10 Things # 37

Bad fielding, mediocre politics, some great music

1/ The IPL is on….

2/ …and Cricinfo is here to confirm the evidence of our own eyes, that this is the worst catching in the league for at least five years, with one in four going down. Nine chances were shelled in each of the King Off in Mullanpur, and the Royal Off in Jaipur, the latter including this absolute pratfall by Virat Kohli. Rooted to the bottom of the table, Chennai Super Kings have dropped sixteen catches in eight games. Mumbai Indians are rebounding after their slow start, but how did SKY drop Abhinav last night? It beggars belief.

I’d go further. The best catches in the IPL are good but not nearly to the standard of, say, Marnus Labuschagne’s in the Vitality Blast last year or Campbell Kelleway’s in the Sheffield Shield this year. The ground fielding is often execrable too. Is it dew, heat, fatigue? I certainly suspect that practice opportunities are limited by the extreme temperatures and the intensity of the schedule. Are increased bat speed and bat dimensions, imparting additional revolutions to the ball? The IPL is being more vigilant about bat sizes this season, but my bat would still fit twice through their gauge .

Not that I’m complaining - if anything, this fallibility may enhance the entertainment value. But it does mean that a team improving their catching efficiency by, say, a quarter, would enjoy the same advantage as the footballer improving their set shot efficiency. So why not try? Or is it that T20 fielding, which especially on the boundary became a spectacle in itself, has plateaued? And if an egregious drop should cost a team the IPL, what then? Just remember where you read this…

3/ In the meantime, the most exciting pace bowler going round is a twenty-eight-year-old Zimbabwean with the game’s loveliest name. Blessing Muzarabani, lithe, swift and possessing a venemous short ball delivered from a Cam Green altitude, has zoomed to 50 wickets in his eleventh Test with another match-winning bag in Sylhet - one favourable outcome of Brexit, as it ran down the curtain on the Kolpak deals by which counties greedily beggared the international game. Safe to say that Australians will never encounter him on a Test match field….

4/ Coincidence: I learned of the passing of that great competitor Keith Stackpole shortly after finishing the new autobiography of one for whom Stacky was a first Test wicket. Mohinder Amarnath’s cameo of being a stripling teenage opening bowler for India at Chepauk in 1969 is a little classic:

I expected at the most to be given two or three overs to remove the shine from the new ball because the Indian captain had no faith in pace bowlers….I took a deep breath to give my best shot. My first over was tight but did it impress the captain? When I walked towards my bowling end for the next over, Pataudi was holding the ball. He said, ‘One more over and do not shine the ball.’ With fielders already rolling the ball, I could feel the beginning and end of my Test career.

I trudged towards the Balaji Rao End bowling mark with a heavy heart. There was little faith left in the leadership and I prayed for a miracle. I knew that once the spinners got into action, I would have no role in the second innings. If I had to survive the agony, I had to so something special in these six deliveries. Was it providential? My first delivery squeezed through a narrow gap between Stackpole’s bat and pad, and uprooted the middle stump!

First Stacky then Chappelli, in fact, and Jimmy went on to be one of my all-time faves - I savoured every word.

Reckon Stacky, who like Jimmy hardened from a modest bowler into a mighty batter, might have enjoyed it too.

5/ Last week’s post of vernacular team photos flushed out two beauties from subscriber Greg Hardy, sometime historian of Monbulk CC. Their oldest surviving team photo, from 1926….

…is improbably in the context of a game against a team comprised of staff of the Commonwealth Senate. Greg explains that sixty-four-year-old local Billy Hughes, cricket enthusiast and former prime minister, owned a house at nearby Sassafras. Common to each photograph is scorer Lil Gannon - her brother Andrew McAlister was a parliamentary driver, whose family hosted the visitors.

I dare say that Lil had a hand in the scones that got a shout out in the Ferntree Gully News too.

6/ For my own part, I have two shout outs. The first is to another reader, live from New York, Sarah Shah.

Go on. Indulge yourself. I can attest that the olive version is perfect for hosting your club’s presentation night!

…and a second is to our friends at Woke Wines in McLaren Vale, who proffer a cheeky Cab Sav ‘for those who believe in progress, equality, and keeping it real.’

7/ A question from the campaign trail: given the lion’s mighty roar, why stick a party noisemaker in its gob?

Also, just saying, but ‘Honor omnia’ actually means ‘honour is everything’; ‘honour above all’ would be ‘honor super omnia.’ And if you don’t trust my six years of schoolboy Latin, check Google Translate.

8/ Similar standards in evidence on Brunswick Street, although, as my daughter observed, one out of two isn’t bad.

9/ Highlight of the week: His Edness was just awesome last Saturday, spellbinding a packed crowd at the Brunswick Ballroom, not only with his endlessly fluid guitar but a voice growing richer with age and a body of work that stretches from horizon to horizon.

There are three more weeks of this national treasure’s national tour. Don’t miss it. Also, check out Ladybitch, cool girls reinforced by dapper guys, who we caught at the Worker’s Club last night.

10/ Other forthcoming attractions: catch you at Sorrento this weekend, perhaps. And there are still tickets available to next Wednesday’s Chappell Foundation dinner, where Pete will genuflect to his hero, the great DK. Prepare for the truth about this….