Mark Cosgrove: Batsman, mathematician, scholar

Mark Cosgrove has today described Darren Lehmann's eternal abilities, while being interviewed about South Australia's hopes for the season:

"He somehow always makes 1,000 runs. Even if he seems to have the worst year, you look at his figures and go, 'he actually still got 800 runs'."

What's making us point out that Mark Cosgrove doesn't know that 800 is less than a thousand? It's a fairly innocuous thing - a verbal slip, at most. Would we be reporting this if it were any other player?

It's because he's a little bit fat, isn't it? Any excuse for a post on a fat cricketer.

Justin Langer neglects a (w)hole category

It's the latest in our new style of posts: Innocuous comments by Australian Test cricketers.

Justin Langer said: "Anyone who suggests there are holes in the Australian cricket team, they are very far from the truth, because what I've seen is a very united Australian cricket team who are very, very, very determined to win back the Ashes."

Justin Langer has forgotten about one kind of hole. This particular something-hole opens the batting with him.

In this picture, Justin Langer is clearly requesting a cup of tea. You can tell by his semi-outstretched pinkie. We smile when we're getting a cup of tea too, Justin. Tea is nice.

Andrew Symonds defines the role of the opener

Australian man, Andrew Symonds of Australia quoted from the ABC website:

"Looking forward, I suppose there is a little bit of opening there," 31-year-old Symonds said of the openers. "A number of players are there."

We've taken that entirely out of context. It's more fun that way. Trust us.

Australia two days ago

This is almost news. In the days before the internet, if you didn't get a Sunday paper, you might have to wait until Monday to find out scores. This is only as bad as that, although most of you will probably be reading this on Monday, in which case this post has no value - particularly when you consider what follows.

Australia lost a one-day game. We find that it's a wise idea to apply to the one-day arena the rules you used for England's Test team ten years ago. Namely, don't boast about Australian defeats, because England are probably going to get hammered tomorrow.

What's that? England ARE playing Australia tomorrow. Well there you go. Keep quiet (for now).

Damien Martyn fails to see what all the fuss is about

People batted. People got out. There were precious few runs and they came slowly and attritionally. Except for Damien Martyn, who flicked the ball about like a man playing a familiar computer game on 'easy'.

Damien Martyn has always been a class act, but England fans shouldn't worry. He has an amazing knack for getting himself out in the most surprising and innocuous ways in Tests. It's the price he pays for being able to see into people's souls.

Hayden and Langer meet up to prepare for the Ashes

Ha ha ha. Australia's players are old. Ha ha. Much older than England's.

This joke would have made more sense if Matthew Hayden had been wearing a grey wig or something. You get the idea though - Australia's players are old. This is officially our second best post that's about a picture of Matthew Hayden.

We're being deliberately unfunny in an ironic sort of way. No, really.

Look at his Nazi-looking family at the bottom

"I have never known anyone enjoy their cooking as much as my mate Haydos" - Justin Langer.

There's a recommendation. One, would you put the name 'Haydos' on the front of your book? Two, what sort of an authority is Justin Langer? Three, how impartial is he?

Matthew Hayden was bitten by a dog the other day. We should really lay off him. He hasn't even done anything, really. We're not quite sure what's driving us.

"Just write 'hold other end' - that should do the trick"

For all we know, Matthew Hayden's a genius, although his quotes tend to indicate otherwise.

Anyway, he's better at cricket, cooking and surfing than we are. Plus, he's massively more successful. We've got to pretend we're superior to him in some way. What are we going to do? Ask him to highlight the differences between the Central Lancashire accent and that of Manchester with reference to diphthongs?

No. We're not going to do that. We're going to make weak jokes at his expense instead. And if you think that this one's weak, we've barely started.

The Australian team from an English perspective

Unusually, there seems to be a bit of debate about the Australian team for the Ashes. Traditionally Aussie teams have been pretty much self-picking, but ageing players are leading to a little bit of intrigue. Here's our opinion. And we're being honest.

1. Hayden
2. Langer
3. Ponting
4. Hussey
5. Jaques
6. Clarke
7. Gilchrist
8. Lee
9. Warne
10. Johnson
11. McGrath

You'll notice that we're sticking with Hayden, even though we think he's a bearlike rectum. On flatter Aussie pitches, flat-track bullies are to be coveted. He'll make sure he scores heavily just to irritate us. You can count on it.

We've also gone for Phil Jaques in the middle order. There's lots of hoo-ha about how Jaques, an opener, can't get into the side whatever he does. Well Australia's middle order's more fragile than it used to be, so stick him there. Why not? Australia have traditionally blooded batsmen at number six and then promoted them when they were more comfortable in Test cricket. It's a good ploy.

We've also gone for Michael Clarke rather than an all-rounder. We're not dead set on this, Watson could play. We just think that they've got to start picking Clarke at some point, so they may as well now.

Mitchell Johnson gets the third seamer's position, although Stuart MacGill would be just as good a choice against England, no matter what the pitch. In any case, there's no point picking any more old laggards to clog up the bowling attack - Kasprowicz, Gillespie, Stuart Clark or whoever. They may as well go with a wicket-taker. As with Michael Clarke, they've got to start picking some youngsters soon and Johnson seems to be the best of the bunch.

Finally, Brett Lee's above Shane Warne in the batting line-up. Click on Brett's name to find out why.

Damien Martyn again

Australia knocked India out of the Champions' Trophy yesterday. We watched most of India's innings and they never really got going. You always thought that 249 probably wouldn't be enough. And it wasn't.

Australia chased it down with no real difficulty. Again, the top-scorer was Damien Martyn with 73 not out. We've never watched Damien Martyn bat in a situation where we weren't desperate for him to get out, so we've never really appreciated his style. We're dimly aware that he's 'classy', but we usually overlook that and just call him names whenever he's on TV.

Earlier, Glenn McGrath bowled his first four overs for just four runs and although he was still a bit pedestrian, Aussie fans shouldn't worry about the guy. There's definitely no danger of his being dropped for Nathan Bracken.

Matthew Hayden drops from notch one

"The Platinum Club is basically the top-order batsmen - the 'engine room', we call ourselves - plus one of the interior decorators in Damien Martyn. The fast bowlers aren't invited." - Matthew Hayden

Berk.

To think that it was only yesterday that we were wondering whether we were wrong about Matthew Hayden; that maybe he was actually an all right bloke. And it was only a few days before that that we decided that he'd gone up a notch.

The Platinum Club: You can't give yourselves a name like that. You don't get to pick your own nicknames. Ask anyone. Nicknames are humiliating because nobody wants to make their mates sound cooler than themselves. Most probably Matthew Hayden's real nickname revolves around his giant arse.

Suggestions are welcome.

Matthew Hayden is a complete wuss

Define 'cheap shot'...

Matthew Hayden's got a broken finger. His coach says: "He'll wear a brace, a little plastic brace that our physio has made up for him. The concern was whether they could get the brace to fit properly, and get some sort of comfort for Haydos."

Ahh. Poor little lamb. Needs a FingaBendaMenda to play cricket.

We've never broken a bone in our entire life. We bruised a knuckle by inadvertently punching the floor when trying to remove a nail from the skirting board about two months ago and we're still whinging about it like the puny, pommy girl we are.

We don't care. We'll still call Matthew Hayden a wuss. That brief moment of reflection where we felt that maybe we were being hard on Matthew Hayden seems to have passed over without effect anyway.

Glenn McGrath... Oh balls...

In the first Champions' Trophy semi-final yesterday, Australia shuffled along non-commitally with the bat; then Glenn McGrath won the match by taking 3-22 in ten straight overs; then New Zealand made a bit of a comeback, falling short.

Rumours of Glenn McGrath's bowling decline seem greatly exaggerated. He was never quick anyway, so what can go wrong? He's not going to shrink. He'll still be playing when he's 50 with three times the experience of anyone. It's a heart-warming nightmare of the highest order.

That's a good aspect of cricket compared to many other sports. Players hang around longer. Combine that with the fact that you see a good deal more of players than you do in most sports due to the length of matches and you get to know these guys pretty well. It lends an intimacy to proceedings which in turn fleshes out the matches yet more.

It's a drug, we tell you.

Matthew Hayden is duller and less popular than his fishing rod

In an interview with The Australian (newspaper), Hayden describes how he saw a group of people fishing off the rocks near the team hotel in Galle when Australia were on tour in Sri Lanka once.

"I noticed they were catching little mackerel so I took my fly rod down to the rocks and within the space of 10 minutes I reckon I had close on 300 people watching," Hayden recalled this week.

"I was thinking, 'this is good, they're obviously keen followers of cricket'. But no-one knew who I was. They were looking at my fly rod. They invited me back to their village to show off this rod. It wasn't me at all."

We're going to have to stop reading things about Matthew Hayden. He doesn't come across too badly in this interview. We're not having that. It was bad enough when we started liking Brett Lee. You've got to draw the line somewhere.

West Indies collapse massively in Champions' Trophy final

That's pretty much all there is to say. Australia won the Champions' Trophy and now no-one cares again. It's very 'of the moment' the Champions' Trophy. We actually quite enjoyed it in the end, mostly because all the big nations are in one place at once and it would be hard for that not to be a big deal. As soon as it's finished though, it's forgotten.

Shane Watson saw Australia home with the only fifty of the match. The Tonk, on the Sydney Morning Herald site, described Watson as 'a raving metrosexual' the other day. We've always been a bit creeped out by his albino looks. He doesn't have eyelashes or something weird and his eyes are too blue.

Phil Jaques with our impartial hat on

England got battered. Phil Jaques did a good deal of the battering, hitting 112 off 110 balls.

We put Phil Jaques in our Australian team from an England perspective. We stand by that. Stick him in, Australian selectors. Everyone's waiting round for an injury to Hayden or Langer (or retirement). Why? Put him in at six. Or five. He WILL score runs.

Phil Jaques shows Aussies' strength in depth

Phil Jaques scored another hundred against England yesterday. He still isn't going to get picked for the first Test.

England might think that their batting has strength in depth these days, but they couldn't consider leaving out a player of Jaques' class. Not many sides could - Australia included, thinking about it. They're being obstinate and mental. At least we think they are: Technically, Australia haven't announced their side yet, so he could feature.

Damien Martyn fought his way back into the side by not playing and watching Brad Hodge score a Test double hundred, so maybe Phil Jaques has got his tactics wrong. He should put the kettle on and don a nice pair of carpet slippers. That's the way we've always approached our career in international sport at any rate.

Phil Jaques could have played for England, if he so chose, you know.

England achieve slow simmer

They're at the sort of temperature at which you cook a stew. It's not quite at the boil, but at least there's pans and heat involved, which didn't seem likely as recently as yesterday.

In their joke warm-up match against New South Wales, they took a few more wickets for not many runs in the morning and then toddled along to 256-4, which is nice and solid. Kevin Pietersen is on 80 not out, which is a welcome return to runs for a man who's never mentioned in the discussions about dropping middle-order batsmen, but yet who averages roughly the same as those who are.

Andy Flintoff's 48 not out, which is similarly reassuring. Any cynics who are suggesting that New South Wales' international bowlers are lulling England's batsmen into a false sense of security are seriously misunderstanding the Australian sporting psyche. Australians want to crush the English without mercy. It's as simple as that.

Monty Panesar: Smart and English

Monty Panesar was called a 'stupid Indian' during England's warm-up against New South Wales by a dense prick in the crowd.

Just to clarify, Monty Panesar has a computer science degree and if you can't remember where he's from, just check the scoreboard. It says 'England' on it.

Maybe Monty should have responded that he was as Indian as the speaker was English. That would have gone down well. We're presuming that whoever it was, wasn't of Aboriginal descent.

The Sydney Daily Telegraph reports that the beered-up no-mark went on to add: "Give us a wave, Monty. You can't speak English, you stupid Indian. I'll have to say it in Indian," which you would have thought was an insanely optimistic offer on his part. Not least because there's no such language.

New South Wales' captain, Simon Katich, described the incident as 'disappointing'. When Matthew Hayden got bitten by a dog that time he described it as 'disappointing'. They seem to be a bit strapped for emotions Down Under at the minute. Everyone's just sharing the one.

Marcus Trescothick to miss Ashes

Marcus Trescothick's 'stress-related condition' has flared up again and he's missing the Ashes. This is mighty bad. (We're not questioning the legitimacy of his condition with those inverted commas, incidentally - it's merely a reference to the predictability of the mainstream media who have settled on that phrase to explain his malaise.)

Marcus Trescothick is like a big, solid lump of familiarity at the top of the order. No, we'll go further than that: Marcus Trescothick IS a big, solid lump of familiarity at the top of the order. The reason why he's attained this status is because he's played heaps of games for England because he's so good at batting. To lose a player of his calibre is a bitter blow.

We wish Marcus the absolute best with his continuing struggle. If there were some way of indicating the absence of sarcasm, we'd have used it there. We're quite capable of genuine emotion, despite the vast majority of this site.

Most likely Alastair Cook will move up to open the batting with Andrew Strauss, thus removing England's selectorial headache surrounding the middle order. However, there is an alternative.

We should probably add that Mahinda beat us to that in the comments on our previous post. We were already thinking it though. Since about March.