Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket
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Thought this tweet was interesting:
https://twitter.com/pradeepmagazine/status/978591286486798337
India would have handled this very differently. Probably their usual tactic- claim a racist conspiracy and threaten to boycott the series.
Actually, that's not a bad idea now I think about it...
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Thought this tweet was interesting:
https://twitter.com/pradeepmagazine/status/978591286486798337
India would have handled this very differently. Probably their usual tactic- claim a racist conspiracy and threaten to boycott the series.
Actually, that's not a bad idea now I think about it...
@barbarian said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
Thought this tweet was interesting:
https://twitter.com/pradeepmagazine/status/978591286486798337
India would have handled this very differently. Probably their usual tactic- claim a racist conspiracy and threaten to boycott the series.
Actually, that's not a bad idea now I think about it...
shit, you're on to something there. Get Dutton to front the outrage. "you only hate us because we're white! None of us are even farmers!" Followed by going home, and blacklisting South African players from the BBL. Textbook.
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@barbarian said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
Thought this tweet was interesting:
https://twitter.com/pradeepmagazine/status/978591286486798337
India would have handled this very differently. Probably their usual tactic- claim a racist conspiracy and threaten to boycott the series.
Actually, that's not a bad idea now I think about it...
shit, you're on to something there. Get Dutton to front the outrage. "you only hate us because we're white! None of us are even farmers!" Followed by going home, and blacklisting South African players from the BBL. Textbook.
@mariner4life said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
shit, you're on to something there. Get Dutton to front the outrage. "you only hate us because we're white! None of us are even farmers!" Followed by going home, and blacklisting South African players from the BBL. Textbook.
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@booboo said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
@barbarian said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
This is another really good read, from a journo on the ground:
Paywall unfortunately
The tragedy of Steve Smith’s fall from grace
They’ll be taking Steve Smith’s faces off the cereal packets. Removing his image from the poles and buildings as if to signal the regime change. He’s fallen.
It’s heartbreaking — even if he does deserve everything that’s coming his way, although I suspect he doesn’t deserve all of it. This pile-on is unseemly but speaks volumes. I want to hug him and say it will be all right but I know it won’t.
The ceiling was sagging in the dressing room long before he entered it. The roof had been leaking for years. Nobody was interested in the rising damp because there was so much sunshine. Nobody noticed how low they had to stoop.
And then it caved in. And every indiscretion and negligence of past and current tenants fell on the head of Smith and whoever was with him that lunchtime on day three at Cape Town.
David Warner was certainly one. There’s a sense that every time there’s a bin fire in cricket the opener has been seen wandering from the scene with a pocketbook of matches, an empty can of petrol and a ‘wasn’t me’ shrug.
It’s not all him. The contempt has been building for years. Opposition players have danced a jig of delight that this has caught up with the Australians. They aren’t holding back in public and in private.
The blame game has started in Australian cricket’s inner circle. They’re under siege and turning on each other. Cameron Bancroft is collateral damage. A man in his eighth Test he knew nothing but the environment he walked into. He was stupid and he deserves punishment but the fact the match referee didn’t even see fit to suspend him for a game suggests something. He says he was “in the wrong place at the wrong time”. He was, Nuremberg style, just following orders.
Warner, the ball maintenance man, will argue that he has just been doing his job. The bowlers benefit from it. The team benefited from it. The coach, well, the coach sets the agenda. He’s not exactly the retiring type.
Smith’s clumsy attempt to protect the identity of his co-conspirator(s) had an unfortunate side-effect. Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc were rightly upset and wanted it corrected.
Back to Smith because I can’t shake the sadness about his demise. Here was one of the most personable, least calculating, more talented and one of the more genuinely decent people to skipper the Australian team in recent decades.
That’s no knock on the others, but Smith has an openness, even naivety, that few of those men had.
Here was a man with no pretensions. An enthusiast. In Port Elizabeth he’d been out with his drone (the fad that’s keeping them occupied this tour) and he’d filmed a pod of dolphins swimming beyond the waves. It was spectacular footage and he couldn’t wait to show it, standing in his towel in the foyer of the team hotel, as excited as a kid with a new toy. Which he was.
Smith entered the highest office in Australian sport wearing shorts and thongs, opened the door and greeted all comers with a goofy grin.
And, boy, can he play. Gifted with natural talent but not on the scale of an AB de Villiers who has had his bat kissed by God, Smith worked and works and worked and works and grafted a goofy approach that has seen him achieve results in his career no batsman, Bradman aside, had.
The outrage is searing, crippling even. People are concerned for him. He cuts such a lonely, devastated figure in the corridors of the hotel. Most of the others have their families with them, for once he is flying solo.
It’s a mark of his character that he saw a bus headed for Bancroft, knew that it wasn’t right and attempted to throw himself in front of it. He knew he couldn’t completely protect the opener but he wanted to share his pain. How many would have done that? How much has it cost Smith?
If he’d kept quiet this could have been “managed”. Maybe if he had his time again he would. What sort of person voluntarily risks all they have achieved?
This time a few days back Smith had the world at his feet. He was the friendly face of Australia’s favourite sport. Indian franchises were willing to pay him the best part of $2.5 million to turn out for a month or so. Australia paid him around $2m just to play cricket. How good was life?
The ground that was at his feet has crumbled and Smith is plummeting, hitting a world at every plunge like the character in Emily Dickinson’s poem. There’s a funereal air around the Australian cricket team in Cape Town but there’s nobody sending flowers or notes of sympathy.
I want to understand what happened in the dressing room that lunch time. You might want to bury Smithy but it shouldn’t stop you taking the time to wonder how this god awful mess came about.
The pressures of captaining the Australian team are immense. Greg Chappell talked about the mental strain that led to the underarm moment that Trevor Chappell says has haunted him the rest of his life. Every time he enters a room there’s an announcement from the PA, “here is Trevor underarm Chappell, the man who brought disgrace on Australian cricket”. He’s almost an old man now but a moment in his youth, in another century, stalks him.
Captains go crazy with the strain. Most crack at some point. Sometimes it’s calamitous, other times just a little unsettling. Ricky Ponting turned on an England coach in unseemly scenes as the Ashes slipped away, he took a catch once and threw the ball into the turf as a World Cup slipped away. He did it because another fielder collided with him. Steve Smith was his name.
Allan Border is a simple man, an exception to life’s usual course in that he has grown less grumpy with age. He snapped regularly as skipper, said things to his teammates that he regretted, but it was his release valve. He blew up once and was briefly on strike over selection. Refusing to go with the team, yelling on the phone instead of playing.
Michael Clarke got himself into some dark places. His captaincy was hanging by a thread on the day Phillip Hughes died. He had gone off the reservation and Cricket Australia was considering disciplinary action against him.
In Joseph Conrad’s classic novel Lord Jim, Jim is a friendly young man who makes a critical bad decision in the heat of the moment. Unlike others who are possibly more culpable he faces the music, but the shame haunts him for the rest of his life.
Smith will be beating himself harder than anybody can beat him over this. He’s done something foolish and he’s paying for it like few before him. Politicians lie and cheat and stay in office unscathed. Everybody does something they are ashamed of.
The greatest shame is that moment of treachery is so out of character with everything else about Steve Smith.
Maybe I had him wrong, but I am pretty sure I don’t. He can’t remain as captain and he can’t play cricket for Australia again for some time, but he should not be exiled or excoriated forever.
PETER LALOR
@barbarian thanks for the c&p Barbs.
Good article.
Bit of a puff piece for Smith and hatchet job on Warner. Quite believable scenario though.
Would question just how friendly the friendly face of Australian cricket was. He tended to come across sneery and arrogant to me.
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I quite liked Smith before he became the captain (felt a bit dirty for it too). Since then I've still admired his clear batting talent, but thought he'd fallen into the trap of being more abrasive (aka a bit of a fluffybunny) as he's led the team through some pretty iffy periods of behaviour. But on the whole nothing that was totally new for the Australian team in the last 5 years or so.
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@mariner4life said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
@barbarian not sure I am quite buying that one Barb, it's a little overdone in the hyperbole stakes.
The narrative around Smith and the press conference has changed quite a bit. I'm not sure he really did selflessly dive in front of the bullet fired at "Bangers". It sounded more like when your parents get you to explain why you are in trouble.
"It's my responsibility, but bangers, tell them what you did".
That plays into it, though. Maybe Smith isn't really a leader- it's just not in his personality. He handled it about as well as he could have, which is to say not very well at all. Well intentioned enough, but poorly executed.
I like the article more than most because it's from an actual journo on the ground, who has followed this team around for years. That knowledge counts for something, and I place a lot more trust in that than I do some of the vacuous think-pieces that are floating around the internet.
@barbarian said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
@mariner4life said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
@barbarian not sure I am quite buying that one Barb, it's a little overdone in the hyperbole stakes.
The narrative around Smith and the press conference has changed quite a bit. I'm not sure he really did selflessly dive in front of the bullet fired at "Bangers". It sounded more like when your parents get you to explain why you are in trouble.
"It's my responsibility, but bangers, tell them what you did".
That plays into it, though. Maybe Smith isn't really a leader- it's just not in his personality. He handled it about as well as he could have, which is to say not very well at all. Well intentioned enough, but poorly executed.
Yup, I don't think Smith is leadership material. I'd have just left him to being the best test batsmen in the world and have someone else deal with all the shit that comes with the captaincy.
It's not always an easy role to fill, as talent does not equal leader, but often the most talented player gets given the reigns in the hope he'll grow into it because he's most likely to warrant his place in the team long-term.
On our side of the ditch I don't think Kane is a natural leader either, but is growing into the role each year. Easier to get away with it for the BCs than the Aussie team though given how much pressure the Aus captain is always under, especially if they don't perform (or cheat in this instance).
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@barbarian said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
@mariner4life said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
@barbarian not sure I am quite buying that one Barb, it's a little overdone in the hyperbole stakes.
The narrative around Smith and the press conference has changed quite a bit. I'm not sure he really did selflessly dive in front of the bullet fired at "Bangers". It sounded more like when your parents get you to explain why you are in trouble.
"It's my responsibility, but bangers, tell them what you did".
That plays into it, though. Maybe Smith isn't really a leader- it's just not in his personality. He handled it about as well as he could have, which is to say not very well at all. Well intentioned enough, but poorly executed.
Yup, I don't think Smith is leadership material. I'd have just left him to being the best test batsmen in the world and have someone else deal with all the shit that comes with the captaincy.
It's not always an easy role to fill, as talent does not equal leader, but often the most talented player gets given the reigns in the hope he'll grow into it because he's most likely to warrant his place in the team long-term.
On our side of the ditch I don't think Kane is a natural leader either, but is growing into the role each year. Easier to get away with it for the BCs than the Aussie team though given how much pressure the Aus captain is always under, especially if they don't perform (or cheat in this instance).
@no-quarter said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
@barbarian said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
@mariner4life said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
@barbarian not sure I am quite buying that one Barb, it's a little overdone in the hyperbole stakes.
The narrative around Smith and the press conference has changed quite a bit. I'm not sure he really did selflessly dive in front of the bullet fired at "Bangers". It sounded more like when your parents get you to explain why you are in trouble.
"It's my responsibility, but bangers, tell them what you did".
That plays into it, though. Maybe Smith isn't really a leader- it's just not in his personality. He handled it about as well as he could have, which is to say not very well at all. Well intentioned enough, but poorly executed.
Yup, I don't think Smith is leadership material. I'd have just left him to being the best test batsmen in the world and have someone else deal with all the shit that comes with the captaincy.
It's not always an easy role to fill, as talent does not equal leader, but often the most talented player gets given the reigns in the hope he'll grow into it because he's most likely to warrant his place in the team long-term.
On our side of the ditch I don't think Kane is a natural leader either, but is growing into the role each year. Easier to get away with it for the BCs than the Aussie team though given how much pressure the Aus captain is always under, especially if they don't perform (or cheat in this instance).
Oz had a succession of world class batsmen in Border, Waugh, Ponting and Clark as their captains. ( Tubby Taylor was also very good but a notch below them ) it probably seemed logical that Smith would follow suit. In terms of records Smith will probably be better than all of them ( which in itself is a fantastic achievement ) but captain ? Maybe not.
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Kane has steadily improved over time, I think it would have improved regardless. Same with Smith.
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Smith, Warner and Bancroft sent home. Boof to stay.
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Smith, Warner and Bancroft sent home. Boof to stay.
@catogrande said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
Smith, Warner and Bancroft sent home. Boof to stay.
Welcome to 14 hours ago
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@catogrande said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
Smith, Warner and Bancroft sent home. Boof to stay.
Welcome to 14 hours ago
@virgil said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:seychelles:
@catogrande said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
Smith, Warner and Bancroft sent home. Boof to stay.
Welcome to 14 hours ago
Fuck. Woke up this morning and saw it on the news. Went through the thread but didn’t see any mention. Bloody phone.
I feel humiliated.
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@virgil said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:seychelles:
@catogrande said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
Smith, Warner and Bancroft sent home. Boof to stay.
Welcome to 14 hours ago
Fuck. Woke up this morning and saw it on the news. Went through the thread but didn’t see any mention. Bloody phone.
I feel humiliated.
That's nothing new on the fern
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@virgil said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:seychelles:
@catogrande said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
Smith, Warner and Bancroft sent home. Boof to stay.
Welcome to 14 hours ago
Fuck. Woke up this morning and saw it on the news. Went through the thread but didn’t see any mention. Bloody phone.
I feel humiliated.
@catogrande said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
@virgil said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:seychelles:
@catogrande said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
Smith, Warner and Bancroft sent home. Boof to stay.
Welcome to 14 hours ago
Fuck. Woke up this morning and saw it on the news. Went through the thread but didn’t see any mention. Bloody phone.
I feel humiliated.
It’s ok just blame the leadership group
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@virgil said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:seychelles:
@catogrande said in Convicts v Marxist Land Thieves - Crucket:
Smith, Warner and Bancroft sent home. Boof to stay.
Welcome to 14 hours ago
Fuck. Woke up this morning and saw it on the news. Went through the thread but didn’t see any mention. Bloody phone.
I feel humiliated.
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