Dances With Chazzwazzers

So I’m late up. The bus for the SCG leaves soon. Not much time to get a blog out prior to the last rites that will surely be issued later. Here’s a talking point from yesterday and one of the reasons that, should the electorate go left next year, dear old Blighty could be as much of a Nanny State as sunny ‘Straya.

Frightening.

Go to the booths. Stop this thing happening back home before it’s too late. You have been warned.

ELSTOW WIN CRICKET WORLD CUP

Taking my cue from the latest AnchorMan film where they report what people just want to hear rather than the actual news, and with another Haddin-ruined day for English cricket yesterday, I’m struggling with another vaguely hopeful or gritty critique for yesterday’s play. So I’m just going to put anything here for the next day or so.

Tomorrow.

‘Hatters No To Barca For £30 Million Plus Player Deal For Andre Gray‘

Or something like that.

It’s Day Two. The sun’s out.

To the SCG! Come on boys, dig in!

The first morning of a Test Match. One of life’s great pleasures. Be it the first or the the last Test in the series, that opening morning, regardless of the situation, regardless of what has happened before, is always a fresh start.

Today, once I can rouse this remiss rabble of rural roomies, we’re off to the Sydney Cricket Ground. For me, Sydney is not a patch on Melbourne, for reasons I will doubtlessly go in to another time. However, one thing the New South Wales capital has on its Victorian counterpart is that it has the better cricket ground. Sure, the iconic G, Melbourne Cricket Ground is impressive enough. A feat of enterprise and engineering, it’s modern coliseum-like structure is the pride if the city and quite rightly so. But, for me, despite its name, it’s not really a cricket ground.

The SCG? Now we’re talking. This is a proper cricket ground.

With the recent restructuring, it will look a different ground to the place I visited last year. A different, but everything else is the same. It’s the same quirks and customs the world over; the excited chatter, the over-zealous security checks, the first glimpse of the turf, the looking for clues as to the starting XI, the getting-to-know-you with the strangers around you, working out how much of the day you’re likely to be frying or freezing, the establishment of the proximity of the nearest bar.

It’s one of the reasons I do what I do. A raison d’être. Yet, due to the scheduling of the ICC’s future Tours fixtures programme, despite it being so early in the calendar year, this is the last away Test Match for England for the best part of fifteen months.

Which is fantastic for my career progression, for getting money put away for a house, for all the things a chap in his mid-thirties should be doing. Except, well, let’s be honest I’ll be counting the days until I get to do this all again, probably at Sabina Park in Jamaica in April 2015.

I’ll grow up one day. I will, honestly.

All is quiet on New Year’s Day? Clearly Bono hadn’t reckoned with the packed Sydney high streets teeming with the thrifty, the hungover and the clinically bored. Or the scores of bathers struggling for sunstroke space on the busy sands of Bondi. Then there’s packed walkways strewn with baseball capped youngsters heading trance-like to the Domain for the NYD mash up. You’re welcome to the rave. Then there’s the Manly ferries resembling Titanic lifeboats bursting through Port Jackson to get the frantic beach dwellers to their slightly secluded havens.

In short, Sydney is a city that refuses to sleep. Even when it probably has every right to, given the effort it puts in for the big night before.

What to do today then? With my one track mind, a cursory glance at the sporting calendar would surely provide the answer.

The one or two token fixtures in response did little to stir the soul here. Back home, New Year’s Day is one big day of sport, a day chock full of football, rugby, racing and loads more besides. However, in Australia, New Year sport; Where the bloody hell are ya?

I’ve thought of little else since the news came through, like a love note from Blighty to the front, that my beloved Hatters have made it to the top of the table. It will go wrong, it always has, it always does. But for now, I’m passing Hope that gun again.

My team are at home to Barnet later, yet another test of our title winning credentials. That we are where we are is due to the part manager John Still has played in getting there. When he took over it was a shambles. Now we’re playing winning football. The players are behind him, the board are behind him and, pleasingly, the supporters, always a notoriously fickle lot at Kenilworth Road, are behind him too.

On the pitch, we are indebted to the goals of Andre Gray, the industry of Luke Guttridge, but also to our defensive lynchpin Steve McNulty.

Steve McNulty. The first time I saw him play he got sent off. Ignominiously. I have also seen him arrow, Keith Houchen-like, a diving header into the back of the net. Past his own keeper.

Standing squatly, with his closely cropped grey hair and his Sunday League pot belly, he looks nothing like a professional footballer. Indeed, when the Queen meets McNulty (when surely she will) to bestow honours, she’ll doubtless asks him ‘what does he do’. She’ll probably ask him again straight away.

Yet despite his un-athletic exterior, our McNulty is a leader of men. To watch him cajole a young defensive partner through a match is like watching the master, Tony Adams, back at work again. He knows the game inside out, as befits a man of fourteen stone, he uses his cunning to read situations and outwit opponents. Bedecked in Luton Orange, his long passes make him look like the Ronald Koeman of the lower leagues. And he’s capable of this as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBvWs_8ElxM

Honestly. Just watch it again. It’s preposterously brilliant.

If Messi or Ronaldo had done that they’d be playing it on a loop on Sky Sports News.

So, play well Luton. Not just today, but every match day here on in.

2014 is a big year for us. Come on you Hatters.

If Test Matches will finish early, this sort of thing will always happen. The thoughts of Tredwell Corner and our Best Ever England XIs. A happy, scribbled reminiscence of an otherwise forgettable day’s cricket watching.

Lists? Brahms And Liszt more likely….

This was Sunday. Tomorrow is Friday and the first day of the 5th Test. What would we give to have any (well, possibly not Greg’s selection) of these teams taking the field for us?

No matter. Whoever is entrusted with pulling on the Three Lions we will back heartily. England are in a corner, but, as in 2011, 2003 and in 1999, if we can win anywhere, it’s at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

www1.skysports.com/watch/video/sports/…/ashes-rewind-gough’s-hat-trick

Uncle Ben, my dad’s youngest brother and it should be pointed out here, not the old guy who does the rice, was there that day. It’s been a lengthy and mostly ugly tour. I don’t ask for much (Actually, I ask for loads of things, but let’s limit it to cricket for the moment shall we?), but, anything remotely as magical as this will put some much needed sheen on a rather drab few weeks.

We’re with you. Come on England!

It wasn’t quite the hell hole hostel of Perth but 10 nights in Elizabeth hostel on Elizabeth Street had taken it out of my roomies. The hostel had been fine. But the clientele? Sheesh. Any British fans smugly shaking their heads at the behaviour of the basest of the locals in Bay 13 over the four days at the Test Match would’ve checked their chuntering had they had to spend any time with their erstwhile countrymen in our hostel. The Brits abroad at their beastliest; the chunder in the bathroom sinks, the football skirmishes in the wee small hours, the suicide bids, the lurid, loud phone calls, Lord Wineyhands himself witnessed in human form.

It was a relief to get out. At least until it was revealed the onward journey to Sydney, as they probably suspected by now, wouldn’t be as straightforward as just flying. Oh no. A twelve hour overnight bus journey lay in wait. I could feel their eyes bore or glaze or moisten or maybe all three.

After some reassuring pre-journey beers, we got a taxi to Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station to board ‘Tunza Fun’, our alarmingly named interstate chariot. I expected the worst.

But, what’s this? Leg room. Blissful legroom. And air conditioning. Sweet air conditioning. And quite terrific views of the Victorian capital’s cityscape. Then the great Victorian countryside, though dust bitten and arid rather than green and pleasant, all the same a welcome tonic for the three city-strangled farmers sat beside me. The rolling fields and jutting mountains of the Alpine National Park with the sun, pinked and melted over the scene like jam slowly stirred into rice pudding made for better viewing than the in-journey movie, Young Guns, a hitherto unseen ‘classic’ of my youth.

The Cafe Haven in Albury. A truck stop of rubbery, ropey tucker, fair dinkum good ol’ boys, novelty tattoo magazines and the least likely setting, so you’d have thought, for the early heats of Miss World.
Buses pulled up to allow legions of beautiful girls to disembark and shimmer their way into this most plain-Jane of venues. Then more. Each continent demurely represented, waiting patiently for their chips and chicken schnitties as the men folk gasped and gathered round disbelievingly. The starting snarl of the coaches’s engines brought about an involuntary Benny Hill scene as the ladies clambered aboard to continue their journey to the members enclosure of an awaiting glam fest in a Sydney New Year.

I was quietly pleased with how it was all going and settled into a soft sleep. I awoke with a start as our driver, a naturalised South African, swerved attempting a stupid manoeuvre on the narrow road. It reminded me of something I’d seen a little too much of recently. South African virtuosos? Hot-headedness? Either the recent brush with death or the memories of the WACA or the MCG curtailed any further deep sleep.

Avril Lavigne or some other such screaming, soporific songstress on the bus’s radio greets our arrival in Sydney as we glide through the deserted streets. A short hop from the bus stop and we reach our final digs.

Once again I’m in the dock. Perth and its sweaty Northbridge bunker was horrific. The plane journey to Melbourne was similarly unpleasant. The Melbourne accommodation faired badly too.
The driver’s nonsensical overtaking notwithstanding, the coach journey, I estimate, was a success. Reasonably. I reckon a good report here at the Sydney Hostel and I’ll just about get way with it.

Location-wise it’s ideal; there’s a kebab shop next door for the ever-hungry Shaw Dog. The showers are the best of the tour reckons James. And there’s a window. Plus A/C.

Oh, A/C. In sure-to-be-stifling Sydney, where the mugginess and heat abounds like asphyxiating crowds of shoppers. A/C, you wonderful thing, you. We’ve finally reached the promised land.

That’s it. I’ve done it! I’ve gained the lads’ confidence. They’ll invite me back to organise another tour abroad.

Then the hostel manager asks me about payment and my bubble is about to burst. Again.

In another hemisphere I can hear the throats of my friends beginning to clear for the opening of that cruelest of songs.

‘Paul’, I said. ‘Dont worry’, I said, for worry had gripped his consternated visage. His eyes glazed in the expression only a soon-to-be-terminated pet could ever know. ‘Dont worry about this. It changes nothing. You will always be Lucky Paul.’

Our superstition had endured over a year. The Lucky Handshake prior to the start of every day’s play. We shook hands out of friendly courtesy but soon realised just how important our curious little custom had become to the fortunes of our national team.

It had brought us success in India and it had rescued us in New Zealand. Over the course of last summer, when things looked a bit dicey for our lads at certain stages during the English leg of this Ashes marathon, the odd Proxy Lucky Handshake had been sent, in a flux, via text or email.

We recommenced the ritual with gusto on Boxing Day, the first Test we’d attended together since the Matt Prior-led miracle of Eden Park. We’d been buried in the first three Test Matches and, like unlikely knights on white chargers, we thought, hoped, nay, expected the Lucky Handshake would salvage something from what had been thus far a sorry time for our beloved England team.

After Day One, where late England wickets had destabilised their quest to make slow-but-steady progress to anything approaching a decent total, we questioned the continued validity of our routine. At the close of Day Two, England’s best of the series, we questioned our questioning.
The afternoon of Day Three, where England, through another nineties-esque batting collapse, effectively surrendered to Australia, had us thinking again. Our position in the match was perilous. We would gather the next morning to shake hands regardless, but we knew the game was up.

Both for England. And our Lucky Handshake.

And so, at our usual MCG meeting place on Day Four beneath the statue of the iconic Australian quick D.K.Lillee, while the swelling ranks of home fans strode up Jolimont Street like green and gold gloating Revolutionaries towards the scene of this most public of executions, the air thick with Bogan bloodlust, we knew the end had come. This cherished, compulsive, yet slightly eccentric, shibboleth had run its course.

The Lucky Handshake would be stood down graciously. On reflection, maybe others connected to this hiding Down Under should do likewise.

Unlucky Paul? Never. To Lucky Paul and to the Lucky Handshake, we’ll always have Mumbai, Calcutta and Auckland. Great days.

There will be more greatness to come on tours in the future. As there will, doubtless, be more silly superstitions.

Everyone’s a selector these days. Repairing, as had become tradition after the day’s play, to Tredwell Corner in PJ O’Brien’s, a run of the mill, fiddle-de-dee-potatoes Irish Pub, a dimly-lit warren of dark dens and, by the forth day, even darker moods, with the morass of what had passed for half a day’s play fresh in our minds, we decided to get the beers in and the pen and paper out.

Much has been said about the state of English cricket in the wake of this disastrous tour. Most of it from Team Tredders, our happy band of brothers (and sisters). The above is our predictions for the final England XI of The Ashes in Sydney on Friday.

Remember, you read it here first.

Spotted in Olympic Stand on leaving the ground a lady’s bag bearing the legend ‘Keep Calm And Listen To Radiohead.’ Even their most staunch of fans would admit that some of the band’s more, err, funereal of songs would leave some of England’s fans really close to the edge following another disastrous day watching their team implode. Day Four of the Forth Test at The MCG will be like attending a wake.

Among other things, Melbourne is famed for its unpredictable climate. Yesterday afternoon after a warm, sometimes muggy day, a turbulent typhoon hit The G. In the face of this tempest, England were a shower.
Four & Twenty pie wrappers, beer trays and member’s trilbies whipped around the outfield. Spectators were treated to one of the finest sights in world sport as umpire Aleem Dar lost his hat, exposing his magnificent bouffant hair for all to see. This was the only thing to smile about. England’s batsmen were wretched.

Alastair Cook was let down by his mates once again. On this blog earlier in the year I stated I would never publicly berate Ian Bell again, so I won’t. But he knows what he’s done. Enough said. Part of England’s tail, our famed lower order biffers, looked moronic, losing their wickets in quick succession as part of another collapse to Nathan Lyon, who England made look like Shane Warne. Michael Carberry’s days as a Test cricketer look numbered now and Joe Root, a man expected to shine Down Under has also experienced a torrid tour.

Once England lost Cook after a well-made fifty and to a good ball from Mitchell Johnson, the top order folded in a madcap second session. Not for the first time in the match or, indeed, the series, Johnson was to the fore for Australia. Simply irrepressible. His fast bowling, though still trademark erratic at times, put the frighteners on England again. Then his power arm threw down the stumps to dismiss Root, attempting a quick single that really wasn’t there. Bell’s aimless shot into the air found the waiting hands of the cover fielder.
Johnson.
Him again. Like the tacky green n’ gold replica gear so beloved of the locals here, he was everywhere.

So too was Lyon. His role in winning back the urn for the Aussies shouldn’t be underestimated. Time after time England have given their wickets away to him, seeing him as an easy way out, a relief in contrast to the thorough working over they’ve experienced at the hands of Australia’s quicks.
His five wickets here took him to 100 wickets in 29 tests, a fine achievement for any cricketer. By the looks of his rather pedestrian off-spin bowling, much of these dismissals have come about as a result of the batsman giving their wicket away rather than through massive turn or flight and guile, and England certainly helped this theory yesterday.

Australia need 201 runs. England need 10 wickets. They also need help from above, although a lot more than the tempest yesterday.
In this great city’s crazy climate, where seemingly any weather condition is possible at any time, England’s fans will be praying for snow today.

A Four & Twenty pie wrapper, shortly before it’s probable involvement in yesterday’s cyclone.

Ok, so it’s another fairly monosyllabic blogpost. My apologies for this, and at some stage I’ll get more words on here, but breaking the sleep-cricket-pub-sleep routine is proving harder for me to do than the England team racking up a decent total.

This may yet happen today, for The Man Who Can Do No Right is still there unbeaten on 67. It’s back to the MCG along with another thirty-odd thousand hopeful people from Merrie Englande to cheer on our lads.

Pictured strutting to Gimme Shelter which was being played, rather brilliantly, rather portentously over the PA before the start of play. Good egg, the splendid Roomie Rex (on account of him sharing hostel dorms with me as opposed to being a comment on his girth) is the other chap.

I know, I know, it’s not The Warren, Elstow. But it’ll have to do. To the G….

Go on KP! Go on England!