Beer is poured on the head of the retiring Mitchell Johnson. Photo /Getty
Cricket needs baddies, we'll miss you @MitchJohnson398 especially the Freddie days pic.twitter.com/8zSr55FEmk
— Beige Brigade 🥝🏏 (@BeigeBrigade) November 17, 2015
After the pain and pummelling of The Gabba, it warmed the beige cockles of my heart to see the New Zealand team bat like the Masters of the Universe over the WACA weekend.
Ross Taylor and Kane Williamson turned in a veritable tempest of statistics on their way to our ninth best partnership of all time, 265. The wee man from Tauranga has now had a hand in four of our top 10 partnerships, with Brendon McCullum (3), Taylor and Tokoroa's finest, Bradley-John Watling (2) the only others to make multiple appearances.
So off to Radelaide we go for the inaugural pink ball fiesta. With all the bitching and moaning about the red leather in the first two tests, accompanied by endless suitcase entrances by the fourth official, the pressure is really on the pink ball to deliver a more controversial performance. Dare to dream New Zealand.
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Sad to see the back of Mitchell "Freddie Mercury" Johnson. The game is all the better for cult heroes and pantomime villains like him - loping in at pace and trying to break batsmen's phalanges and stumps. I love Pietersen winding him into a frenzy at the MCG, repeatedly backing away as the moustachioed firebrand rampages in. "As I ran past Mitchell Johnson I said to him, it's me or you, buddy, and believe me, I'm less scared of getting out than you are scared of giving me a lot of runs," Pietersen wrote in his book. "He looked at me, just stared at me, he didn't say anything back. He kept staring and walked past. S**t. S**t. S**t...."
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Craig McMillan's twitch fibres may have started super-twitching when cranky Mitchell Starc challenged him to a net on Sunday night. But Macca (aka Lid) had a fair point. The Starc delivery looks slower than Tait, Akhtar and Thomson footage - and there was a t least one report that even silky Matt Henry had notched up a decent velocity at one point: 108.8mph anyone?
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Dirk Nannes is a bloody legend for having the honesty gene and putting his thoughts about the arrogance of the Australian cricket team on the table for all to see. It was interesting to see the typical response, along the lines of him being soft and of course unAustralian (as opposed to unIndian ). Nannes is a fascinating character who famously described himself as an accidental cricketer, and his is a great new larynx in the commentary box. Here's hoping he makes it over the ditch this summer for the return series. The Nannes back story includes time as a pro snow skier, he is a retired saxophonist and he founded the Global Snow Tours tour company.
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Ian Healy. Make him stop. Hands down the worst commentator going around, and when he is in combo with Mark Nicholas and/or Mike Hussey and/or Mark Taylor it is excruciating. Thank Christ for Ian Smith. More evidence to support a "sound effects only" option channel, for all international matches where The ACC caravan of carnage is not parked up behind the boundary rope.
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Michael Bracewell is a southern man through and through. He'd take a bench press to a desert island and his favourite meal is pie and Speight's.
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I said I wouldn't go back to the insipid Cricket All Stars Sunday League for matches two and three, and I kept my word about my information diet. But a mate did send over the slightly sad sight of a Groupon offer to the not-so-big show. At least they weren't talking it up too much: "Spectators will see an assortment of top-tier athletes...all brought together by their universal passion - the world's universal passion, really - for hitting stuff with a bat." Don't believe the hype.
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WTF is single wicket cricket? I had never heard of it until I stumbled across this gem of a history lesson. It's a knock-out tournament involving 16 players who do a 1:1 knockout comprising of bowling 1 over and batting for 1 over while 10 of the other players field. A variation is the double wicket version - reigning world champions: Dan Vettori and Jacob Oram . "Well done to New Zealand who are the first Double Wicket World Champions. Oram played brilliantly today, ably supported by Vettori. But it is Jacob Oram who has really made himself a star here. We'll confirm the number of sixes later, but they were all great value.
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LISTEN:
The Newstraya Land Episode of The BYC Podcast landed this week. It's a strong week for Emails From Around The World with Bob in touch to talk little lambs, interviewing Kane Williamson and Steve Smith's hardcaseness; Biggie has a polite trolling of our affiliations to NSW and Reg is talking ducks.
READ:
Jarrod Kimber on Abraham de Villiers, The Beast from Pretoria. "There is no kind of bowling that can stop him from scoring a six. He is, as we sit here today, a perfect modern batsman. A beautiful hybrid of all the best batsmen who went before him. Like Sobers didn't invent hitting the ball hard and Bradman didn't invent scoring massive, nothing AB has done is an invention; it is a perfection."
LISTEN:
Dirk Nannes on The Cricket Couch podcast: "Well, I always played when I was a kid, all through my juniors, I was rubbish. I was third [division] and stuff like that."
WATCH:
If you haven't seen Takapuna Grammar School cricketer Jasper Edgar's uncanny impersonation of Ross Taylor's batting entrance, you must. Includes Taylor's idiosyncrasies and eye exercises for pterygium maintenance.
Citified stadium is amazing. Can you work out the size of the boundaries by our faces? #cricketallstars #spinners pic.twitter.com/HIIgEy2YC0
— Graeme Swann (@Swannyg66) November 5, 2015
Middle & Leg is a cricket newsletter for New Zealand cricket fans who like a dose of optimism and a tablespoon of take the piss with their weekly cricket informational. It is tapped out by Paul Ford, co-founder of the Beige Brigade, and one-seventh of the Alternative Commentary Collective. You can email him here beigehq@beigebrigade.co.nz.
Bevon Jacobs is yet to play international cricket, but he knows it's where he wants to be.