A mate of mine lives in the Emerald City (Sydney).
His name is Aussie Dingo Dave and he originally hails from Wimbledon [1] in the UK but has recently had the ’surgery’ which resulted in him having Aussie citizenship bestowed upon him along with two potted blue gum trees thrust into his hands (as is our custom).
Now I make mention of the big fella Dave as I innocently sent him an email earlier today and the response was outstanding and really too good not to be shared.
My emailed touched on two comments - a) Twenty20 - this relatively new cricket format that had been telecast last night was fantastic entertainment - with it’s rock’n'roll soundtracks, speed bowling, big bat hitting, candid on-field players microphoned and comment b) how is it possible that the English (who invented this game for crying out loud) managed to not only lose the fabled Ashes in a 5-0 whitewash but then drew the last of the water from the proverbial pool by putting in an even worst performance in these fun Twenty20 games that followed.
His reply follows in all it’s glory follows, enjoy!
Twenty20 cricket is for the philistine. Why not just call it Baseball and be done with it ?
There is no greater symbol of the 21st century malaise than Twenty20. Brash, ugly, quick, superficial and like a BigMac easy to digest and utterly compelling for the man on the street who has no want or need for the subtly of the longer version of the game. Why do we always have to rush, compact and bastardize something that was OK to begin with ? Because we all have shorter attention spans, less time for appreciation and we want our gratification NOW, and sod the game. Another revenue stream say the bean counters, another nail in the coffin of civilization say I.
Test cricket is for the connoisseur, the gentrified upper-middle classes, not the proles. I thought we invented darts and ’shove ha’penny’ for the masses ? Now the pollsters and media guru’s are trying to muscle in on our territory and wrestle this beautiful game from us. Sod off. It was fine before you got here. Grounds now resemble supermarket aisles, everywhere you turn there’s a product placement or twenty, and the players look like clowns.
Surely when you have got to get Andrew Johns to don a clown suit, you have reached the bottom of the barrel and carried on digging…….
Rant over……..
I’m guessing he’s not much of a fan and that sadly the surgery to make him ‘Aussie’ Dingo Dave was not as successful as we had hoped.
He clearly still exhibits a bit of manky ‘wombleness’ and a sense of class and pommy entitlement in his outlook that we’ll need to urgently address for the next cricket season. Despite all this - he’s still Aussie Dingo Dave to me. Just a bit of a cranky Wombel today that’s all guv’nor - and what ever you do - don’t mention the war or the Dons for the love of all that is flouncy and pink.
Wombles:
http:// www.wombles.easyweb-solutions.co.uk
Twenty20:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty20
http://www.thetwenty20cup.co.uk
| 1. | We often called it Womble-don, inspired from the 1970’s TV show starring the giant Wombles… it amused us no end on slow days and annoyed the hell out of Dave. Fun annoy that is, not scarey annoy like when his much loved soccer team the Wimbledon Dons got dropped from the Premiership to the Championship leagues and then in turn were relegated again to League One, only to then be taken over by a hostile ownership bid who promptly moved the entire team, much to the outrage of lifelong loyalists like Dave, across London to Milton Keynes. The reasoning was that the national Hockey Stadium was cheaper and better - naturally with the move the team lost almost all its local support, they had to sell half the team that was of value to pay for the move, they renamed the club the MK Dons and in doing so wiped away over a hundred years of history and tradition only to the be relegated again and in turn witness a supporter backed semi-pro AFC Wimbledon team created… but, well, that’s another story. The thing is we try not to talk openly about the whole saga around Dave as his weeping is kinda uncool, which just makes us carry on about what a Womble he is… |
| Return |
In theory, as an Australian, I should understand cricket. But I don’t. Sure, I understand the rules… well, I understand some of the rules… but I don’t understand how anyone who could otherwise be declared legally sane could spend five days (five days, damnit!) watching a single game.
In a way, as well-written and giftedly plagiarised as ‘Aussie Dingo Dave’s’ rant about this new breed of cricket - Twenty20 - is, I couldn’t disagree more with his conclusion. Or, you know, I wouldn’t disagree more if I actually cared about cricket, one way or another.
At least Twenty20 is over quickly. A couple of hours of on-field brutality and you have a result. Fair-enough, I say - particularly if all you’re doing is waiting for the telecast to be over so you can watch a re-run episode of Two And A Half Men you’ve already seen 8 times; which, I don’t mind telling you, I would enjoy craploads more than any form of cricket you’d care to name.
Still and all - I know plenty of other maniacs who share Aussie Dingo Dave’s outrage over this latest attempt to sex cricket up. In a way, I see his point of view - I’d hate to see top chess players come to the board armed with hockey sticks. In another way, a healthy dose of “hey, get over it,” might be in order - I’d like to wager that 12 months from now Aussie Dingo will be saying, “Did you catch last night’s Twenty20 game? Fwoar, did you see it when the guy did that thing where he threw the ball and the other guy hit it with his bat? Crikey!”, just like the rest of them.