The Aussie Summer is here

I have missed the Aussie cricket season over the last few years. Just the other day I bought my tickets to the first day of the SCG test vs. South Africa and am looking forward to that feeling of mild-drunkenness, the smell of sun-screen mixed with sweat and the debilitation effects of sunstroke that you only get from a day in the Doug Walters stand.

I have high hopes for a top-quality series. I am very disappointed to see that Stuart Clark is out because I believe he is one of the main reasons that we have remained pretty close to top of the Test heap over the last few years - him, Hussey and Ponting. I am not convinced about Peter Siddle yet - and I'm not sure what Bracken and Hilfenhaus did wrong. Please, please let them pick Krezja...

And it's good to see that Graham Smith has come over with his mouth shut. He was put firmly in his place last time SA toured after he came out sledging and talking-the-talk. He seems to be a much wiser cricketer now. Given Australia's current fortunes, Ponting could learn from him.

And finally, this may be sacrilegious, but I was very disappointed England did not beat India in the first test. But at least it took a record chase for India to win. After all the drama surrounding this tour, I would be surprised if England could put up such a fight in the next Test.

What's wrong with this statement?

From Andrew Hilditch, Aussie chairman of selectors:


"For us, the simple formula is to pick our best six batters and our best four bowlers."

When in recent memory have the selectors actually stuck by this simple formula? Cameron White one of our best 4 bowlers? Shane Watson one of our best 6 bats?

Let's lay off Ponting...

Poor old Ponting. He lets the over-rate slip, we get stuck into him. He tries to get it back on track, we get stuck in. He can't win.

Now, there is no doubt he is not our best ever captain (I like Tubby Taylor). But he's not too bad. His own batting has certainly picked up since becoming captain - he averages 59.78 as captain vs. 55.97 when not.

If Ponting lost the Test, he lost it at the toss. And let's remember that even if he had bowled his good bowlers instead of the part-timers, he would have bowled a completely out-of-form Brett Lee and the over-rated Shane Watson. It's not like he spurned McGrath and Warne. And he was bowling Jason Krezja, the bloke who took all the wickets anyway, from the other end. Also, in theory, he brought on our number one spinner in Cameron White.

Where Ponting did fail was letting us get behind in the over-rate in the first place. Dhoni did it, but they won so it didn't matter. Ponting may have to get used to not winning and work out a way to get the overs in - stop changing fields every 3 balls would probably be a good start.

Ponting was just doing what he had to - especially in these troubled times of neurotic worry about Twenty20. Gideon Haigh has a good take on this. I also suspect that this was a team decision - it certainly wasn't simply down to Ponting.

My questions are, why didn't he bowl Katich? And why haven't we sacked the selectors yet?

The [Insert Location Here] Royals

In an interesting development in the continued commercialisation of cricket, the reigning IPL Champions, the Rajasthan Royals are looking to "globalise" their franchise. They've stated their intent to sell shares in the franchise in an effort to raise some cash to take the Royals worldwide, and their focus appears to be on South Africa and Australia, presumably to get a piece of the Southern Hemisphere Twenty20 competition action.

Sounds like a reasonable idea to me, cricket is big money business these days, and as far as cricketing businesses go, the Royals have made a pretty good fist of it, they made a profit in their first year in the IPL, the only team outside of the insanely marketed Kolkata Knight Riders whose Bollywood star owner Shahruhk Khan pretty much whored himself out day and night to promote his team, and they were smart enough to get an IPL franchise at a bargain.

So, are we going to see the Royals setup shop in the Southern Hemisphere Comp? Will they setup Warnie with his own team, the Victorian Royals and just extend the contracts of his players to cover this comp - will we effectively see stars like Warne tour the world playing in all the lucrative Twenty20 comps under the Royals brand? I could see that working, and working well.

Of course, there would be all sorts of confusion when it comes time for the Champions League. What happens when the semi finals consist of the Rajasthan Royals versus Victorian Royals on one side, and the Middlesex Royals are taking on the KwaZulu-Natal Royals in the other? Could get awkward!

Finally, I wonder what other worldwide global franchise would like to diversify into cricket and cash in on this booming sporting frontier? Will we see the Sydney Galaxy or perhaps the Auckland Yankees in the near future?

Absolutely Krazy

I am still in shock after day 2 of the fourth test. When I discovered that Jason Krejza was in the Australian side at the expense of Stuart Clark while Cameron White gets to fill space once more, I was pretty confident I knew how things would turn out.

India would score 400+ runs, and Krejza would conceed at least 200 runs in the process. I was spot on.

What left my jaw hanging on the floor was the fact that he took 8 wickets! In a performance that could be described as the best and worst debut ever, he's gone ahead and equalled the record for most wickets taken in a debut innings, and broken the record for the most runs ever conceded in a debut innings.

Krazy is the word. So my question is - does a massive amount of wickets make up for conceding a massive amount of runs?