Crucket

Let’s all hope, for the sake of cricket worldwide, that New Zealand wins the super over of the Battle of the Johns.

New Zealand Cricket has a very nice website, with loads of stats, great photos, live scoreboards, heaps of info and of course current news about the Black Caps.

One thing that has always amused me is how they push out press releases as news items with headlines and everything. These get to me through my RSS feed with the very nonspecific byline “from News”, so at first glance they look like they’re a newspaper article or a TV news segment.

“Full and exciting calendar for cricket lovers” was a recent “news” headline from NZC headquarters. And it certainly was news to me, coming as it did after I had waited out a month and a half of no international cricket and was struggling to raise any interest in the Bangladesh series.

I was further surprised to read in the article that:

The vagaries of international cricket scheduling will be highlighted over the coming two weeks as New Zealand, Australia, Bangladesh, Australia and the West Indies  compete in all three formats of the game in six different locations at the business end of the cricket season.

In order to manufacture interest in what is left of the season, we’re being enticed with being able to watch a team, the West Indies, who we aren’t even playing against. This is New Zealand cricket news right? And what is the trick of listing one of our opponents, Australia, twice?

You know to keep your eye on the game at a 20-20 match, right? Not just because of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nature of the action, but because some thug might be whacking a six RIGHT AT YOUR HEAD!

And be particularly careful when Ross Taylor is playing. He holds the record for 6s in 20-20s, with a massive 115 6s from 63 innings, including 28 from this year’s HRV Cup alone.

The guy’s a hazard!

Very interesting piece about Australasian cricket politics by Peter Roebuck:

ICC arena no place for this inexpert right-arm slow

Some very interesting news is coming out of India regarding the Indian income tax department’s assessment of the BCCI’s tax status.

The tax department has looked at the BCCI’s returns and has confirmed what many of us have been suspecting of the BCCI, that they are much more concerned about their bottom line than they are about advancing cricket. They have determined that the BCCI are “totally commercial” and that “cricket is only incidental to its scheme of things.” Despite pulling in 2.7 billion rupees in 06-07, the tax department has noted that the BCCI has not developed any infrastructure or constructed any facilities.

All power to the BCCI for making so much money out of cricket. However, that profit is only a good thing if it is used for the promotion of the game. So it is a crying shame that the BCCI are treating their surplus as a profit.

It is of vital importance to the game that the various cricketing boards operate as charities (or not-for-profit). Profiteering is simply incompatible with developing the game. Developing the game requires investing in youth cricket, improving facilities and promoting the game globally. None of which will draw short-term profit, or even long-term monetary profit necessarily. Running cricket as a business will push the game towards the lowest common denominator.

Also, if the BCCI are conducting their operations on a purely commercial basis, that casts an unpleasant light on their ICL bashing activities. If the BCCI trying to quash the ICL was simply the action of one commercial entity against another, then it looks awfully like uncompetitive activity. And involving other cricketing bodies such as NZC in this looks potentially like a cabal.

But even if you are happy with the BCCI making money and comfortable with cricket being run on a commercial basis, there is still the issue of the BCCI’s tax status. Until it was revoked by the tax department, the BCCI had charity status, presumably meaning its revenue is tax exempt. But if it is operating commercially, it should be paying tax. From its income of 2.7 billion rupees for 06-07 (pre-IPL it should be noted), it owes 1.2 billion rupees in tax.

In my view – much worse than a charity chasing profit, much worse than leveraging your size and influence to stifle competition – the filthy rich not paying taxes is the fricken’ worst.

When the news emerged that Shane Bond would miss the 2nd and 3rd tests of the Pakistan series because of injury, he made a comment about considering his future. This seemed a pretty heavy thing to be thinking about when you had just a tiny abdominal tear. It was clear then that he was revisiting all the arguments that lead to his first retirement from test cricket after the South Africa tour of 2007. It seems this year’s injury reminded him why he made that decision in the first place.

There have been two contrasting reactions to Bond’s retirement. Short of a Length nominated Bond for retiree of the year with the following valediction:

Shane Bond: Shane has always been very special. He has a last name that reminds you of all those horrible chemistry classes which dwell on elastomers or something like that. He had the kind of pace and swing a national cricket board would kill for. It takes talent (and bad luck) to end up playing 18 tests over a career spanning eight years, yet to take 87 wickets at an average of 22 and strike rate of 39 in those tests. With all of that on his resume, it should come as no surprise that even in retirement Bond did something different. He retired twice in 2009! First from the ICL (who are themselves a nominee! you might say he’s a reference to the ICL in coding terms. Then again you might not…) and then from Test cricket. That makes Shane so unique that he’s almost a shoo-in to win the award.

Whereas Sportsfreak remarks:

So that’s it then. Farewell Shane Bond from test cricket. Like stardust sprinkled loosely, quite a few nice shiny bits, but no real long-term illumination. It is easier not to miss someone when you are used to missing them.

A true assessment of Shane Bond lies somewhere between the praise of the first and the harsh truth of the second. On the one hand, Shane Bond was an exceptional cricketer, with an almost unbelievable bowling average of 22.09 and a strike rate of 38.7. On the other hand, he missed many, many more tests than he played during the length of his career. But you can’t focus on one of these aspects without acknowledging the other.

With Shane Bond in the team, New Zealand won five tests for every test they lost. You simply have to be astounded by that figure. Not only was he individually outstanding, as per his individual stats, but he lifted the rest of the NZ bowling attack. If this was all you could see of Shane Bond’s record, you would have to have rated him as the best bowler in the world. However, over the length of his career, NZ actually lost more tests then they won; his impact on NZ’s record was greatly affected by his regular non-availability.

So when reflecting on Shane Bond’s retirement, it is not just the incredible talent that Short of a Length celebrates that we will miss, nor we will dwell solely on his perpetual absences, as Sportsfreak does. But rather we will rue what might have been. What we missed because of his absences. What his legacy might have been and where New Zealand cricket might now be if he had played in 3/4 of NZ’s tests during his career rather than 1/4.

Ryder’s abusive rant revealed says the headline.

I’m sorry, but informing us that Jesse said “F*** off, you stupid old ****,” reveals nothing. I could have guessed that he did at least that much. Or is the revelation that he only said that? Because really, that isn’t even a rant. What I’m doing now is more of a rant than telling some old **** to f*** off.

If you really want to reveal something, remove the *s from “****”. Just how pottymouthed is our Jesse?

It will come as no surprise to readers of Crucket, given the near total absence of any description of physical cricket here, that I do not watch a lot of live cricket. I catch a bit here and there – at the Basin, at my mate’s place, at hotels when I’m travelling – but I don’t have Sky at home. It has always been an expense too far, a luxury.

The other day, I was offered a very good deal over the regular cost of Sky. Free installation and a basic+sports+movies plan for about $10 a week for 6 out of 12 months. I think that comes out to be about half price for those 6 months.

Now, if there was a good home season of cricket (including 3 tests against Australia say), I might pay $10 a week to be able to see it if that was the only option. But to then have to keep my subscription for another 6 months off-season at the full rate largely cancels out that first 6 months of discount.

And the thing is, I don’t like television. I’m not being snooty about it, I actually really love some television (The Wire, say, or Outrageous Fortune or The Simpsons or Deadwood – great stuff!); it’s the endless stream of crud padding out the good bits that I hate, as well as the fact that you have no control over when the good stuff shows. And Sky looks like a metric ton of crud. It offers 49 channels in the basic package (though I note that many of them are free to air anyway and many others are actually radio stations, again free to air). And you must pay for those channels, including Fashion TV, Fox News, and Crime and Investigation, to say nothing of the Christian channel, if you want to get sport. Not only do I not want to have to pay for all that, I don’t want to have it on my TV.

It’s a scam, right? There isn’t a single Sky subscriber in New Zealand who gets something from all 49 channels and there isn’t a single sports fan in New Zealand who would watch Fashion TV (okay, maybe Haydn Green). I suppose you can think of those 49 channels as freebies that you get with the basic subscription, but that subscription would be much lower if there were less freebies.

On the spectrum of sports fans I would consider myself an ‘enthusiast’, not a nut. If I was a sports nut, I’d get Sky at whatever cost. But as a mere enthusiast, I’m not inclined to. And sport on TV should be reasonably available to sports enthusiasts (even snooty too-good-for-TV ones), not just sports nuts and TV nuts and the rich. That’s a fair point of view isn’t it? The fans are a critical part of sport, so shutting some of them out is bad. And it has to be bad for the sports themselves. I mean, perhaps if New Zealand cricket got wider exposure it wouldn’t have such difficulty finding a sponsor.

I was making this post to try to get some advice on whether I should take up this Sky deal, but I feel that in writing it I have convinced myself not to. But if you think you can reveal something about the Sky experience that I might like apart from the cricket, something that would justify the cost, please tell me, help me change my mind.

Welcome to the latest New Zealand cricket blogger: MP for Wellington Central, Grant Robinson.

Ever since seeing this picture

I have been haunted by its similarity to this famous photo

On the surface, the only parallel between the first photo – Vettori and Moles watching a rained out ODI at Christchurch – and the second – General McArthur and Emperor Hirohito facing up to the press after Japan’s capitulation at the end of the Second World War – is the angles of Vettori’s and McArthur’s respective elbows.

Perish the thought, but could the developments of the past few days deepen the parallels?