Chris Cairns. photo / Dean Purcell.
A cricket newsletter from Beige Brigade HQ for New Zealand cricket fans who like a dose of optimism and a tablespoon of take the piss with their weekly cricket informational.
The men in the pango kiapas head to Australia next Tuesday, in a series where success could see them dubbed our greatest team of all-time. World Cup finalists and conquerors of Australia would chin that bar. Meanwhile over the ditch, the Australians are preparing for the series with domestic one-dayers and one round of pink ball Sheffield Shield first-class matches - good to see there is not a red Kookaburra in sight.
I'm worried that Dean Jones is worried about the upcoming series from an Australian point of view. And I'm worried that Hess is talking about us winning from a New Zealand point of view. I'd rather they were being cocky buggers and underestimating us like usual...
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Poker Face fan Andrew Alderson and reckons the Pink Ball test might be best for batsmen: "The fluorescent ball assaults the retina like a piece of ostentatious costume jewellery.... There was no doubt of the trajectory as the ball lit up the darkening sky. A subsequent late cut and cover drive offered further evidence the ball was more discernible than a Lady Gaga brooch."
Quote of the week from The Guardian's Cairns trial coverage: "[Sasha Wass QC] said Riley would tell the court that she and Vincent had dinner with Cairns, his wife Mel and the former England captain Andrew Flintoff at the Manhattan Grill restaurant in Altrincham in the summer of 2008. Flintoff "didn't contribute to the conversation and spent the time drinking..."
Here's my Cairns Trial First XI in batting order: Mal Loye, Lou Vincent, Ricky Ponting, Stephen Fleming (c), Brendon McCullum, Stuart Law, Chris Cairns, Daniel Vettori, Andre Adams, Kyle Mills, Shane Bond. And the bench is as follows: Matthew Elliott, Mark Greatbatch, Murray Goodwin, Chris Harris, Andrew Hall, David White.
Amazing that anti-corruption monitoring has been introduced in India for cricket down to Under 14 level. This means photographs and names of players, managers, support staff and "service staff boys" need to be displayed at the entrance of the dressing room. Neeraj Kumar said: "Grooming means some people may help them get cricket kit or do some favours in the early stage of their careers only to manipulate them once they have established themselves as players. Players from poor families could be easy targets. A young player may think that a person who is helping him is doing charity but that could be a trap. So we have to educate them about all this under the anti-corruption education programme at a very early age."
The rumour mill has Pepsi threatening to pull the pin on its sponsorship of the Indian Premier League (a deal worth a box-bursting US$70m or 4 billion rupees) because of ethical concerns. That may spell the end of amazing ads like these featuring the back stories of 'cricket innovations' from the likes of Kevin Pietersen, Tillikeratne Dilshan, Lasith Malinga and our very own Billy Bowden who stars in this piece of eccentricity.
Shane Warne and Sachin Tendulkar are taking their Cricket All-Star Circus to Citi Field, Minute Maid Park and Dodgers Stadium in November in the latest attempt to crack the cricketing nut in The Land of Opportunity (the best of which was this concisely lucid cricket explainer). Loved this: "In the US, cricket is too small to be tracked in the Sports & Fitness Industry Association's annual participation study, and the national cricket association has a strategic plan to reach 50,000 American participants by 2017. By comparison, SFIA counts 2.4 million whitewater kayakers in the US, and 2.5 million participants in pickleball*, a racquet sport that combines elements of tennis, badminton and ping-pong."
The Vic Tunnel-side embankment of the Basin Reserve got cooked on Sunday - but it wasn't exactly a bushfire requiring monsoon buckets from helicopters. See the state of the damage here.
Watch: You may have read about Batting Forever, the super-secret yet deceptively simple Kiwi-designed "solo batting net" licensed to Puma. It lets batsmen warm up by whacking up to 25 deliveries in 30 seconds, without the need for a single throwdown.
Read: Dylan Cleaver peels the Jimmy Neesham onion: "Vulnerability doesn't appear to play much part in Neesham's game. He oozes confidence on the field, even cockiness. In a quiet moment, however, the leadership of the Black Caps will tell you that some of it is a front; that Neesham's confidence is a little streaky."
Listen: The Rosé Perjury Trial Haka Episode of the BYC podcast has landed and features Jayne on wicketkeepers if Ronchi, Watling, McCullum and Latham are all injured simultaneously, Martin Snedden's promises, Yashi from Agra on cricket hakas, and Muzz with a teaser about 10-wicket bags. Violence Corner is armed and very dangerous in Orlando, Florida.
Read: 8500 words on The men who sold the world from the greatest cricket writer on the planet, Gideon Haigh. As one mate said: "I did wonder if it was going to end...." but hang in there as this is a magnificent essay about cricket administrators guided by self-interest, self-aggrandisement and self-preservation.
Watch: Brett Lee stars in a new Australia/India film called UniNdian. The preview is here. Brace yourself: it includes a sex scene. His co-star Tannishtha Chatterjee said: ""When it came to the sex scene, because it was Brett's first time, he was nervous. We did two weeks of acting workshops so we could trust each other as friends. I told him it will be very mechanical - this is not in the shot, the light is not falling right, can you move your leg? By the time it happens, it's very clinical, but it's a love story, so you have to show some love."
Paul Ford is a co-founder of the Beige Brigade, and one-seventh of the Alternative Commentary Collective. You can email him here beigehq@beigebrigade.co.nz.
* Yes it is ridiculous
Forty-three South Island co-ed principals have asked the national body to intervene.