Posted by When they manufacture a girl band or a boy band, they often work on a simple principle: put enough reasonably attractive people in one place and it’s hard to assess the visual merits of any one individual.
When it comes to girl bands, we subconsciously take the best features of each of the talentless no-marks, blending them together to form a Frankenstein’s pop star of rare beauty who exists only in our mind. After a year of struggling to keep up with the rapid editing of their music videos in a bid to identify the good-looking one, we will eventually realise that they’re all munters. But it takes a year.
We feel similarly about today’s South Africa v Australia dismissathon. So many wickets. Can any truly stand out?
Well, yes, actually. One wicket does stand out. Brad Haddin’s. On a day when great bowling met mindless batting, this was an absolute beauty.
It’s all about context. 17 wickets have fallen in the day and your team is 18-5. What do you do? Do you amble down the pitch to a short pitched ball and try and flap it into the air on the off side for no real reason? HELL YES, YOU DO!
Imagine you’re standing atop the white cliffs of Dover. A strong wind is blowing, causing people to lose their footing. So far you’ve seen 17 people slide over the edge and if you peer over, you can make out their spattered remains on the rocks below.
Most of us would back away from the edge in that situation. Brad Haddin would take a ruddy great run-up in the belief that he could jump to France.
Shahid Afridi would be proud of him.
Badhands been doing that sort of thing for years. It’s why we all love him so.
Yes, our Hads excelled himself yet again today. It’s no wonder Tim Paine waits in vain when Hads is so bloody funny to watch.
The thing is, in the first innings Haddin tried to play cautiously, only to be utterly owned outside off by Steyn, and it didn’t last long.
With only the tailenders for company, it makes a sense for a batsman like him to try and throw it, because he’s going to get out anyway. And if he can get some runs, maybe he’ll make the bowlers think twice, adjust their game and make batting a bit easier for him and his sightly inept partner.
The thinking behind the decision to go for it was debatable, but more or less sound. What he fucked up was the shot itself, but no more than if he’d performed a lame push of a defensive shot, like half the top order.
Apologies, that should have been posted as me. One of my multis from the other thread snuck in.
It was a shocker of a shot, if he got dropped for that shot alone, he could have no complaint, it was bloody funny though.
The only thing worse was Billy Doctrove’s decision not to give Shaun Marsh out lbw, it was that blatant that a bloke on his debut had the confidence to call for a review without consulting his captain and was celebrating the wicket while waiting for the review. A true shocker.
It is funny how South Africa operate. They unleash the most lethal bowler in the world on the opposition and then proceed to try and win by lining up the most boring batting order known to man. Sometimes I wonder why Jonathan Trott moved to England. He would’ve fit right in.
It’s on days like these that we miss Jrod’s cricketwithballs. All that seems to be left of the poor fellow is tombstoned here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarrod_Kimber
“Mildly controversial”. How damning is that?
Sounds like he wrote that himself.
For those interested, cricketwithballs.com will be back shortly, once Jarrod’s sorted out his hosting.
Can’t believe he has a Wikipedia page. Where’s ours?
Are you sure you mean that? Can easily be done….
No, you should respect the Wikipedia guidelines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Bowden
Oops. Sorry. Didn’t read that before I posted. I disagree though. You are widely enough published to meet notoriety requirements these days.
Wikipedia’s guidelines are clearly too lax if that doesn’t get taken down.
Pff, I like watching Smith, especially in backs-to-the-wall situations, and Amla is (or can be) incontestably good to watch. DeVilliers too, though he was much more entertaining when he first came in. England? Just Pietersen for me. Cook, horrible, Strauss, sort of unremarkable, Trott eh, Bell… cunt, Prior biggest piece of shit on earth. Maybe Morgan. Broad? Also a cunt (though I’d say him and Mitchell Johnson are amongst the best timers of a cricket ball around).
Anyhow I liked Mark Richardson and Steve Waugh and didn’t really give a crap about Martyn and Mark Waugh and Laxman and all that so never mind
WHY HAVE I REPLIED TO THE WRONG POST, WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
Article deleted. Accorting to the log, it was first treated as “Vandalism” (their word for misinformation) and promptly deleted, then restored when KC was found to be a real person.
It was then deleted about an hour later in accordance with the aforementioned “someone must give a shit” stipulation.
It seems at the very least, we’ve caused a healthy argument among the wikipedia elves.
Remember kids, if you use our real name, that constitutes ‘vandalism’.
But Alex Bowden can contribute to several sites at once:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/page2/content/story/539473.html
The longer comments on that one are awesome. Or should I say, “the missing the point-ful-ness is terrific”.
Who is Alex Bowden?
59 needed by the Saffers now, with nine wickets in hand. I think the odds are heavily favouring an Australian victory by 55 runs at the moment.
Zaltzmann sums up yesterday’s mayhem best on cricinfo: “What a day. I think cricket needs a cup of tea and a sit-down.”
When I clicked to search Wikipedia quotations for Alex Bowden it said “Did you mean Alex Bogey?”
the last line of this article made me snort through my nose.