As Bill Lawry Would Say: ‘It’s All Happening’

Ashton Agar after getting out for 98 in the First Test

So for once, instead of struggling to come up with a topic to write about, this week there has been so much going on that I couldn’t decide which topic to pick. Therefore, as the fence sitter than I am, I figured I’ll just touch on a bit of everything and then reward myself with a weekend away.

To start, let’s talk about the Origin decider. The Queensland streak remains alive after they hung on to win by two and NSW have to wait another year to try to end the drought. Those who follow me on Twitter or Facebook know that I, like many others, think the biggest issue for NSW was halfback Mitchell Pearce.

The only people I have seen defending Pearce have been Roosters fans and even Roosters fans have been divided on it. I am not questioning Pearce’s heart or effort levels. I think he desperately wants to be the best player he can and gave it his all yet again, but he quite simply isn’t good enough. He is a good defender for his position but NSW need a halfback that can create points and that is something Pearce has not done in five years playing for NSW.

His kicking game is below par and he doesn’t have the dynamic passing or running game. He also didn’t take control of the direction of the team, which lead to many plays that looked like they had no plan.

The argument that a halfback needs a forward pack going forward to be able to perform doesn’t hold water here either as the NSW pack won the arm wrestle. NSW had every opportunity to win game 3 as well as getting the better of the forward back for the last two years in general. Pearce may well be a great guy, but he has had more than enough chances and it’s time NSW make the move they should have made before this series. It’s certainly a popular opinion and I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said elsewhere over and over, but enough is enough and it’s time the Pearce experiment ends. He just isn’t that good.

Onto the Ashes, where Australia lost the First Test but there were certainly a number of positives to take out of it. From a neutral standpoint it was one of the most entertaining and gripping Tests I have ever watched and whilst Australia ended up on the losing end, it gave me belief that we can absolutely make this a competitive series.

Darren Lehmann’s decision to play Ashton Agar instantly paid off with one of the greatest moments in Test history, with a 19 year old Agar, batting 11 and with Australia in dire straits, getting to 98 (alongside a tremendous knock by Phil Hughes) before holing out trying to get his century.

There is clearly a concern with the top order, which hopefully will be rectified as the series moves forward, but I can’t remember a tail that so consistently wags. Our bowlers are honestly not that much worse at batting than our specialist batsmen are. Which isn’t really a compliment to our batsmen, but is still praise for our bowlers.

As I write this the team for the Second Test was announced and so I had to quickly rewrite this bit about selections for the match. Cowan was axed as expected and replaced by Usman Khawaja, who was the likely replacement. Mitchell Starc also makes way with Ryan Harris getting the nod over Jackson Bird as the replacement fast bowler. Cowan had to go and Starc has been a bit down on form so neither was unexpected. I wasn’t sure whether Harris, Bird or a second spinner would come in depending on the conditions and it’s hard to argue with Ryan Harris getting the nod.

But either way, I’m no longer feeling as down about our chances for the series as I was before the First Test, which is saying something considering we are now officially trailing in the series.

Also a quick point on the whole DRS and Stuart Broad saga. First of all, I think we need to be a bit careful to put all the blame on England, when we got a bit lucky ourselves in the first innings with Agar and the fact that Clarke continues to misuse the review system. That said, Broad should have walked and the fact that he didn’t absolutely makes him a dirty cheat.  Also, the on field umpires were atrocious for both sides and this wouldn’t be an issue if they actually did their job at a level even near competent. Aleem Dar is one of the worst umpires I can remember and it baffles me how he continues to get such big matches. He is like cricket’s Jason Robinson.

Onto Le Tour. Whilst some of the individual stages have been exciting, is it just me or is the fact that Chris Froome is so dominant making the race kind of boring. It’s hard to stay up at night knowing the result is already over barring injury. That’s not to take anything away from Froome himself. He was expected to do this and he is delivering in spades and proving that he probably would have won Le Tour last year as well if his team had let him.

I also think raising speculation of him cheating as the media have been doing is ridiculous. It’s an unfortunately side effect of the sport’s history, but Froome has done nothing to suggest he is cheating besides being really, really good. I’d like to think he isn’t cheating because neither are his competitors anymore. However, should he end up in a doping scandal at any stage, it would be tragic and would be another nail into the coffin of the sport for many people.

We also are currently being graced with the presence of English Premier League champions Manchester United, who are here to play an A-League All Stars team this weekend. Then next Wednesday, my beloved Liverpool will be taking on the Melbourne Victory and I am fortunate enough to be traveling to Melbourne to watch the game. I’ve never seen Liverpool play and I’ve never been to a sporting event at the MCG, so to say I’m excited would be an understatement.

I hope to write about the experience next week, so stay tuned for that and remember, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.

Too Old For These All Nighters

 

I have been staying up late to watch sport for as long as I can remember. Whether it’s for the Tour de France, international cricket or to watch English football, being up in the middle of the night for a game has been part of my life forever.

At present we are experiencing an apex of late night sport watching activities with the Tour de France overlapping with The Ashes and before that, Wimbledon. There’s also been some late night motorsport on too and some others, depending on your interests. So you’d think I would be in my element, getting no sleep and loving every minute of it and that’s what I thought too, but for the first time I have found myself not able to do it anymore.

Every night I have gotten settled in to watch le Tour and the tennis or cricket and right as it’s starting to get good, I can’t keep my eyes open anymore and end up passing out and missing all the action. I think this is something that ends up happening to us all as we get older. First you can’t handle the all night partying of the early 20s and eventually you can’t even handle the all night TV watching. I’m officially getting old at the ripe old age of 28.

Watching sport has a way of forcing you to come to terms with your own mortality, even if you aren’t actually doing anything besides sitting there and watching a TV screen. First comes that day where you finally realise (well most of us anyway) that you aren’t going to actually become a famous athlete and that most of the guys you are watching are younger than you. That is a sad, sad day and I don’t think I’m fully over it yet, despite the fact I was never good at sport and barely played it.

Then after that, comes this day, where you can’t even watch sport like you used to. As someone who actually writes about sport and planned on writing about these late night events, it certainly has made it a lot tougher considering I’m not actually seeing it happen.

So what do I do? Either I accept the fact that I no longer am the spring chicken I once was, capable of putting in the hard yards on the couch watching TV, or I train harder than I ever have before, stop coasting off natural ability to stay awake and get there on determination and hard work. Or perhaps I should go down the route of performance enhancing drugs and take up drinking coffee.

All I know is that this phenomenon is new to me and I don’t like it one bit. Hopefully I can put it behind me and get back to watching sport like I used to, because we’ve got an entire Ashes series in front of us as well as the meat of le Tour still to come. Then we go straight into the start of the English Premier League season and I foolishly am once again optimistic about Liverpool’s future.

Yes, I am fully aware that this entire silly article is the quintessential ‘first world problem’. Shut up.

It’s a Man’s World

Lauren Jackson competing at the 2012 Olympics

I read a headline today that turned out to be about something entirely different, however it got me thinking. The story was about how dual football and cricket international Ellyse Perry will have to choose between playing for Sydney FC in football or NSW in cricket this week when their matches clash. However the headline to get you to click on the story related to how Perry wants to compete against men. I’m sure she has mentioned this in the past, but it was nowhere to be found in the story itself.

Nonetheless, the issue of women competing in male sports fascinates me. Women’s sports obviously have rules preventing men from competing in them; however many male sports do not expressly have such rules preventing women. For the most part it is an issue that has never come up and obviously the woman competing in the male sport would not be at an unfair advantage as a man would if he tried to enter the women’s game.

I admit that it’s hard for me to have the perspective and insight on this topic that a woman would have and I would love to get the opinion of as many women as possible in the comments, but I will do my best to share my thoughts on an issue that I think will come up more and more in the future.

The sports in which it is easiest for a female to compete against men are obviously those where technically the sport is individual rather than in direct physical competition. Women compete against men in equestrian and horse racing all the time and recently we have seen women, such as Annika Sorenstam, get invited to compete in some golf tournaments, but they have yet to truly be competitive at that level due to the different tees and course set up.

Danica Patrick has become a famous example, but is not the only female to compete in motorsport against men and she has now moved on from Indy Car to NASCAR where she is certainly competitive. Again these are examples of sports that are technically individually based even if they are driving on the track at the same time.

Outside of the famous Billie Jean King exhibition match against an already retired Bobby Riggs, we haven’t really seen the top female competitors compete against men in direct competition sports, at least not in modern times.

I think that if we are to see women competing against men directly in the future it will have to start in a sport such as tennis, following on from Billie Jean’s lead and where they already compete in mixed doubles. For years people have speculated about whether Serena and Venus Williams would be competitive on the men’s circuit and whilst none of us can claim to know with certainty how they would do, our suspicions cannot be answered unless we get to see it.

But is it in their interests to try?

Women’s tennis, unlike most sports, actually has great earning potential simply by staying on the women’s tour. The prize money in tournaments along with the sponsorship money available means that it is not financially in their interests to compete against men, when it is reasonable to expect that even if competitive, they wouldn’t advance as far as they could against women.

Not only that, but should they try and fail miserably, it would potentially be damaging to their careers even if it shouldn’t be. The speculation as to whether they could compete is potentially better than trying and answering the question in the negative.

But what if they tried and succeeded? Say Serena Williams entered the men’s draw for the 2013 US Open and made it to the 3^rd round before losing to a seeded opponent. Would that not be one of the most amazing and inspiring events in sports history, not to mention move Serena to another stratosphere in terms of success and sponsorship dollars?

Some would argue that allowing her entry as a marketing play is taking away a spot from a man who can’t then turn around and go take her spot against the women. But if she is deserving of the spot and is truly one of the best 128 players in the World, regardless of gender, I think she deserves the opportunity. In a sense, without giving the opportunity to find out, we can’t know whether someone actually deserved the opportunity in the first place.

That’s just tennis though, which is a one on one sport without physical contact. What if a woman were to try to compete against men in a sport with physical contact?

I can’t see a day where women compete against men in actual contact sports like rugby but what about a non-contact sport like basketball?

Basketball is technically a non-contact sport (by rule), but is certainly very physical. I would never suggest a woman would be able to compete at the NBA level, but what about if Lauren Jackson or Liz Cambage tried to play in the NBL here in Australia? First of all it would be an amazing story and much needed publicity for the league, whilst giving the opportunity to a woman to earn more than they can in the women’s game. Obviously it would require a player considered tall in the women’s game as they would only be considered mid-sized in the men’s game, so someone like Jackson makes sense.

But could she do it and acquit herself well? I honestly believe she could be a decent bench player as a shooting guard in the men’s game, at least on offence, if given the chance. However, I have serious doubts about whether a woman would be able to defend in the men’s game, as opposing teams would look to target and take advantage of the athleticism gap. A 6’5” man who is used to being a perimeter player would likely blow past a 6’5” female used to being a centre. But I’d love to see Jackson or Cambage or even Baylor University star Brittney Griner, give it a shot.

Cricket is another sport where I think seeing a woman attempt to compete would be fascinating and have a shot at succeeding. The only real issue is whether or not the pace of the fast bowling would simply be too much. If Ellyse Perry or any other female cricketer aspired to play in the men’s game, as long as they could handle the much faster bowling, then I don’t see why they couldn’t make it work. To make it happen I’d imagine they would first need to try and play in a club level match before maybe having a go in the Ryobi Cup.

Again, I doubt the female competitor would reach the level of making the Australian Men’s team, much like I doubt a female basketballer would compete in the NBA, but if they were capable of competing in the domestic competition and earning the money and success that came along with that, then I am all for it. That being said, my doubts are simply my own personal doubts and without the opportunity, we will never know. A female spin bowler could show up and be as good as Shane Warne and end up being an all-time great regardless of gender.

Women’s sports are never going to generate as much revenue as the men do and so the earning potential for females is always going to be lower in sport (tennis excluded); however should one woman in any particular sport be so good that they could have the opportunity to compete against the men and earn the money the men earn, then they should be allowed to.

If nothing else, they would be an inspiration to the next generation of women, whether they were trying to follow in their athletic footsteps or simply entering a career where men still make disproportionate incomes compared to their female colleagues.

Holiday Thoughts

I like penguins

It’s the holiday season and I haven’t given you guys the gift of my brain for over a week now. Shame on me. I am making it up to you by given you another edition of my random thoughts to ponder. Also I’d like to wish everyone a happy whatever they celebrate and a Happy New Year.

• I am already enjoying the Jackson Bird era in Australian cricket. He bowled well on Day 1 of the Boxing Day Test (On Boxing Day no less!) and without being some sort of revelation, he took wickets, bowled a nice line and length and even had the ball swinging on occasion. Plus you get to make a lot of ‘Bird is the Word’ references and link to things like this:

          If his nickname isn’t Surfin’ Bird by the end of the day, you have all failed.

• Our fast bowling depth is looking super strong as we head towards the Ashes. Now if we can just get everyone fit at the same time and figure out our top order, we will be in business. Not to mention, everyone seems to be in agreement that Clarke and Hussey need to move up the order. Some say Clarke should be in at first drop, I could live with him batting at 4, Hussey at 5 and Watson at 6. But I think we can all agree that 5 and 6 for Clarke and Hussey is too low. Agreed? Agreed.

• Supporting the New York Giants in the NFL is a frustrating experience. On one hand they win two Super Bowls in the space of five years. On the other hand they have historic collapses like they did this season, where they not only lost form, but played like they had just met or even learnt the rules of the game. I told my dad not to count his chickens when the team had a three game lead halfway through the season and sometimes I actually hate being right. They are frustrating but not nearly as frustrating as….

• Liverpool. Oh my Liverpool. I really don’t want to rant about everything I would change about my beloved Reds, although I might in another piece, but seriously if I start drinking again, I’m blaming Liverpool.

• I miss ice hockey. I even got a new Bruins jersey for my birthday and it just makes me sad looking at it when the league is having yet another lockout. Gary Bettman is the opposite of Batman. It’s also unfortunate that his name is so close to being Batman.

• So much is being made of all the Los Angeles Lakers struggles until their recent winning streak and return of Steve Nash, but not enough is being made of the fact that Dwight Howard really isn’t 7’ tall. I don’t know how I only noticed this once he got to the Lakers and not when he was at Orlando, but seeing him stand next to Kobe and Pau makes me realise the guy is 6’9” tops. He looks 2-3 inches taller than Kobe and about 4 inches shorter than Pau. Did the back injury make his spine get shorter or was he always this way? Yes, I know this was touched on in a BS Report podcast, but seriously this should be a bigger deal.

• The LA Clippers on the other hand are ridiculously good right now and a huge part of that is their 6^th man Jamal Crawford. Sure that isn’t a big surprise given his history as a great 6^th man, however it’s interesting that he admitted that this offseason was the first time he actually worked on his game and practiced shooting. Now he is having probably the best season of his career and it makes me wonder how good he could have been if he had that Kobe-level competitiveness in the first place. Either way, he is fun to follow on Twitter.

• Did you know that Boxing Day was Jared Leto’s birthday (and technically still is in the US)? Who cares you ask? More importantly, did you realise that the actor and lead singer of an emo band with a largely teenage fan base just turned 41? I wonder how many 30 Seconds to Mars fans realise the lead singer is easily old enough to be their dad and in some cases, probably older than their actual dads.

• You know who else is 41? Brad Friedel. He just signed an extension at Tottenham for a couple more years, most likely to remain as backup to Hugo Lloris in goal and I really want to see a keeper try and push 50 at a high level. Peter Shilton got to 47 and there are probably others who did it too, but with modern training and understanding of how to prolong careers, how cool would it be to see an actual 50 year old playing high level football?

I’ve recently started getting more and more suggestions on things to write about and things people would like my thoughts on. If you have ideas for a Back Sage piece, I’d be happy to hear from you.

Happy New Year!

Come in Spinner

Will Warney answer the call?

Australian cricket may soon see the comeback of the greatest spin bowler ever and one of the greatest players ever in Shane Warne. Of course Warney has been around the Twenty20 circuit but he is long retired from the long form of the game and is 43 years old. The thing is if he came back he would be not only the best spinner we have, but probably add a lot of value helping Michael Clarke as a sort of de-facto captain.

When Warne retired from Test cricket it became clear that he was the man doing a lot of the field setting and such, as without him Ricky Ponting’s flaws as a captain became more and more apparent. Ignoring the bowling benefits, simply having Warne field in the slips and mentoring Clarke may very well improve his captaining skills.

Of course the biggest benefit would be the return of a legendary bowler. Whilst we would obviously need to see how he went at club and/or state level first (from both a form and a selection policy perspective), I think most people suspect Warne would quickly become our leading spin option. Despite his age, his bowling style is one conducive to longevity in terms of his short run up, not to mention Warne looks to be and by all accounts is in the best shape of his life.

Whether that translates on the pitch is another story, but I’d love to see him try.

This raises a bigger question though. What does it say about Australian cricket at the moment that most people, including the current captain of the team, expect a retired 43 year old player to be able to easily get back into the team should he so choose?

Nathan Lyon is not a bad bowler by any means, but at this point doesn’t seem like a world class spinner either. There were some definite positive signs from our bowling attack in the South Africa series and we played the Third Test with an entirely new fast bowling attack. Assuming they can get and stay fit, James Pattinson and Pat Cummins, along with Mitchell Starc and Peter Siddle could form a dynamic fast bowling core. That’s not to mention Ben Hilfenhaus, John Hastings, Mitchell Johnson and others like Doug Bollinger.

The spin option however still seems to be a bit of a concern. Michael Clarke says that Warne would be a great mentor for Nathan Lyon and that is definitely true, but it shows little faith in Lyon’s current ability to drop him for a retired guy. How long is Warne expected to play for if he returns? Simply for the Ashes and then leave again?

It actually surprises me that Australia is struggling so much to find a spinner these days. I remember during Warne’s heyday every kid wanted to copy him and become a spinner. Much like how so many kids wanted to be Michael Jordan in the USA (hell it was considered a problem in American basketball that too many kids were trying to play ‘Like Mike’), kids here wanted to be Shane Warne, so I would have thought there would be more spin options than before if anything.

Sadly that’s not the case. Nathan Lyon is a good bowler but not a great one and is not being challenged and pushed by any of the other spinners going around at state level. Therefore we turn back the clock and hope Warne’s return will at least provide a stop-gap until Lyon or someone else is ready to be the world class spinner we need.

It’s a prospect to both drool over and consider an indictment of the current state of affairs, but as long as we get to see Warney roll the arm over again I’m all for it.