10 Things #21

GH on meteorology, ideology, My Brother Jaz and....surrealism.

1/ It’s raining sixes in England and raining rain in India, somehow reflecting the respective fortunes of cricket’s oldest and newest genres. That was all I thought worth adding to Pete’s excellent study of climate on cricket, which is that T20 is relatively advantaged by weather’s worsening volatility by dint of its presenting a smaller target. Five consecutive days of largely decent weather looks like being an ever bigger ask.

2/ In the meantime, what to make of these unsourced reports that the Taliban is turning against cricket? It is never obvious who is in charge in Kabul - the regime does not speak with one voice. So my guess is that this smacks of an injunction to piety, or factional positioning. But again we see underlined the futility of the Australian 'ban' on bilateral cricket with Afghanistan. As Rory Stewart, a recent visitor to the country, just put it on The Rest is Politics podcast

, these are not crooked African politicians sensitive about their freedom to shop at Harrods; the Taliban have spent a lot of the last few decades in caves, and care nothing for the world's good opinion. So the idea that Cricket Australia can make them stroke their beards and reconsider the lot of women in Afghanistan is a liberal fantasy.

3/ We launched My Brother Jaz in the Readings alcove of the State Library of Victoria on Thursday, which was a home game, Readings being a treat for my manga-loving daughter and the library being where my mum is a tour guide. I was interviewed by my friend Sally Warhaft, who was born two days after Jaz, never knew him, but commented that she’s always felt the influence of him on my life - maybe I wasn’t as good at hiding it as I thought. She did a typically sensitive job - I could not have asked for a more sympathetic interlocutor.

Also present my Cricket Et Al colleague Sam Perry and Dan Toomey, and many friends of the pod/stack. Thanks to everyone for tolerating my fading croak of a voice.

4/ In fact, having been pretty crook the last couple of days, I might not have made it to the library at all but for Janeen’s tender ministrations. From Strange Loyalties, the third volume in William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw trilogy, which I’m rereading with pleasure: ‘Her life was orderly and successful. Me, I seemed to be moving backwards. I sometimes get the feeling that I’m on foot while everybody else is driving. It’s as if my life still hasn’t invented the wheel.’ 

5/ It’s strange to be in public answering personal questions when for so long I have presented the world a professional face. I’ve no intention of getting used to it, and feel no particular aptitude, although the panel on The Project were very solicitous.

At the same time, I recognise it as part of the process that writing My Brother Jaz began, culminating in this thoughtfully probing interview by Sarah Kanowski from RN Conversations.

6/ Yesterday, as mentioned, would have been Shane Warne’s fifty-fifth birthday. He, I never forgot, was born fifty-one days before Jaz, and in a way that was part of my vision of him - the incorrigible younger brother, always getting into scrapes but fundamentally good hearted. Anyway, here I am talking about the best cricketer, and the biggest cricket personality, I’ve ever seen, with Miraj Vora from the PCCI podcast

7/ To an issue, finally, that absolutely nobody is talking about: what do Jake FG, Cooper Connolly and Xavier Bartlett have in common? Each, like Todd Murphy last year, has described the beginning of their career as ‘surreal’. But before you imagine that this is the prerogative of young Aussie guns, this has also been the experience at various stages of Steve Smith, on winning an ICC award, Jimmy Anderson and Kane Williamson on international debut, Mitch Marsh and Jofra Archer on coming back, and Alastair Cook on his international exit and retirement, not to mention David Warner and Virat Kohli at various milestones. Playing against Virat was likewise surreal for Aaron Hardie and Will Jacks; although, for Virat, perhaps the ultimate surreal deal was not playing at all.

8/ So this is a descriptor transcending all bonds of affiliation, age, nation and sex.Whether you’re Phoebe Litchfield, Lyn Larsen, Darcie Brown, Lauren Filer or Amelia Kerr, surrealism can strike at any time. New Zealanders may be especially prone, Finn Allen, Rachin Ravindra, Tim Southee, Corey Anderson, Daryl Mitchell and Jimmy Neesham have all had that sensation of watches melting and paintings of pipes denying that they are pipes.

9/ I know, I know - overuse and hyperbole are always draining words of meaning, and one can be too picky. Nothing is merely sexist anymore; it is outrageously ‘misogynistic’. Nobody is simply caught unawares; they are completely ‘blind-sided’. But let’s note that the term ‘surreal’, which derives from an influential but ancient artistic movement, is steadily detaching from its original etymological moorings. This year marks the centenary of Andre Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto which defined surrealism as ‘pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought’, and ‘dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.’ As this like-minded pedant notes: ‘Surreal refers to something that has the qualities of a dream - it is illogical, fantastic, or bizarre in a way that defies normal perceptions of reality…..So while "surreal" does connote something unusual or unreal, it has a more specific meaning related to the subversion of logical thinking and the blending of the conscious and unconscious realms. The common misinterpretation of "surreal" as simply meaning "weird" or "odd" fails to capture this deeper meaning rooted in the artistic and philosophical origins of the term.’ And it is really not remotely unusual for a cricketer to be playing against other cricketers, even famous ones; that is, after all, what they do. It would be surreal were Virat Kohli to find himself facing the bowling of Mother Teresa; it would be surreal were Steve Smith to respond to a call from Marnus Labuschagne by producing a dove from his sleeve. Anyway, I’m looking forward to the first cricketer to invoke cubism, abstract expressionism or repulsive brutalism. Reckon that’s what Hardik Pandya was reaching for when he described Narendra Modi Stadium.....

10/ When reality television collides with televised reality, part the millionth. Emily Nussbaum’s fantastically readable new book Cue the Sun: The Invention of Reality TV provides this cameo of the first show that the infamous Mark Burnett made after Survivor. Of 2002’s Combat Missions, she reports: ‘The show lasted one season. The Delta team included Scott Helvenston, a fit, blond Captain America type….A celebrity personal trainer who whipped Demi Moore into shape for GI Jane, Helveston was a Zelig of reality shows, showing up as an ‘alpha-male captain’ on the never-aired Extreme Expeditions: Model Behaviour and on the Fox series Man Vs Beast where he was the only player who won against his assigned animal, beating a chimpanzee in an obstacle course. On Combat Missions, Helvenston was a classic reality TV hothead, growling: ‘That motherfucker comes near me, man, I’ll club him.’ Two years later, his life came to a tragic end. Broke, in the wake of a divorce and failed fitness venture, Helvenston took a three-month, $60,000 freelance gig with the notorious Blackwater Security Company, flying to Iraq for his first experience with real-life combat. Serving with him were two friends from Combat Missions. His first week there, Helvenston was murdered in an ambush in Fallujah, then dragged through the streets by a cheering mob and hanged from a bridge across the Euphrates. The grisly images…set off America’s disastrous retaliatory assault on Fallujah.’ Not the last American disaster that Burnett laid the seeds of either ....