But on another level, I bloody hate it. I liked Wisden better in the old days when it stuck to its lane. The whole reason for Wisden’s existence is to have a long blank myopic stare at English cricket in the England summer. Not to get bogged down talking about how much better every other nation’s players are at cricket. We know that. We don’t need your stamp of fucken imprimatur.

The problem is that Wisden can’t decide what it is. It still selects its ‘Five Cricketers of the Year’ using all their traditional, ridiculous self-inflicted limitations. ‘Can’t win it more than once.’ ‘Only for shit that takes place on England soil in the England summer.’ ‘Selected entirely at the discretion of one tweed-clad bloke in an overpriced office in Hampshire.’ And I respect that. It’s your fucken book. Make up as many stupid rules as you like.

Wait, is that why they call it the bible of cricket? Because it’s all about making up rules that don’t make a lick of sense to anybody but which everybody has to live by regardless? Because if so, fair play to them. They’ve absolutely bloody nailed the analogy.

But that’s also why they don’t get to suddenly add new rules. The last time the God-botherers made a tweak to the actual bible was a couple of thousand years ago when they chucked in a new testament. The town vicar isn’t out there adjusting the commandments several times a decade. It’s not ‘here are the Ten Commandments, but also here’s the leading commandment in the world: Thou shalt not recline thy seat on a Jetstar flight’.

But that’s what Wisden’s done. They’ve kept their Cricketers of the Year like they’ve always done but have also started piling all these other awards on top. Leading Men’s Cricketer in the World. Leading Women’s Cricketer in the World. Leading Cap Accumulator in T20 Franchise Cricket. Most Improved Attitude Toward the DRS. Tallest All-Rounder with a Shithouse Moustache. Best Innings in a Match Nobody Watched. Grooviest Overall Vibes. Take a breath, lads.

It’s not as if they’re short of material for their book either. I mean, fuck me. I never order one for fear the postie would give me a gobful. It’s like getting a hot water system or a ride-on mower or a full-size snooker table delivered to your house. Technically possible. But impractical. Mate, the postage alone would have your banking app losing its mind with bullshit fraud notifications before you even finished searching on crickettragic.co.uk.

It’s the only book in the history of publishing that’s wider than it is tall. The David Boon of books. You require a building permit to add it to your bookshelf and a spotter standing by before you read it. You could stun a wombat with the bloody thing.

So the last thing they need is all these extra awards padding out this absolute weapon of a book. Stick to your ‘Five Cricketers of the Year’, where ‘cricketer’ is defined as ‘people who played the game during a handful of months in a country only notionally acquainted with sunshine and whose pitches play like a wet mattress’.

You’ll get no arguments from me. One per customer. Warnie got his. Pigeon got his. Even Boof got his. You earn your moment, and that’s it - no second helpings. That’s practically Australian in its egalitarianism.

Sure, it means every England player worth their salt eventually gets one. Although, weirdly, Phil Salt hasn’t. Which tells you something about the man. Or the condiment. Either way, not a great look.

But if Johnny or Janey Foreigner want to get recognised by Wisden (and, let’s be honest, that’s a courageous assumption), they should do it the old-fashioned way. By touring the country and beating the shit out of the Poms on their home soil.

Let’s scrap the feigned respect of handing out Leading Cricketers in the world to every IPL player and their dog. We know your heart’s not in it, Wisden. Not really.

Own your bloody biases. Take yours truly, for example. I’m biased as all fuck. I know it, you know it. Everybody knows it. Sure, my biases are based on something real - that Australia is better at cricket than any other nation. But the point is that I’m not embarrassed by that. And I’ve sure as shit never slapped a Leading Cricketer in the World award on top of my biases to make them look more respectable. I just have the biases. And I’m fucken proud of them. They’re good biases.

And this, BTW, is also why we never needed an Australian Wisden. Oh, sure. You tried it on for a while there. Don’t think we’ve forgotten. Half a dozen or so editions. Green cover. More pictures. Fewer polysyllabic words. But quietly dropped because Australians never needed Wisden’s permission to record our cricket. And we certainly didn’t want to waste two thousand pages doing it every year. “Oh, look. Junior’s taken some sublime catches in the slips. Again.” Mate. See last year.

So yes, Big Mitch Starc is the Leading Cricketer in the World. Of course he is. But we all knew that before you Wisden-come-lately editors deigned to give him the nod.

Find your own bloody heroes, Wisden. I know it’s challenging, but Starcy’s ours.

Good news (for me)! I’ve just signed a two-book deal with Allen & Unwin and am about to start work on my next cricket book. Which means, once again, I’m inviting you to watch it all unfold, shadowing me throughout the entire process like some kind of literary Nazgûl.

The idea is the same as last time. Over the next six months, a small group of people wil…

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And now there’s nothing.

Not nothing nothing. There’s the IPL, if you want to be up at midnight like a glassy-eyed possum, watching a fifteen-year-old tonk sixes into baying crowds, all screaming deliriously like they’re at a bloody Robbie Williams concert, and the big fella’s just taken off his shirt during ‘Rock DJ’.

Have you heard about this kid? Just out there, playing in the IPL, bold as brass. I’m not talking about one of those BBL ankle-biters who stand awestruck on the field while the fireworks go off then get to keep a player’s cap as a reward. Or those Rock Eisteddfod munchkins doing elaborate gestures at a Power Surge button like they’re in a school play about the wonders of electricity. Or the little ferals in the stands chasing after sixes like golden retrievers and lobbing them back into the ground. No, this little shit is playing in the actual match. Fucken smashing them too.

Everyone’s going spare about it - ‘extraordinary talent’, ‘generational prospect’. Analytics merchants weeping into their laptops. Look, good on the kid. Genuinely. Maybe he is that talented - I wouldn’t know, I’m not staying up until three in the morning to find out. But, frankly, I’m not that impressed. As far as I’m concerned, it just means the ‘best T20 competition on Earth’ can be dominated by some young ratbag jacked up on red cordial. That’s not a tribute to the child. That’s a damning indictment of the format. Hell, my asthmatic niece could hit just as many sixes if you gave her a big bat, a flat pitch, and boundaries shorter than a Hobart summer.

No wonder none of the Aussie bowlers can be arsed playing over there. What are you gonna do? Bounce the little bastard? You can’t win - you get him out, you’re being a cruel mongrel, picking on a child half your age. You let him slog you around, you’re a hopeless clown, past your prime. Nah, if I were Big Hoff, Big Cummo or Big Mitch Starc, I’d keep doing what they’re doing - stay at home until this precocious terror’s forced to go back to school or whatever.

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In particular, this time around, my Wasted Review of Cricket is headlined by the men’s Ashes. Remember that? How hopeful we all were of a genuine contest before England arrived, half-drunk, partying up a storm and barely bothering to even try to compete against an Australian side held together by sticky tape, rejected Snicko algorithms and promises that Cameron Green would eventually come good any minute now. Yeah, that’s covered in depth, including commentaries from anonymous former cricketers from each nation.

However, the book also covers the Women’s ODI World Cup, the Australia v India women’s multi-format series, a half-hearted attempted at the men’s T20 World Cup that mostly took place at 1am for me plus, as always, a few random white ball series you’ve no doubt forgotten (I certainly had!).

That’s all in one convenient book for you to browse. It’s available in ebook form and print.

Check it out!

(A reminder, of course, that paid subscribers get the whole thing for free by using the discount code found at the discount code page. You’ve already paid for the daily report cards. You don’t have to pay for them again. If you’re not a paid subscriber, this is either a) your chance to become one, or b) your chance to support me via a one-off transaction.)

Not much to report here on this third and, as it turned out, final day. India managed to just squeak past Australia’s first innings lead to force them to bat again. But only just.

(And why were they squeaking, for goodness sake? Wild behaviour. Although perhaps I shouldn’t be too harsh on that. It’s a desperate situation and you might a…

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The day began ominously for India. Oh, sure, they were still more than a hundred runs ahead, but Australia had Ellyse Perry and Annabel Sutherland at the crease, with the next three batters the formidable matter of Beth Mooney, Ash Gardner and Tahlia McGrath.

(Can you have formidable matter? Yes! Einstein proved that formidable matter is equivalent to formidable energy, as outlined in his famously formidable equation, e = mc². In this relationship, c is the speed of light, and you don’t get much more formidable than that!)

But enough special relativity patter. Let’s instead revert back to those relatively special batters, Perry and Sutherland.

Perry, batting at three, had the head start on her younger partner and was the first to reach major milestones, zipping past Karen Rolton to become the highest run-scorer for Australian women in Tests. A fine effort for a cricketer who began her career as an ODI bowler, coming in at number nine.

Oh, and a couple of runs before passing Rolton, Perry also brought up one kilorun in Test cricket. Congratulations, Pez!

Petulance
Grade: B+

But, of course, right behind her was Sutherland, who, on a hot Perth day, seemed utterly untroubled by the India attack. Despite her senior partner’s head start, she slowly but surely reeled Perry in, eventually surging past her in the seventies. (The score, not the decade.)

Perry’s response? To immediately be trapped leg before wicket by Deepti Sharma. Wonderfully petulant behaviour from the veteran. ‘Fine,’ she was saying to Sutherland. ‘If scoring more runs is that important to you, I’ll let you have it. Whatever.’ Followed by a majestic eye roll.

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Right. Cricket during waking hours. In Test match form. Yes, please.

Especially since the last hope for any kind of belated fun in the eternal T20 World Cup that keeps invading my morning notifications was crushed when England were beaten by India in the semi-final. (And, yes, I know England-Australia rivalry is supposed to trump all…

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Perhaps irritated by the young girls’ top order clique of Phoebe Litchfield and Georgia Voll producing such an impressive partnership in the second ODI, captain Alyssa Healy turned her helmet backwards to ‘chill’ with the kids prior to this third ODI. She got down on the youngsters’ level, promising to do some ‘partnershipmaxxing’ via some pretty harsh ‘bowlermogging’ that would ensure India were ‘boundary pilled’.

“I’m sorry, what, exactly, are you talking about?” said Litchfield, and promptly lost her wicket rather than listen to her skipper’s rambling any further.

Voll, however, was more tolerant, and stuck around with Healy for a century partnership, the run rate accelerating beyond six an over in the process. Eventually, however, she was caught by Harleen Deol in the deep, and Beth Mooney joined Healy in the middle.

Mooney and Healy together? An unlikely duo, but perhaps, against all odds, a pair that might find cohesion.

Keepers
Grade: A-

And they did. The pair added 145 runs in just over fifteen overs, as Healy powered her way to a century, and then another half-century on top of that, finally finishing on 158 from 98 balls. Is there a future in the format for this former keeper? Perhaps.

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Once again, social obligations limited my ability to view vast chunks of this match. Although, happily, the social obligations were with cricket-loving folk, meaning that there was no need for surreptitious score checks on the phone. In fact, it was quite the reverse, as I would proudly announce a cricket update on the match and …

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Having stumbled to a 2-1 defeat in the T20 portion of the multi-format series, Australian fans welcomed back Alyssa Healy to captain the team for the ODIs, with Sophie Molineux dropping back to vice captain.

Other changes included Elysse Perry and Kim Garth ruled out with leg injuries, and Georgie Wareham ruled out with a bad case o…

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I didn’t get to watch the third T20 because I had a dinner date instead.

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Over to Canberra then, where Australia once again batted first. Or perhaps they batted 0.97th or 1.01st. Something that suggests a lack of precision in what they were trying to do.

Because Georgia Voll spent most of the first half of the innings desperately struggling to get one of her mistimed shots to go to hand. Over and over, and over after over, she’d try to hit a shot, be slightly too late or slightly too early on it, and loft it just out of reach of an India fielder’s hands.

She somehow still brought up her fifty in just thirty balls, though, and eventually made her way to 88 (57) before being caught at deep midwicket. By that point in her innings, she was bashing the ball everywhere, and rumours of her struggles to find timing earlier in her knock were reduced to tales whispered down from generation to generation. And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And so forth. You know the drill.

Undeterred, Beth Mooney, who’d been denied the strike through much of Voll’s earlier troubles, stepped up and picked up the slack in terms of struggling to find timing. Great partnership batting. Mooney mistimed her way to 46 (39) before finally putting the ‘shit’ in ‘mishit’, chipping a simple catch to mid-on.

Having said all that, it’s the height of privilege to be disappointed the Australian openers weren’t more elegant about their century partnership at 8.5 runs an over. But who’s to blame for that? Set your standards lower, ladies.

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Look, I don’t watch T20s. We all know it’s not real cricket - it’s batting practice with fireworks and a DJ, just three hours of slogging, interrupted by some bloke in a Hawaiian shirt shouting at you about KFC.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not totally ropeable about what’s gone on over in wherever this World Cup is being played. I want to say ‘Sri Lanka’, because apparently we’re going home because it rained there? In a game we weren’t even playing? Don’t fully understand it myself, but one thing I do understand is that the selectors must be held accountable for this humiliation.

Now we all know T20 cricket is the idiot’s version of the game. Nothing but mindless hitting for the TikTok generation, with their 6-7s and their Twitch streams and their not using headphones on public transport. But that just makes losing at it even worse. How does Australia get knocked out of a World Cup in the easiest, most shit-for-brains form of the game? I mean, just hit sixes. That’s it. That’s the whole sport. You’re telling me Australia - the most successful cricket nation in the history of cricketing history itself - can’t hit sixes any more? Who the fuck did we select in our team? Did we raid a physics department? Storm a chess club? Pick eleven accountants from H&R Block and hand them bats?

It’s unacceptable, because I don’t care if it’s T20, ODIs, Tests, beach cricket, indoor cricket, or hitting a tennis ball with your granddad in the backyard, if you’re wearing Australian colours, you’re not supposed to lose. Especially not in the group stages, which is apparently all we got up to here. Group stages! That’s not even the main event. It’s like getting knocked out of the tournament based on a nets session.

Now, like I said, I didn’t watch any of the matches. I don’t have Stan Sport Plus or Amazon Prime for Nerds or the Kayo Unlimited Bullshit World Cup package, or wherever the fuck this tournament was being streamed in the middle of the fucking night, but according to Bing (the search engine, not the fast bowler), we lost to Zimbabwe?

That can’t be right, can it? I thought Zimbabwe gave up cricket when the Flower brothers packed it in. How are they back two decades later knocking us out of this pissant tournament? Did they get bonus points or something for showing up?

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Traditionally, I wait until the end of the year before awarding my strongest cricketing comedy moment of the year. That’s just the way I was raised.

Not this year. It’s only February, but I can say w…

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With the Australian men’s T20 cricket side, held together by chewing gum and old Shane Watson guitar strings, stinking up the joint over in the men’s T20 World Cup, it felt like a perfect opportunity for the good Australian T20 team to spring into action.

By which I mean, of course, the Australian women’s T20 cricket side, led for the fi…

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If only we’d prepared properly for the series. If only we’d had proper warm-up matches. If only we hadn’t batt…

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The fifth day began with England extending their lead in this Test to 159, and Mitchell Starc his lead in the top wicket-takers for the series to nine, as he took the final two wickets to fall.

Still, that mere nine-wicket lead did open the door for Brydon Carse to finish with the most wickets in the series. Could the lionhearted fast b…

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Carroty Goodness
Grade: B+

Whatever hard-won gains Australia made on the third day of this Test, England unmade on the fourth day, as they reached 8/302 after cheaply removing the last three wickets of the Australian innings.

Unfortunately for England, Australia had also made hard-won gains on the second day that had yet to be undone by the tourists, which means the home side is still rather a fair way ahead in this Test. Still, might England yet undo Australia by undoing those earlier hard-won gains and thereby gain a late, hard win on the fifth and final day?

No. Almost certainly not.

Still, press that CTRL-Z, fellas. Press it with all your might.

England truncated Australia’s first innings on 567 (as the kids like to say these days, assuming they’re kids heavily into setup and preamble), thanks primarily to Josh Tongue once again dismissing Steve Smith for, I dunno, the zillionth time.

Smith is officially Tongue’s bunny. Is this better than being a bunny’s tongue? Hard to say. The first means you’re at least playing international cricket, albeit only until Josh Tongue deigns to dismiss you. On the other hand, the latter means getting the taste of a lot of carroty goodness. Genuinely difficult to split.

Ridiculing Your Spouse
Grade: B-

Once Australia were all out, Zak Crawley ended the series as he began - out in the first over to Mitchell Starc. Now you might therefore think that this is a sign that the gormless England opener has made no progress on this tour. Not at all.

For one thing, he made a run this time around, something he famously failed to achieve in either innings in Perth. For another, he didn’t waft at a ball outside off stump or chip it back to the bowler. No, instead he did what all good openers do, and what we’ve all been trying to drum into the empty heads of these senseless Bazball maniacs since day dot! He left the ball.

Sure, he left one that swung back in and hit his unprotected pad near enough in front of the stumps for the umpire to shoot him out and DRS not to save him. Rightly so. Proper bookending for Zak. Shame about the run.

On Fox Cricket commentary, Alyssa Healy then revealed she spent the innings break mocking Starc’s batting (bowled by Tongue like some kind of hapless Steve Smith) and firing him up, on the basis that ‘angry Mitch’ always bowls better.

This is wildly unfair, surely? Same old Aussies…

I say, the ICC should permit all spouses to ridicule cricketers during scheduled breaks if they think that will improve their cricket, not just those who happen to be international captains in their own right, commentating for the host broadcaster.

Still, my point is that, according to stats guru @SirSwampThing on BlueSky, Starc’s record for wickets taken in the 1st over of a Test innings now stands at:

• Ball #1 - 4

• Ball #2 - 4

• Ball #3 - 2

• Ball #4 - 3

• Ball #5 - 5

• Ball #6 - 9

What’s going on with ball three, Mitch? Need to lift, mate.

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Blinkered Dogmatism
Grade: D

POV: Yo— (sorry, can you sit down please?)

England began the day 218 runs ahead. Not that you’d have known it looking at the two teams in the field. The late Shane Warne - bless his pizza-loving soul - used to have a lot of random commentary bugbears that have now been mostly forgotten and/or forgiven. And perhaps rightly so.

One of them was ‘body language’, a cudgel with which he’d ritualistically beat poor old Mitch Starc at the beginning of pretty much every summer. It was as if Warne - like so many larger-than-life characters - simply could not conceive of a world in which there is a personality type who might not want to always be striving to physically, verbally, emotionally, spiritually and/or financially dominate the space they were occupying.

POV: You’re Stev— (where’s that glare coming from? Can we do something about that?)

Now, I’m sure Warne sort of had a point. Sport is inherently confrontational. Physically asserting one’s dominance via body language (which so often tends to simplify to swearing at people a lot, but that’s by the by) is no doubt a successful approach. It’s not - as Starc has proven this very summer - the only approach, but it’s one that would very often work. And if it was Warne’s preferred approach while playing, it was perhaps understandable for him to similarly champion it in the commentary box. Even if he did it with a kind of blinkered dogmatism that sometimes grated.

Today, however, Warne would have been in his dogmatic body language championing element, because England came across as doomed from the second they stepped out into the middle.

For one thing, Matthew Potts was still bowling. And, somehow, getting worse.

Zatanna
B: edarG

POV: You’re Steve Smi— (Sorry, can that gentleman in the crowd take his cap off? No, the other one. Yes, you. Cap. Off.)

Michael Neser - the nightwatchie - resumed with Travis Head, despite being given the perfect opportunity from the night before to retire hurt. Why was Neser still out there? Nobody knew. Shame on him for resuming the innings. Get back down to nine where you belong, Michael.

To be fair to Neser, though, I’d also quite like to be in the middle when Head brings up a century.

And, of course, Head didn’t take long to do that. Did he do it off Potts? Look, let’s say he did. By this stage, Potts had become a cartoon character. And I’m thinking in particular of the Simpsons cartoon character from the meme in which a small child begs for a brutal beating to cease, with the phrase ‘Stop! Stop! He’s already dead!’

Because this was like the Bizarro version of that: ‘Potts! Potts! He’s already dead!’

POV: You’re Steve Smith, one of the gr— (can we put a towel over that camera?)

Now, look, as a gag, this observation doesn’t really work. For one thing, Bizarros think in opposites - they don’t talk in reverse spelling (you’re thinking of Zatanna!). Potts also has an extra t in there that means it’s not quite ‘stop’ backwards, is it? Furthermore, why, in this imaginary character’s voice, is the first half of the phrase backwards and the second the right way around? No, this is a fundamentally broken joke that barely holds together.

Still better than Potts’ bowling though.

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Having thought they’d vanquished their most fearsome foe in the infamous ten mm Test of Boxing Day, England were suddenly forced once again to confront the terrors of Day Two.

In the first Test, England finished the first day 49 runs ahead, with Australia 9/123 in reply to 172 all out, the tourists having unleashed the most fearsome battery of fast bowlers ever to reach Australian shores! On day two, Travis ‘PETA’ Head freed those fast bowlers from their battery cages and sent them squawking away in random and startled directions.

In the second Test, England were 9/325 at stumps on the first day, a perfectly competent little total, with Joe Root, ton successfully secured, and Jofra Archer, ton not (to use the common palindrome), at the crease, having already added a merry half-century partnership. On day two, Australia larruped their way to 6/378, a total that would eventually balloon to 511, as England bowled dross and fielded drossier.

In the third Test, Australia reached 8/326 at stumps on the first day, a perfectly competent little total of their own, but one that could be overrun, as the previous match had shown. England did not, however, overrun that total on the second day, instead allowing Mitchell Starc to reach his second half-century of the series with the bat, before somehow flaming out, falling to 8/213 at stumps, despite the Australian side being the ones who had to bowl in forty degree heat.

A terrible and fearsome day then, day two, for fans of England cricket. Not coincidentally, also the best day for listening to the endless swathe of English cricket podcasts for fans of Australian cricket. Schadenfreudcasts!

And despite having slaughtered day two in the MCG madhouse Test, here it was again, rising from the dead like some form of slasher movie villain or Jesus to wreak havoc once more.

Amnesiac Cartoon Characters
Grade: C

The day began half an hour early, thanks to the darkness that fell across the blackened city of Sydney that prior eve. Which meant, of course, that Harry Brook could be out sixteen minutes before the scheduled start of play. What a precocious talent he is.

Ben Stokes soon followed, caught behind off the bowling of Mitchell Starc, a decision made to seem more controversial than it was by the third umpire taking three times as long as necessary to apply the Snicko guidelines. Good stuff. There’s a spike within a frame of the ball passing close to the bat, Kumar. That’s it, he’s out. You don’t need to zoom in and pan around the screen, lost and confused, like an elderly person who’s triple-tapped their iPad. Press the big red ‘fuck off!’ button.

Still, remember before this series when no normal cricket fan could talk intelligently on the relative merits of Snicko and UltraEdge? And perhaps didn’t even know they were different things?

We were children then.

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