Test Cricket - Australia vs the Hobbitses

 Some hobbitses fighting over the precious.

The New Zealand cricket team and its fans have taken a well earned break from sheep shearing, wine guzzling and Lord of the Rings ‘hobbitses’ role-playing to pop over to the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) to play some good ol’ fashioned proper sport that doesn't involve sheep, wine or hobbits.

This is the second Test in a trilogy of fantasy matches featuring these gnome-like hobbits battling evil warlords (the Australians, stay with me) for control of a magical place called the MCG.

As it turns out, the newly designed activity program for hobbitses at the MCG does in fact allow for all of the important leisure pursuits that New Zealanders enjoy.

The MCG Fun Curators have decided that fans should no longer have to choose between attending a Test Cricket match or maintaining basic hygiene standards, because now the MCG offers a barber service.

It is not clear whether it is for sheep and hobbits as well, but I saw a human-ish looking man in the barber chair having his sheep-like beard tended to, so he could sit back and watch the match in the blazing Melbourne sun/wind/rain/hurricane (depending on the time of day you choose for your manscaping). This is the new cricket. This is men living their best lives. It’s a great time for sheep shearing hobbitses to be alive.

The MCG has stepped up big time his year. There are a variety of goods and services on offer at the ground that you wouldn’t normally expect from a day at the cricket. You can get a shave, get a haircut, shear some sheep, indulge in some fush and chips, play some rugby probably and do some Haka, I don’t really know. Nevertheless, exhausting day!

Credit to the boys, the creative types at the MCG, they really are making the Fushy Chaps (my nickname for the drunk New Zealand larrakins who made their way across the fishy ditch to the Test) feel right at home. The Chaps are loud, and singsongy. Never mind ’alcohol free areas’; I’d need a New Zealander free area.

Where do we even draw the line with spectator entertainment at stadiums these days? I’ve got no idea, but I also have an idea, Cricket Australia. How about Pay to Play, where for a few hundred quid (going to charity) you get to field for Australia for 5 minutes? I didn’t say it was a good idea. I’m sure the Australian captain Tim Paine would more than welcome a drunkard twit running around his outfield tripping over their hobbit feet. Stupid hobbitses.

The Australian captain has been awfully perplexed lately at the Umpire Decision Reviewing System, the DRS, and rightly so. To be fair, the meaning of the acronym DRS should change with each ref decision. For example, Didn’t Really See, Dat Ref Shite, Didn't Review Shite. The reviewing system needs a systemic review.

Anyways, it’s looking like a win for the Aussies. We wants it, we needs it.

Thoughts from the Big Bash League

Last night I went to a Big Bash League (BBL) cricket game at Manuka Oval in Canberra. Cricket being the sport where two team play a game with sticks and balls and one team wins and the other does not. If you’d like me to describe anything else to you please let me know.

So this particular match was between Sydney and Hobart - the Sydney Thunder versus the Hobart Hurricanes, with Sydney hijacking the Canberra pitch as a lesser second-string home when their parents at Spotless Stadium have kicked them out for partying and cricketing too much.

BBL names are curious. While Sydney is very dependable with it’s thunder activity throughout the summer months, I’m not convinced Hobart has ever experienced a hurricane, but that’s not important right now. Well it is important actually if you are of the view that team names should perhaps vaguely reflect something about that city but, alas, nope. Maybe it’s a bit like Gandhi’s world view - be the stormcell you want to be in the BBL. 

Clearly the BBL Team Naming Gods were not concerned with the potentially adverse consequences for international tourism of giving Australian sporting teams names like hurricanes, thunder, heat and scorchers. Maybe in the future they’ll add terrifying spiders, deadly snakes and bogans to the comp to really give those pesky tourists the boot.

Anyway, I’ve been to the cricket before, and I always find it a mirthful experience - what’s life without MIRTH! - except I always get wet because it always rains, and I always get cold because it always gets cold, even though it’s supposed to be summer, and my brain apparently can’t be bothered reminding me of these facts before I go.

So last night was no different - wet, cold, yet mirthful - and also a kid got hit in the head by a cricket ball. If the world of cricket is foreign to you, the balls are made of the hardest substances in the known universe and they are whacked at a very, very hard speed. 

The crowd announcer always thoughtfully tells us to watch out for balls that may fly into our heads. Look, thankyou for the threatening heads-up, but it’s kind of difficult to avoid when you’re constantly being distracted by the endless advertising, adorable little attention-seeking robot cameras zooming around, dance cams and crowd waves. Also, head injuries are highly likely when the you’re working within a framework that rewards a player with a ‘six’ for clubbing a ball into the crowd. It is, in fact, a work, health and safety nightmare.

The offending ball. Maybe.

Onto other burning matters. I almost forgot how most excellent Australian sport is at promoting the junk food industry. It actually does a better job at promoting the $20 billion a year Australian junk food industry cash cow than the industry does. Last night was KFC’s turn to turn us all off healthy options and be less health conscious consumers. 

Last night the crowd announcer - who had seamlessly moved on from a kid getting hit in the head with a ball - told us excitedly that if a ‘six’ was caught in the crowd we could all win free KFC. Because that’s the way to earning yourself a cricketer’s physique, kids. Fairly confident the cricketers are not eating that for supper, ever.

Anyway, my team won - the dependable Sydney thunder activity - so yay.

Runs on the Cheeseboard.

We all know that Australia is in the middla ocean in the middla nowhere. A back of beyond, full of the Bush, the Outback, the Bushfire, the Cricket and big mobs of the Whoop-Whoop.

Our country is like one half of a pair of ships that pass in the night, except there isn't any other ship for miles, unless the other ships are lost or have been overrun by pirates who like vegemite on toast and a glass of milo before a night of pillaging on ye high seas.

The remoteness of Australia often gets my goat. You know when you're on a lilo in a pool and you get to the edge and you kick off with your feet to drift to the other side? I wish we could do that with Australia. We could traverse the world! I suppose the sharks would pop an inflatable Australia with their baby teeth in seconds.

One of my main gripes with our remoteness is during The Ashes. If you don't know what The Ashes are then how dare you.

The Ashes are an extremely tiny but important urn that is given to the winner of a series of cricket test matches between Australia and England.

Aussie cricketer Mitchell Marsh tucks
 into a cheeseboard because yum.

Cricket is a religion in Australia. It is an institution founded on the worship of skank slash loveable rogue slash cricket commentator Shane Warne and a strict set of beliefs. Like winning. 

And giddily jumping up and down when this happens. So happy. And then so sad. So sad. All the emotions. And that's just after one ball from a fast bowler, the dramatic divas of the cricketing world. Ours are called Mitchell. It's just easier to remember one name.

If you need me to explain cricket to you it goes like this: two teams, one wins. Although sometimes they play for five days and then shake hands, drink tea, and eat cheese and agree to a draw so no-one wins. It's complicated. 

It's also non-contact. At no time during a game is it acceptable to touch each other, until they all hug and drink tea at the end of a game after agreeing that this sport doesn't always need a winner, sometimes it's just nice to drink tea together. Lovely.

A lot of people think cricket is boring. Well many things are boring to those who unable to grasp the concepts of strategy or thinking.

I think you are probably going to get some enjoyment out of any sport if you attend in person. 

Live elite cricket, for example, highlights the speed of the game, the precision, the skill, the technique, the strategy, the dedication, the persistence. That's all worthy of an admission price, innit?

You may not love it, but you will appreciate something about the skill sets on show. Unless we're talking about the sport of boxing, in which case you may as well save your cash and just hang around the pub and appreciate that no-one has KO'd you yet.

I love my cricket. However at this time of the year - winter in Australia - any cricketing event of import involving my national team is played on the other side of the world, in another time zone, in another galaxy.

But now that this year's Ashes is finished, I need to find a way to get off London's Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and return to a time zone that is vaguely, or, even better, specifically, connected to my every day existence.

Another Mitchell. So confusing.

While I happily exist on London time my home town of Canberra, Australia is not. It is from the future.

GMT was invented in England in the late 17th century to give English cricketers a general idea of when to stop their match for a spot of jam and scones, or cheese and crackers if that's your jam. 

And, to this day, the unruly GMT continues to ruin the sleeping patterns of cricket fans the world over.

You're gonna need a bigger big screen, Canberra

Yesterday I went to The Cricket - England vs. the Prime Minister's XI in Canberra.  It was great craic.

Every year the PM asks several of his more flexible Cabinet Ministers, a few Australian international cricketers, and a bunch of up and coming kids, country bumpkins and blue heelers from local cricket teams around the country to attend Cabinet to make very important decisions on which the fate of the country rests, drink some tea, and then finish off the day with a spot of cricket. Some of that is the truth.  What is this, Watergate?

And they all said yes, that would be lovely thank you, so we had a match on our hands, old sport.  And the blue heelers did good. They didn't beat the England cricket team - no less - but they made it to the end almost. And they mostly returned the ball to their opponent after each over, but only when they were given a treat. Kids these days.

I love my cricket. I haven't been to a live game before, unless you count the time my mum took my sister and I to the MCG and we had to listen to the moronic alcoholics in Bay 13 for eight hours.

A lot of females I know think The Cricket is a big bore, which is rich coming from people who think watching 'how to paint roses on your toenails' Youtube videos is a fascinating way to while away the hours. 

Next up in my new busy, busy cricket calendar is the Big Bash League final, which Canberra will host in a few weeks. Muchos looking forward to that.

The fact that the other More Important Cities of Australia are being denied the final warms the cockles of my heart. It really does.

But Canberra is gonna need a bigger big screen.  Perhaps start with one from the 20th century.  While you shouldn't need your binoculars to see replays on the big screen, frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.  All right Mr DeMille, I'm ready for my closeup, but not on that tiny bigscreen.  If you build a new one, they will come.

I'll be back.