Ah yes, a sad state of affairs that we have turned our backs on the minnows. There’s no money for us in playing them, so stuff ‘em, seems to be the attitude. BTW how would PNG go in the Sheffield Shield or whatever it’s called now? Would they be good enough?
I just listened to your latest podcast. I have to shut the door as my chuckling upsets my wife. Two things :
Who else could go from being so loved to hated and loved again, as David Warner has done? Are we that fickle or just me?
Re the fake hammy stunt. It was pretty crude but it was Afghanistan, so let’s cut them some slack as you guys did. (The best game of cricket I ever played in involved copious time wasting to save a grand final. 20 minutes to bowl the last three overs, with paid umpires officiating - I still don't regret the tactics 40 years later).
Australia, surely now, needs to do the right thing and embrace tours into here from all associate nations. We now have plenty of facilities (yet more would help) in NT and FNQ to play against players / teams from all across the Australian landscape.
We have found a way for “A” tours or Under something to occur in the past.
Is not that hard and we should have cricket being played in Australia all year around rather than just over a seemingly smaller summer period.
Thanks for the reminder, Gideon. I gave up supporting Oz some years ago, giving my heart to NZ, but have slowly returned to the fold over the past two years. Your comments are a good reminder, and I'll leave again, although this time to either Afghanistan or PNG.
Spot on GH, Australia years ago sold its soul to the big nations and has sold out the rest mainly to protect the mountain of gold (well, a small mountain compared to India's) it accumulates as a result. Years ago it was that disdain that in part allowed Jagmohan Dalmiya to mobilise the small nations, force a World Cup for India and that set the juggernaught going. And here we are, hubris now hammered, wonderfully.
I agree with your point about Australian cricket's hypocrisy when it comes to taking a moral stand, but surely the South African apartheid regime based on race is not that morally different to the current Afghanistan one based on gender. It's pretty much accepted wisdom that the sporting boycott helped bring about change in the former, so I can understand why it's thought that this success can be replicated.
I'm not sure this 'accepted wisdom' withstands close examination, or fits the circumstances of Afghanistan all that effectively, John. More than 30 years elapsed between the Sharpeville massacre and the extension of the franchise to non-whites, so the apartheid regime proved pretty damn resistant to external pressures. You can argue that the sporting boycott did punish the white minority population because they implemented, and regularly voted for the continuation of, apartheid. But is the Taliban's rule a reflection of the will of the people of Afghanistan? Is it not an outcome of the power vacuum left by the withdrawn of American (and Australian) soldiers? And in that case are those Australians who support a sporting boycott in the position of punishing the people of Afghanistan for our own failure to foster the democratic institutions and the security from harm we promised them? So, big differences that I would argue are impossible to overlook.
Ah yes, a sad state of affairs that we have turned our backs on the minnows. There’s no money for us in playing them, so stuff ‘em, seems to be the attitude. BTW how would PNG go in the Sheffield Shield or whatever it’s called now? Would they be good enough?
I just listened to your latest podcast. I have to shut the door as my chuckling upsets my wife. Two things :
Who else could go from being so loved to hated and loved again, as David Warner has done? Are we that fickle or just me?
Re the fake hammy stunt. It was pretty crude but it was Afghanistan, so let’s cut them some slack as you guys did. (The best game of cricket I ever played in involved copious time wasting to save a grand final. 20 minutes to bowl the last three overs, with paid umpires officiating - I still don't regret the tactics 40 years later).
Nor should you, Greg!
Australia, surely now, needs to do the right thing and embrace tours into here from all associate nations. We now have plenty of facilities (yet more would help) in NT and FNQ to play against players / teams from all across the Australian landscape.
We have found a way for “A” tours or Under something to occur in the past.
Is not that hard and we should have cricket being played in Australia all year around rather than just over a seemingly smaller summer period.
Thanks for the reminder, Gideon. I gave up supporting Oz some years ago, giving my heart to NZ, but have slowly returned to the fold over the past two years. Your comments are a good reminder, and I'll leave again, although this time to either Afghanistan or PNG.
Spot on GH, Australia years ago sold its soul to the big nations and has sold out the rest mainly to protect the mountain of gold (well, a small mountain compared to India's) it accumulates as a result. Years ago it was that disdain that in part allowed Jagmohan Dalmiya to mobilise the small nations, force a World Cup for India and that set the juggernaught going. And here we are, hubris now hammered, wonderfully.
I agree with your point about Australian cricket's hypocrisy when it comes to taking a moral stand, but surely the South African apartheid regime based on race is not that morally different to the current Afghanistan one based on gender. It's pretty much accepted wisdom that the sporting boycott helped bring about change in the former, so I can understand why it's thought that this success can be replicated.
I'm not sure this 'accepted wisdom' withstands close examination, or fits the circumstances of Afghanistan all that effectively, John. More than 30 years elapsed between the Sharpeville massacre and the extension of the franchise to non-whites, so the apartheid regime proved pretty damn resistant to external pressures. You can argue that the sporting boycott did punish the white minority population because they implemented, and regularly voted for the continuation of, apartheid. But is the Taliban's rule a reflection of the will of the people of Afghanistan? Is it not an outcome of the power vacuum left by the withdrawn of American (and Australian) soldiers? And in that case are those Australians who support a sporting boycott in the position of punishing the people of Afghanistan for our own failure to foster the democratic institutions and the security from harm we promised them? So, big differences that I would argue are impossible to overlook.