Tabla de contenidos para July 2015 en Inside Cricket

What should I be commenting on? The recent, aborted bid to overthrow the leadership of world cricket? A revolution is brewing, after all. Or perhaps the heated debate over Pietersen’s exclusion from England’s team. Nemesis dooms the rebel to a lifetime of admiring only himself. We wait to hear the final “plop”. No. I want to make a belated tribute to a real revolutionary and a true rebel. Richie Benaud. That’s right. Those who only ever knew him as an elderly commentator might think that’s a risible description of the man, something like saying John Howard was an unacknowledged giant of hip-hop. Revolution is about change for the better. That’s what Richie was about. He showed the world what rebellion and revolution can achieve when it’s done with the right…

…AS LONG AS THE CRICKET ISN’T FRENCH! A new T20 competition has been started in Europe to raise interest in the game on the Continent. Called the Mediterranean Premier League, the competition has the noble aims of enhancing the status of the game throughout the Continent, and creating some history of its own. Having the various ancient peoples of that melting-pot of a landmass agree on anything is no easy task – just ask the European Union. But the MPL has been crafted to appeal to people of all European nations and sensibilities. The competition will include all existing teams, at all levels, from club through to national. Currently, numbers appear to be somewhere between six and 12 teams, which will compete in one match a day over four, or…

Bradman was an exceptional cricket captain. Essential to his hefty métier was a brain able to make myriad cricketing calculations in an instant. Yet his tactical nous is rarely brought up in discussions of his cricketing legacy. This is possibly due to the inescapable fact that he captained teams with Don Bradman in them. As captain, Bradman had The Don in his side over four Test series (the war intervened) and in that time, he scored 3147 runs at 89.91, with 10 centuries and four double centuries. Throw in some of the greatest cricketers Australia has seen, and the required on-field tactics are considered child’s play, uncomplicated, mechanical, much as Clive Lloyd’s and Viv Richards’ at the Windies’ height. But in 1936-37, Bradman took over a team in transition, in…

Before last season, if anyone was familiar with the name Andrew Fekete, they might have been art connoisseurs, because the first man to make the moniker famous was a Hungarian-born Brit, an abstract expressionist painter, poet and writer who died at 32 in 1985. At the start of last season, the most curious thing about Tasmanian fast-bowler Andrew Fekete’s name was that, against all probability, it gave fellow Aussie cricketer Mark Steketee a partner in rhyme. Fast bowler Fekete, a 30-year-old from Tasmania via Victoria, deserves a break – not the kind that almost ruined his career in 2013, but rather the sort of recognition a talented, hard-working fast-bowler should be getting. Hopefully, his shock sweep of all the big Cricket Tasmania awards at the end of the last Shield…

Southern Stars and Konica Minolta Queensland Fire all-rounder Jess Jonassen is no dill, as a cricketer or in any other matter. Apart from being the current WNCL Player of the Year, she is studying for a law degree. Jonassen was the most shocked person in the room at the Australian State Cricket Awards this year, when she won the coveted award from a strong field. She attributed it to “the most consistent year I’ve had,” but that is, typically, an understatement. Though she describes herself as a bowling all-rounder, Jonassen has dug the various national and State sides she’s played in out of trouble, and won them games, consistently with the bat as well over the last few years. But with ball in hand, Jonassen is a very skillful purveyor…

The intense Ashes rivalry of the last 25 years has produced batting feats of drama, skill, spectacle and importance. Some were simply tours de force, like Gilchrist’s incredible Perth ton or Waugh’s last Ashes match in 2003. Some were extraordinary one-off moments; some helped to win a match, a series, or a place in history. Some were performed by batsmen, others with the bat by men whose strengths supposedly lay elsewhere. In one instance, it was a team effort. In another, an amazing partnership. We selected our 11 from memory, where they have permanent residency. Adam Gilchrist Although he performed consistently at unprecedented levels for a man with so much to do on a cricket field, Adam Gilchrist sometimes astonished like some child prodigy sitting down to a piano, or…

“MY CAREER HAS BEEN A TOUGH OLD SLOG, BUT I AM IN A GOOD PLACE NOW ” It was in December 2006, at the age of 27, that Adam Voges received his first unexpected call in to the Australian Test squad. After the first two Tests of that summer’s Ashes, Damien Martyn suddenly retired, and the selectors quickly bolstered the squad by adding two emerging young players, Voges and Andrew Symonds. Voges was a prodigious talent, scorer of the fastest ever domestic One-Day century from just 62 balls two years earlier, whose natural ability was always destined to see him play Test cricket at some stage. In the days building up to the third Test at the WACA, a shy Voges was warmly welcomed into a dressing room which boasted…

Our regular “How To” section is written by the best in the business, Elite Cricket. The Head Coach and Director of Elite is none other than former Australian off-spinner Jason Krejza, who also took this month’s instructional snaps. Jason applies his vast experience working with the world’s best players and coaches to his own coaching. Jason had a historymaking Test debut when his 12 wickets for the match against India in 2010 included eight wickets in the first innings. Elite Cricket was started 14 years ago by former firstclass cricketer and Australia A representative, wicketkeeperbatsman Mark Atkinson. Since then, Elite’s innovative coaching methods have been designed to accelerate skill development, increase understanding and promote the fun of cricket. With this vision in mind, they provide individual coaching, school programs, junior…

JUGS machines enable players of all age groups to improve existing strengths and assists in overcoming weaknesses. All types of deliveries can be simulated with the independently variable speed motors: in-swing, out-swing, medium or fast, slow spin and short rising deliveries. RRP $3960 incl GST. Check them out at www.jugs.com.au or phone (03) 9584 1588. The ASICS GEL-Advance is renowned for being a light and responsive batting shoe – but the ASICS cricket development team was set the challenge of making version 6 even lighter. By introducing a new dual density Solyte polymer outsole, the team has managed to reduce the overall weight of the shoe without compromising the level of support needed for a long stay at the crease. The combination of a Solyte midsole, Solyte Lasting and a…

ASHES FLASHES After the first three Tests in England in 1989, Steve Waugh averaged an awesome 393.00 (177 not out at Leeds, 152 not out and 21 not out at Lord’s and 43 at Birmingham). He averaged 126.50 in the six-Test series. Coincidentally, Australia’s Charles Turner and Glenn McGrath and England’s Sydney Barnes have an identical bowling average of 19.34 in Ashes Tests in England; Turner in eight Tests, McGrath in 14 and Barnes in seven. Another Aussie, Terry Alderman, came close, averaging 19.33 in 12 Tests. All 11 England players bowled against Australia in the 1884 Oval Test. The most successful bowler was the regular wicket-keeper Alfred Lyttelton who took 4-19 with lobs while W.G. Grace kept wickets. Only two batsmen have aggregated over 2000 runs in Ashes in…

I could drop names till you’re knee-deep in the stuff, so I’ll just reach down and pick up a few. Let’s see: Heals, Greg Chappell (does that bloke even have a nickname?), Henry, Robbo – and, for balance, I’ve chucked in former England batsman Allan “Bamma” Lamb (not his real nickname – or is it? Who cares? And yeah I know, not a real Pom, anyway – but I throw him in to avoid accusations of Aussie bias). IAN HEALY "I can't see Australia losing a Test. Their skill, depth and new-found enjoyment and camaraderie will arrest their poor form in England in the last three series. I don't think England will lose every Test by any means, so…" VERDICT: Australia 3-0 GEOFF LAWSON "There's nothing quite like internal strife…

Ashes cricket has a habit of unveiling fast bowlers, some of whom have gone on to have enduring careers. Certain pacemen changed entire series with astounding single-handed efforts and in some cases never got another chance. Others confined their heroics to battles against their "auld enemie" and never really presented the same threat to any other team. Ashes cricket does that. The very thought of playing an Ashes series and being the hero gripped kids in both countries throughout the late 19th and entire 20th centuries. It continues. The statistics do not always tell the story. Figures sometimes tell of overwhelming dominance, but in the case of Lillee and Alderman in 1981, or Hogg in 1978-79, they simply mean a losing team would have looked a lot worse without them.…

On a return flight to Britain after a raid on Germany during World War II, Mosquito pilot Keith Miller broke from his squadron to fly 50 perilous miles alone to Bonn. Flying dangerously low, he wanted to be able to say he saw the house of the man who came as close to being his idol as anyone was likely to get. Slowly circling the skies above Ludwig Van Beethoven’s old abode – so slowly it must have seemed his plane would drop like a stone – he savoured a view of that home the all-round genius who once occupied it never had, gazing down in silent wonderment. For a few solitary, peaceful, suspended moments Keith Ross Miller, himself to become a hero to many, felt connected to his own.…

WHITEWASH TO WHITEWASH AUSTRALIAN CRICKET’S YEARS OF STRUGGLE AND SUMMER OF RICHES. DANIEL BRETTIG. VIKING/RRP $32.99 Stories of Australia’s decline from 2006-07 to the present era were always over-dramatised. Boundary questions were asked prematurely and the new intolerance for normal cycles of success, failure and repair was all too evident. It left some of us wondering whether failure was being talked into existence. A tome focussing on the minutest details of that twilit time was, at first, an un-enthralling prospect. But Brettig’s book is a pleasant surprise. The book is almost social anthropology in its attention to detail and the factors deeply structuring key relationships that marked the period. Especially interesting is his take on the catalytic “homework scandal” and the thinking that really went behind it. One can only…