Graeme Smith knows how Alastair Cook felt as he searches for swift solution

Now it’s Graeme Smith’s turn to try to fathom out a way of halting the refuelled Australian cricketing juggernaut. The South African captain has just a matter of days to revive his battered and bruised troops in time for the second Test in Port Elizabeth after the chastening capitulation at Centurion.   Destroyer-in-chief Mitchell Johnson proved he was not just a one-series wonder when he followed up his recent Ashes heroics with a blistering exhibition of pace bowling that left the hosts blinking in disbelief.  If the Proteas were caught unawares during their first Test unravelling, they should earlier have given England captain Alastair Cook a quick bell on his mobile before hostilities got underway. Then again, maybe Cook would not have wanted to relive the horrors of England’s harrowing tour down under so soon. The after-effects must still be numbing for him after Johnson had orchestrated the Ashes meltdown.  Now, here was the pumped-up  paceman doing it all again, bringing the world’s top-ranked Test team literally to its knees  as wickets were taken and heads were cracked amid a venomous barrage.  I tip my hat to the Aussies.  They strolled the Ashes in a 5-0 cakewalk but I had put that down to an ill-prepared, over-confident England sinking into a state of utter disrepair as much as the upbeat captaincy of Michael Clarke, plus Johnson and his pace cohorts. It looks like I was wrong and that they might be a better team than I imagined. Smith probably thought the same as me.  He won the toss and sent the Aussies in, with much anticipation.  But that was all Smith got right.  Johnson had him upside down, inside out and back to front as he bounced him out in the first innings. Smith delivered some brave words after the four-day defeat.  He said the trampoline qualities of the pitch had helped Johnson bag his 12-wicket haul. His men would regroup, he added. Smith even felt the result could have a wake-up effect on his charges. It all sounded eerily familiar. It was the same mantra that the browbeaten Cook had trotted out to no avail so recently. I hate to say it, but these Aussies might actually be the real deal. As they gather ominous momentum, everything they do seems to come off.  They have so many in-form batsmen that Shane Watson may not gain an instant recall for the second Test. And the luck keeps going their way.  Two outrageous catches stuck for Alex Doolan at short square leg while the hapless hosts managed to drop David Warner three times on the way to his century.  The man I love to loathe doesn’t even sound so brazen in his post-play comments. The South Africans had been sloppy in the field and deserved any derision that came their way. Maybe Warner really is growing up.  His comments were accurate and apt.  It’s another sign that the team that I loathe to love is zooming to the summit of world Test cricket.  Smith has also consoled himself with the fact that the track for the second Test will not contain the pace of Centurion, thereby neutering the threat of Johnson.  It will be akin to a flat surface in Adelaide, we are told. Yet look what happened to England on that Black Saturday at Adelaide Oval just a few weeks ago when Johnson ran amok. I was there, I saw it first-hand. Maybe in years to come I will say I was happy to witness such a piece of masterful fast bowling brutality.  I doubt it. For pace perfection, I would much rather recall Wasim Akram in his Lancashire days destroying Yorkshire at Old Trafford in a Roses clash in the 1990s. My bias and loyalty fails to mutate horror memories into sudden sweet “I was there” moments.  I was at the MCG in the 94-95 series when Shane Warne nabbed his hat-trick against England. That still hurts. At present, there seems to be no stopping Johnson. His fragile mind appears to be a symptom of long ago. However, Smith insists his Proteas have it within them to remind Johnson of those less bountiful times and turn things around. It should be another fascinating contest.  I’m chilled out in the neutral corner so can just recline, relax and take it all in.  Unlike the South African batsmen.  My sole regret is that the series is only scheduled for three Tests.  A five-Test confrontation would really sort out who was the boss.   Captain Smith must already feel it’s going to be a bumpy ride…

Dual defeats for Rovers and England fuel misery of the sporting kind

Sometimes I envy people who are not interested in sport.  They seem to be few and far between but now and then you run into someone who would think that the Ashes is a brand of firelighter or would be totally oblivious to the build-up  to a footballing World Cup.  What a cushy life.  It simply cuts out all the suffering from defeats that your team/country has to inflict on you. The only stress you have to endure as a non-sporting person is what kind of salad to take to an Aussie barbecue.  I do actually morph into indifference when it comes to “solo” sports. Rafa Nadal seems a nice bloke but I don’t go into emotional meltdown if he loses during a tennis grand slam. He doesn’t represent me.  Or where I am from.  Meanwhile, Tiger Woods is a rich and obnoxious human being but he won’t go without if he misses the cut of some obscure but well-funded golf tournament in any particular money-crazed outpost of the modern world.  There are also some team sports that leave me cold. Basketball. What’s that all about? Points a-go-go every single second. American overkill. Much ado about nowt.  So if that’s where it finished, I’d be fine.  But no… All my life, the big two – football and cricket – have loomed as emotional thermometers. I would love to work out a graph of how joy and suffering have scored during my sporting dependencies of Blackburn Rovers, Lancashire and England. There are cursory diversions such as Aussie Rules sides Sydney Swans, Norwood Redlegs and, in baseball,  San Francisco Giants. But they don’t count in the big picture. I even used to watch Balmain in Sydney where rugby league reigns, via the Orange Grove pub in Leichardt. But they were forced into amalgamation with the Magpies of Western Suburbs. It was never the same for me. It is wacky though how you seem to remember the bad days rather than the emotional victories. This week has been a classic. Despair with bells on. Rovers made a rare appearance on Setanta in the FA Cup replay with Manchester City. I loathe City for reasons which I may explain at a later stage.  I tuned in and had to witness a 5-0 mauling. It was not unexpected but very unfair. Under our idiot Indian owners, Rovers have gone from a stable Premier League club to a Championship basket case within no time at all. Only now are we heading towards some form of stability. City were kept out until half-time stoppage seconds. After that, things fell apart and City looked like they could go further ahead at will. It was awful. Rovers had actually played okay, but it doesn’t read like that. 5-0 is not good. And neither is 4-1. That was the next rout at Nottingham Forest over the weekend. I only have those highlights to look forward to on Setanta. Nine goals leaked  in a week. We are on the road to recovery – I think? However, the play-offs may have to wait.  I was pretty distraught. But the real mood churner was still to come after the City carnage. I have been down-playing the England one-day cricketing campaign in the wake of the Ashes surrender. But I still care. And there we were in Brisbane on Friday night. A win at last within our reach.  At 244 with just one wicket to fall, chasing 301, surely England would wrap up a long-awaited minor success. What James Faulkner did thereafter left me in a state of disbelief.  In an Aussie summer of one disaster after another, I was experiencing a new form of numbness. Losing is horrible I know, but losing when it seems impossible to do so is detrimental to the thought process.  I’m sure the England one-day squad are now as mentally shattered as the Ashes fall guys. It’s been a sudden and painful experience. The ensuing Sydney slaughter was so predictable I agreed to turn over the TV to watch Midsomer Murders instead.  The series which makes murder totally trivial was more preferable to a real life working-over. To see the intellectually-challenged David Warner in full flow was too much to take.  Watching someone be bludgeoned to death by a gigantic piece of cheese was lightweight by comparison. There seriously can’t be many people left in those idyllic villages around Midsomer. So if has come to this… Just two one-dayers to go. Oh, and the Twenty-20s. No wonder Kevin Pietersen looked quite at ease in the stands at the Chelsea v Man United  game. Well out of the way. Trust him to go and watch two poseur clubs. Out here,  I foresee more suffering. The final one-day episode will be in Adelaide.  I s’pose I had better go. Just to show loyalty to a losing England cause. Sport eh, don’t ya just love it…

Grumpiness sets in after ruthless Aussies regain Ashes

Oh well, 3-0 to the odious Aussies. In swift time too. Three Tests of total dominance. The Ashes are back down under. Fair dos to  ‘em, they have marmalised us in a manner that I didn’t see coming. So you have to say well done to Michael Clarke’s mob. They have brutalised us. But don’t expect me to like them. Any team with the obnoxious  David Warner in their ranks must stink. Even so, it’s laughing rights to them – with two Tests to go.  Things could even get worse. I admit I’m not very good at losing, but the Aussies are totally graceless at winning. Especially you-know-who. There he was on the telly giving Joe Root an “on your way” wave on his exit. It’s fair game from the seats but surely not from the middle. I wonder what the sadly absent Richie Benaud would have made of this total lack of style. Of course, Root is the player that Warner tried to stick a punch on in a Birmingham bar just a few months ago. That’s when England were winning Test matches. The change in fortunes has been mind-boggling. England suddenly look like a team in decline. James Anderson and Graeme Swann have been taken to the cleaners. Kevin Pietersen has been playing like, well, er, Kevin Pietersen.  It’s just that doesn’t seem to believe his own hype any more. Yet, if you tried to rein him in, he would never have taken on Brett Lee in that amazing blitz during the Oval Test of 2005 where England secured the Ashes after an enthralling summer.  So it’s on to Melbourne. What can England do? Well, Alistair Cook can try and win the toss for starters. It would be good to bat first instead of having to endure the irritating repetition of the first three Tests. The Aussies have clocked up massive scores – but only after England thrice ripped through their upper order then run into roadblocks in the form of Brad Haddin and co. It’s been bizarre.  But well done to Australia. I don’t feel like going on for too long cos I feel grumpiness setting in. Not everyone can lose with a smile. I remember a tale from 1966 when England were on the way to fortuitously beating the then West Germany 4-2 in the World Cup final at Wembley.  The great Scottish icon Denis Law was on a golf course somewhere at the time that the game was going on. Somebody on the course recognised him and said “Hey, Denis, why aren’t you watching the match?” As a proud Scot, he had assumed the worst result for him  would happen and replied coldly: “Why would I want to watch the bloody English win a World Cup?”  Enough said. At least I feel in regal company now.  I may not have been in Perth but why would I leave Channel 9 switched on to watch the cocky Aussies celebrate their overdue achievement?

Clash of Cultures fuels Ashes feud

Perhaps England’s embattled cricketers need to take note of Joe Strummer’s attitude towards visiting Australia if they are to steer their Ashes campaign back on track. When the late, great and much missed former Clash front man touched down in the plane bringing his iconic band for their first tour down under, he had no illusions about what he thought lay ahead. He reportedly approached the exit door of the aircraft with his fists clenched “ready for a fight.” He was prepared, but need not have worried. Joe got through customs and was accorded a warm reception. But such is the perception of Anglo-Australian relations, that expectations can become a little distorted. I first landed in Sydney in January 1984 and felt a little bit like Joe. A mixture of excitement  and trepidation. It was the day after Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh and Greg Chappell had all played their final Test at the SCG against Pakistan. I had come here to this great southern land on a working holiday visa looking forward to sport and sunshine and whatever else. But as my plane descended through the blue skies and I saw all the red roofs of the red houses though the intense glare, I wondered what I would walk into in this city that appeared at first glance to be a cross between San Francisco and Manchester. After all, I did love beating this lot at cricket when England could manage it.  But like Mr Strummer, I was fine. Since those now distant days I have commuted between the two continents but still love England beating the Aussies on the cricket  field. So I reckon I know a thing or two about what makes both tribes tick. The first sight I beheld at the Mascot arrival lounge was a massive billboard promoting the Michael Parkinson show on Aussie TV. How weird… A Lancastrian arrives at the other side of the globe and is greeted by the grinning visage of an archetypal Yorkshireman. And in part, this instantly explains, in my eyes at least, Australia’s oddball stance over the UK. For one, they hate just about everything about us but at the other extreme can’t get enough of us. The TV screens and newspapers are full of stories about all events back in Blighty. They love Royalty – even though they pretend not to. Whereas I genuinely loathe the Queen and all her hangers-on. And yet if you travel in the other direction, you will struggle to pick up the merest morsel of news from Australia. The average Joe or Jane  walking down a street in Bolton or Bournemouth would not be the slightest bit interested in Australia. As Kevin Pietersen rightly said, winding up the natives before the first Test,  they would probably not even have heard of Brisbane or have a clue where the place was. And why should they?  All the standard Cockney, Geordie or Scouser would know about know about Oz is sunshine and “Neighbours”. Oh, and cricket. Which brings us back to where we started. So what has elevated the current Ashes conflict to new levels of fear and loathing? Well, for a start Australia have been losing. They don’t like that. And now back on their home turf, they want to start dishing out some overdue retribution.  And with plenty of flak along the way. And, as the Adelaide Test looms, so far they have made a pretty good job of it. The Brisbane massacre, the sledging furore and the sad departure of Jonathan Trott has the Aussies right where they want to be. Shame there hasn’t been much humour along the way. But as the great Wilpshire wisecrack artist Shaun Gill noted during  his nine-and-a-half illegal years chez Ultimo and Glebe in Sydney, Aussies “don’t do humour.”  Shaun reckoned that subtlety and irony was wasted on Aussies. “They just like to see someone hit with a plastic hammer on the head or with a custard pie across the face,’ he worked out. Certainly, the Monty Python team, now ready for a reunion, could never have come from Australia. So that’s why we should hope David Warner is given free rein with his dumb comments. Rather than get riled, just let him run with his inarticulate drivel.  With his past history, you have to ask if you would like this bloke as a mate, which is the ultimate social barometer  for Aussie males. And for me, too. Well, I don’t think I’d like to meet up with him down the pub. It’s a good job he’s a useful cricketer cos he hardly seems like a candidate to appear on “University Challenge’.  Just let him get on with it. The more he says, the more he seems as thick as a docker’s butty. The Aussie banter, both from the cricketers and media, has been spectacularly banal. Who needs Ron Burgundy when you have Karl Stevanovic on Channel Nine.  Even Matty Hayden comes across as some boor from the Bush. All hicks in an idyllic backwater still desperate to muscle up and pretend to be important on the global stage. Why bother? Just enjoy your great country. Don’t get involved. Chill out. But let’s be fair – James Anderson must have said something out of order to be on the end of riling cricket’s equivalent of David Beckham. The rout was virtually complete by then. Anyway, it’s Adelaide next. Maybe things will calm down. And perhaps England can turn things around. The Perth Test of 2010-11 ran a strangely similar course to Brisbane and all turned out well at Melbourne and Sydney. And last year in India, England produced an extraordinary backflip in form after a first-Test mauling. The Clash belted out “I’m so bored with the U.S.A.” in their early days. All very aggressive but tongue in cheek. I don’t suppose Joe and the lads were ever bored by Oz. It’s such fun here – especially when their cricketers keep opening their mouths. Anyway, stay tuned for more tales from behind enemy lines. And a pub survival guide to Adelaide.