Month: December 2019

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Smith’s weakness to short-pitched bowling has been exposed

There are two things one can take away from the Australia-New Zealand Test series, even though it is not yet over, and the third and final match remains to be played in Sydney early next year.

One, the rankings system that the International Cricket Conference uses is out of sync with reality; if Australia, ranked fifth, can beat second-ranked New Zealand with so much ease, then whatever decides those rankings needs sore re-examination.

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Fast bowlers have lost their balls

There was a time in the 20th century when there were more class fast bowlers in the game of cricket than at any other. Between 1974 and 1994, pacemen emerged in different countries as though they were coming off an assembly line.

It made the game of cricket, which many call boring, an exciting spectacle.

From Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, to Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Colin Croft, Joel Garner, the late Malcolm Marshall, Imran Khan, Sarfraz Nawaz, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Devon Malcolm, Bob Willis, Ian Botham, Allan Donald, Fanie de Villiers, Richard Hadlee, Courtney Walsh, Curtley Ambrose, Patrick Patterson and Craig McDermott, they were of several different types and temperaments as is to be expected.
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A small step for Australian women, a giant leap for Tracey Spicer

A year and nine months after she founded NOW Australia claiming it was meant to focus on the problem of women being sexually harassed in the workplace, former TV newsreader Tracey Spicer is once again avoiding public appearances in order, she claims, to focus on her own mental health.

Spicer has retreated like this on earlier occasions too: she disappeared after actor John Jarratt was cleared of harassment charges and also when actor Geoffrey Rush won a case against the Daily Telegraph that had accused him of sexual harassment.

After a series of incidents that can only lead to one conclusion — Spicer’s embrace of the #MeToo movement was meant more to embellish her own image than anything else — the women’s movement in Australia has been put on the back foot and left wondering how it will recover from the Spicer show.
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