here? why do we?
a once anonymous hill now named Mycenae
unearths our philosophy of archaeology

that

night
backfills
with shadows
and cricket song.

trowels click,
the tourist hoards
guides and excavators
each leg it
insects
in time

and a
ghost

with golden helmet, and golden crest,
golden grieves, golden chest,
untouchéd gold,
drops

his ghostly sword and shield
a-gleam
in time's dew
beside me

Agamennon still awaits a geezer
from the roofless houses below
to repair a chariot wheel
driven one too many over the eight
through the Lion's Gate

a domestic with Clytaemnestra
something and nothing, words were said
as nuptials go a disaster

third-party, fire and theft
nor fully comp
would assuage the scars left
in the stone posts and stoney silence
of their marriage

her indoors will be the death of him

you should have had it widened
i whisper to myself
to let us pass a little more easily

dust settles between us

simply done. one word from you
and people jump
i tell him
petrified to the spot

(with ghosts seeing is believing)

one eye the moon, the other the sea
through the gate of his mask
Agamennon spits out time
to swear at the Gods and i

Just a pile of rock

Adelaide

In years to follow Brisbane might become just a pile of rock, but Adelaide will always be Adelaide.

It embodies Plato's remark that the city is a work of art. These days this is taken as meaning art in the sense of the arts, but it's better to stick with the ancient greek where art is counterposed with nature - it is the work of people to build from natural resources. For Plato if not the art review sections of broadsheets, the arts had to include artisans.

Adelaide was planned from the word go. It was largely the work of one man, Colonel Light, who decided the layout of the city and its location, up-river from its port. South Australia is distinct from New South Wales and Victoria, being a place for settlers to pay to come out, the original ten-pound poms (people of means) and buy land and property - even if the scheme was thought up by a debtor in Newgate jail pretending to be in Sydney.

Here is Light's view of his endeavour:-

Extract from Colonel Light's Journal 1839

"The reasons that led me to fix Adelaide where it is I do not expect to be
generally understood or calmly judged at present by my enemies, however, by
disputing their validity in every particular, have done me the good service of fixing the whole of the responsibility upon me. I am perfectly willing to bear it, and I
leave it to posterity and not them, to decide whether I am entitled to praise or
blame."

In other words, sod off.

My sort of guy. Has vision, prepared to negotiate, listen, work towards it, and take responsibility. A trillion light years from Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, who denied the shopping trolley-fulls of bent dosh right under his and Four Corners cameras' noses.

My sort of city. I think it is the best planned city in the world. The original design of 1839 still works today without ring-roads, underpasses, massive urban renewal programmes. Posterity, always a hard marker, gives ten out of ten to Colonel Light, as recognised by the people of Adelaide who put this journal entry on their statue to him.

It's the sort of city that developers find difficult to develop. There are high-risers, bits that are lost which shouldn't be lost and forces trying to go for commercial rather than civic gain. Overall, though, it's a city which still works pretty much as Light - and Plato - would've intended, and they would have given the city elders pretty good marks too. It's no accident that the Adelaide Oval is one of the most beautiful cricket grounds in the world - hell, the universe - only the Betelgeuse Gardens with its twin suns is said to compare.

I'd happy spend a week or so in Brisbane, and then start to get bored. Adelaide is different. You'll find something fresh every day walking down its main streets, not least its market, which is everything a fresh produce market should be. Despite Queensland being a fruit centre for Australia, fresh produce is hard to find in Brisbane. Come to Adelaide, and it's as though all the fruit, veg, meat, nuts, cheese has rolled around the coast to end up piled high in its market - everything fresh, nothing unnecessarily wrapped. The acme of provision.

In the same way its arts, writers and ideas festivals are fresh, open and sincere. For a city so cultured there is surprisingly little pretence - or is this me with jaded European eyes?

Adelaide has its problems. Elderly population - kids go to the big and growing cities, which is all of them, not just in Australia but in the far east. In some sense the tiger-beijing economy has passed Adelaide by. A sense of not being a destination, not being part of the modern Australia, losing out to the bigness and pull of Melbourne, and especially Sydney.

But it's civilised. For a population of one million, spread across an area larger than Derbyshire (about half the people and ten times as much political partying) local government isn't on party lines. I like that. It means people stand for local issues and improvement, not political gain, either for themselves or their parties. If anyone tried to the foist party politics into Adelaide's local governance, they'd soon get the Colonel Light treatment. Were it so in the UK, especially Derbyshire.

Adelaide feels like a good-sized healthy rural town, which all cities should, because that's what makes it's civilised. Cities are about feel and friendliness just as much as anywhere else. You can bump into people, drop by on them, not have to rely on mobile phones and personal organisers. It isn't divorced from the countryside; it's like my home-town Bakewell should be, writ large.

Well done, Colonel Light and his successors. Keep up the good work.

Adelaide Post Mortem

2006-12-09T19:46:00.000+10:00

The analysis of a body in order to establish cause of death, and thereby prevent similar recurrences

“Like medieval royals with syphilis, they went suddenly mad… But the real crumbling was in the English minds.”

So wrote Greg Baum in Wednesday's Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/columns/how-could-it-be-england-falls-apart/2006/12/05/1165080950737.html

I took this to start my sonnet The English Disease in Requiem for Duff Batting.

Four days on from Tuesday 5th December, Adelaide is pretty well free of English smarting and Aussies smiling under the halo and yoke of victory and defeat. The world moves on. So must I.

Unlike the other entries I’ve separated the poems from the talk. The enormity of England’s self-inflicted failure means the poems speak for themselves.

This talk is about context. It’s close to three thousand words long, a detailed exposé of cause and effect that stretch far beyond the bounds of cricket. Pour yourself a long cool one if in Australia (Adelaide’s 42 degrees – about 110 in old money) or a good cuppa tea if in the ‘old country.’ (just above zero, 42 degrees old money.)

Of course it’s only a game. As I write people in Victoria are about to flee their homes in face of bush-fires. Beyond these shores the Bush/Blair Alliance is under fire for the troops under fire in Iraq. This is the breaking news, life and death stuff, and cricket is only a game.
Nonetheless it’s in our psyche. Just received a round-robin e-mail from http://www.ents24.com/

“If, like England's defence of The Ashes, your weekend is in danger of going up in smoke…”

The reason we invest emotionally in supporting sport is because it is the imaginary beloved. I’ve borrowed the phrase from Michael Ignatieff:-

‘Great writing is private: it issues from an intensely inner dialogue with the imaginary beloved. And the imaginary beloved is language itself. A true writer is fundamentally in love with language, ultimately for the sake of language itself.’
Michael Ignatieff London Review of Books 6 February 1997, page 14

A true sports fan is in love with sport, ultimately for the sake of sport itself, the imaginary beloved.... They may well ignore any connection to a greater world outside the game – hence the critical importance of C L R James’ Beyond The Boundary, which did the exact opposite by relating caribbean cricket to their islands and colonial past.

For true sports fans, sport is an extraordinary fantasy that is reality that is safe, so it can be overloaded with emotional investment inappropriate to ordinary life. No different to a novel or film, which helps create a fantasy from marks on the page or screen, again invoking emotions outside everyday ranges – from Lord of the Rings to Silence of The Lambs. Talking of novels, Nick Hornby captures the sporting beloved in Fever Pitch, where the hero, an Arsenal supporter and a bit of prat, (not just because he’s a Gooner) has to decide between Highbury and his girlfriend. Most sports fiends find the novel tedious, because they already know what is it to be a fan, and made countless similar decisions. Fever Pitch isn’t for them, the converted and the damned. It’s for those of us who aren’t sports nuts. We become engrossed, a novel’s primary duty; to live vicariously the life of another, even if a Gooner. To know what it is to be sports mad without being so insane.

This is why all sports fans are victims, most of all of themselves, but we’ll come to that another time.

Occasionally the imaginary beloved gets out of hand…..

Old Trafford Triptych 1st Day 2nd Test England vs Pakistan 2006

Kismet

from 90 for 2 to 119 all out
is disaster or elation depending
where you’re sitting

four Pakistani lads hold the row ahead
their silver starred moon
marks hats, shirts and faces
against the rub of the green

You’re taking it well, I say
You’re playing well,
they reply

morsels of solace exchanged,
they offer fruit, cakes, pringles

We should share food, they say

i think of fatwah, al Qaeda,
Iraq, Lebanon and five hundred arrests
in Bolton after Engerland
lose on penalties in Germany

food and sorrows, i reply

Two things. England did play well. Harmison with bounce and lift was lethal.

More relevant I was able to relate the game to the wider world. I also wrote a poem about England’s World Cup this English summer…..

The Red Flag of Courage

not waving but drowning
in the sea of expectation,
countless pennants woven
from synthetic yarns of hope
bound taut by ligaments of owen
to the polar bones in rooney’s foot.

the longer the journey,
the more they fray
and flag against
adversity.
Is this too much to bear for a nation
’s daily trips from here to basra
and a christmas kickabout
between trenches on the western front?

the lads did their best.

Clearly not true for England in the morning at the Adelaide Oval Tuesday 7 December, where the lads failed even to perform. Why?

Though Greg Baum’s dead-on that the real crumbling was in the English minds, as is Duncan Fletcher that the batting was the let-down, it has nothing to do with cricket.

Forget dodgy lbw decisions, queried selections, long injury list, dropped catches…England weren’t there on Tuesday.

Marv Levy, a great American Football coach, and a great American, coined the phrase ‘Where would you rather be, than right here, right now?’

This is generally taken to refer to fans, to come to the shrine of their imaginary beloved. It applies equally to players. You have to be there, want to be there in order to be focused, never mind in the zone. Last Tuesday England weren’t.

They had assumed the draw. They were already on their way to West Australia. It isn’t all over until the fat lady sings, but psychologically they had packed their bags, upped sticks and left even before she gargled ahead of breakfast. All their bodies had to do was turn up and bat a bit. Go through the motions. Even the Barmy Army didn’t show before lunch. Why?

You must remember that England hadn’t just batted well in the first innings. They had continued the form shown in the second innings at Brisbane. The answer isn’t because we aren’t any good, nor we don’t mind losing, even against Australians. It goes deeper.

Francis Wheen in The Adelaide Review 25 November suggests we’re "more accustomed to honorable failure, and last year’s Ashes win was a shock to the English psyche" – and to the Australians’. Francis is half-right. It goes way deeper.

We Brits prefer anticipated outcomes. We don’t complain to the source of the complaint, because ‘it won’t do any good’ or as my mother-in-law says ‘it’ll get us into trouble.’ Instead we moan about poor railways, restaurants, service, weather and anything else substandard amongst ourselves rather than go back to the cause. The epithet whinging poms becomes deserved.

Likewise success. Every four years we anticipate winning the World Cup. This summer England was awash with the flags of Saint George. 10,000,000 were bought in June to stick on cars. One for every fifth person or about two per car. In June we holidayed on the French/Italian riviera. Saw no flags and just one shirt – Italia 90 on an old tractor driver in the hills probably unaware of what he was wearing. France and Italy played out the World Cup Final

The weight of anticipation helps lead to failure. Which means of course you don’t lose when you do. ‘I knew we weren’t going to make it.’ More generally it leads to inherent conservatism, because if the anticipated outcome is potential change, no one’s too worried if it doesn’t happen. It isn’t just complacency, which is laziness with an extra syllable. Complacency is a symptom of this curious Anglo-Saxon amalgam of arrogance, apathy, obedience and unquestioning same-old, same-old. It drives me, or anyone interested in radical achievement, nuts.

When we do win, when something changes, the anticipated outcome switch means that we assume we always will win what we’ve just won. The World Cup, the Rugby World Cup, the Ashes…..the Olympic Games….

Here are some examples of anticipated successes turned failures –

• British Expeditionary Force in France 1940 – thought they’d wipe the floor with the Wermacht, with or without the French. Failed, but interestingly Dunkirk became an excuse to label the worst-ever British Army campaign in Europe as a noble triumph against the odds.

• Tory party election loss in 1945. Churchill thought it was in the bag.

• British Motor Industry collapse from 1960s. Anticipated orders would remain the same whatever product quality compared to competitors.

• 1990s home ownership boom-crash. Anticipated investment returns led to unsustainable property price rises – Proudan said ‘Property is theft.’ Mortagees robbed themselves blind.

Examples of less anticipated successes not capitalised upon are harder to find. Within sporting fields

• The Olympic hockey team Gold Seoul 1988

• Redgrave et al’s rowing triumphs has led to few new clubs or widening of rowing as a sport

• relative decline of elite athletic performance from 1980-1992 despite, or maybe because of lottery funding (“I’m a lottery-funded elite athlete, therefore I’m special, therefore I can win, therefore I’ve won.”) After winning gold in Athens after a USA fumble the men’s relay team’s subsequent ability to drop it may well be because they’ve already made the change and won the race in their heads before it finishes in fact.

As a counter example ('counter' in both senses of the word) the Campaign For Real Ale in Britain is a capital unanticipated success Australia would do well to emulate given the quality of what they call beer.

Outside the sports and drinks arena, the most damning example is the stalled White Hot Technological Revolution, part of Harold Wilson’s 1964 Labour Party manifesto.

At the time Britain led the world in computing and information technology. The new administration was prepared to invest heavily to capitalise on this. Tony Benn was the Minister responsible. His diaries of the time are illuminating. Calls in the Permanent Secretary to make it crystal clear his first priority is to take the Queen’s head from the postage stamps. The diary entry ends something like ‘At first they failed to understand, but I’ve no doubt they appreciate I mean business.’ Reading between the lines you can hear the Sir Humphrey ‘Yes, Minister’ chuckles behind the other side of the door.

Don’t get me wrong, I like and admire Tony Benn. My sort of political stance; clear and cogent analyst and speaker, but don’t ever ask him to get anything done. He couldn’t even manage a press-up in a multigym. An intellectual, in other words.

Have you spotted both Benn and the Permanent Secretary playing the Anticipated Outcomes game? Benn anticipates beheading the Queen from the stamps, the Permanent Secretary counter-anticipates its retention. Neither of them tackle the quintessential matter at hand, the white-hot technological revolution, because that too is an anticipated outcome, dealt with in less than a paragraph beforehand, and then failure comes as something of a surprise that, because nothing has been done, not even removing the Queen’s head from the stamps, the funding disappears. Had Tony Benn knew which digit to pull out, the UK would still be a global force in computing. I roundly curse his ineptitude every time Microdross programming gets in my hair.

Anticipated Outcomes is a cornerstone of the USA and UK special relationship. Technological and industrial mighty US of A believe they can do anything anywhere. An anticipated outcome UK are happy to follow and bide by as all roads lead to Beruit if not Damascus.

What’s this to do with cricket and the Ashes? England’s win last year was a shock to the Aussies too. It hurt, it bloody hurt. You saw that in Brisbane, where Ponting went out of his way to try and not just beat but annihilate England, (a plan that could’ve gone wrong big time had it rained and/or Flintoff, Collingwood and Pietersen not played strokes beneath their quality.)

The Aussies don’t do anticipated outcomes. If they anticipate anything it is the here and now. In sport that’s always where they want to be, right here, right now.

Instead of anticipated outcomes they realise desires – like Camra with a good pint.

In terms of Adelaide, they didn’t just anticipate a draw, they wanted to win. Two quick wickets and their desire was realisable. Realising desires vs. anticipated outcomes? No contest.

Realising desires has driven the Green Baggies since at least 1987. Alan Border hated losing the Ashes. When he became captain his desire to regain and never lose them again has been passed down the line though Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting. In all their winning series, they realised their desires, the isolated occasional test win by England at a series end more a post-coital aberative smoke.

The clash of anticipated outcomes against realising desires usually has one winner, hence Australia’s domination of the Ashes since 1930. Bodyline relied on anticipated outcomes. England anticipated Bradman making a shedload of runs, and figured on stopping him. No Englishman considered playing the realising desires hand of ‘We’ll still beat them however many runs Bradman makes.’ It’s interesting that aside from skill and desire, Bradman listed five qualities for sporting achievement – dignity, integrity, courage, determination and modesty. In their first innings at Adelaide England displayed all these, in their second, Collingwood apart, none. They didn’t need to because, that’s right, they’d anticipated their outcome of a draw.

Okay, you’re saying, how come England are defending the Ashes?

Their success last year relies on a supermarket chief.

At the end of the last century in the face of being whipped by everyone apart from Bangladesh, only because they hadn’t started playing test cricket, Lord MacLaurin as the ECB chair initiated the MacLaurin Plan. It took forever to get it past the counties, who were still entrenched in the land of anticipated outcomes, but its vision of the best team in the world by the end of this decade, together with the structures to continue this dominance was a realistic desire, just as taking Tesco from a contender to the supermarket dominator trousering every third high street pound was achievable. Unlike Tony Benn, MacLaurin is a doer. At grass roots upwards cricket in England is more wholesome and healthy than any produce you buy in Tescos.

Things fell apart through winning the Ashes last summer. ‘We’ve beaten the Australians, they're the best, we’re the best, and wins evermore are just another anticipated outcome.’

Series lost and drawn against Pakistan and Sri Lanka which should have been won demonstrate otherwise. That was just the loosening the wheels. They came off major-league last Tuesday in Adelaide. Had Australia retained the Ashes last year, losing how England did four days ago does become inconceivable.

Can I rest the difference between Australia and England attitudes on a few false strokes on the cricket field? And do I need to explain those strokes by pointing to the differences between national attitudes?

I’d be the first to admit there is more to the cricket story. Too many and not enough games; too much exposure and too much protection to and from the media; the lure of money rather than just success – which brings money in its wake - dominating the ECB directives ….. These will have to wait for another day.

However, ask yourself has what I’ve said here explain the otherwise inexplicable collapse of England last Tuesday?

I rest my case in the eyes of Australians. When we lost at Brisbane, I received a phone message from an Aussie which went “I shan’t pretend to commiserate; we like to beat the shit out of you bastards.” Desires realised, message received, normal service resumed.

After Adelaide it was different. Forget the Ponting-Warne induced media hype of this being this team’s greatest ever victory. That’s just to keep the poms down. Great victories are when both sides strive to their best in the heart of the contest. England defeated themselves. Capitulated. Since Tuesday the eyes of Australians have carried this strange look, a tinge sheepish, a scintilla of a thinnest edge from embarrassment….

A Sense of Guilt At Winning All Too Easily

In the unwritten book of how to play sports the Australian way,
realising desires purely through ineptitude of others isn’t quite fair.
They like a fight, have a go, give it a burl, work for their victory,
especially against the old colonial masters of understatement,
sang-froid, playing straight and back down the line.

When dear old England implodes like a pack of cards
without being touched, the Aussies aren’t sure what to do
‘We didn’t beat you fair and square, because you did that for us.
That must hurt, more than us rubbing it in, because it’ll keep hurting
for a long long time. We almost feel sorry for you bastards.’

How does the body of England revive itself for Perth? Come back from the dead?

Whoever’s picked need to be different players. They need to believe they have already lost the Ashes, and the only way to win them back is find the desire to thrash the heart out of the Australians. Technically demanding but impossible without that desire.

Realise desires. Far more potent than anything else Australian?

Adelaide - Requiem For Duff Batting

2006-12-07T22:18:00.001+10:00

In Acerbic Rememberance

English Cricket

which died at The Adelaide Oval

Tuesday 6th December 2007

Bitterly lamented by a large circle

of sorrowing friends

and acquaintances

RIP

n.b. The body will be cremated

and its ashes retained by Australia

if its spirit fails to fight back

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Sick Team

Red Rose, thou are sick!
The Indivisible Warne
That beats you in flight
When you bat without gorm

Has spun out thy draw
Of English joy
And the Green Baggies
Does thy life destroy

With apologies to William Blake The Sick Rose

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The English Disease

Like syphilitic medieval kings, England
suddenly went mad. No apparent cause,
no seeming attempt to stem noble pause
in bedlam's frenzy to lose without stand.
Fumbling wickets tumbled from their own hand,
Misery’s drubbing unconceived before
they gouged their own wounds to bone. Running sores
of needless cuts, hooks, pulls and slashes banned
by dressing room: empty-headed retarded
births within teeming middle of crisis
induced by syphilis's half-brother, hubris.
The day’s sure draw before all this started:
licentious defeats grow infectious,
chaste play's honour fouled by these haughty lechers.

inspired by Greg Baum, Sydney Morning Herald, report of proceedings
- "Like medieval royals with syphilis, they went suddenly mad"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Adelaide Oval Wednesday 7th December 2007

return to understand
go back to the emptiness of defeat
you might learn something

seats tipped-up, crowd roar gone
a cockatoo, songbirds call above
drumble of traffic, clang of scaffolders
dismantling temporary stands
you demolished with your batting

A smear of dried ice-cream
stench of spilled beer around the bars
a nasal trail into the arena
its wicket perfect as it always has been

Why have I taken you here?
No flags of Saint George. No
Wigan, Norwich, Cheltenham
No sign of ourselves.

The scoreboard retells the story
168 for 4, a six wicket victory
they won't take down for a while

Taste the simplicity of defeat
ing yourself. Swallow its emptiness.
Stay till you understand
how never to fail yourselves again.

The Ring Of Truth

2006-12-06T21:34:00.000+10:00

I cannot tell a lie. Unlike England I didn’t lose anything at the Adelaide Oval yesterday, and certainly not my mobile phone. Drop-kicked straight out over the George Giffen Stand one bounce into the River Torrens with my trusty left thong, weaker foot too.

South Australia Cricket Association, ever genial hosts, dredged the river and found my Nokia 1100 wicket taker (3 for 8 at The Gabba, 1 for 0 at Adelaide – beat that, Shane McGrath.)

“It’s here for you to pick up,” said the fax to My Place Backpackers. “We’ve sent you a cab.”

Screetch at the door.

‘Jump in. Are you the pom poet that drop-kicks mobile phones into the Torrens? Can I have your autograph?’ I take the portable tattoo set to add my moniker below Shane loves Shane. ‘It’s for the kids.’

‘Here’s your phone, Mr Fine,’ says the SACA staff. ‘Sign here. It’s for the kids.’
‘No worries. Mind if I look around?’

Not a soul in the ground. The scoreboard remains untouched. The enormity of yesterday’s debacle turns incandescent ire into cold fury.

Blam, Splash!

Straight into the Torrens again, this time on the full. Like wit, timing is everything.

The SACA pedalo and the blokes with the fish-net swing into operation.

‘Sign here. It’s for charity – and can we just say, right foot next time, onto the South Bank. The pedalo boat doesn’t come cheap.’

Virgin mobile, which sounds like hotel room service for tired politicans, say it’ll take about three days for the Sim Card to dry out. (Tired politicans generally take longer, even if left hung out to dry) It rings.

‘Skid Nokia here.’
‘Skid - ?’
‘The Skid Nokia, son. Sports Guru to Sports Gurus.’

It was the sort of voice with Rayban Wrap-rounds wrapped round its tonsils.

‘Forget ABC only ringing when the Green Baggies are at crease. You blokes need a miracle.’

Astound yourself with facts you already know; another staggering glimpse into the obvious.

‘You need to become Australian.’

Adelaide Day Five - Hubris

2006-12-06T00:13:00.000+10:00

It started before I stepped on Australian soil. The Customs Man asked where my tissues were, I’d need them. I replied that I didn’t have them down for cry-babies. We were both right. The Green Baggies are many things but not cry babies, and England will need a lot more than paper hankies to retain the Ashes after played two, lost two.

It should be different.

Kay, my wife e-mails to say she heard me on Radio Derby this morning, and I sounded like I was dead tired and about to fall asleep. I was dead tired and about to fall asleep. It was recorded at eleven o'clock at night after watching too much slow cricket under too much slow sun - "He should complain. It's brass monkeys, freezing rain, fog, snow, ice, gale force winds and general miserableness in the run-up to Christmas. Bring us some of that Aussie sun."

I shall aim to sound pinkier and perkier tonight, and those reading this on http://www.ashespoetry.net/ will just have to imagine the joie de vivre in my voice.

You’re more likely to get anger.

However montonous my voice sounded yesterday, it's nothing compared to the pitch. Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th century Tory spinner, said there are lies, damn lies, statistics and cricket statistics, but seventeen wickets in twelve sessions (just under 1.5 wickets per session according to my pocket Frindaliser) speaks volumes in a dull monotonous railway announcer's voice. 'We regret to announce the fall of the next wicket will be delayed due to a total lack of life in the pitch.'

Talk at the start of the game was the dry weather - level two water restrictions, not quite the level four of Brisbane, could lead to wicket cracking up. 'Never mind level two, the ground staff might have to water it.' With superglue. You could land one of the many Boings that fly over at regular intervals on this track and still not leave a mark.

It's almost as bad as the Buxton to Stockport train Kay takes to work, which is delayed or cancelled due to leaves on the line, no leaves on the line, the wrong sort of leaves on the line, too hot, causing the rails to distort, too cold, causing the rails to distort, but basically the permanent way is knackered, and will remain so until the government decides to unknacker the railways.

If they do, Transport Secretary of State Douglas Alexander (and how many of you knew his name; I didn’t) should contact Les Burdett, groundsman, or curator as they're called here, about the Adelaide Oval. A railway made from this wicket would run forever. As I said to the security guy who checked my bag, they shouldn't have allowed this pitch in. Were Les ever to make car tyres, put me down for a set. I could hand them down to my children's children. This is the diametric opposite of a result wicket. You could play on this till the end of the Fifth Test at Sydney and still get a draw. At the end of the game, the South Australian Cricket Association could pulverise this Mogadon Special into sleeping pills for chronic insomniacs –

Two Burdetts before hitting the sack and you'll be sparko. Eight hours zeds guaranteed.'
'Gee thanks, Doc.'
Not to taken if you drive or use dangerous machinery.

Credit where credit's due. Les may have discovered the alchemist's dream - perpetual motion. As a kid with my threppence pocket money (one pence or three Aussie cents in new money) I often mithered about buying a Bassett's Everlasting Strip. This was a very long and thin stretch of toffee, designed to extract a lad's threppenny bit from the pocket of his short trousers. It did last a long time, about a day and half before there was only sticky paper remaining in my pocket. Les has cracked it. This wicket is an Everlasting Strip.

Only no one reminded the England batsmen.

Warne still extracts psychological mesmerism from somewhere, Strauss out for 34 caught off one which hit the pad. Then Bell's run out hesitating on Collingwood's call on a dab behind square. 70 for 2, 108 runs ahead. Game on.

Can England last out on the Everlasting Strip of the Century? No.

Warne reprises his ball of the century bowling Pietersen sweeping round his legs hitting off-stump. If anyone can take on the combined might of England and this pitch it's Warnie, but why does Pietersen sweep fifth ball in, when he never swept in his first innings big century?

The Barmy Army are conspicuous by their absence - where are they when Super-Super Freddie Flintoff comes to the crease, a captain's innings needed to save England?

I ignore Brit know-alls who are blathering on about how they saw Jonathan Agnew dressed up as a dog's dinner at a romantics do, but his wife looked stunning. None of them notice Gilchrist stand up to Clark, as Jones had to Hoggard. Safe enough on the Everlasting Strip with its slow regular bounce to keep batsmen in their crease for fear of stumping. The Brit know-alls all would have caught Ponting's hook that Giles spilled at the same time as responding to Collingwood's call which ended with Bell's run out. The game's always easier to play in the stands than in middle, but it does help to watch what's going on.

Flintoff ct Gilchrist b Lee 2. A useless waft outside off stump. 77 for 5. We're about to clutch defeat from the jaws of a draw. If the Green Baggies win this, the series and the Ashes are more or less lost. Two down, three to go is all but irretrievable. Seriously squidgy-bum time for us Poms.

Lunch comes 89 for 5. Far from watching paint dry while still in the tin, for the disinterested spectator this has been the most absorbing session of the game, if not the series. You can almost hear Fred Trueman up in heaven saying 'Funny game, cricket.' The English aren’t laughing.

Not so funny after lunch, as Jones goes fishing for a Brett Lee wide one to be pouched at gulley. Didn't see it. Think I've lost my mobile phone somewhere between My Place backpackers hostel and my seat in the Chappell stands (and talking of stands, neither Ian nor Greg would've contenanced the woeful England shot selection) Come back after lunch, they say. Lo and behold, I bump into John Turner of http://nudgeanddefs.blogspot.com/, who e-mailed to say he particularly liked yesterday's Matthew Hoggard poem, and perhaps we could meet...

My mobile's already taken three wickets at Brisbane. The near McGrath hat-trick, while away from the action talking to ITN radio, then final day ABC Radio Sydney call just as the ball leaves Pietersen's bat to go down Martyn's throat. Even without it I miss the demise of Jones. The roar goes up just as I enter the stands. Four or a wicket. The scoreboard tells all. Another victim to the Nokia 1100 wicket taker. Had I found it in the ground, I'd have dropped-kicked over the stands, one bounce into the Torrens River.

Natural Break
sooner or later over five days
nature calls outside intervals
you leave the arena all a rush
hasten necessities
praying for quiet.
A roar, is it four
or a wicket fall
in midstream?
the hiatus afterwards tells all
a measure of time elapsed
for the next bat to take guard
or bowler to return to his mark

if only a force of nature
why is it never what you want?

Warne gets Giles with a leg-spinner that bounces - maybe a puff of dust, Mr Burdett. He takes Hoggie with his googly. Barmy Army arrive in force, but it seems too late. Collingwood's still there, and his first innings double-century drew comparisons in the commentary box with Wellington, but not even Blutcher's Army could save England today. Sod 'drew comparisions.' All England are willing Collingwood and the tail to hold out for a draw after the top order have failed their profession.

Watching Australia in the field, there are no hysterics (except for the staged appeals, which are all part and parcel of being professional.) McGrath’s walk to his mark at long leg bears precisely the same demeanor when England were four hundred odd for three in the first innings or 118 for 8 in the second. Just another day at the office.

McGrath leaves his desk in the deep to step up to the mark to nab Harmison lbw. Nine down. 158 for victory. Even if Durham compatriot Collingwood delays the inevitable till tea, half-an-hour away, big Stevie has to step up to the plate, and then some to save England. The only way they can win the game is to do their damnedest to lose it. They've pretty well achieved the first part. Anderson out last ball before tea gives Australia two extra overs.

Not that they need them. Ten off the first over, 168 is made fairly easily, four wickets down and three overs to spare. Unlike the rest of the test on this last day it’s like watching men and boys, or Nyren’s XI thrashing the twentytwo of Muddleshire, or Ashford, a village near Bakewell, taking on Derbyshire for their annual charity game to raise cash for a new pavilion – a few good hits, loss of wickets but the difference in approach is palpable.

That's history and a charity match. This is the Ashes.

A View From The Bridge
All is fine.
No reefs, hidden sounds, rip-tides, storms, fogs
or unanticipated conditions,
the sea a milkpond mirror,
the final day an easy cruise ahead.
Too easy. Captain and crew conspire
to foul propellors, drift off-course,
lose way, take incorrect bearings
till the SS Five Day Draw
is dead in the water,
listing badly,
holed below the waterline,
leak pouring in, pumps unable to cope,
doomed for the depths.
Aussie destroyers race from their stations,
each lacing boundary a torpedo
to dispatch the hulk to the bottom
with all due speed and efficiency,
leaving survivors to fend for themselves.

England seem come-day, go-day, Australia ruthless. That's what hurts; everyone, fans, journalists, players who support England. The lack of professional acumen. I wrote that Adelaide Oval is so achingly beautiful you wouldn't mind watching your team lose there. That is, if they played to the standard befitting their and the ground's stature. If not, it hurts, and hurts bad, extra bad. Truth is beauty and beauty is truth, as Keats wrote, and England lost ugly today.

I’m angry, livid, bloody livid. I can’t remember seeing England bat so badly, although another supporter says they were as poor losing twice in Pakistan this time last year. All the supporters feel the same. This talk is called hubris, but a more exact term to sum up England fans, supporters and doubtless the team's feelings is XXXX, and not a reference to a Queensland beer.
Of course the Aussies fans love it. Even the Germans in the hostel say ‘Zwei-Nul’ (and the German cricket correspondent’s summing up of England’s batting performance ‘unmöglichisher schlecht’ – unbelievably bad. Let’s face it, it was about as poor as England’s inept display losing to Norway in the 1990 World Cup qualifiers:-

Captain Cook, W G Grace, Wilfred Rhodes, Hobbs and Sutcliffe, Percy Chapman, Wally Hammond, Douglas Jardine, Harold Larwood, Hedley Verity, Alec Bedser, Godfrey Evans, Sir Len Hutton, Jim Laker, Fred Truman, Ken Barrington, Ray Illingworth, John Snow, Derek Randall, Mike Brearley, Ian Botham, Bob Willis, Mike Atherton, Phil Tufnell and Dickie Bird,
Your boys took one hell of a beating.

Two Boxing Days ago I watched Coventry lose 3-1 to Leeds at home. It was the worst performance from the Sky Blues I’ve had the misfortune to witness, and there have been some X-rated shockers. Enough that if someone published Coventry City – The Fifty Worst Games it’d be a sell-out, and fans would argue its selection. The 3-1 Leeds game was the worst because not only were the team clueless, they weren’t even trying hard. No dedication or application. Manager Reid resigned straight afterwards.

England’s batting this morning in Adelaide made me feel the same, if anything worse, since they are more immeasurably more talented than Coventry, and had applied themselves well to the task at hand in the first innings. Forget the tissues, naughty boy nets, they need to queue up to give each other a bloody good kick up the arse first thing, otherwise this will be the longest of tours with the shortest itinerary for themselves and their fans.

England Expects Every Man To Do Their Duty
The ground should be empty, dead,
Everyone gone, the last hour not taken;
England have batted out their draw.
The only Aussies remaining,
Paid to stay behind, clear up the mess,
The rubbish, plastic beakers and pie-wrappers,
Dross. They do a good professional job for little reward.
Two teams already gone, ready to go on to Perth,
Adelaide rush hour stuffed with traffic going home
To comment and criticism restricted to the pitch.
The ground is full, the CBD deserted,
England's collapse mimics Jessop's prowess
To empty offices. As wickets tumble
To false shots that'd earn official rebuke
in the workplace, Aussie workers scent blood.
Precious little work done this afternoon,
Collars and ties outweigh t-shirts and shorts
as gleeful witness the inevitable loss
four wickets delay. Englanders are so angry
no sorrow and little respect remains
for players who failed to play professionally.
They need to stay behind, clear up the mess
they created in each of our hearts and their own.

Adelaide Day Four Anticipation

2006-12-04T21:01:00.000+10:00

Trekking along the Torrens on my way to the ground I overtake an elderly English couple with MCC straw hat (him) and matching cushions (her). She speeds up to overtake me. 'No need to rush,' I say 'You'll get in before the start of play.' 'I want to soak in some of the atmosphere.' I look up from the Torrens to the teeming thousands crossing the Adelaide Bridge. That is the atmosphere, I think, and in your rush to get into the ground you're missing it.

I catch up with her catching her breath at the start of the bridge. 'He's a little way behind,' I say. She doesn't reply, but her eyes speak volumes. We both know she's lying. This has nothing to do with soaking up atmosphere but making a point in their marriage. He's significantly frailer than her and couldn't keep up however hard he tried. I guess they had their tiff back in the hotel, and whatever the right and wrongs of it, she intends to wreak revenge. Maybe he lorded over her (the MCC pun is intentional) for most of their marriage, rather like as a kid our dog Bob and cat Pap before Bob bust his leg and Pap taunted him. So what. These are people who've travelled halfway round the world to be together, and she behaves like a spoilt child and bully.

I'm angry. Not just at her behaviour, but their relationship. Why couldn't they talk to each other to sort it out, rather than extend and deepen the difficulties in their relationship through lack of acknowledgement. Too often the English only express emotions through their denial.

Australians don't really mind. You can more or less sit where you like in a ground provided you don't try to sit on top of someone else. Even at the Gabba where the police would eject you for standing up and yelling, you could move around more or less where you fancied. It makes a lot of sense. Do you want to sit in the sun or the shade all day? You can socialise, take different angles on and off the paddock. In England, even if you know the person sitting next to you for more than a generation, if you're sitting in the 'wrong' seat, you both have to get up, shuffle across blankets, mustard pots, hot-water bottles, feet-warmers and dyhydrated Wisdens, so you're sitting in the 'right' seat. Social order isn't threatened, and Britain is great again. I imagine the MCC couple have this argument in bed as well as at the ground, assuming they share the same bed.

The cricket is slow and absorbing. For the first hour England seek a breakthorough to the tail end of Australia, while Clarke and Gilchrist, playing for place and form, survive and score with luck and skill in equal measure. After the interval the Barmy Army start up for the first time in earnest, but it's too late. Australia have saved the follow-on with Gilchrist depositing a long-handled fifty in the bank. The long-handle (holding the bat at the top rather than the bottom for greater leverage) the urge to get forward and fearlessly going arial, makes me think this is a latter-day left-handed Gilbert Jessop, aka The Croucher, aka The Office Emptier. Once too often Gillie smacks Gilo down Bellie's throat (if Bellies can have throats) - Gilchrist ct Bell b Giles 64.

After lunch Clarke and Warne kill off the game. The pitch is the only winner. Australia pass five hundred and England’s second innings starts at the end of the fourth day, more or less even stephens. Matthew Hoggard is a Hercules from Yorkshire taking 7 for 109, the second best ever by an Englishman at Adelaide. (The best is Farmer White of Hampshire in the 1929 Test described in yesterday’s poem.)

Hoggard
At times it must be like climbing onto the moors,
dog tugging the lead when mists and ran come down.
Hard to see, know where you are,
stumbling into rocks, bogs, uncertain of paths
that could lead to nowhere or circles,
worried you'll be out here beyond nightfall.
Whatever you do the elements take their toll,
sap the spirit till it seems easier to give up
than go on. The familiar world twists cruelly strange.
You climb each hill, break its back before
it breaks yours, seven times
for one hundred and nine long runs, dogged
against these hounds you never let off the leash.

Was this what to be anticipated before the start of play?

River Crossing
From the Torrens I see thousands teem across Adelaide Bridge
All on their way to the Oval for cricket.
In other times it might be a rock concert
Or refugees fleeing a heartless enemy.
But this is cricket, two sides joining together
to cros a river, its waters placid
to the burbling viaduct of soles above.
I shall join them soon, become one of many,
Another anonymous ticketed ripple
Pouring into the Oval, filling it to the brim
Around about the start of play.
Lock-keepers inspect our holds for proscribed cargoes
Against clearly marked manifests.
We pass through, jostling gates
For the bridge to fall quiet as the river it spans.
At the far end of the day, bails lifted
Pulls the plug on our seats and we stream out,
No locks or gates to bar our progress.
Were the hopes and fears ferried inside our holds
Ever realised? Why else teem across the Adelaide Bridge.

Adelaide Day Three - Reassertion

2006-12-03T23:38:00.001+10:00

Day Three - reassertion

Just as I fire up my palm-top Hoggard fires out Hayden caught behind 2 for 35, or 35 for 2. Whichever way you look at it, needing 352 just to avoid the follow-on, Australia are starting to stare down the barrel.

Last session Hoggard wore a black armband, in memory of the first person he got out, who died this week. This morning I received an e-mail from my twin-brother to say our last surviving aunt has passed away - doubt if she ever watched a cricket game in her life, but there is a sense of the eternal in cricket which in some strange way helps the living come to terms with the mortal loss of those we love.

Adelaide is also like an England ground in that the crowd fall quiet with each ball. At the Gabba, however taut the state of play (admittedly England were bandjaxed) there was always a burble of chatter, like the cicadas in the park, almost regardless of the passage of play or people.

Sandwiches. I'm staying at My Place, a backpacker's hostel on Waymouth Street. I'm about twice as old as anyone else there, and I'm not sure what they make of me. One lad came in late last night well oiled and asked about poetry. I think the English have to be drunk to talk literature with writers. He was impressed by the Collingwood poem of two days ago, but wanted some rhymes with a vulgar term to apply to Shane Warne. 'Front,' I thought, 'which he has and you haven't.'

Sandwiches. The Aussies just bring themselves to a match. The English always bring sandwiches to the cricket. The packed lunch, thermos flask of tea or coffee, possibly both, umbrellas, plastic mackintoshes, blankets, newspapers and books to read, and when they finally sit themselves down, get comfortable to start to watch the rain fall on the covers, they say 'Oh dash it, dear, we forgot to pack the English mustard to go with the pork pies. We will have to make do with the French.' This morning I was making my sarnies along with another English bloke (we're outnumbered about two to one by Germans, no idea why) It took me back forty-five years.

My twin-brother and I used to go and watch county cricket at Cheltenham College. The Cheltenham Festival, years before the term was borrowed then usurped by the arty-farty literarti. In the morning we'd go to one of the first supermarket chains in England, suitably named Finefare, buy the makings for lunch, prepare sandwiches - egg and tomato my favourite, luncheon meat a very poor second, and set off again. In a way I'm still doing much the same - it's just 12,000 rather than a mile to the grounds. Learning something new, asserting the right to experience other worlds.

Martyn won't be doing that for a while after edging Hoggard to Bell. The rifling inside the barrel is visible in the whites of the Australian eyes when Giles drops a Ponting hook at deep square leg.....

Catches Win Matches
I swear I saw it come straight off the bat
A small red dot growing to fill the sky
and ready myself to hold its descent,
feet well apart, steady, hand-eye practiced
co-ordination triggered to make the catch.
Arms above my head, a high-board
diver sure to end the ball's spin, tuck
and revolutions with a perfect re-entry
to soft sweatless cushioned plams. Welcome
a mob of celebration. Mates stare. I dropped it.
I don't see how. A safe pair of hands,
maybe I lost it coming out of the stands,
the red and white flags of Saint George
a dragon of distraction that swallowed
opportunity in a fiery display of Engerland.

Profit from your opponents errors is a basic tenet of playing cricket. Ponting and Hussey do just that. From 65 for 3 to the Poms to 3 for 185 at tea is steering the game to a draw. Mount Adelaide at 551 seems an easier climb than Mount Gabba.

Australia even win the tea-break.

The Real Thing
At tea Team Boony and Team Beefy
contest the Battle of The ´Tasches.
A relay race to pad up, run away
and back again. As close to reality
as a rhyme is to fidelity.
None watch curatorial staff
re-line the crease, tend the pitch;
nor they us, the throng critical of players
once they resume the damning area.

After tea Ponting and Hussey continue their reprise of Collingwood and Pietersen. Score just gone to 236, the nearest to a wicket a run-out which takes the length of a spinners over for the third umpire to adjudicate. Juries can make decisions quicker, and it all adds to the suspense, the entire world inside the ground glued to the replay screen. Nine wickets and 789 runs in nearly two days play indicates the pitch might slightly over-favour the batsman, even if Ponting normally doesn't need luck. The writing on the wall is a draw, and another wicket doesn't fall before stumps, (new ball almost due) you can start to chiesel D R A W in stone.

With the new ball Hoggard knocks the mawl from the mason’s hands. Two quick wickets, Ponting and Hussey, and the day ends Australia 312-5. Both sides would have accepted that at start of play. I think Australia have done better than England, Australians vice-versa. Hoggard’s done well. Four wickets out of five. He started in mourning. Perhaps we should commemorate the dead by celebrating their lives. The 1928-9 Ashes series was timeless, in both senses of the word...

Day of The Dead

on the occasion of the 8th Baggy Green Dinner, Saturday 2nd December, 2007 Adelaide and in commemoration of the Fourth Test 1929

Seven days hard yakka, they rise from the Ashes,
individual heroes all in teams to test their
undivided mettle. Close finish at the close,
seven days hard yakka, still they rise for the occasion.

We worship the memory, the more their breaths are done
short or long in the field, Jackson to Bradman,
White to Hammond, all eleven of each side
split by just a dozen runs after seven days hard yakka

in a field near a river watched by many,
attended by empire from a different era,
depression and bodyline still to come,
Adelaide will always welcome its heroes

whose ghostly boot-sprigs clatter down
and up pavilion steps. Some quick, some slow,
some two at a time, some quiet, near funereal,
a tattoo as sure as any scorecard of exploits

to become players of today. You may say
they do not bear compare with yesteryears’
titans, god-bestowed elegance of performance
to mist over the grind of seven days hard yakka.

Turn for confirmation and you shall hear nothing.
Nothing from them, for other matters call
at the end of their days, boots, bats, pads,
sweated armoury, undone yet not yet stowed away,

half-abandoned, stranded in an unwashed canvas
of labour against dressing room tiers
bear witness to these invisible spectres
off to share a few cool ones with posterity they created.

Adelaide Day Two Record Breakers

2006-12-03T09:20:00.000+10:00

It is a very English morning, I'm still wearing jacket and jeans as the sun just starts to come out after lunch.

Happy Birthday To You, Mr President

a cool morning’s start. blustery,
overcast, almost a two sweater day,
Collingwood’s very English century
made in very English conditions

i’ve come from the fun of the eighteenth
Test Match Brekkie. seven hundred in a room
Without views ending with scantily
clad New York, New York, all for charity

no charity here. Pietersen
laces McGrath’s first for three fours.
no back-handers or deceits however political
each bound to be found out for what they are
in these most English of conditions.

Queing for a warm drink - it's that cold, I fall into conversation with a woman from the hills, as she puts it, the Barrosa wine growing country. She's not a big sports fan, here with the family to fetch coffees, coats...I explain my game with words and poetry - 'oh, I like poetry - I'll take a look at the website.' I guess she's the sort of person Ashes Poetry is also aimed at - you don't have to a be cricket fiend to enjoy cricket poetry.

With this cold weather I run the risk of Serious Cricket Watchers Neck. A repetitive strain injury caused by turning from the field of play to the replay screen for a particular minutae of action. In this instance a near edge of Pietersen off Lee. In the end the snickometer is indeterminate, so I guess the pen is edgier than the blade, even when facing Glen McGrath today. Slowly but remorselessly they bat through towards the interval. It’s as though England have taken control of the weather, the skies about the ground, as well as the game itself. Just before lunch Clarke replaces Clark but still Australia can't bring England to account.

After lunch the sun comes out but still England murder the Australian attack till it almost becomes an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms like military intelligence or an adequate supply of alcohol. Collingwood and Pietersen put on 310, before Collingwood is out for 206, both all time Ashes records for Adelaide.

The ground doesn’t seem to mind. It’s so achingly beautiful at times, you wouldn’t be too upset if your own team went down their elegant drains here. At the drinks interval the Gatorade trolley looks way out of place, an interloper on tradition and custom. It’s not just me who doesn’t like it. The ground holds it in comtempt.

Here’s a riddle …

What’s the difference between the Gatorade Trolley and the Aussie attack?

Both trundle onto the pitch to refresh England’s batsmen but the wheels haven’t come off the Gatorade Trolley.

Finally England declare at 581, just in time for blacksmith Flintoff to fire out Langer. I go to read at the South Australian Cricket Association Historian’s Baggie Green dinner in a very happy English frame of mind (which explains the relative shortness of this report.) I even manage to get one of the quiz questions right (Who played a single Ashes test match and soccer for Manchester United – Arnie Sidebottom) I also appreciate how cricket has a huge and varied love, perhaps more than any other game.

Record Heart Breakers

big tough antipodean arms,
sheep reivers, drove men used to labour,
held firm across broad chests,
hill people down for the day.

in silence they watch the Southern Cross
suffer. they eschew 3 blow-up fingers
to say Go Australia. they are australia.

jets cross the wicket, spectators
instructed how to inflate life-jackets
in case of emergencies. hill people
eyes remain motionless. fielders
motion to each other
across the paddock.

not waving but drowning

Adelaide Day One Disneyland

2006-12-01T18:48:00.000+10:00

If The Gabba was the Strineship Enterprise, then the Adelaide Oval is The Way We Used to Be. Never saw a drop of paint (or rain) at The Gabba. Adelaide is an all pastel colour card from Dulux. George Giffin Umbra, for those who prefer a richer shade of terra cotta. Colonade cream, deeper than mimosa, more subtle than primose, and Clem Hill pagoda pink, far better than a busted flush dodgy prawn. The SACA Adelaide Range, ideal décor for house and home.

It's a fairy-land ground:-

The Adelaide Oval

- 1st December 2006 If you've not seen it for yourself
think Worcester New Road, the view
across the River Severn, Torrens,
sun catching the water in its safe
hands, cathedral behind, an inspiring
article of sporting faith,
then add some. Disneyland
which folk round here rate England's chances
between slim and Buckley's

We shall see, shan't we?

England start well. Freddie Flintoff wins the toss and elects to bat. Which means England can't follow on, or kick off with a wide.

The morning session goes into a time-warp. 1950s, rationing just over, runs scored at marginally above two runs an over. Strauss and Clarke aren't quite Noddy Pullar and Bob Barber, Brett Lee not quite Ray Lindwall but Glen McGrath is Glen McGrath. England should have picked two spinners, even if a 1950s MCC touring side would never have selected a turban-wearing Sikh from Luton called Panasar. How many more wickets would Warne have taken in Australia had he started in the 50s, with eight ball overs all the harder to escape from?

Stuart Clark hauls us all back to reality with two quick wickets. Ian Bell faces his Jeremiah Nemesis, aka Shane Warne. You feel sorry for him. He tries to do everything so correctly yet Warnie makes him look a complete mug.

The Wizard of Warne

We're off to see the wizard,
a wonderful wizard called Warne.
A spell-binding trickster of wrong-uns,
never one better for hair-loss in Oz.
He'll pluck England's Bell
like a rabbit from a hat;
sooner or later it's ring-a-ding-ding,
stumped, bowled, lb, caught HowZat!

The Adelaide Oval is made for Quidditch, and Warne would wipe the floor with Harry Potter. If Bell survives, will we feel sorry for Shaney?

A very English thing to feel, amidst very English conditions: clouds, a hint of rain just after lunch, 'That's early,' says the Australian, who's next to me, with his stone-deaf dad which makes me think how important websites are to those who can't hear. England still play a very English game of gradually placing themselves on top, recovering honour, dignity and position, like Wellington at Waterloo in the face of the Old Guard.

From Barmy HQ, mentioned in dispatches
Mr Collingwood and Mr Bell
We think you've done rather well.
Two fifties on the stroke of tea
Suffices to retard their victory
March to the Promised Land
Of Ashes Regained,
While they may well be in retreat
Once Mr Pietersen takes a hand.

Sure enough, by end of play Pietersen is past sixty and Collingwood two shy of a century

Paul Collingwood -

98 not out overnight

I shan't get out to this man,
It's not just I'm English and he's Australian,
I shan't get out to this man.
It's not just he's done me too often before,
(last match a century in reach, just needing a four)
It's hard enough to hit the ball, never mind score,
I shan't get out to this man.
Earplug his incessant chatter,
concentrate on being a batter.
But don't get too clever, over after over
I shan't get out to this man.

Even if I reach fifty or more,
will I ever feel secure?
Australia's most venomous creature
spits and coils with every ball,
I shan't get out to this man.
Bones soak under a long hot shower,
having defended hour after hour.
The splash of water reechoes the mantra,
I shan't get out to this man.

Just in case you think I'm going all sepia-tinted, I entered through the Victor Richardson gates, one of South Australia's favourite sons, and grand-dad to Ian and Greg Chappell, two chips off the old block.

At the boiling point of the 1932-3 bodyline series, it is said when Douglas Jardine complained to the Australian dressing room about one of the Green Baggies using distinctly uncricketing language to his arch fast bowler Harold Larwood, dear old Vic replied

'Right you bastards, this bastard wants to know which of you bastards called their bastard a bastard.'

It is hard to find anything more effectively and poetically put in cricket or the greater world.

Adelaide Day One - work in progress

2006-12-01T09:57:00.000+10:00

At stumps 367 for seven, regardless of the toss they're just about to make

Walking on the other side of the river this morning brought first site of the Adelaide Oval:-

If you've not seen it for yourself
think Worcester New Road, the view
across the River Severn, Torrens,
sun catching the water in its safe hands,
cathedral behind, an inspiring
article of sporting faith,
then add some. Disneyland
which folk round here rate England
's chances between slim and Buckley's
We shall see, shan't we.

Freddie's just won the toss, and surprise, surprise, elected to bat.

O Captain Ricky Ponting

tune The Grand Old Duke f York (traditional)

O Captain Ricky Ponting
Went out and bought a box
To see eye-to-eye with Captain Freddie
When they strolled out to toss.

And when he was up, he was up,
And when he was down, he was down,
And when he was neither up nor down
With each toss he was still lost.

Brisbane Day 5 Losing It

2006-11-28T01:23:00.000+10:00

The rain never came. Instead it was all over before lunch, defeated by nearly three hundred runs. That is a heavy loss, and it will be hard to pick up and go on from there. (But not nearly so hard as a three day massacre, the likely outcome had Ponting enforced the follow-on.)

For me the day started so well, a seat high up and straight behind the bowler’s arm. This is how I like to watch cricket, down the wicket, tracking the slightest deviation of line, length, angle and seam. Truth be told I’m not much of a shouter; when the opposition chant at Coventry ‘You’re not singing anymore,’ it’s true of me at least, because I wasn’t singing in the first place. As a founder member of the Serious Cricket Watchers’ Association the only sound you’ll ever get from me is polite applause, sssshhhh of vacuum flask or tupperwear sandwich box opening or head nodding asleep in the late afternoon.

England’s day starts well too. The Barmy Army, the legendary legion of English fans, so far split up by the ticketing arrangements, are in one cohort, a phalanx of support for their beleagured team. Four days of dispersal, unable to give clarion voice to their desire, is now over. They are one and make the most of it.

“We are the Army, the Barmy Army,
We are mental, and we are mad”

A new song, to the tune of You Are My Sunshine, and it fills every corner of the Gabba. You would think this was England, and England about to win. Had they been able to sit as one throughout the game it would have provided a tremendous psychological advantage. You don’t outdo the home support, do you?

For half-an-hour, never mind some corner of some foreign field being forever England, all Australia seems to be. Instead of being thrown out for standing up for their country, as may well have happened on the previous four days, they fill the replay screen at the ground and doubtless tvs throughout the continent, not to mention back home in England. It’s terrific. The Aussies love it. Even Brett Lee their fastest fast bowler, fielding at the boundary’s edge in front of them, shakes his hips to the rhythm.

It brings to mind Siegfried Sasssoon’s famous poem, of men marching to war and death. Everyone Sang – set by the late lamented jazz composer Neil Ardley a couple of years ago to be sung by the Bakewell Choral Society.

Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.
Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away . . . O, but EveryoneWas a bird; and
the song was wordless; the singing will never be done

The silence in the Gabba as the Barmy Army drew breath was sepulchral.

On the pitch it was pretty well over before the singing begun. Fourth ball of the day Pietersen hit Lee down Martyn’s throat at midwicket. The Fat Lady might have started to think about singing but she was drowned out by The Barmy Army.

Where do we go from here? The obvious answer is Adelaide, and I leave Brisbane behind hardly feeling I know the place.

Friendly but sharp, I’d call it. For me the contest started last Tuesday at Brisbane International Airport. Feet poised to tread on Australian soil, the customs officer asked

‘Come for the cricket? Packed plenty of tissues?’
‘Why no,’ I replied. ‘Sorry, but didn’t have you lot down as cry-babies.’

I’m lucky. As a poet I can take a dispassionate view, be detached from the hurt of losing that other English supporters inevitably feel beneath the shadow of Mount Gabba, their team falling 277 short of its summit. Of course the Australians lost last year, and maybe the impact of that had been forgotten in the lauding of the English team since then.

The Final Ball

five days hard cricket
pretty well going to plan
every run and every wicket
charts our course set on victory

no thought of commiseration
just a job well done
the emptiness of loss
is all too hard to bear
winning hard enough
but losing’s just begun

Brisbane Estimates

2006-11-27T03:23:00.000+10:00

At no little effort Ashes Poetry has installed the highly expensive and wonderously temperamental but surprisingly semi-accurate End of Play Guesstimator. On the first day it got within two runs of the final score, without knowing who was to bat, and the overestimation of wickets was probably due to inbuilt Pommerisation bias as was the over-estimation of runs on the second day. The third day estimate did not factor in green baggie dust-grinding. Disciplinary recalibration has now been completed by Professor Fiffle-faffle of the University of Bent, which gave a fairly close estimate for the end of Day 4.

These results are tabulated below, and have been used by the University of Bent's Department of Sporting Clairvoyance to add additionality to the additions:-

Day One Stumps 7 for 348 - not sure who to - actually 3 for 346, close with the runs at least
Day Two Stumps 174 for 3 - am sure who to, needing around 300 to avoid the follow-on - actually 53 for 3 a 'slight' overestimation of runs scored and required

Day Three Stumps 84 for 2 - still in with a chance in the dog-house actually 181 for 1 but 84 for 2 would've have been slow yet not too bad had England followed on

Day Four Stumps 242 for 3 - the Greatest Escape since Moses split the sea and led the chosen people from Egypt still on. Actually 293 f0r 5, England would prefer my estimate but may still do it with a spot of rain.

Professor Fiffle-Faffle has finished fiddling with his knobs to include cultural and climatic conditions in search of unerring accuracy - the End of Play Guestimator, the Hawkeye of Crystal Balls.

Day Five Estimates

End of Play Guestimator set at maximum Strine 310 all out before first drinks break.
End of Play Guestimator set at maximum Pom 648 for nine winning by one run and no balls to spare.
End of Play Guestimator set at maximum romance 647 all out on last ball match tied.
End of Play Guestimator set at maximum realism 404 all out 37 minutes after lunch.
England fell 37 runs short of being realistic
End of Play Guestimator set at maximum precipitation - rain stops play for the day with England nine down and still needing at least a session or two hundred to save the match.

Invited to discuss following on about invitations to follow on, the learned and august Professor does not believe that the Ponting Factor - batting way past your bedtime and the point of reason - can be mathematically modelled, but like Fermat's Final Theorem it has yet to be proven it can't be.

Oh yes, the poetry. I'm still saving Mr Bowden regrets to say he won't be raising his finger today for the great England fightback as told in The Ascent of Mount Gabba 1 & 2

Brisbane Day 4 Fight Back

2006-11-27T03:00:00.000+10:00

Each day I aim to get here early to soak up the atmosphere and sun block, and each day for a variety of reasons I arrive a little later. Tomorrow will be different. I aim to have breakfast in the City Park café which beats grabbing a latte from the ground. There's a bit of confusion as someone takes the latte I've paid for. 'It's going to be a long old day,' I say. 'Yes, and it's only just beginning.' All England hopes exactly that, the longest day they'll remember.

Pointing has just made it shorter, by batting on. Conspiracy theorists would have it that the decision not to invite the follow-on wasn't made by the captain, nor indeed the manager, John 'Chinese Lessons of War' Buchanan, but by Cricket Australia itself. "Punter, thrash the bastards, but don't do it in three days, it'll cost us millions."

Maybe not. For some strange reason, possibly due to some obscure interpretation of an obscure Chinese lesson of war, or possibly fear of Indians, Red or Asian, the Punter bats on, running the risk that in burying the Poms so far underground, that they might be able to bat their way through the centre of the earth to safety back to England. Talking of which this could Ponting's worst decision since inserting England at Edgbaston to lose by two runs four innings later.

Last night the film The Hill came to mind. Sidney Lumet’s great black and white 1965 movie about a British Army punishment camp. Soldiers have to dig up earth from one side of the hill run up and down it carrying what they’ve dug up, to deposit it on the other side. Then reverse the process. The hill never gets bigger or smaller, just moves about a bit as the soldiers wear themselves out. This is what England had done yesterday. They started about six hundred behind and finished about six hundred behind but with one innings less. Mount Gabba intimidates from all angles, camera or otherwise.

Not when Ricky bats on. You sense a different feel in the England team. Hoggard starts with a maiden. They stand more proud. They feel insulted. Being asked to make six hundred odd is bad enough, to see the Australians’ bat on goes against their pride. ‘You’re having a laugh, aren’t you?’ they must be thinking. Yet at the same time, it makes their task half-an-hour easier. And there is rain.

Andy and I met up on the first day. ‘You’re a Coventry City fan,’ I said, clocking the small Coventry elephant on his top. ‘So am I.’ We don’t talk too much soccer, just as City don’t play that much either. I mention the chap who came to sit by me at the hotel computers before breakfast while I was printing out some drafts (I do plan and check this stuff)
‘Oh hell,’ he says.
‘What’s wrong.’
‘QPR lost.’
‘Sorry to hear it. I support Coventry.’

Who beat QPR. Andy and I agree that as omens go this takes some beating. If only we had Iron Man George Curtis going in ahead of the tail. Andy figures it could pour down and his wife knows a rain doctor in Jakata. ‘Text her to tell him to hurry it up. No use on Tuesday, when the game’s finished.’ I text the Klingon battle fleet to holds fire. We’re not putting all our eggs in one basket.

Twenty minutes later Langer has a century and Ponting declares.

Mount Gabba now officially stands at 654 runs or 690 minutes above sea-level If Ponting hadn’t batted on, it’d have been half-an-hour more daunting, possibly the difference between rescue and dying of frost-bite.

England bat well. Alistair Cook looks especially assured. People say he’s not a stylist, but you can see his elbow is always over the ball at point of contact which is a pleasure to watch. Warne gets him bat and pad. He probably does Collingwood with his Chatter. Warne of a thousand deliveries; leg–break, googly, top-spinner, zipper, zooter, flipper and now the Chatter, where he talks himself into a wicket. This time suggesting to Collingwood that he’s just four to his century, and not yet gone down the track to Shane. Collingwood does and is stumped by a country mile. If you’re looking for literary precedents for Warne go to Baccus and the Artful Dodger.

Till then England almost feel like they could do it. They’ve quietened the crowd, far less aggro than yesterday. Their task now becomes similar to crowd volley ball. The aim is to get into the top tier of a stand, where not only is gravity against you, but also that each tier is more raked than the one below. England need to reach the top tier, they are nudging second, but each time a wicket falls, or the blow up ball confiscated by the police, they start again at the bottom. They have ten to begin with and Collingwood’s dismissal leaves Six ‘Balls’ or wickets left.

Pietersen holds back. No trying to smash the ball into the top tiers. My jig

Warnie’s balls turn square, KP hits ’em in the air.
A six or out, there is no doubt.
You get a funny feeling one side’ll be reeling
Ev’ry time Warnie’s balls turn square.

fails to work. Warnie’s balls don’t turn square, and KP doesn’t hit them in the air. Hard to when they’re speared defensively down leg-side. ‘Hey, Warnie, bowl him something he can hit - you’re not Ashley Giles,’ someone should shout out. So I do.

Flintoff disobeys our prayers. Holes out going for the big one against Shane

and smite Warne mightily all your slog-swept sixes
as Warnie smites those who trespass against him.
But heed us when close to temptation
and shield the Ashes from evil:

He hangs his head as soon as it goes up. He should have read the message on the scoreboard from Griffiths University. ‘Get smarter’

With the last two recognised batsmen at the crease, (no disrespect, Ashley) we need rain.

The Lap Of The Gods

Andy’s on the blower to his missus in Jakata
To accelerate the thunder due tomorrow afternoon.
She knows a rain doctor who dries out golf courses
To pilot this bad weather which can’t come too soon.

The Barmy Army take the Gabba with gamps and umbrellas
To make the most of Ricky Ponting batting way past his bedtime.
Queensland and England desperately need precipitation,
State and nation rest all on the imminent arrival of their Cloud Nine.

Brisbane Day 3 Getting away with it

2006-11-26T03:44:00.000+10:00

English might feel agrieved. According to Hawkeye, Pietersen wasn' t lbw, and Flintoff was caught off a no-ball. Australia is a place where you can't get away with anything. Not even if you are Hawkeye Pietersen, the svelte scout from the velt. (Hawkeye is the name for a laser interpolation system that predicts if a batsman was LBW as well as offside.)

Yesterday I was on tv twice. Already mentioned the ITN Lords Prayer for Flintoff and England, and by God, how they need it. Just beforehand a steward kindly asked me to move a small bottle of water from the edge of the aisle. It had been caught on security camera, and they'd asked him to ask me to move it. You can't get away with anything in Australia.

Maybe that's why they love their Warnie. The mythological larrakin lad following in the line from Ned Kelly onwards. Those who have broken the rules and got away with it. Even the jolly swagman of Waltzing Matilda shot three state troopers. Shane's different. Not just the sheer range of proscribed behaviours – drugs, infidility, and the ultimate male omerta, baldness. Shane's still alive. Ned Kelly was a good-for-nothing, ne'er do well, robbing, thieving murdering swine till they shot him. So he didn't get away with it. Australia recreated him as a means to rebel safely against itself - an essential sub-text to Peter Carey's novel about Kelly.

Only this time Shane isn't going to get away with it. 'He likes this ground,' an Aussie tells me as Strauss and Clarke come proudly out to bat for the first time. 'Never taken less than six wickets in a Gabba test.'

Don't bet on it. Warnie may not be called upon. McGrath 6, Clark 3 and Lee 1, did the necessaries as England undid themselves to reach 157 all out. With Giles ending it all with a distress flare of a skier they’d barely clambered quarter the way up Mount Gabba. Only Ian Bell stood firm, resolute and skilled against the numbing accuracy of Old Glenda.

Glen McGrath
Can’t quite reach ninety miles an hour
No worries. Where he puts it is
Their top order’s nemesis

Ian Bell
What the hell
Has long lost the habit
Of being a baby-faced rabbit

If Aussies can't get away with it, foreigners certainly can't. Instead of inviting – such coyly false politeness in the term - “Excuse me, Frederick, old chap, would you mind awfully”- to go back to Mount Gabba 445 runs still to climb, the Punter chooses to bat on. Mount Gabba is about to grow even higher before our eyes.

You can see why.

Ashes to Ashes, dust to dust. This is something else. It grinds the dust into dust till there is nothing left, not even dust. Nothing for England to cling on to. You can’t get away with it in Australia; you can’t break the rules. And rule one is the Ashes are Australia’s. The Green Baggies set about squeezing Freddie’s men back into the 4¼inch high urn. Each additional run doesn’t just screw down the nails already banged in on the coffin lid, but bury it so far underground, deep beneath the mantel of the earth crust. Teams can come back from the dead, but only after banging on the coffin lid and tunnelling their way back through miles of rock to reach the surface.

It could just back-fire. Not through rain – something England and Queensland both pray for, since the State is in one of the worst droughts ever, now up to Level Four water restrictions, the fountains in Brisbane long since dried up and the fruit crops decimated. No, just when the three English lion’s claws have been so worn they couldn’t cling onto anything, hope is in the main. I can reveal exclusively, dear readers, the secret treaty signed between perfidious Albion and the Klingon Nation, that in deep in the stars above where Captain Kirk boldly went to split infinitives where no infinitives had been split before, the Klingon Battlefleet is warp-factor hyperdriving its way to Mount Gabba, the Strineship Enterprise a sacrificial lamb to imperial domination.

Don’t think even that will save this game, if not the Ashes. The cricket becomes, to put it in one word, boring. The lack of contest as Australia set about earth-moving Mount Gabba back to its former height and beyond does not enthrall. There is one moment of competitive interest. England give away four overthrows. Ponting looks at the ball hurtled by English hand to the boundary in a way their bats singularly failed to do earlier, and claps his glove against his bat in harsh public irony. It’s rare a bat sledges a whole nation so eloquently and effectively.

Even the crowd get restless. The Aussies love their inflatables. Perhaps even more than stuffing the Poms, since it’s something everyone can join in on, even the police. We’ve already had the Gatorade reject sperm donator drinks trolley from Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Too Afraid To Ask, today being Saturday, we see the Giant Milo Tin in support of kids’ Kwik Cricket (Milo is a popular milk shake, not Milo Mindbender from Catch-22) and two twenty foot high cricket balls race each other on the outfield during the tea interval, one called Beefy and the other Boony, in support of Victoria Breweries – no one in Australia drinks tea in the tea interval of a cricket match. (Someone is said to have tried it in a more genteel part of Melbourne last century, but it didn’t catch on.)

In response the crowd bounce giant beach balls between themselves – this is also the nation which bought you beach volley ball as an Olympic Sport. The rules of cricket volley ball are simple, keep the ball in the air but if it goes out of the seating area the police get to keep it. Near us a group go too far. Instead of a ball, they have a ball with an inflatable woman. For some reason this is also against the rules, even though Cricket Australia publicised this series with a thirty foot high Giant Warnie they pumped up and took to England just in case anyone in Australia didn’t happen to know the Ashes were back. (Imagine the FA commissioning a Giant Rooney to take to the Reichstag in Berlin ahead of the World Cup with shops selling out of St George flags and you’ve got the picture.) The police move in. They arrest the inflatable woman who by all accounts refused to give her name, address or any other details and kept her integrity intact under intense scrutiny till one prick too many. She may well return tomorrow disguised as a blow-up policeman.

What do you think? Should Inflatable Sheilas be allowed to watch cricket?
have your say on www.blogbw.net

O yes, the cricket. The Aussies missed one chance. To shout ‘Oi, Flintoff, give the inflatable Sheila a bowl. She’d do better than the lot you’ve got on the park.’ It’s worse than the task of Sisyphus, carrying stones up Mount Gabba only to see them hurled back down again, yet through their efforts to reduce the task the hill gets higher, the climb becomes steeper. At the start of their first innings Mount Gabba was 602 high. It now stands at 629, and England have one innings less to reach safety.

Read all about it in the Ascent of Mount Gabba at the end of the game.

In the meantime in homage to the sixty foot Christmas Tree sweltering in the centre of Brisbane (artificial but curiously not yet inflatable)

On The Third Day of Play (to The Twelve Days of Christmas)

On the third day of play the Gabba gave to me
A blow up babe in custody.

On the third day of play the Gabba gave to me
Two big balls
And a blow up babe in custody.

And so on, till

Twelve crowd ejections
Eleven top selections
Tending to win
Nine tired bowlers
Eight ways in
Seven poms out
Six hundred lead
Five for McGrath
Four tall pylons
Three English Ducks
Two big balls
And a blow up babe in custody

Brisbane Day 2 Didn't quite make it

2006-11-25T02:21:00.000+10:00

New day more pride
But Harmie's started
With another wide

Not me but Paul Herrick - all will be explained. Just let’s say for now, Harmison again put his first ball on a sixpence, the one he left off the cut square yesterday. In relation to the mud of Flanders mentioned previously, he remains consistent, and consistency is all, especially with regards custard.

Entry into the ground was much easier this time. So easy I did it twice in search of Section 49 where I was due to meet Ian Payne and Paul Herrick to do something for ITV viewers. The guy who took my ticket pointed me in the wrong direction which meant going out of the ground again to get it right. We decided to film at lunch, and missed nothing significant as Australia made England toil

Up Against It Australia 4-407 Hussey bowled Flintoff

Each wicket a point on an English chart
Of hopes on a voyage round Australia.
No reefs, storms, rip-tides, sand-bars and currents,
Just a long lonely barren ocean of sweat
In the sun before the next wicket’s fall.

Cool, below decks, thieves plot their destiny

Come lunch England are without a prayer. Ian and Paul gathered a multitude to film while I lead them in worship....

The Lords’ Prayer

Our Freddie, the heart of our eleven,
willowed be thy name.
Thy Century come, thy will be done,
from Perth unto the Gabba.
Bowl each day your daily jaffas
and smite Warne mightily all your slog-swept sixes
as Warnie smites those who trespass against him.
But heed us when close to temptation
and shield the Ashes from evil:
for thine is the century, the fivefor and the glory
for ever and ever.
Amen

It sort of works. In the next session four wickets go down including the avaricious mephistopheles Ponting, 196, lbw Hoggard, when it looked to all intents and purposes that we’d need the frigate, Diamantina shored up on the Brisbane river, to fire out the blighter, but England eventually face six hundred, each four umpire Bowden signals like a farmer attempting to scythe the final daisy which is not quite within reach. The Grim Reaper.

I can imagine Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the Test Match Special Radio commentary box saying ‘England have a real mountain to climb.’

The Ascent of Mount Gabba

Six hundred and two is far more than a stiff climb.
Inside the poms’ dressing room it’s squidgy bum time;
Advance party leave base-camp, equipment checked
Against endless fury they’ll face beyond tent flaps;
Those inside hope against hope they will be some time.
28
Just out of sight, twenty eight steps taken well in hand,
One falls, hooked off a precipice overhung with risk.
28-1
Rescue party sent, immediate slip to slip
Second to second, rescuers can but observe.
28-2
Elements ancient magnificent accuracy
Of dispatch. Furies howl and yell, scenting more blood
42
Not much further on, base camp abandoned, useless
They hold onto each other, forced alone, a fall.
42-3
In the coldness of heat they find purchase enough
To sleep the night amid dreams of their dead.

To be continued on the second day of the Ascent if not beyond.

Chastened we wend our way home back across the Brisbane River, the frigate Diamantina at the Queensland Maritime Museum surrounded by smugly grinning Australians, including the funnels and ventilators of the HMAS Diamantina, in anticipation of unexpected English visitors on the last two days of the test match, having failed to get half-way up Mount Gabba.

But I strike gold on my way home. Never mind Flintoff blowing Jaffas, none of the cafes and convenience stores sell fruit. Woolworths does, by the bucket load. I stock up for my lunches. And if England were to reach the summit of Mount Gabba, these fine Australian products will taste especially sweet.

Brisbane Day 1 Nearly Didn’t Get In

2006-11-24T04:07:00.000+10:00

Wandered out of the hotel just after eight to catch one of the free buses to the ground. Queues the length of Brisbane. Our luck’s in; being with a spread-betting magnate, we find the only vacant cab in town, and rush the rush hour traffic to the ground. Plenty of time to find my seat to soak in the atmosphere and sun-block. No worries.

No such luck. Waiting to go through the turnstiles, a friendly Aussie who knows more than me about Brisbane poetry says ‘Heard of Ross Clark?’ http://www.brisbanewritersfestival.com.au/2003/content/standard_c1.asp?name=Bio_Clark_Ross only to spring from Mark Waugh’s poetic qualities to the prosaic and immutable fact they won’t let me into the ground.

News to me, and thousands of others, since they only changed the rules just ahead of the game. Very carefully back in Blighty I had planned and packed a day bag, to the point of negotiating with Loz, our eleven year old daughter, to take her school bag in exchange for a new one ‘Mine’s too small for all the stuff we have to carry to Lady Manners,’ she says.

Clearly too big for The Gabba, capacity 45,000, and conforming to Cricket Australia The Ashes Down Under Official Travel Guide of Cricket Australia “Coolers, eskies and other belongings must be stored under your seat.” I join another queue to find I have to pay $5 (about two quid) for the privilege of disobeying rules I didn’t know about, or obeying rules I did know about. I wasn’t about to argue; sports fans the world over know you can’t win with sports authorities and there was a queue as long as Brisbane behind me. ‘You wouldn’t happen to have a plastic bag I can take my belongings in with.’
‘No, sorry.’

I’m missing something here which Bill Bryson would have nailed into the bleachers. The reason people carry bags is to carry things inside them. If you take away their bags, that still leaves the things they were carrying – like water, sun-block, not to mention a copy of Kate Grenville’s The Secret River, Man Booker short list from Australia. In other words, the stuff to keep humanity fit and well watching a game. You’d probably probably think ‘Won’t they need a plastic bag to keep those things in, especially as we’re charging them $5 to change the rules without their knowing.’

No, sorry. I look wistfully at the 7-11 across the road with trillions of plastic bags with the queue of Brisbane between them and me. Only connect, as E M Forster said (and Ricky Ponting did.)

Two fans in England shirts decide to get shirty with a whiteshirt bloke with raybans, blue-tooth in one ear, walkie talkie to the other, and The Great Australia Desert in between. ‘It’s in the papers,’ he snarls. True. One line in a copy of The Courier Mail ‘Serving Queensland since 1846’ left in the ground “Spectators also have been warned to arrive at the ground early to clear security and not to take large handbags, backpacks and coolers” Liam Plunkett’s drink-drive incident receives four column inches below another ten about Queensland public servants attending the game, doubtless at the expense of their public.

You can’t win. Sports fans the whole world over are victims, ultimately of themselves. At the end of the day, I retrieved Loz’s old bag and asked how I might complain. ‘Cricket Australia.’ I shall, and advise them to get in touch with The Bakewell Show Committee who are one of the best organisations in the world at running large crowd events over several days.

The Gabba is the future. No pavilion, no ends, an oval with a stretched steel roof, it looks like the Starship Enterprise has landed. ‘It is a cricket ground, Jim, but not as we know it.’ Actually it’s not a cricket ground. It’s a sports arena where they play cricket, football – league and Aussie rules, but not soccer – and what’s more in the middle of the night, when no one’s watching it takes off on stupendous missions throughout the universe…

Stardate 346 for 3. Skipper’s Log Of The StrineShip Enterprise. Our mission? To boldly be more Australian than no Australian’s ever been before.

The real action of the day was before play started. Australia won the toss and Punter Ponting decided to bat, both as a team and for himself.

This is a shirt-front pitch. Not that the first ball of the series hits it. A wide from Harmison which 2nd slip takes. Rueful grins all round.

One ball hits the pads in the first hour, pretty well none for the rest of the day. Still Langer edges just wide so many times, if he were a cat he’d be dead by now.

The swifts swoop down just before each drinks interval, where a gigantic yellow and green plastic monstrosity wheels itself onto the pitch. It’s from America, the Gatorade Carrier. It looks like a cross between a Sino-Soviet Cold War May Day Parade unknown missile device and a prop from Woody Allen’s Every Thing You Want To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask – the scene where Woody plays a reluctant sperm. You don’t get this at Lords, where the members might well have forgotten what sperm were and were for, even if a horde of them (sperm not members) rushed the Long Room and willowed everyone over the heads with Sloghard Thugbusters.

Ponting’s bat is more a magic wand that takes the game from England to Australia.

Just before lunch Ashley Giles comes on for an over.

From Our Parliamentary Correspondent

After a season’s recess
The International House resumed sitting.
Across the dispatch box
Mr A F Giles, member for Warwickshire and England, faced
Captain R T Ponting, Tasmania and Australia,
who immediately lept from his place at the dispatch box
and smote the member for Warwickshire and England’s
very first question high into the opposition’s back benches.
The member for Warwickshire and England
returned to his mark to resume questioning.

Mid session between lunch and tea the game changes. Australia know they shouldn’t lose, and England are looking more at a draw. Ian Bell comes on after tea to bowl in tandem with Giles. Here’s one for the Frindaliser Drive which powers the Strineship Enterprise, and all you cricket stattos. When was the last time two Warwickshire players bowled in tandem for England?

Ponting isn’t about statistics, although his century equals Steve Waugh’s record and tomorrow he might go past 226, the highest score at the Gabba, posted by Don Bradman.

Viewing the game side on just behind square you appreciate the quickness and class of Ponting. Feet move early, bat plays late. Fantastic. Ponting doesn’t get the adulation I think he deserves for style. Australian teams are meant to be efficient more than stylish. Ponting is both. Flintoff does his all to try and get his man.

Brisbane End of Day One Australia 346 for 3 A Flintoff 2 for 42 R T Ponting 137 no

The Blacksmith and The Dancer

Down they come, twenty-four hammering blows
Run up against the anvil of the crease,
England’s finest, leader of tall strong men
Pounds a flat pitch to make something from nothing.

Red-hot ignots bounce and spit from the anvil
Of Thor from the north to thud pain and fury
Even into the gloves of his own keeper
Three pitches distant from the beginning.

Those in the middle dodge hurtling force,
The smell of singed leather beneath noses
Sears their minds long after danger passes
Till an opener edges heat and is gone.

The dancer comes. Small, slick-quick tip-toe feet
A ballet pump or conductor’s baton
In his hands against Thor’s redoubled thunder
Strong enough to break his own braw bones
In the pursuit of forging victories.

The dancer banishes other tradesmen.
No interest but the blacksmith’s anvil,
Each hammerblow a pirouette, paso
Doble, cock a snook at the once red-hot ignot

Now dulled with dancers’ taps as the floor
For clubbing when clubbing has been done,
Small feet and hours from Hobart unto Accrington,
The dancer and the blacksmith each know the score.

The dancer needs the smith to play
As the smith the dancer’s touch
To end the dancer’s say.

Preparing for the Worst - Brisbane Day Zero

2006-11-22T18:44:00.000+10:00

One thing I won't miss leaving England is the next series of "I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here."

Andy Warhol stated everyone's famous for fifteen minutes, but this is taking has-beens-who-never-were into an eternity of tv purgatory – for all of us. The ex-husband of Lisa Minelli is scarcely omega list.

Kay and Laurel swear they hardly ever watch it, yet they discuss all the nonentities that do nonsensical things. I share the house with psychics. In my worst nightmares I find Don and Dec encouraging me on a Bushtucker Trial. (What aborigines make of these is anyone's guess) I bite off everyone's heads, finishing the ordeal by chewing out Don and Dec in the search for brains. Look on the positive side; at least it would be the end of my and all their tv careers and I'm not a Celebrity, Get me into Here.

It's probably harder now to get into The Gabba, where the first test starts tomorrow. Sell-out months ago, days after they went on sale.

Pundits reckon England are in for a caning. Maybe not the 5-0 prediction the environmentally aware Glen McGrath's recycling from last year. A forecast almost as boring as its actuality, but infinity better than “I'm Really Desperate, I'll Eat My Own Toe-Nail Clippings” in front of Don and Dec, my family and other animals. That’s a point; if Kay and Loz are psychic, why do they need to watch it?

People ask me my view about how the series will go – the real series, the big one, in Brisbane, Queensland not “I’m A Mobile Phone Number In Search Of An Identity”. I play cute, offering no shot to a wide one outside off-stump. "Two-one," I reply, "Not sure which side." In the last couple of weeks as tension heightens, I'm told to bring back the Ashes, which may demonstrate the value of poetry, but seems a pretty tall order, especially as I'm a short-arse who hasn't played cricket seriously for nearly forty years.

Worse, they're starting to say "Don't come back without them." And when I protest, I get "We know who to blame if we lose." In one breath they tell me it’s their taxes that’s paying for my odyssey, the next make sure we win. Poet’s can’t – either make sure, or win.

England did last summer, which is why I'm in Brisbane writing this. Just remember that, dear Australian readers. If you’d not lost the Ashes last summer, you wouldn’t be blessed with a pom poet in your midst. Every cloud has a silver, or green baggie lining.

Had Old McGrath's Almanac proved right, 5-0 the Gabba would probably be close to empty, and I don't think there'd be an iota of interest in an English poet going to Australia to record another pom drubbing.

Cricket Walkabout is a book about the first Australian cricket tour to England in 1867-68 by John Mulvaney and Rex Harcourt. The team were aborigines and sailed instead of flew. The Gabba is an aboriginal name, the back-end of Woolloongabba, the surburb of the ground. “There are two theories about its meaning, some believing it means ‘whirling waters’ while others say it represents ‘fight talk place’” according to Cricket Australia’s The Ashes Down Under – official travel guide of Cricket Australia. Could be a poem in there somewhere - Woolloongabba, not the official travel guide bit - even if only the beer spilled between aboriginal lexicographical disputees.

At the moment the Barmy Army are playing the Fanatics as a pipe-opener for tomorrow’s contest. At the same time players and umpires, ground-staff, hospitality, security, media technicians and reporters (800 press passes according to The Australian – I’m sitting in the stands in case you’re wondering) are all getting ready; ready for the big one. Barmy Army vs Fanatics must be closer to the first tour of 1866-67. Not too many to watch, keen and fairly contested, just one or two people from the media. The strange and lovely thing is that they’re each recognisably the same game. Lose that and the spirit of cricket’s lost too.

We’ll be keen to see what happens:-

First Ball 10.00am local time, The Gabba, Brisbane

The toss, decision to bat or bowl, team selection
and media games, noises off the field.

Set and survey, bat makes mark, bowler back to his

play

admidst the hush, arm comes over, bat into line,
each grooved, almost automatic. Whatever its outcome

wicket, boundary boards, full face or edge, play
and miss, a middled middling dot in the scorebook

the glance between bat and ball as the field resumes
its mark for five more balls and many more
over five five day matches will tell all

they’ll know before sledge or smile
who has won the very first ball

Woolloongabba

Woolloongabba they come from far
they come from far to play to play
Woolloongabba Woolloongabba

Waters whirling winds in our hearts
Wind still whirling whirling waters
Whirling fight talk place noisome boys
Warriors outdo warriors

place to talk fight die and share
drowning placentas whirling waters
Woolloongabba Woolloongabba

Balance The World On The Edge Of A Blade

2006-11-22T18:42:00.000+10:00

We're 33,000 feet above a globe flying from one point to its antipode. Do the Australians refer to the British Isles as the Antipodes? In terms of relative size the antipodean equivalent of Australia is Europe, including Russia to the Urals. It's all a question of geography, distance and time. It'll take us about 24 hours elapsed time to reach Australia - a killer of journey, seasoned travellers say, but a moment compared to half a year or more it took for Van Diemen, Tasman and Cook to navigate the seas below us. Cook landed about the same time as Thomas Lord opened his first cricket ground - near Baker Street Tube, later sold to Regency developers to fund a move to St John's Wood, and doubtless line Lord's pockets. In those days it was sail, and the environmental impact was miniscule. The first Australian touring team, Aborigines, sailed in 1866. Top speed, at best Glen McGrath approaching the wicket, at worst a stalled walk back having been dispatched to the boards.

Snooze, film, sleep, airline food, small talk, and a poem 'Courage of Convictions’ written over the Balkans, and we're coming into Kuala Lumpur, a place so unknown to me I need to check its spelling. The clouds below the window drift away. Spelling apart, what other damage have I done to the world?

You can't see global warming. Its effects may be catastrophic, long-term and irreversible - like radioactivity. If you could see or smell either, like smoke and sulphur from an industrial plant, we might be more appreciative of its dangers, and willing to do something about it.

It's been on the radar for decades. First mention in the mid-seventies, when oxygen-isotope measures from glacial ice cores were used to reckon climatic conditions tens of thousands of years ago to the last ice age. A positive use of radioactivity which I came across studying prehistory at Sheffield University while the other side of Steel City was still belting out smoke and sulphur. A learned article suggested these oxygen isotope
cores were indicating global warming from about 1900 onwards....

Where are we now? All but George W Bush agree it's happening, and all too few are doing all too little to stop it.

You can.

I'm going to carbon-balance Ashes Poetry. Carbon balance works like this. The chief agent of global warming is carbon-dioxide. Plant life takes in CO2, so if you pay for plantings - to afforest deforested rain forests, say - it balances the CO2 your plane exhales taking you to where you want to go. Simple. Go to http://www.worldlandtrust.org/ credit/debit card or cheque book in hand.

Some like George Monbiot http://www.monbiot.com/ reckon carbon balancing doesn't work. Hard to say, just as it's hard to say how weather and climate works too. The basic physics is simple, just a global heat engine, but its mechanics are extremely complex and tricky to measure. Rather like watching a kettle boil - except once it's boiling not even God can take the earth out of the heavens to stop it boiling.

We're now two hours from Brisbane, on a different plane if not dimension. Kuala Lumpur airport is magnificent - beautiful design, clean, quiet and uncluttered. I'm an old-fashioned beer-powered steam train man, where airports as points of departure have the same conceptual cachet as a bus or filling station. To impress me it has to be something, and it is.

It still doesn't reduce global warming, just as glitzy cigarette packaging won't stop you getting cancer. There is a difference. I can choose to smoke myself to death; I've no real say in the climate that Loz, my eleven year old daughter, will inherit. It makes my jam-kettle blood boil that the President of the United States of America can choose to jeopardise the life of our and everyone's else's children. Not because it's a cretinous decision, which is an insult to cretins who have no control over their unfortunate condition, but because Bush has a global choice where he's stuffing the whole wide world and its future.

It's not cricket. It's an environmental tyranny and dictatorship. By carbon balancing my Ashes Odyssey, I aim to achieve:-

reduction in global warming
greater awareness of the problem
others doing the same

If you want to reduce global warming by carbon balancing, click the carbon trust, http://www.worldlandtrust.org/ who may well be planting countless stands of willow, since one of their patrons is David Gower, classic left-handed elegance at the crease and now the Sky commentary box.

If like me you're short of the readies - hardly surprising, given it could be a trip of a lifetime and you don't want a lack of cash to take anything away - then why not carbon balance after you return? Global warming isn’t going to go away by your or the world’s bank balance improving.

The devastion of New Orleans may just be the tip of a melted ice-cap. If something isn't done soon about global warming we better start thinking playing the Ashes under water because all the test match grounds at each end of the Antipodes will be flooded.

Glug, glug, glug. Sticky wicket. Glug, glug, glug.

Go on, credit http://www.worldlandtrust.org/ Play and pay with the full face of the bat. No point trying to balance our future on its edge. Unlike even a David Gower, the world doesn’t get a second knock.

Talking of the right stuff...

Courage Of Convictions

Some good, some bad, and some ordinary
people the wrong side of the law to hold
their breath against the creak of deck, rope and
canvas; fixed blank stars slowly alter course

Of lives, destiny and political
aspirations. Now history. Not then.
No going back. No return to the old
Till the end of each testing sentence

Whose surf, shore and hinterland are unknown,
prime and aboriginal. Imprisoned
by nothing but the land’s fresh horizons
how could all survive, endure and flourish?

Today twenty-two flannelled fools replay
Australia, set to court failure
on no other grounds.

Chance To Rhyme

2006-11-22T10:24:00.000+10:00

A Kwik Guide How to Write A Half-Way Decent Ashes Song

The Barmy Army don't just support England at Test Matches. They play cricket - including thrashing their Aussie equivalents The Fanatics on the eve of the First Test at Brisbane - support Chance To Shine to enable more youngsters to join in and learn the game, charities, and now the opportunity of a lifetime ...

Do you want to win a trip of a lifetime for two, all flights and acccomodation thrown in with tickets for the last two Tests? Smack http://www.barmyarmy.com/chance2rhyme.cfm for details of this fantastic opportunity sponsored by Phones4U - closing date 30 November

Do Some Research

Before you start singing in the bath or scribbling on back of envelopes, look at the Barmy Harmonies on www.barmyarmy.com , and search under appropriate key words for Australian retorts to see how others do it.

Keys

Apart from those you sing in, there are four keys:-

WIT
REPEATABILITY
ACCESSIBILITY
PATHOS

WIT is what makes it stand out - like 'Let's Twist Again, Like Shahid Afridi' a wry reference to Shahid's illegal pitch scuffing in Faisalabad.

REPEATABILITY covers two things. Firstly, no offence but it must not be offensive. Rude, vulgar, if you want, but nothing racist, homophoebic or otherwise offensive. It'll be binned. Second, it has to be sung on the terraces. This means it needs a relatively simple and strong structure, if not words, with a degree of repeated lines or choruses so it's easy to remember without looking at a hymn sheet, and still join in if the memory fails – as it does with plenty of beer and sun

ACCESSIBILITY Repeatability means almost all terrace anthems are adaptations of earlier songs. You can try to write your own tune too but it's easier to use someone else's. This is because if people already know the tune, it's easier for them too - they just have to remember your words. It's easier all round. Choosing the tune is where the je ne sais quoi comes in. It needs to be memorable - from hymns to charts, catchy classics is the best catch-all. And it needs to be easily singable - a reworking of Mozart's Requiem Mass, still in Latin, however witty, is unlikely to succeed. As Gary Taylor, who wrote ‘Show Me The Way To Shane Warne's villa?', http://www.barmyarmy.com/baharm_lyrics_aplayers.cfm put it, the tune comes first. It might arise from a phrase which brings to mind the melody but you then need to fit the words to the music, not vice-versa.

PATHOS - could be a clincher. This is the tingle-factor. Anfield's 'Walk On.' Wales' 'Bread of Heaven' - it's respecting something other than your team, even the opposition....

Here’s one based on the modification of the lyrics of When This Lousy War is Over, from “Oh What A Lovely War”; Joan Littlewood, based on the original hymn 'What a Friend we have in Jesus'; Joseph Scriven.

When this Ashes Tour is Over

When this Ashes tour is over
No more cricketing for me,
I shall put my commentator’s mike on
To give expert summary on tv.

No more gloving Stevie Harmison,
No more edging Hoggie to the slips,
I shall kiss the gold of my green baggie,
God, I'll miss this whence it leaves my lips.

This has elements of all four keys - not much repeatability except the rhyme. Might be outside the singing range of the Barmy Army, still less the Fanatics (the Aussie’s equivalent) but the BA belt out Jerusalem…….

Other hints:-

• Make sure your words fit.
• Know the tune inside out - hum it, whistle it, eat it, and then check your words fit the tune. The tune is all, so again, don't try to scrunch or stretch the tune to the words.
• Too often people, including me, try to fit too many words in.
• Work with a pal, partner, pet or other animate object – most songs are written by pairs from Gilbert & Sullivan “I am the model of a Pom watching cricket in Australia…”
• Finally, sing it out loud before sending it anywhere else.

How else can you make sure it works?

Here are a three starters for ten

Hoggard, Hoggard, Hoggard,
Keep it up and swinging, Hoggard
....
to the tune of Rawhide (Remember The Blues Brothers Good Ol' Boys club scene?)

Flintoff, Flintoff, Freddie Flintoff
....
to the tune of Noel, (the carol, not Edmonds)

And for you Aussie Blokes

Grimmett, Mailey, O’Reilly, Ring and Benaud
Fine leggies all, outshone by Shane Warne
….
to the tune of Waltzing Matilda

Play!

One Day We Will Lose

2006-11-12T08:05:00.000+10:00

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month we commemorate those lost in two world wars, the first of which was the war to end all wars. Poets write about war. Homer’s Iliad is the story of Troy, the Trojan Horse, Paris, Achilles, and Helen the fairest of them all. Perhaps the first and only war to be named after a poet – the Homeric wars. World War One poets fired me to write poetry. Siegfried Sassoon, in particular: Mad Jack, country squire, homosexual and winner of the Military Cross. He fought, to be shell-shocked out, and then went back to the front because, though he loathed the conduct of World War One, Sassoon believed it was his duty to his men. As a poet he is an Archie Jackson to Don Bradman:-

The Dug Out

Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
And one arm bent across your sullen, cold,
Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,
Deep-shadow’d from the candle’s guttering gold;
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;
Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head …..
You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.

Siegfried Sassoon. St Venant, July 1918

It touches me as much as it did then, nearly forty years ago, when I first studied it for O-level. Two years ago I attended the Armistice Remembrance Parade and service in Bakewell.

11th November 2004

It’s Sunday morning, just beyond early light,
the first frost sharp throughout, enough
to strip each branch of their legion colours.

The sun shines low, a single clear signal
to head a day of remembrance
as Bakewell readies itself to remember.

The town marks time in its market square;
shops, pubs, cars, ourselves near enough still
as gravestones

till we leave.

Those with most to remember or forget
let us follow, in train, behind the lines.
Young lads in uniform, not quite in

or out of step. Their pudding girls grin
at the parlour door, full lace prinnies
ironed starched white, almost waving them off

lest they forget.

The bugler calls,
so we march, and march; sing and sing.
Commands barked against cold bare skin
wreathed more than breathing a long held silence.

Names read out

Their letters addressed in order of dispatch,
the last post and final delivery
They did not rush to catch.

Did it matter if the sun shone
when they went over the top?

Earlier this year I met with Mark O’Connor, a fine Australian poet who took part in the Sydney Olympics – not running a sub-four minute sonnet, Mark was the Olympic poet, reviving a tradition where the muse was part of the ancient games but lost till 2000. Here is an Australian view of 1914-18.

Pozieres Cemetery (WW1 France)

- Our fathers: did they dream as yabbying boys
on their farms in Deniliquin, Horsham, Scotshead, Yass,
of so deep a subsoil waiting for their bones?
. . . Instead two old men hobble down the rows
dreaming of young men whom they knew; while honour and folly
hold the ground under the gently piddling skies of France.

Written on The Somme, 1977 Mark O’Connor

What’s this to do with cricket? Had the French and Germans taken the game at all seriously would it have prevented 1870, 1914-18, 1939-45? Difficult to prove, or disprove.

In all seriousness by the time you read this I’ll probably be wearing a t-shirt inscribed ‘I speak of bats, balls & wickets’ at an Australian Test Match not near you in homage to Virgil's kick-off line to his classical epic the Aeneid. It’s a way of telling people who I am and what I’m doing. The uniform of an Ashes poet in residence, in the same way cricketers wear whites, stewards florescent jackets or Tommies' khaki battledress.

I’m not saying Freddie Flintoff and the Barmy Army would’ve finished off the Trojan wars inside three days, nor that injury-struck England on current form could do with Hector, Ajax, Achilles and Agamemnon on their side. More that cricket isn’t war. George Orwell said ‘sport is war without weapons’ perhaps because as Eric Blair he won a scholarship to Eton, with its regime of rugger, cold showers and the Eton Wall game – where the cream of the upper classes run straight into a brick wall. Deuced good practice for going over the top and running straight into a hail of machine gun bullets. You need leaders in those situations.

Jardine went to Eton. If sport is war without weapons, I think war is sport without love. Douglas Jardine led England on their notorious bodyline series, where within the laws of the game England bowled straight at Australian batsmens’ hearts - literally. Justification came from the same logic as the carnage of the trenches: it lay within the rules of war. Officer and a gentleman, leader of men etc etc but no sense of feeling, not even animosity. World War One and The Ashes were just something to be won.

The abiding image of last year’s series is Flintoff consoling Bret Lee at Edgbaston after losing two runs short of an amazing victory which would’ve all but kept the Ashes with Australia.

Sport is war with love because winning isn’t everything.

Who do you reckon will win? People ask me as though I might know. Don’t see how. I’m a poet, not a cricket correspondent, yet they do. And more interestingly they say ‘Don’t come back without the Ashes.' It means a lot to a great deal of people. Probably far more than poetry.

Their Premier’s XI stuffed us in Canberra, watched by Mark O’Connor amongst others. ‘Yes, I was there,’ he said, not needing to say more. Some would say that Howard’s selection for the PM's XI is the best thing he’s ever done for the country. Could Graveney and Fletcher do worse than Brown and Blair? I couldn’t possibly comment, but note in the traditional equivalent fixture in England, the Australians play the Duke of Norfolk’s XI at Arundel (don’t ask why it’s Norfolk in Sussex.) Class, gentlemen and players, hearts of old England, play up, play the game. Yeoman stock Kevin Pietersen might reflect on duty and Sassoon to cut out the hook shot, but the signs are England have ferried their half-day international form from India to Australia.

One day we will lose. At least we’re consistent and consistency is everything, like they say about custard.

The Basic Deal

2006-11-06T00:22:00.000+10:00

A Poet In A Coffin

Ashes Tests Australia 23rd November 2006 – 6th January 2007

Coffin n. …Long sturdy box-like bag with canvas carrying handles and lengthways opening specifically designed for cricket players to carry their equipment and hopes.

This isn't really a coffin; you couldn't quite fit yourself into it, never mind your hopes, dreams and fears. It's a cricket bag which could be at least a hundred years old, owned by Peter Richards, one of the oldest players at Stafford Cricket Club. As a young boy he remembered his father using it before him. The Ashes go back even longer ...

“Sing, goddess, the games of young men, who are fighting
With willow bats and balls and stumps
On the levelled pitch, as before, in the Antipodes.”

(translation and transmutation from the original ancient greek Odysessy and Iliad by David Steadman)

Aim

To dispatch a poet, David Fine, to the Antipodes for the next five test matches between England and Australia in order to describe and explain the series in poetry, and explore the relationship between the two sides, supporters and countries as a poetical anthropologist.

Outcomes

· Twenty five poems, one for each day’s play in the five tests between 23rd November 2006 – 6th January 2007. This would be the key outcome. An example, Gardening With Afridi, from last season’s overseas’ tours, is included below:-
· Working with The Barmy Army and others to review literary horizons and appeal of poetry…
· A poetical-anthropological series of essays; style between Bill Bryson & C L R James
· A regular end-of-play radio programme reflecting the atmosphere and feel around the game itself – a radio essay for Radio Derby after the end of play each day and Peak Support will provide all equipment and training for me to do this.
· report back to National Association of Literature Development on Australian literature development

Here's the poem which gave me the idea last January:-

Gardening With Afridi

With a wave
of the hand the umpire signals four
to move the scorers’ score behind their boundary edge
while commentators caw at the kites’ wait
to escalate up and down a local thermal’s ledge
which sentinels the parched dry sky above the city.

Waves of air bowlers seek to bend off straight,
sun beats shadows, police beat stands, heart beats still,
ball beats bat, audible snick, the crowd’s roar
a signal beyond the ionosphere
lobbed back by the keeper of the BBC
through a field of critically stationed orbiting
acolytes:close-in astral catchers pouch each chance
to sledge the sound thousands of miles back to me

alone admid mid-November scruffiness;
the undug plot a leafless scoresheet, unweeded,
ready to be broken by spade and forked
over to break again, frost opening a perennial innings
near the start and heart of earth’s eventual disintegration
to nothing. Long waves halfway around the world.

A bombscare. The entire ground stops to stare
and Shahid Afridi plants his boot on the length
of the pitch to turn over earth like me - no one else watching.
Given the intent of the marks he made,
could he not do with my fork and spade?
Word are spoken, a shrug and a glare mid-wicket,
“This isn’t cricket,” they say on the air,
“He’s sure to cop it.” Rogation to follow his boots’ rotation,
a worm at my feet tries to wriggle away.

Close of play at the start of my day,
shadows stretch across the ground
as the same sun sneaks up the hill of wind-stripped beeches
behind my back. In Faisalabad, Derbyshire, I hear
the mullahs call the faithful to prayer.
Minaret horns blare from the wireless world
before they go off air. Alone Shahid slips
the field to face his maker’s mark and means.
Together we stop to flick sweat from our
brow at the wonder of it all. I’m gardening with Afridi.

Shahid Afridi, a Pathan and Pakistan’s equivalent of Freddie Flintoff (except he’s an even more ferocious hitter) was caught illegally scuffing up the wicket in the Second Test at Faisalabad last November http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/england/4457910.stm I was digging the allotment at the time, just before succumbing to viral/rheumatoid arthritis which prevented me doing most things except think for four months.

Grace Road, England vs India 1st Test

2006-10-20T11:59:00.000+10:00

From Grace Road To Ikea.
England vs India 1st Women's Test, 3rd Day's Play.

Grace Road Leicester Thursday 10th August

Never been to Grace Road before. Virgin county venues in the mind’s eye are always places of faded grandeur – tall pavilions, old trees, rolling hills behind. Faded perhaps, but Grace Road nestles amongst red brick terraces and small family factories, far more like a lower division soccer ground. I wandered up a gravel path and almost walked past the entrance – no vast ornamental gates, just green iron sheeting, like the factories around. At the turnstile two blokes ask ‘Have you come to watch?’ ‘Yes’ ‘Are you going to pay?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Three quid.’ And I was in.

It explained the lack of double-parked cars, crowd burble, faint smell of old beer, burgers, crushed litter you usually associate with a test match ground three days in. A hundred, one-fifty watching – about the same number of people who came to my fiftieth birthday party, and a lot less noise.

The cricket’s good. Technically excellent. Straight bat, big feet movements front or back, bat-and-pad close together, playing through the vee, elbow over the ball, all along the ground. Steady scoring, and plenty of overs in the day. It was like watching cricket about forty years ago when one-day games were a curiosity, over-rates faster and scoring slower – must have reminded umpires Jesty and Lloyds of when they started out. Cricket how it used to be.

At a drinks interval umpire Jesty picks up one of the players’ bats and practices a few air shots; Lloyds turns over an arm. No one gives it a moment’s thought but it’d never happen with the men’s test side. Umpire Bucknor essays a late cut with Captain Strauss’s blade? I should cocoa.

There’s a sense of nurturing in this game. In his pick-up Jesty becomes a young boy, emulating others more famous, such as Jesty T E, Hampshire and England, as we all once did, playing pretend shots to become players we weren’t.

Laura Newton opens her shoulders, lofts it over mid-on and a three-bounce four. Perfect timing, middle of the bat, straight out of the screws. Like her namesake Isaac, Newton has the mechanics, just not enough power. A Flintoff or Pieterson would have had me ducking and the county secretary on the phone to the local glaziers.

India play on this. Plenty of men – women – back, restrict the run rate, just as they scored slowly, so slowly, the previous day heading for a draw. A scintilla above two an over, for those who decry how few are bowled in the modern game, it must have been like watching paint dry while it’s still in the tin. I’m glad I’ve caught Taylor and Newton opening the can to give it a bit of umpty.

It lacks steam. Easier to take a big stride forward, not get caught on the crease when Harmison makes you smell leather at ninety miles an hour. A lone West Indian barracker shouts encouragement, but even he is never going to yell ‘Gi’ ’er di throa’ ba’ , Mildred!’ Keenly contested, good to watch, you think it could be a varsity game or very well coached club cricketers until you hear the fielders’ higher pitched ‘Howzat!’ and realise these are women.

Imogen joins me. She’s communications for the ECB women’s game at Lords. Good views out of the office window. I ask about the crowds or their lack. Part is to do with India being well known for snatching draws from the yawning jaws of a draw. Partly because the Ashes effect, where the women also won them back last year, has dwindled in the women’s game.

Maybe it’s trying to be what it isn’t. On my way down I picked up tickets for the Melbourne Test from Bakewell sorting office. My three pound Grace Road number is all the colours of the rainbow with about ten sponsors’ logos, rinky-dinky design values, top dollar image. Does it sell?

Imogen looks at both tickets – which is the bigger game? Plain black print, zero design and zilch logos, one step up from a cloakroom ticket. Then the text. Melbourne 4th Test England vs Australia. 95,000 other people will have similar tickets to fill the MCG cloakroom. Half a million if England can’t finish it off inside five days. Rather more than here, my birthday party, or indeed the Queen’s. At tea-time two green-coated security guards patrol the square to watch the boundary in case there might be a crowd invasion. Laugh? There’s no one here to.

Perhaps they should market it as Cricket As It Used To Be. At a fiver a day with comfy chairs, and plenty of tea I’d take Rene my mother-in-law, who shares birthdays with Her Royal Highness. Bakewell receives the odd test match ticket and two million visitors a year (or four Melbourne sell-outs) each of whom seem to travel with the express purpose of getting up my nose, and if you’ve seen its size you realise they’ve achieved their allotted task in life with consummate ease and great elan.

Why not operate Wrinkly Cricket package tours – coach, tea, cakes and comfy seats, snooze in the afternoon. Ideal for those who found the Barmy Army Western Terrace at Headingley too much last week. You could have a farmer’s market, WI stalls and beer; proper beer in glasses, none of the plastic swill Grace Road served in plastic – sorry, Leicestershire County Cricket Club, the truth hurts. Young teenagers could pick up empties at a penny a time just like we did at the Cheltenham Festival. Bring schools to watch and learn the techniques; it’d be the College Ground, Cheltenham Spa in the sixties – except the toilets, which we won’t go into.

You think I’m joking? Isn’t a hundred or so watching top class cricket a joke too?

The women deserve more. I thank Imogen for her time, leave as England cruise past 200 for two, sun willing the old fox’s leap o’er the old weather vane atop the old clock of the old scoreboard next to the fading elegance of the George Geary stand. More or less as the world was before I came in. Driving down Grace Road past the 1950s purpose-built Childwell Clothing Company, inside full of happy employees whistling to wireless tunes on BBC Light Wave ‘Workers’ Playtime, their children wearing start-rite shoes, looking forward to a tea of potted meat and cucumber sandwiches, washed down withTizer the appetiser, the dream for a moment holds true till the roadworks onto the M1.

Perhaps I should stop here, leaving you all cosy and snug.

Turn off onto the A610 and realise I’m going past Ikea. Loz, our eleven year old daughter wants a Bladdra, which you all know is a set of metal arms on a pole to hang newspapers from (flat packs, thank God, don’t work on the radio) It’s my cunning plan for her attic bedroom as hanging space in lieu of a wardrobe. Ikea isn’t for me. I do it out of paternal duty. Reckoning a summer’s evening like this with England nearly 250 for 2 at close of play, the world and his – her - dog will be outside, and Ikea as empty as Grace Road.

It heaves. Shopping as a leisure activity – even for bats, balls, tools, or books – does not compute. I should have asked Imogen how women cricketers escape shopping, homemaking, housework, not why. Go down to Grace Road, enjoy quality live international sport for the price of a gut-full of swedish meatballs or knockdown flatpacks - and with a lot less heartburn or heartache: flatpacks don’t really work off the radio either.

There are thousands here, each getting up mine and each other’s noses, when all I or Loz wants is Bladdra. Lank boiled staff play the game of avoiding eye contact, replying ‘There’ accompanied by a vague arm-wave whenever asked for directions – no use their setting a field. I think of asking them for a product called Aaaargh. ‘Not sure what it’s for – someone told me to get one.’ Aaargh, they say, how do you spell it? AAAAARGH!

Ikea is cheap, practical and relatively honest – the Lidl of home interiors. What bugs me is the denial of independent thought by its evocation. It’s the sign that says ‘You are allowed to change your mind.’ They don’t mean literally. Ask one of the lank boiled to unscrew the top of your head and swop the unit inside for one of theirs off the shelf. At least I don’t think they meant it literally. It’d almost be better if they did.

Of course everyone can change their mind – assuming it’s in use in the first place. You can switch this off any time you like. In cricket the best run-outs are caused by changes of mind if not heart in mid-wicket. The world would be an easier if less intriguing place if people couldn’t change their minds. You are doomed to listen to this for eternity – long after I’ve finished.

It doesn’t need Ikea’s permission to think – although I have to say that a theology where God might and arguably should be a self-confessed anally retentive yet reformed alcoholic has its merits. It’d explain a worrying welter of otherwise inexplicable phenomena within our daily lives. For example, never mind you always find something you’re looking for in the last place you look, why is it never there in the first place?

Never been to Grace Road before.

Then the vision. How to get crowds into Grace Road. Women cricketers and men for that matter, play cricket inside Ikea. One of those foam balls, and Ikea bats called Bonk or Bonkers. The women rush round one way and the men the other, and the winners are the first to make a lank boiled smile and shoppers laugh – in Ikea no one ever does, do they, and life’s meant to be fun.

I stole one of their little pencils instead to write the next instalment.

Where it started

2006-09-09T04:09:00.000+10:00

I guess it started when Charles Monkhouse www.charlesmonkhouse.co.uk said about a milestone between Middleton-by-Youlgreave and Friden in the Peak District, Derbyshire UK 'If the sun's right, you can just catch it.'

It brought to my mind a stunning slip catch during a Test Match between England and Australia at Headingley, which in turn led to my first cricket poem:-

A Sunlit Day near Middleton

Behind the bowler’s arm
at Headingley
towards the end of the last century
the ball took the edge
of Thorpe’s angled blade
to speed past slips.

Still as the dead, almost too late, dead
quick Mark Waugh takes the catch,
a single hand behind his back
turns with the batsman’s glare
to make the miraculous seem easy.

All still, till the batsman walks:
I’ve told you how it happened,
but if you were there
you’d not believe your eyes.

For the better part of a century
or more, a turnpike stone takes guard
on the Friden Road between here and there
in a parish remote to Headingley
to mark other ways to destiny.

It stands a fielder to fields
dead to the world. Stooped,
angled, leaning, ready, nearly
eager as a grave stone
to tell you how the past happened
behind its back.

Well hidden by bushes and grass
(jumpered umpires of time)
You just have to wait
for the sun to catch it
like an edge to the slips.

From this I was asked by the Sites of Meaning project - http://www.sitesofmeaning.org.uk/ - to write a poem to be inscribed in a fresh distance marker - literally a literary milestone:-