I was disappointed to see so little attention given on December 20, 2005 to the centenary of the birth of one of Australia's finest cricketers of all time. For many, Bill O'Reilly was Australia's best slow bowler before (and maybe even including) Shane Warne.
It all makes sense, you know...
Shane, you may be, as you told the world in 1998, "naive and stupid", but we're not. Even if that is all there is to the remark, how utterly dopey was it to use the word "Blackman" to a black South African opponent in any context?
Warne should have been disciplined for disrepute for the sheer insensivity of the remark, and it reflects poorly on all those in the Australian camp who condoned it.
Anyway, take a look at this article in the Sunday Herald Sun for a startling revelation about the real Dickie Knee.
Time to catch up on a few items over the past couple of weeks that I haven't mentioned previously over the next three posts:
Firstly, the annual Australia versus the Bombers six-a-side cricket match at Windy Hill on December 22. For two years running we have seen the Australian cricket team play the Essendon Football Club (that's Australian Rules to all you association football pedants) at cricket, and guess what, the Australian team is yet to win!
It was great to see Ashwell Prince bring up that century at the SCG yesterday, if only to see a South African with personality do so well...
The partnership of 219 for the fourth wicket between Prince and Kallis, though a little slow by contemporary Test standards, has put South Africa in the box seat for this game, and let's face it, it's healthy for the sport any time Australia is made to struggle these days.
Watching Shane Warne bowl to Prince yesterday gave me this perverse image of the same bowler with a slightly plumper girth and longer blond hair being smashed around by Ravi Shastri on this same ground fourteen years ago, almost to the day.
On the morning of Day Three, the start of play (at the absurdly early TV-driven hour of 10am) has been delayed. It's gloomy and overcast in Sydney and barely drizzling. Goodness, if this were Old Trafford or Headingley they'd be saying conditions are ideal for cricket!
Yesterday it was 44.2 degrees in Sydney, the second-hottest day in recorded history. Today it's in the low twenties, very dark outside, and drizzling. No real complaints about that, they've had some hideous bushfires near Gosford over the past couple of days, but there's a Test match due to start at the SCG in a couple of hours.
The webcam at the SCG doesn't appear to be operating at the moment. I'll be blogging about the Test this week as time permits. Feel free to comment.
Happy new year.
There's been a lot of inaccurate twaddle written in the overseas media about the late Kerry Packer over the past week. I could get nasty and single out some exceedingly bad pieces of near-fiction that I have seen in some of the Indian newspapers, but I would have expected better of CricInfo than to describe him as "one-day cricket's inventor".
"There is a problem with gambling in this country, but the problem doesn’t lie with people who can afford to gamble and afford to lose."
- John Howard, talking to 3AW's Neil Mitchell about Kerry Packer after he reportedly lost $32 million in a night at the casino, 1.9.00
If Kerry Packer had not organised a breakaway cricket tournament, someone else would have. Not as well, and probably not for another ten or twenty years.
"I've been to the other side son, and there's f#$king nothing there."
- Kerry Packer, on his heart attack in 1990, during which he was clinically dead.
Kerry Packer, who died on Monday night, was one of the most remarkable characters of modern-day Australia. His career, his lifestyle, his personality made for a capitalist's wet dream. But he wasn't so much a captain of industry as he was the overlord of a feudal empire.
Kerry O'Keeffe used to call him the "Oswald" in the Australian one-day team alongside (Shane) Lee and (Ian) Harvey. But Andrew "Roy" Symonds has suddenly decided to snap into gear as a wannabe born-again dreadlocked Andrew "Fred" Flintoff. Or maybe, even more ambitiously, a Jacques "Jacques" Kallis with personality.
