I'll talk with the selectors when next we meet, but I can't promise anything. You're not short are you?
I'll talk with the selectors when next we meet, but I can't promise anything. You're not short are you?
Taller than JT
I bowl(ed) filthy leg spin so the selectors will never trust me.
Swann has since retired, so you're in.
They obviously fancied a 5 day test in Perth for a change.
In a new low for the Ch.9 commentary team, Ian Healy wanted Ross Taylor to perform an "impromptu haka" upon reaching his century, "a bit of kamate kamate".
They're terrible, and I'll not make any excuses for them.
I've got time for Mike Hussey and Mark Taylor. The rest can go jump.
In an ideal world, I'd have Bumble, Michael Holding, Robin Jackman and maybe a couple more of the poms commentating every minute of every game.
Loving the Ram Slam. The combination of a few world class players with complete club level turds is what T20 cricket is all about.
There's a bloke here bowling with a double hop off his back foot ffs.
Healy was OK for a couple of years after he first started commentating, when he would actually talk about the cricket rather than just letting his mind wander around endless nonsense, but he must have used up whatever brain cells he had left.
Shame, because that Warne/Healy masterclass from the Ashes shows he's still got a brain on him. He just doesn't use it any more.
Ian Chappell's about the best of them left now. I can just about tolerate him and Mark Taylor (depending on who else is in the box with Taylor - he's much worse if it's "Heals" and "Slats".) Alas, ABC Grandstand no longer have the rights to streaming audio in Australia so I can't even listen to some proper commentators.
Commentary is very much our best area in cricket. Bumble is possibly losing his marbles (if he ever had them) but Atherton and Hussain are both just silly good. We have also somehow managed to sell Mark Nicholas to Australia. We must be amazing.
What I'd really like to see though is a 24 hour permanent loop of Nick Knight and Pommie Mbangwa on commentary.
Got some decent depth as well. The likes of Rob Key and Mark Butcher are itching to make the step up from the county circuit.
This would drive me to do unthinkable things...
Ian Chappell is also a good call. And I agree with you about commentary being England's best area of cricket.
I actually need to get myself down to a double header at Centurion and give myself a chance at the R1 000 000.
The only person you could reasonably find unbearable would be Sir Loin, and even then it's just because he doesn't care how biased he is.
Well, that other than your own contribution in the form of Shane Warne.
Warne wasn't good, but I remember most of the lineup being cringeworthily bad.
Botham is unbearable but the rest are decent to very good.
Atherton's great, mind.
He's a boring twat. Nasser and Bumble.
Atherton is a bloody doyen, although his typical snide northern hatred for Surrey does get on my nerves.
Butcher needs promoting to the full team when Botham, Bumble and Holding hang up their opinions. He's an absolute geezer.
Personally I love Atherton and Hussain. When Nasser gets going it's a thing of beauty. He doesn't commentate anymore but watching Bob Willis run amok on the verdict has to be one of the best things about cricket.
Obviously he's an unimpeachable legend of English sport, but he's also the Daily Express in human form and an insufferable bore.
Should never have gone into media. Just do your walks Beef mate, raise some money for some spastics and stop annoying me when I'm trying to watch cricket.
I can put up with Botham because he's that rarest of beasts, a genuine folk hero. He's the national legend that 'Warney' wishes he was.
The other piece of evidence in his favour is that he's lifelong bezzies with IVA Richards, who is probably the greatest man ever to play the game (and not far off greatest player either).
If you were going to put together a desert island commentary sextet for an English Test series you'd have Benaud obviously, Hussain and Atherton, Bumble for light relief, and I'm willing to pay Tony Cozier's air fare. I'd also have Boycott who for my money remains the shrewdest pundit in the game.
The Australians don't really have much going for them now Richie and Greig have gone and they've ushered Bill Lawry into his armchair to make way for the matey banter.
Why couldn't Botham have gone the Viv route though. Keep it quiet and lowkey post retirement (maybe fuck Allen Stanford off though).
Oh God, now I'm going to watch a shedload of Viv Richards videos on YouTube aren't I?
You should just watch this instead and ruin your youth: http://www.espncricinfo.com/cricket-...ry/941277.html
No Blowers talking about pigeon plumage and succulent buses?
Shoaib Akhtar in this legends series is reminding me of a pakistani version of Rik Mayall in Bottom to look at.
The aggregate scores in this match are 1,441 for 21. That means 360 for 5 every day. Bowlers taking a pasting. Far too much dick waving for my taste.
Producing a properly competitive 5 day pitch must be nigh on impossible these days. Give the bowlers anything and you get 2.5 days of aggressive brand wafting. Give them nothing and you get 4 or 5. It's the run rate as much as anything in that Perth match. Waste of everyone's time. Cue final day collapse, such is the regularity of collapsing these days.
Warner gently leaning on a forward defensive and the ball flying straight down the ground to the boundary on the first morning was a sign of things to come. Everything I've listened to since seemed to be pretty tame; boundaries every over.
Set them 350 in a session and a half tomorrow and wait for the ABOC.
In fairness I just think these two teams have gone into a macho singularity. Australia got bummed three times by a deeply ordinary England team because they just couldn't keep their erections down even for brief passages of play. I'm pretty sure Steve Smith actually nicked off with his cock at Trent Bridge, which was one of the poorest team displays in history I would have thought.
Pakistan going there next 'summer', God I hope the great man is still around to sigh at them like a disappointed uncle.
As if to prove my point, Ross Taylor says they'll have a go at any target.
YOU'VE GOT TO BE PREPARED TO LOSE, TO WIN
That's because you're Australian. You need to watch a good few loops of every ball of Alastair Cook's cowardly, negative brand of 28 Test hundreds to get you back to reality.
Actually, I think the World Cup group stage encounter was peak willy waving. My memory of it is every bowler trying to bowl at 150mph and every batsman trying to hit every ball for six, resulting in a total collapse by Australia and then subsequently almost one of the great collapses of all time by New Zealand in a game lacking any sort of finesse or composure.
I am prepared to draw, to win. But I'll take a draw tbh
There's an objection to aggressive cricket?
I mean, we all know how the World Cup ended.
The more I think about it, the weirder the complaint seems, since it's more based on a stereotype than any reflection of our side at the moment.
As an example, Warner scored a ridiculously high percentage of his first 150 runs in ones, twos and threes. I wouldn't exactly call Smith an imposing batsman, either. Nor Burns. Nor Voges. Nor Khawaja or Nevill. Warner aside, we really don't have any "imposing" batsmen who try and dominate the bowlers.
We have three quicks, two of whom are very physical. But nobody's getting intimidated by Hazelwood or Lyon either, so I'm a little confused really.
EDIT: The same is true of New Zealand. McCullum's the only devastatingly imposing batsman. Taylor and Williamson are incredibly talented. Watling and Guptil are patient stalwarts, and Latham's not intimidating anyone.
For Hazelwood, put in Bracewell. For Lyon, Craig. Southee and Bolt have the intimidating fast bowler thing going on, but like Australia, a pair of fast bowlers and one imposing batsman is as far as it goes.
New Zealand are also basically the nicest team in cricket. What a really baffling objection.
It's not an objection. It's an observation.
Mitchell J is about to retire, they say. In the middle of a series
Fairplay to him. He came back, dominated an Ashes, locked down his spot with consistent performance, and won a World Cup. Credit to him for developing into a consistently good bowler, rather than a sporadically amazing/terrible one. We'll miss him, although our stocks in the fast bowling cupboard are pretty good, so it shouldn't be a crisis stations situation.
I'm not sure I'll ever see a series-long bowling performance to rival his in the 13-14 Ashes, and his performance in the South Africa series was almost as good.
This test could still go all three ways.
He bowls to the left.... Let's remember 10-11 when we talk about him.
I love the guy, and even I didn't expect him to retire on his own terms. He had "playing until he's dropped" written all over him.
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Someone get the video of him chirping up to Jimmy about taking wickets. Or the first ball golden duck.
In all seriousness though he molested us like a Jimmy Saville victim a couple of winters ago and it was horrific to see. I will be a lot happier that he isn't there when we go back. What's he like? Is he made for TV commentating? Could he replace Warne as the token Aussie for our coverage?