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Part 18: Malcolm's Big Bash | Apr 13, 2007 11:15

AYE CALYPSO An exclusive Cricket World Cup blog

Malcolm sped into the kitchen in his jeans and pink rubber gloves. 'What do they DO in the bathroom?' he wondered. He dropped his flatmate's magazines into the bin, stashed his bottle of disinfectant, checked his reflection in the teapot and grabbed his list. They would be here soon. His first party of the new decade. Vacuuming – check. Straightening the furniture – good. Artwork – check. He'd taken down the tatty band posters and put up some new space travel ones he borrowed from the physics department, as well as the one with the close-up of the bikini bottoms and the message 'Hang loose!'. The scene was set.

Soon they'd be here, he'd greet them at the door, they'd pay the cover charge (correct change, please) and pick up a paper cup of punch, and start talking to each other about whatever people talk about at these things. Their studies, things happening in the news, Vietnam, cricket. The list again. Music. Music! Where was the band? Don't they wear watches? It was a simple arrangement, surely – book them, and they will come. He'd made a simple request that they clean their instruments first. Had he missed something? People seemed to like music at parties. He dusted off Frank Sinatra's 'Watertown' and put it on the record player. Good. Groovy, most likely.

Where was everyone? Weren't they aware he was destined for great things? Didn't they notice how easily he influenced people? He could shape big things. His skills were legendary in the department. He could head off any speculation with accurate precedent, he'd illuminate political gossip with legal anecdote. At his birthday party he'd had those guys from commerce eating out of his hand. The sociology girls from next door were always complicating these affairs with quite strange ideas that made some of the guests uncomfortable. Malcolm had tried to explain the simple transactional nature of social gatherings. He'd tried to explain that fundamental market forces apply – his supply creates a demand. Talk and they will listen.

He looked at the clock and frowned. They will come.

Bermuda shorts

As I write, Antarctica is knocking at the door, the shadows are long on the television and Bryan Waddle is delivering one of his dire verdicts that sound like a homily from a hungover coach. Sri Lanka, that flighty mountain goat of a cricket team, are capering past our paltry score. Which bleak clichés will you enjoy today? A dose of reality. Stumbling toward a semi. I turn on the TV and Ian Smith is gruff. I turn the radio back on. Smithy is there also. I hope he's careful, this world cup seems to have a high rate of attrition. Rigor has gone missing. Jerry Coney is still astray. Has it been that bad?

For cricketing enlightenment in difficult times, you must try 'Ganesha Speaks', where you can view, among other things, Daniel Vettori's biorhythm report. Scroll down to view the head to head strength charts, with our Dan taking on Ricky Ponting. Superb.

Humour ought to help. Who said sports fans don't deal in satire? Unfortunately at this site they have to spell it out, but they've wholesome mirth aplenty. The team in the studio here particularly Malcolm Speed's announcement of the 'Super Surprise' round, featuring NZ v France, and the mid-Super 8 "Vicars and Hoes" [sic] fancy dress party.
Macca has been quiet lately, since the moratorium on players blogging. And the tour diaries of the Black Caps have been consistently artful, with James Franklin emerging as the new Barry Crump.

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Part 17: Ennui | Apr 11, 2007 11:17

AYE CALYPSO An exclusive Cricket World Cup blog

Having assiduously side-stepped all political affiliations for many years, I am almost ready to tale off my culottes, grab my musket, put on my C.D. of Les Miserables and stand atop the barricades I've made behind my house using fruit boxes and disposable nappies. Treat this as a clarion call. Join me in the revolution. Let us resist the attempt by the I.C.C. and Sky to make us watch this lumpen tournament. It is the sports version of the longest Russian movie ever made - endless and mostly boring, with occasional moments of drama that only to serve to confuse us further. And it's on television at an obscene hour.

Everybody else is happy. The players are happy. Ross Taylor has had weeks to recover from his hamstring pull. Mark Gillespie has got feeling in his shoulder. Hamish Marshall has played himself into form. Stephen Fleming has had time for people to forget that he called the game against Ireland a "tricky match". Craig McMillan said this morning that the amount of cricket was wearing him out. Six games in over a month. That's what a club cricketer manages.

The journalists are happy. One patsy interview a day and the newspapers feel justified in giving their man in Antigua an expense account. That's just one tired metaphor a day. Money for condiment.

Everybody in the West Indies is happy. It is almost impossible not to be. Trinidad has the greatest beach I have ever seen; Grenada the most beautiful capital. The national currency of Barbados is Mount Gay rum. Antigua has a beach for every day of the year, or so they claim. St Lucia has a pair of mountains that look like breasts. I saw a friend of mine on telly at one of the matches wearing a cowboy hat and not much else. She was indubitably happy.

Everybody is happy except the poor sorry viewer on the other side of the world. Any momentum this tournament may have had has sunk like a pedalo. Games have been rationed at one per day for the entirety of the Super 8 series, no doubt to feed content-hungry broadcasters. Good Friday our time, the organisers had enough contempt for us that they didn't even bother to schedule a game. Or the next day. The broadcasters are happy.

I however am not. New Zealand is in the semi-finals, barring a disaster which I wouldn't want to watch anyway. We have played with the cold efficiency of Aeroflot stewardesses. There have been only three exciting games this entire round – England finally finding some backbone against Sri Lanka, South Africa almost choking before their tail-enders performed a team Heimlich manoeuvre. And Bangla Tigers mauling the Proteas and providing the smallest of hopes for England or the Windies. Three out of 12 is a bad strike rate even for Michael Vaughan. And you have to remember, I love cricket. I can consume it all day, like bar peanuts.

Admittedly this round hasn't been helped by the absence of Pakistan and India but they were the necessary casualties of the bloated opening exchanges. If they hadn't happened this entire tournament would have seemed like a chore, an ordeal, a marathon, or telethon, even. Their elimination sparked our interest. Unfortunately that interest has been extinguished by the glacial pace of the schedule. And the schedule? Designed to allow the big teams to play the most cricket, to sell the most products to line the satin pockets of the cricket's cigar-chompers.

Of course there have been quality performances. Matthew Hayden's batting. Baz McCullum's all round game. Bondy. Malinga. That throw from Shane Watson. And this pitch report from the Guardian: "It looks like a Jackson Pollock reject. There are strange wavey lines all along its length."

But really, enough. Already. I am a busy man. I can't really be bothered setting my alarm for 5.30 a.m. yet again with the hope that something magic will happen. The I.C.C., the broadcasters and the organisers have shown a lack of concern for us, the viewer, as we sit in the wee smalls, as liverish draughts tickle our ankles and remind us that its only 20 shopping days till winter. Let us put down the remote. Let's break the cycle. Start the revolution. Man the barricades. Turn the telly off at the wall. Eschew games where muppets are playing, including the Windies and England. Paul Nixon as Statler. Brian Lara as Waldorf.

Until 1.30 am April 13th that is. Black Caps against Sri Lanka. It's gonna be a ripper.

Hamish McDouall

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Part 16: Charisma - Just a Dark Horse? | Apr 04, 2007 11:20

AYE CALYPSO An exclusive Cricket World Cup blog

After another clinical, efficient display against less than stellar opposition, the Black Caps are rightly feeling satisfied with themselves. But a dark cloud hangs over the team. Apparently they lack charisma. No, not the need for an Olympic medal winning horse roaming the outfield, but that indefinable magic that gives cricket journos something to write about.

In the Guardian, the word is out:

somehow there is efficiency without charisma. Shane Bond excepted, the best fast bowler in the tournament. They conform to the sort of old stereotype that still dogs German football teams. Perhaps it is the uniform, as bible-black as Dylan Thomas's Llareggub at night, which lends a puritanical air.

It would be fair to say Thomas' fictional Welsh mining town (spell it out backwards) may not mean a lot to our lads, but we get the message. Dour, stoic, boring.

Should we be up in arms at this insult directed at our growing, but fragile sense of nationhood? Or is he right, are our cricketers a bunch of emotionally retarded automatons?

At first blush it seems wrong. The lads celebrate wickets with gusto. Lots of mistimed white boy high-fives and bottom touching/slapping. They have gone to, and over, the boundary as often as the other big names in the tournament. Brendon McCallum has been awarded the chattiest wicket-keeper award. They are multicultural, short and tall.

What do these people want? Was it charismatic when Chris Cairns had long hair? Or when the lads ensured that the smoke in South Africa wasn't just coming from the BBQ? Is it charismatic to lose, but have batsman walloping holes in the dressing room wall live on TV. (a la Ken Rutherford in South Africa)

But then maybe they are right. It is in fact our national psyche that is on show. The Black Caps are doing a good Kiwi thing. They are getting on with it. They have planned, prepared, and are executing. They are all-rounders, all as good as each other (save for Bond of course). They are as comfortable working in the office as they are doing DIY on the weekend.

There is no Brett Lee, putting out albums and still in the face of a batsman, or Freddy Flintoff, paddle boating, or Murali wide-eyed, all flailing limbs.

What there is, is Dan Vettori looking unco, but oh so effective; there is Scott Styris, last pick at school dance, but showing the finest of form. And then there is Flem - cool under pressure, movie star looks, but so far limiting his cinematic roles to ventilation systems and real estate.

I don't think the South Africans are greatly different from us in this regard, but no one accuses them of lacking charisma. I guess its because they wear green. In reality what is happening is that we are a small country, not in the same timezone as Europeans, and they had not really thought about us doing well. To try to explain it they go for some 1950s stereotype of New Zealanders.

One thing is for sure - whatever happens I will take winning over charisma any day of the week. But we could consider a CD of sing-a-long hits. Mark Gillespie does Ten Guitars? They will no doubt be queuing up for that in Mumbai.

Grant Robertson

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Part 15: The money shot | Apr 03, 2007 10:40

AYE CALYPSO An exclusive Cricket World Cup blog

It's the world cup, it's playing out in paradise, and there are hardly any fans at the games. Yesterday's game in Guyana was a case in point. Sri Lankans v the hosts, whose backs were firm against the wall. But sod all went to watch. Guyana is a very poor country, and tickets cost the equivalent of nearly a month's wages.

Can you pinpoint the exact moment when your favourite sport was poisoned by greedy financiers? In football this is a perennial theme. The big European clubs, for example, have apparently lost their local identity, their sponsors and oligarchs thrust squillions at chairmans and boards to supercharge their playing personnel and other investments. But it's kind of an old issue, and can blur with racist arguments when there aren't apparently enough of 'our boys' in the side. And these gripes won't go away, so long as every Saturday there are hundreds of thousands of fans ready to trudge up to the gate and shell out. Or, more likely, so long as there are many millions more paying to watch the games on the telly.

Some purists think cricket sold its soul during the Packer revolution, when very silly and colourful clothes grabbed test cricket by the trouser waist during the protracted saucy party we now call the seventies. But that's being a bit obstinate about commercial realities. And social ones. People like one-day cricket. They may continue to quite enjoy Twenty20 cricket, or they may fling it into the closet with the moths and Martin Crowe and Max.

The current malaise in one-day cricket started awhile back, and has a lot to do with pay television and exclusive rights. New Zealanders might think that Sky Television own cricket. Many submit, and pay the $35-60 per month to watch games; others boycott, and scan newspapers and websites for stories. But people adapt, and there's a new logic to the commerce. Yet too often we turn on the box and see something utterly illogical.

Empty stands. Is there anything more sad in theatre of sport? Stand up, you genius sports administrators. Where is the adherence to commercial realities here? The bureaucrats are deep in some salty dream, where hoards of locals from Guyana and Antigua and St Kitts forgo an afternoon of online stocks trading to toodle down to the cricket in their Bentleys. People are not coming to the games, so they (the West Indies Cricket Board) must lower the ticket prices, now. It really is that simple. A full house paying quarter price is better than a stadium quarter-full of people paying full price. If it's chocker, then they can sell loads of food and drink and musical instruments (particularly given people aren't allowed to bring in any of those). More importantly, we in TV-land would like some Atmosphere, that elusive quality that comes from large groups of people having fun. You can't buy that. Despite the obvious high-profile dilemmas in this world cup already, we still want our team to achieve something good in a good tournament, but not in some lame congress diminished by blind greed.

Alex Gilks

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Part 14: My Mind's Sedate | Mar 29, 2007 23:31

AYE CALYPSO An exclusive Cricket World Cup blog

It is trite, and completely wrong, to call cricket a simple game. It is not. It is as complex a sport invented, where an individual faces an individual, each striving for a team. The contest between bowler and batsmen is distorted through the prism of what is required by the team. As interpreted by the captain. As relayed by the 12th man who has come out with gloves or drink. The contest bounces around the cranium of bowler and batsman as the former stands at his scuffed mark. Psychoses meet and greet. And then the bowler begins his run up.

The bowler's insecurities can manifest themselves by not being able to hit the pitch. See Steve Harmison's frisbee at the start of the Ashes. Michael Mason's debut. Daryl Tuffey's 14 ball over. Or Robert Kennedy's career.

The batsman's psyche is displayed by feet and bat. If the feet aren't moving there is something wrong. The bat being away from the body is as basic to Freudian psychoanalysis of cricket as the Oedipus complex.

Of course this doesn't isn't true for every batsman. Some players have minds like a Grahame Sydney painting, all emptiness and benign hills. These players succeed because of simplicity, because their eye is good, or the swing of their bat so unalterable. One of the dumbest people I have ever met played first class cricket. Just a few times, but nevertheless, enough to suggest the Spotless Mind is a boon, not a bane. Then there are players who have balsa wood psyches, their talent wrestling with innate lack of self-belief, fear of failure, or problems beyond the oval. I think of Martin Crowe playing psychological sudoku, tying his talent in knots. The extraordinary cat-on-a-hot-tin roof footwork of Matthew Bell. The demons that haunted Blair Hartland every time he batted. South Africa displayed a collective brain fart against Sri Lanka only yesterday.

Most batsmen will tell you the best thing is to reach the zen-like state of calm where you remove the mental element from batting, and rely purely on instinct, on hundreds of hours of training. Jacques Kallis finds that regularly, but often, as against Australia the other day, at the expense of what is needed by his team. Matthew Hayden finds the zone regularly and takes up residency rent free.

The Black Caps have had a psychologist for many years. Gilbert Enoka was a crucial part of our late 1990s revival. Now we have Gary Hermansson on board. Ian Botham came out all very macho suggesting it was like having a witch doctor or water diviner in the squad – this from a man whose captaincy techniques included squirting a water pistol at his team-mates (tests won as captain - zilch).

Hermansson has work to do. Hamish "Mary-Kate" Marshall has parachuted in to replace friendly-fire victim Lou Vincent. Hamish Marshall has not hit a score exceeding 50 in international cricket since April 2005. That is 38 international innings, if you're counting. His last test innings against South Africa had a Lions v Christians quality. He is an excellent fielder, so it is like for like, in some ways. But Lou Vincent has viral charisma, and self-belief as big as his Clutch Cargo jaw. He bounces around the crease as if heavily caffeinated, and when he goes out, looks to be in disbelief that this could have happened to him, the Hammer of the Gods. Hamish Marshall has the resigned air of someone wearing an orange jumpsuit.

I like Hamish Marshall. His name is only four letters different to mine. I met him many years ago at Lord's. He was affable and funny. His century against Australia was as spectacular as any I had seen since, well, Lou Vincent in 2001. He created the greatest catch I have ever seen, leaping over the boundary to parry the ball for another fielder. If ever the Black Caps could use an innings of chutzpah like his maiden century, now would be it. By the time you read this we will probably know if jetlag has operated like a short-term lobotomy and he is scoring the runs his talent deserves, or if he is, as usual, flailing at balls outside off stump like my granny trying to swat flies beyond the reaches of her eyesight.

I love cricket. Not because it is simple, but because, occasionally, it is an examination of the frayed fibres of the mind.

Hamish McDouall

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Part 13: Rattue: A Vegetable Stew | Mar 29, 2007 10:11

AYE CALYPSO An exclusive Cricket World Cup blog

In the bygone days of cricket journalism in New Zealand, hyperbole was saved for geometry class. DJ Cameron in the NZ Herald and Dick Brittenden in the Christchurch Press gave us thoughtful, measured and occasionally gruff analysis of the swings and roundabouts of NZ Cricket.

On the radio their contemporary Iain Galloway's voice only quivered with emotion when someone dropped off a box of cherries to the commentary caravan at Molyneux Park in Alexandra.

There were exceptions of course - Brent Edwards, the long time Sports Editor of the Otago Daily Times, could make a dour draw between "an under-strength Otago" (always under-strength for some reason) and the touring Malawi B side in Antarctic conditions in Invercargill sound like edge-of-the-seat stuff. But Brent was a rarity.

Fast forward to 2007, and Wellington readers are treated to the thoughts of former Wellington and, er, New Zealand bowler Jonathan Millmow. Some readers will struggle to remember the gangly Millmow pulling on the national strip, but like the legendary Robert Kennedy, Brian Barrett and Kerry Walmsley he played his walk-on role in our search for pace bowlers.

Millmow, it appears, has finally made it to the Caribbean for the Super Eight stage, after Fairfax hedged their bets on the Black Caps making it this far. JM's first contribution on tour in the Dom today continues his well trodden path of talking about himself (apparently about to expire from dehydration).Before long there will be a perceived slight from the management directed at him, and recollection of his heady days playing in Sharjah.

No chance of conflict between Richard Boock from the NZ Herald and the Black Caps on this tour. Boock does have some form with the current team hierarchy, but the apparent poverty at APN in Auckland means that Boocky is in the Caribbean courtesy of NZ Cricket. Our very own 'embedded reporter'.

However odd this might seem, The Herald as found a way of sinking even lower. Chris Rattue's column on 'the sham of the World Cup' is a bizarre piece. In summary, all world sporting tournaments are flawed, the Cricket World Cup is especially buggered, and Chris has not watched a game since Bob Woolmer's untimely passing. Eh?

Rattue has decided, with absolutely no proof or evidence, to go all Safraz Nazwaz on us and claim the whole tournament is a jack-up. Apparently, the Cricket World Cup can not claim that the best team won. Chris might not have been following closely but neither India nor Pakistan (the major teams out of the competition) figured in anyone outside of Mumbai or Karachi's picks for the semis.

By not watching any games since Woolmer's passing, Chris may not know that Matt Hayden has played a couple of the finest one day innings that you are ever likely to see, or that the Black Caps are actually looking half organised, or that Murali and Malinga all but pulled off the impossible against South Africa this morning.

Of course the World Cup is not beyond reproach. It is undoubtedly too drawn out, the quality of the pitches is having an impact on some of the games, and of course there is corruption in the global game. We all mourn Bob Woolmer.

But Chris, there is also tension, drama and quality. It is a spectacle, on an international scale, where New Zealand is right up there. On the bright side, I guess we won't have to hear from Ratatouille again since he is not watching any more games. Stick to the league mate.

Grant Robertson

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