Doug Bracewell prepares to bowl with the pink ball during the tour match between the Prime Minister's XI and New Zealand. Photo / Getty
Doug Bracewell prepares to bowl with the pink ball during the tour match between the Prime Minister's XI and New Zealand. Photo / Getty
A cricket newsletter from Beige Brigade HQ for New Zealand cricket fans who like a dose of optimism and a tablespoon of take the piss with their weekly cricket informational.
Fireworks are just around the corner - our middle order is in decent form, we don't give a rat's about the pink ball kerfuffle and the scariest thing is that we're still talking up our chances of taking home the carcinogenic bacon against Australia.
Cricket Australia look to be keen to keep fans away with their super-lame promotional campaign, Don't be a Daryl. Not a reference to milkshake fiend Daryl Tuffey but a dig at fans who don't make it to games, it zeroes in on an empty seat in the crowd meant to be occupied by a bloke called Daryl. It's here but I warned you...
Elsewhere, the Australian Cricketers' Association head honcho Greg Dyer is the latest to come out whingeing about the pink ball. He's hinting that it's not too late to abandon the experiment and stick with the red cherry in Adelaide. But as a NZ cricket fan in the 1980s (and at the MCG in 1987 in particular) it is nigh on impossible to take anything he says seriously. He is not a member of the Despicable Australia XI for nothing you know.
Meanwhile in Dunedin, the ODT reports on pink balls of an altogether different nature: "Police were called to Logan Park where a group of about 100 students had been drinking and streaking during a pre-season cricket game between high school pupils and members of the Otago Sparks." One Mum put it succinctly: ''As my son said, he will probably never be in any other game that has a streaker." Wishful thinking.
It's almost 30 years ago that Sir Paddles Hadlee wreaked utter havoc in Brisbane: "my perfect performance" - hard not to argue with figures of 52.3-13-123-15. Remind yourself of his clipped vocals, silky action, double sweatbands, pencil 'tache, encyclopaedic memory and 15 wickets here . Hard not to enjoy William Morris Lawry and Richard Benaud too.
Honesty Corner: Hard not to go past photocopier salesman, DB drinker and gutted Havelock North club cricket coach Derek Stirling after his team scored 107 all out and still won by 72 runs: "It was a perfectly fine batting wicket. We batted poorly and obviously they were worse. Overall, the standard of premier men's club batting is appalling because no one wants to hang around. Everyone wants to bat like the highlights you see on TV in the IPL."
Uh-oh there is another bloody Waugh looming. He's Austin Waugh, son of Steve and nephew of Mark. He takes his cricket very seriously and has been racking up runs in age grade cricket across the Sunburnt Nation. Dads out there will appreciate that even if your old man is a legend of the game, your son won't care. "Like all [sons] he doesn't listen to [his dad] so I've got to tell another coach to tell him what I'm thinking so it gets through to him."
Heartbreaking to see Sir Garfield Sobers cracking with emotion as he spoke about the decline of West Indian cricket, as it heads down the plughole. His lament was focused on the attitude of the players on Twenty 20 cricket: "My whole obligation was to West Indies cricket. As I have always said: I have never made a run for me....I don't think we have that kind of person today. We might have them in different countries; we might have them in Sri Lanka, we might have them in England, in Australia, but I don't think we have that kind of person in West Indies any more who is quite prepared to play and to give it everything to their country."
But maths must also play a massive part in this decline and fall equation: The Economist reports that since June 2000 the West Indies has won 14 Test matches and lost 78 against the other eight major nations. And under the New World Order in which India, Australia and England take the lion's share of world cricket revenue, there it is estimated the West Indies Cricket Board will receive around $80m over the next eight years - a box-shrinking $43m less than they would have expected under the old regime.
How good was Sir Don Bradman? Here's a graph that shows his batting average in Test cricket against the rest of the cricketing world. He even makes ODI freak Michael Bevan look bad.
WATCH, READ, LISTEN
Watch:Branded A Rebel - Cricket's Forgotten Men - as recommended by talented opening bat Dylan Cleaver. A brilliant but sad tale about the West Indian cricketers who were made 'honorary whites' and toured apartheid-era South Africa. A good call or a bad one?
Read: From timber to sixer - a short film plus long yarn about bat-making and an unexpected foray into Pakistani cricket politics. "Javed blames PCB's "incompetent marketing department" for the whole fiasco..."
Listen: The Dyer Headley Pink Modesty Episode of The BYC Podcast featuring Jesse Ryder turning out for Wairarapa and scaring teenagers' mums, what they're eating in Southwark, and George Worker & Andrew Mathieson's 134-run 10th wicket stand.
Watch: Where is Indian discard Yuvraj Singh? Starring in surreal ads.
Paul Ford is a co-founder of the Beige Brigade, and one-seventh of the Alternative Commentary Collective. You can email him here beigehq@beigebrigade.co.nz.
