Jarrod Kimber

As we come into the New Year’s Test, it’s worth remarking upon the role that Tim Paine has played in the Australian team over the last few years. It wasn’t an easy decision back in late 2007 for the selection committee to overlook the obvious replacement, Brad Haddin, and go with the inexperienced and raw Paine. It was perhaps the best selection of the current NSP, and without it, Andrew Hilditch’s current role as chairman of selectors may be in serious jeopardy.

Without Paine’s recent batting at No. 6, a gutsy promotion by Ricky Ponting during the last Ashes, Australia’s top order would have been involved in some of the worst collapses in their history. Paine is the middle order batsman who can play the moving ball, keep the tail calm and even counterattack when he is required. Also, by batting at No. 6 he‘s given Australia the ability to play an allrounder at 7, which in partnership with Shane Watson gives Australia’s new crop of young bowlers a much needed rest during the day’s play.

But the real reason Australia should be pleased with the gutsy decision to take Tim Paine is that now they have a ready-made future Test Captain. Paine taking over the vice-captaincy role is not like the old days of Australian cricket when wicketkeepers were given the honour of vice-captain as a place holder, he is the obvious front-runner for top job. He has experience all over the world, has been played under two captains, is involved with strategy and planning, and knows what it is like to be the young player in the gun. This all might not have happened had the Australian selectors lost faith in Paine when he was first picked.

An Indian journalist standing in front of me in the buffet said that Sehwag was arrogant for chasing wide ones before lunch. It seemed ridiculous.

When Brad Haddin, after playing a big shot, says it’s just the way he bats, it’s a hard pill to swallow, considering his ever-diminishing batting average, currently at 36. When Sehwag says it’s just the way he bats, even if by that he meant naked with only a helmet of whipped cream on his head, his way of batting means an average of 52.

So the fact that he waved (and by waved I mean practically threw himself off his feet) in the last over before lunch, that is just the way he plays. There aren’t many pauses when Sehwag bats; he’s more MTV than Jim Jarmusch.

I’m friends with Eddie Cowan. This seems like a ridiculous thing to actually read, now I’ve written it, but I think I am. We haven’t exchanged bodily fluids, or said out loud we are friends, but I think at our age semi-frequent exchanges where we happily abuse each other are what constitute a friendship. I know we own each other’s books, and since I never buy cricket books, that’s a big thing for me. We’re not besties, I don’t know whether he was 7 or 8 when he first got his beard, and he has no idea what I swear word I used on Triple J, but we know each other in a non-biblical way.

That meant Boxing Day, and the lead up, was different for me. I’ve had friends who were cricketers before; it’s an occupational hazard. Some of them have even played Test cricket while I’ve known them. But this was more than that. This was my home Test, my favourite place in the world, and my friend was about to walk out and face the new ball. I can’t explain why it did weird things to me more than that, but it did.

Eddie handled the whole trip to Narnia (as he calls it) very well. When I frequently (probably too frequently) asked how he was doing, he said he was relaxed, and did, at the very least, a passable impression of this. He had the air of a man who was thinking about something else, but not fixating on it in a bad way. Like a nerd waiting for a new Star Wars film.

Any day now I’ll assume that ESPNcricinfo is about to help finance my dream film project, which is Billy Elliot meets Harry Potter in the cricket nets at Lord’s. It’s a dream project with crossover appeal and a catchy elevator pitch.

The good news is that Cricket Australia is also helping me cast it. For a while I was never quite sure whom to cast as the wise, smooth, stately and distinguished head of the dancing cricket-wizard academy, but now I do. It’s clearly John Inverarity.

His performance as chairman of selectors has made every press conference from Cricket Australia in the last 20 years seem like a community meat raffle. And it wasn’t just the sensible clothes, reassuring white hair or even the glasses poised delicately on his nose. It was what he said, how he said it, and how he selected. Somehow in one press conference he gave Cricket Australia an intellectual panache that Andrew Hilditch couldn’t touch if Norman Mailer ghosted his press releases.

I knew the Big Bash had started when I saw an intro that was one part Matrix, one part Tron, and also just enough Wide World of Sports to remind you that cricket was involved. Just when you thought the intro was over, they moved into a second intro, which involved team logos and a map of Australia. This was handy for those who still couldn’t remember exactly where a Scorcher came from.

In the second intro, Brett Lee suggested this was mate vs mate, which I think was also the domestic cricket mantra from 10 years ago. But like the Big Bash, it had been polished, and re-positioned in more glam surroundings. Then we were reminded of exactly which players were playing in the tournament. Perhaps I wasn’t listening that well, but I’ll swear they said Shane Warne 4 times. And then Warne spoke and assured us he’d be commentating whilst playing, which probably doubled his fee.

Fox’s coverage started with a tracking shot that flew across the ground only to end with Mark Waugh and Brendan Julian. According to Julian, the Sixers were Waugh’s team, but Waugh said “I might be Sydney Thunder you never know”. And that was it, the essential question of all of those in Sydney or Melbourne, which franchise should you pick? My mum, who’s new found interest in cricket is largely inspired by Mitchell Johnson, wanted to know why someone would pick one Sydney team over another. This was followed by awkward silence as no one in the room could answer her.

I like large pink Hummers. I like two Melbourne teams. I like Shane Warne. And Bryce McGain. And even Stuart MacGill. Plus, I like Twenty20 cricket. I do. Maybe I don’t love it, but I like the T20 game itself more than I have ever liked 50-over cricket. I prefer Test cricket, just because I think it’s a better form of the game, but T20 cricket still does something for me. I don’t just like the big hits and bad commentary; I like the tactics, the new deliveries, the way spinners and left-arm quicks seem to do so well, and how my favourite ignored first-class cricketers can now get some of the adulation they deserve instead of slaving away in front of 12 people in an empty colosseum. I even enjoy going to the toilet when the strategic time-out is used.

But if you strip the tonnes of cosmetics off the Big Bash league, it’s just another T20 league. I can’t get excited about another new tournament. I have nothing against the Big Bash itself; I don’t get excited for the IPL, Champions League T20, Friends Life t20, Stanbic Bank 20 Series or even the Insinger de Beaufort Twenty20 Cup. With a Test series I know that chances are I won’t see these two teams play again in a while. T20 tournaments come around yearly, like Neil Harvey quotes, and it’s nice to know they exist so your television is never far away from a cricket match, but that’s all. I usually can’t remember who won the tournament that came before the current tournament, which is all right because by the time I remember that I’ve forgotten the last tournament there is a new tournament to watch. I mean, before T20 I hardly used the word tournament.

What I don’t like is when the Big Bash, or any T20 league, changes the way cricket is run. Shield Cricket, for all its flaws, is a nursery for national honours: the dependable big brother who always does the responsible thing. The Big Bash is like the youngest child, who pours red cordial on the walls while singing out of tune Lady Gaga songs and still gets special treatment. It already has its own season, extra international players, and more money than the rest of domestic cricket, but now also gets preference over quality preparation the Test team.

Ponting spits in his hands, has alarmingly hairy arms and, if his performance in a new ad is anything to go by, wears a scarf badly. When he bats, though, it’s rarely ugly. He has a bustling no nonsense elegance, brutal pulling and hooking and just enough flair on the leg side.

“Sadly for Phil Hughes,” is what Tony Greig said upon Hughes’ latest push to the slips.

The word sadly is accurate, but there was no more sadness than Hughes walking off the ground. His face was a visual representation of someone saying, “Oh no, not again”. In his nightmares Hughes walks off just the same. On a day when batsmen left the ground more than usual, no one left with the look of more utter despair and pure hopelessness than Hughes. He was every puppy who’s ever seen his family leaving; you could practically hear the muffled whines. Even if you aren’t a believer in Hughes, and they are harder to find than current day Milli Vanilli fans, it’s not fun to see a cricketer that defeated.

The New Zealand slips cordon seemed to have more than 9 players in it, and they were salivating as Hughes faced Chris Martin. Luckily for everyone involved, it didn’t last long.