Painting Fakes

So, Michael Clarke has announced his retirement from international cricket, to take place at the end of the Ashes series. It's kind of surprising and not surprising.  Surprising because he's only 34, still young for a cricketer, and because he had been so adamant that he was not retiring.  Not surprising, because his degenerative back condition always meant he would retire younger than most, and because over the past few months he has looked like his heart's not in it. No-one in elite sport is universally loved even among among their team-mates, especially not while they're playing.  Elite sportspeople are driven and competitive and this often makes them abrasive and inconsiderate.  Still, Clarke seems to have copped more criticism than most considering his achievements.  So, in the interests of fairness, here's six things to remember him by. 1. 2012 In the 2012 calendar year, the year after he took over as captain, he scored 2,400 test runs including thre

I really enjoyed the recently completed Brisbane Ashes Test , especially since Australia won so convincingly after such a long drought.  I certainly enjoyed seeing the Australians dominate Jonathan Trott, a player who has scored plenty of runs against them in previous series. However, I'm not enjoying the aftermath, with Trott returning home with a "stress-related illness".  Naturally I feel sad that Trott is unwell, and hope his recovery is swift and complete.  I also feel disturbed by the euphemistic description of his illness and the hush-hush way in which everyone seems to talk about it. Cricketers, like other elite sportspeople, are prone to frequent physical injuries.  It's the nature of elite sport, where people push themselves to the limit of their physical capabilities.  We hear about these injuries in forensic detail.  Everyone who cares about cricket knows all about Michael Clarke's degenerative disc, Kevin Pietersen's chronic knee problem,

I've been working on a theory about why elite sportsmen seem to get in trouble so regularly. We've been hearing a bit about this recently.  Australian cricketer  David Warner has two strikes to his name - tweeting angrily at journalists, and punching an opposing player in a pub.  Souths and Queensland Rugby League player Ben Te'o  found himself drunk and in the company of two former team-mates and woman none of them knew.  What happened next is a matter of dispute - did he punch her, or did she injure herself in a drunken meltdown? - but either way the whole situation is completely dumb.   Another Rugby League player, Blake Ferguson , has been charged with sexual assault of a woman in a bar on a Sunday evening while in the company of another former team-mate.  All this in the last month.  A fairly typical month, really. Of course you could blame alcohol, which is involved in all three incidents.  It's a convenient scapegoat, but alcohol doesn't drink itself.

On the weekend, prominent Aboriginal AFL player Adam Goodes was racially vilified by a 13 year old Collingwood supporter who referred to him as an "ape".  He took immediate action, asking security to remove her from the ground, which they did.  Collingwood president Eddie McGuire, one of Australia's most prominent media figures, was quick to visit Goodes in the dressing room and apologise on behalf of the club. Later on the young girl was very contrite, ringing Goodes to aplogise.  He was forgiving.  Thirteen-year-olds do stupid things.  She needed to be told firmly, then left alone to do better next time.  Hopefully she will. Forty-eight-year-olds do stupid things too, but they are entitled to be cut a lot less slack, especially when they are as prominent and media-savvy as Eddie McGuire.  Because only a few days later, with the vilification incident still echoing around the media, McGuire suggested on morning radio that Goodes could be used in a promotional role for

Apropos of Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp , here's another little song for you.  It's an old English folk song that goes by the name Polly Vaughan, Polly Von, Molly Bond  or other variations thereof.  Here's a version by Anne Briggs. Come all you young fellows that handle a gun Beware how you shoot when the night's coming on For young Jimmy met his true love, he mistook her for a swan And he shot her and killed her by the setting of the sun As Polly was walking all in a shower of rain She sheltered in a green bush, her beauty to save With her apron throwed over her he mistook her for a swan And he shot her and killed her by the setting of the sun Then home ran young Jimmy with his dog and his gun Crying Uncle dear Uncle have you heard what I done? I met my own true love, I mistook her for a swan And I shot her and killed her by the setting of the sun Then out rushed his uncle with his locks hanging grey Crying Jimmy oh dear Jimmy don'

It being Grand Final week, it's a good time to write that post about football morality that's been going around in my head for months. I'm a regular watcher of Rugby League.  It's a good way to switch the brain off on Friday evenings.  Yet footballers often get bad press.  Whether it's off field incidents involving drugs, alcohol and violence towards women, or onfield violence towards each other, you would be forgiven for thinking sometimes that footballers are a bunch of amoral thugs.  This however, is a long way from the truth, at least for most.  Our story begins in August 2011 and the notorious Round 25 clash between Melbourne and Manly.  This match is infamous for a vicious all-in brawl that erupted in the second half. A bit too much aggression in a tackle led to a few punches and a lot of pushing and shoving near the tryline.  The referees decided to cool things down by sending two of the main offenders, Manly's Glenn Stewart and Melbourne's Adam B

If you wanted an insight into the other side of the World Series Cricket saga,  it would be hard to go past Christian Ryan's 2009 biography of Kim Hughes, Golden Boy: Kim Hughes and the bad old days of Australian cricket.   Unlike many of his famous contemporaries, Hughes never wrote his own memoirs, and he didn't cooperate with this bio either.  Nonetheless it's a highly sympathetic account of his career. In 1977 Hughes was a promising young player on the fringes of the Australian test team.  Hughes claims that he turned down an offer to join WSC, while key WSC figures claim no offer was ever made.  Either way, he ended up on the Australian Cricket Board side of the war and with the top players missing he moved instantly from fringe player to mainstay of the batting order.  By 1979, in his 11th test, he found himself captain of the struggling young Board team. What happened from there on shows that the peace between the combatants in the dispute was hardly more than sk

I was a teenage cricket fan in 1977 when World Series Cricket split the cricketing world down the middle.  Kerry Packer, having recently taken over from his father as head of Channel 9, was rebuffed in his attempts to buy the broadcast rights to Australian cricket despite offering vastly more money than the ABC.  Not being one to take no for an answer, he set up his own rival cricket competition, recruiting virtually the entire Australian and West Indies teams (the two strongest in world cricket at the time) and a host of other elite players from around the world.  Rival international competitions were staged for two years, the cricket authorities filling their teams with second string players, before peace was finally made in 1979. I remember it well. So I watched Howzat! Kerry Packer's War  on Channel 9.  I was pretty underwhelmed.  For a start, it's just a poor piece of story-telling.  The cricketers, even those with central roles in the saga like Ian Chappell and To

With the London Olympics winding to their close, it's hard to think anyone can have missed hearing about the woes of Aussie 100m freestyle swimmer James Magnussen and his team-mates, or missed out on seeing the Commonwealth Bank advertisement featuring his hopeful smiling face.  For those who forgot, the ad (which interestingly is now unavailable on the internet) features Magnussen out for a training run, followed by guys wearing the letters "C", "A" and "N".  They start talking him up: "Not long till you bring home gold for Australia." "Hope so," says Magnussen. "Know so!" Then a guy in a "T" joins them and starts to cast doubt on the expected gold medal.  "After all, it's not like you haven't been beaten before."  The ad ends with the "T" bloke tripping over the edge of a cliff and landing in the ocean below. Fortunately for our sometimes tenuous link with reality, Mag

It being the lazy post-Christmas season I'll just have to write you a post about Cricket.  American readers might like to wait for something else to pop up, or else try this helpful explanation of the game, or perhaps this more detailed one .  Many commentators have been calling for the heads of veteran batsmen Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey, but both have been picked for the Boxing Day Test.  Australia's new Chairman of Selectors John Inverarity explains that both players provide "great value in the dressing room". This is is obviously a good thing as both have been spending a lot of time there lately.  They are clearly needed in the team, because while these two experienced players are devoting themselves to the dressing room, some other players are letting the side down. Of course the bowlers can't be blamed.  They routinely spend long hours with their mates, followed by a brief stint batting and a swift return to the bosom of the team.  This means you ca

Over the past week I've been watching, in a half-hearted way, the coverage of the Commonwealth Games in Delhi.  Most of the world, even people in the Commonwealth, take no interest in this little colonial remnant.  Aussies love it because our athletes get to win a lot. So why am I only half-hearted?  I think the main reason is that Australian coverage of the event is so poor.  Australian broadcasters have determined (I'm not sure by what means) that Australian audiences are only interested in watching Australian athletes.  It's not that we just get to see events where Australians are competing.  It's that we only get to see the Australians, full stop.  For instance, an Australian, Fabrice Lapierre, won the mens long jump at these games with a jump of 8.30 metres - a full 60 centimetres shorter than Bob Beamon's 1968 effort .  Was this a surprise or was he the favourite?  Who did he beat?  Did he blow the field away with his first jump, or lag before coming thro

Somewhere around 1971 or 1972 one of my dad's friends gave me a pile of English sports magazines.  It was one of the best presents I ever got, although I think he was just clearing out junk.  There was a set of something which may have been called Football Monthly , and a pile of something that could have been called Sports Illustrated although it didn't have any swimsuit models.  They spanned a period from 1967 through to 1970, including the 1968 Olympics and the 1970 World Cup, both held in Mexico. I read those magazines over and over again,  partly because I would read anything and partly because I loved sport.  I was still young enough not to be blase about the unfolding drama.  The writers speculated about who would win the World Cup and patriotically promoted England's chances.  Then they gushed about the brilliance of the eventual Brazilian winners, and mourned the moments that cost England.  They ran over the form guide for the blue riband events in the Olympics,

One of the stories that has featured in the news this week is the death and funeral of Shawn Mackay, a young ACT Brumbies rugby union player who died after being hit by a car during a tour of South Africa. A low-profile player, unknown to even many rugby fans, has become a celebrity in death. Why is the media, and the public, so interested in the ordinary death of an unknown young man? Why did we follow the daily details of his injury, initial recovery, death and funeral? Partly I suppose it is the genuine fame of a number of his team-mates, and partly the fact that it’s just a tragic story that tugs at our heart-strings. But there's more. We like to hear about the intimate lives of famous people, and sports stars play a particular part in this fascination. Whereas the lives of Hollywood celebrities just seem bizarre, and politicians carry an aura of power, sports people seem very ordinary. Sure, they can run, swim, hit or kick a ball better than anyone else, but they are

Being a huge cricket fan, I've been following the story of the England cricket team's response to the Mumbai terrorist attacks via http://www.cricinfo.com/ . Of course I'm fascinated by the batting and bowling stuff but it's also interesting to see how people react under pressure. As soon as the attacks happened, the England team flew home from India. This is fairly logical - Mumbai was their next stop and in fact their gear had already been sent on ahead of them to one of the hotels at the centre of the attacks. I believe it's still there. There followed a debate about whether the team would return for the test series, demands for a "presidential" level of security, talk of some players not touring no matter what, and so on.  It went without saying that the test scheduled for Mumbai would be moved to another city. As of now it seems a full strength team is heading back to a training base in Abu Dhabi, with the commencement of the Test series likel