Monty Panesar celebrates victory in the 2006 Beard of the Year awards © Getty Images

He’s just been named the 2006 Beard of the Year by those notable facial-fungus connoisseurs, the Beard Liberation Front. The organisation, dedicated to “the removal of a societal prejudice against the facially folically enhanced or bearded” sprung to prominence in the late 1990s, when its founder, Keith Flett, took exception to the tendency for New Labour politicians to shave off their whiskers to attract more voters.

Continue reading "Monty's magnificent hirsuteness"

1.16pm

“Have you spoken to John Howard, and do you know if he’s retiring,” asks a reporter, as Warne exits stage left to laughter and a round of applause. That’s it. The man has said his piece. At the age of 37, with 699 Test wickets from 143 matches, with the prospect of two more games to come, Shane Warne has announced his retirement from international cricket, Australian domestic cricket and club cricket for his local St Kilda team. He will, however, continue to honour his contract with Hampshire for the next two years. Catch him there while you can, because you’ll not see his like again in a hurry.

1.14pm

“We expect England to come out and play with pride,” says Warne, but he believes the coming weeks will be celebrational rather than emotional.

1.12pm

Warne says he discussed his retirement with, among others, Ian Chappell and his ex-wife, Simone, “who’s been there for the journey.” He wants to be remembered as “an entertainer, who enjoyed himself along the way.”

1.10pm

“Let’s hope they can contain the bushfires for a week, and let the rains to come along next week,” he jokes, when asked about the prospect of a 700th wicket on home turf at the MCG.

1.08pm

“There was a little bit of shock when I told Ricky I was going to retire,” says Warne. “He is a good friend and my captain. It makes me feel good that I’ve had such an impact. Sometimes you don’t realise the impact you have.” He recalls the example of Dan Cullen, who used to chase the team bus to get Warne’s autograph, and is now a team-mate.

1.06pm

The Ball of the Century? “It definitely makes me smile. As I’ve said a thousand times, it was just a fluke. I’m just thankful Gatt missed it.”

1.04pm

“Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara have been the best two batsmen of my era,” he adds. “Lara places the ball unbelievably well, while I admire Sachin for what he has to go through every day. 50 million people wanting you to succeed. One of the hardest things about being a successful player is the weight of expectation. Domestically, Darren Lehmann has been the hardest player I’ve had to bowl to.”

1.02pm

“If England had retained the Ashes in this series, would you have pushed on to 2009?” asks Dean Wilson of the Daily Mirror. “Yup.”

1.00pm

“Richie is the man, he knows everything about everything,” says Warne, when asked about the influences in his career. “I wished I’d played under Ian Chappell,” he adds, before reminiscing about their time living together in Augusta, when they were both covering the US Masters … in Warne’s brief Channel Nine gig as a “roving reporter”. “And I wouldn’t be where I am without Terry Jenner,” he adds.

12.57pm

“I don’t know what Steve Waugh’s on,” he retorts, when asked about Waugh’s opinion that Warne might one day line up as a coach of England.

12.56pm

Any chance of a comeback? "No." Lows? Losing the World Cup final in 1996, and then losing the one-run Test against West Indies in 1992-93, before being hammered by Curtly Ambrose's 7 for 1 at Perth. The only home series defeat of his career. Any regrets about missing out on the captaincy? "I've been very lucky," he says, not quite answering the question.

12.54pm

Warne recalls his haul of 7 for 52 here at Melbourne in 1992-93 against West Indies as the moment he realised he was good enough to belong to the team full-time.

12.52pm

“Do you want your life to be less like a soap opera,” asks Stephen Brenkley of The Independent. “You guys will be the judge of that,” he replies, before adding that he hopes there’s a bit less moralising about his life in future.

12.50pm

“At times I pushed the line, particularly with my appealing, but I think I made cricket more enjoyable,” says Warne, before confirming that he will honour the final two years of his Hampshire contract. “Who knows what the future holds? I want to spend more time with my children, that’s for sure. But my focus is these next two Test matches. I’ll have a few drinks and a few smokes afterwards, and take it from there.”

12.48pm

Warne reiterates that his favourite Test win was the recent victory at Adelaide. Before that, you have to rewind to the tour of Sri Lanka in August 1992, the first occasion on which he won a match for Australia with 3 for 11. Thirteen years between highs. No wonder he’s satisfied with his timing.

12.46pm

“I’ve given as much as I could to cricket. I’ve never walked away when I’m tired or knackered. But the job’s not done yet. We want to win 5-0,” says Warne.

12.44pm

Warne reveals he would have retired after the 2005 Ashes, had Australia managed to retain them. “But this is my time, and getting the Ashes back was my mission, and I couldn’t have worked the script any better. When it’s your time you just know.”

12.42pm

“I sit here today with every single trophy in the Cricket Australia cabinet," says Warne. "I retire a very happy man. My life has been unbelievable. I’m going out on top, and in my terms. It’s a day of celebration."

12.40pm

Warne has announced his retirement from international, domestic and St Kilda cricket. But he hasn't mentioned Hampshire just yet. He still has two years to run on that contract ...

12.38pm

Philip Pope, the Cricket Australia media man, is on the stage, doing a bit of pre-presser "housekeeping". The great man is waiting in the wings.

12.37pm

A flash of cameras and a hush descends, but it's only James Sutherland and the Cricket Australia crew. The tension is killing us.

12.35pm

No official word just yet, but the reminiscing has begun already. This morning, on Australia's Today show, Mark Taylor was asked by a random TV presenter how the Aussies would cope with the loss of one of the game's "great sledgers". "Awww... mate, he's not that good," quipped Taylor. "He tends to just start with a four-letter word and then says a load of nonsense."

12.30pm

Channel Nine has already gone live, apparently, but there's nothing to see just yet, save the back of a lot of gossiping heads. As the clock ticks over to zero-hour ...

12.15pm

Expectant chatter turns to an expectant hush, but then reverts to another expectant chatter. What are the bets on the man being fashionably late?

12.00pm

A monstrous media presence now. At least 14 TV cameras, twice as many photographers, and four times that number of journalists. Most of the photographers are camped at the entrance to the big black curtain, from behind which Warne is expected to sweep in the next half-an-hour. About the only people oblivious to the goings-on are the ground staff out in the middle of the amphitheatre. With five days to go until the Boxing Day Test, however, they'll have arguably the biggest part to play in the whole send-off.

11.15am

Enter through Gate 2 and, as instructed by the media advisory, head straight up the escalator to the Members' Dining Room. No-one else around but a few early-bird cameramen, a handful of Cricket Australia officials in jacket and ties, and the ghosts of several dozens of legends of the game, looming down on the scene from their portraits on the walls. It is here that I catch my first glimpse of the great ground. Even when empty it is an extraordinary arena, with tier upon tier towering up to the skies. There could be no better venue for such a showman as Warne to face his final curtain. If, of course, that is what he intends to do.

11.00am

Arrive at "The G", just as a large bronze statue is being offloaded from a trailer on the concourse. The grand, sweeping action (coupled with rumours I heard while at the WACA) lead me to believe it is Dennis Lillee, although the men ripping the off the bubble-wrap insist that, come the morning, it will look somewhat different. "We're going to saw its head off overnight," jokes one of them, "and stick Shane Warne's on instead."

10.45am

Well, something's definitely happening. As I set off on the hour-and-a-half journey from Mount Martha, on the Mornington Peninsula, to Melbourne, an email arrives from Cricket Australia, confirming that Shane Warne will indeed be present at the MCG "to share his thoughts with the media". Well, that's nice and ambiguous. Something rather dramatic must be afoot after all.

	Brett Lee parties with 'Slim Jim and the Fats' © Andrew Miller

Remember 2005? Remember England's Ashes rampage through every bar in the West End? "Freddied!" read the headlines in the morning papers, as Andrew Flintoff presented the acceptable side of binge-drinking during an all-night bender that finished with that open-top bus parade through Trafalgar Square.

Fifteen months on from that epic day's night, and it was Australia's turn for a bit of post-triumph release. It's fair to say that things were just a little bit more restrained. Perth, I suppose, is a good leveller. No matter how exciting an occasion turns out to be, there's only so much capital any victorious team can make out of the most isolated city on earth.

And so, while England's finest had bundled into the most exclusive nightclubs in existence, Australia chose instead to patronise one of the lowliest backpackers' hang-outs in the entire state. On Mondays, Perth rocks to the beat of the Deen on Aberdeen Street. It's Aus$10 for all that you can drink, and on the night that the Ashes were won and lost, that equates to a lot of beer.

Continue reading "Brett Lee's Ashes after-party"

	'It is my choice whether I sing or do not sing the anthem' © Getty Images

Jacques Kallis, very much the cornerstone of South Africa's Test side, is embroiled in a controversy over his refusal to sing the national anthem. A report in South Africa's Sunday Times suggests that Cricket South Africa will ask for an explanation from him after the Johannesburg Test.

The current anthem, first sung in 1996, is a combination of Nkosi Sikelel'iAfrika, which was a symbol of the resistance to Apartheid, and Die Stem (The Call of South Africa), which was adopted as the national anthem by the Apartheid regime in 1957. The issue regarding Kallis was first raised by a Sunday Times reader, Ebrahim Sadak, who wrote in to Cricket South Africa asking whether Kallis thought he was indispensible or "anti new
SA".

Ros Goldin, Cricket South Africa's marketing manager, wrote back to him saying: "While we do encourage all our players to sing the anthem, it is at their discretion whether they wish to do so. Jacques's choice not to sing is certainly not due to his being anti SA or because he thinks he is indispensable! It is simply his right within a democratic environment not to sing."

She went on to cite examples of other sportsman who didn't sing, including some South Africa footballers and rugby players, but Sadak wasn't appeased. Eventually, he got a reply from Kallis himself. "It is my choice whether I sing or do not sing the anthem," it said. "I certainly do not
have to explain my reasons to anyone, especially you. I do have good and valid personal reasons and I intend to keep it that way."

Continue reading "What is in an anthem?"

	'Ali Bacher's love of the game still all too evident. The difference between him and the power-hungry businessmen threatening to take over the game couldn't be starker' © Getty Images

On the eve of the Test, as the evening shadows lengthen, we head to the suburb of Sandton, and a quiet bungalow that's home to a man who was Mr South African cricket for more than a quarter century. Aron Bacher, Ali to nearly everyone, captained one of cricket’s greatest sides, and then earned further renown as one of the best administrators that the game has seen. He eased himself out of the limelight after successfully planning and conducting the 2003 World Cup, and his association to cricket these days is limited to appearances at the Wanderers and SuperSport Park in Centurion.

Bacher walks slowly to the door when we arrive. Two bandages still cover his lower leg, a legacy of a second bypass surgery that he underwent last week, having first gone under the knife way back in 1981. "I've had about six escapes," he tells us with a smile later. "But I feel as good as new now. I walk three times a day, and might even make it to the Wanderers to catch play on Saturday and Sunday."

Bacher is an eloquent speaker, and he has no reluctance to admit to mistakes of the past. The rebel tours, which he helped organise, were a huge mistake in his view, errors of judgement that happened because "we lived in a cocoon during the Apartheid years". "Had I known that Apartheid would end, I would never have tried to organise it. But we felt we needed to keep interest in the game alive."

Continue reading "Mr South African Cricket"

	Angus Fraser rolls back the years at the WACA © Getty Images

I was still thinking about this indignity as I made my way down to the WACA last night to watch England’s “Legends” take on their Australian counterparts in a floodlit Twenty20 match. If something as obvious and natural as walking through a door can, in the wrong circumstances, become such an embarrassment, then what about something that for 20 years had been your livelihood? Bowling a cricket ball for instance.

“I was asked to play, but I said ‘No way’,” said Nasser Hussain, one of the wise few who avoided the bear-trap that had been set for him. As the 6.15pm start time approached, Nasser was still lurking in the corner of the business centre, struggling to get his head around his new iPod. “Once you’ve retired, that’s it,” he added between curses at his computer. “Still, I might pop down just to watch Fraser get spanked out of the park.”

Continue reading "The Ashes in widescreen slo-mo"

Almost 24 hours after they wrapped up the tour game, one of the Indians
was still bowling in the middle at Sedgars Park. Anil Kumble played no
part in the 96-run win over Rest of South Africa, and he bounded in for
half an hour, with Dinesh Karthik keeping wicket. After that, Karthik
batted for a few minutes as Kumble went through the repertoire in
preparation for the first Test.

Continue reading "Net gains for Kumble"

	Jacques Rudolph fends off a rare lifter at the less whacky WACA © Getty Images

Forgive me while I make a bid for Private Eye's Pseud's Corner, but as a wannabee writer, I've always been a sucker for a bit of onomatopoeia. You know the construction I’m talking about - a word or phrase that imitates the sound it is representing: "The moan of doves in immemorial elms and the murmurings of innumerable bees,” as Alfred Lord Tennyson might have put it.

But let’s cut the classical crap. We’re in Australia now, and so there’s no need for such highfalutin examples. Especially not when we are talking about the most satisfyingly named sporting venue in the world. I refer, of course, to the WACA ground in Perth.

"The Whacker".

Continue reading "Whacking off"

	The crowd turned on the after-dinner entertainer in a rather unexpected fashion © Andrew Miller

Lilac Hill lies a half-hour’s drive from the centre of Perth, amid the fringes of the region’s wine industry. The ground is nestled on a tree-lined kink of the Swan River, and is the sort of place that evokes images of bucolic tranquillity. For English tourists, however, such appearances are invariably deceptive. In this fixture, there is always trouble in paradise.

“There’s no such thing as a festival game,” said Alec Stewart after England‘s latest mugging of the tour - a seven-wicket thrashing at the hands of a dervish-bladed Luke Ronchi. Stewart, England’s captain and top-scorer for the day, was still fresh as a daisy despite having played virtually no cricket since his retirement three years ago. That was more than could be said for the rest of his bedraggled team, who had various layers of ring-rustiness scoured off them in the course of the match.

To a backdrop of drunken baying hospitality tents, England’s Generation Next suffered varying degrees of discomfort - Chris Read picked up a fifth-ball duck, Jon Lewis vanished for 51 in seven overs, Liam Plunkett left the field with a dislocated finger and Monty Panesar’s bowling figures suffered a wind-assisted demolition at the hands of Ronchi, who rode a tempting cross-breeze to slap six after six after six. Given Steve Harmison’s infamous eight-wide over in this fixture four years ago, these indignities were more or less par for the course.

Continue reading "Roll-flingers and pie-chuckers"

	Cri-Zelda Brits - 'If people aren't aware that we're playing, they won't come and watch us' © Cricinfo Ltd

As the 22-year-old Morne Morkel summoned up a performance that was sure to catch the eye of the national selectors, an established international sat and watched from the space behind the sightscreen. Though Cri-Zelda Brits is only a year older than Morkel, she has already played 22 ODIs and three Tests for her country, opening both the batting and the bowling during the women's World Cup that was held in South Africa in March-April 2005.

Unfortunately, such is the nature of women's cricket that neither she nor her team-mates have played an international since a three-match one-day series against West Indies soon after their World Cup engagements were over.

Continue reading "Maximum passion, minimum rewards"

	The party's over before anyone was really aware it had begun © Getty Images

I’d imagined this moment ever since I first starting watching Ashes routs. What would it be like, I wondered, to be Pom Down Under, on the day after England had slumped to one of their most wretched defeats in history? The answer surprised me, because the result had surprised everyone. Australia, it seemed, was too shocked even to gloat.

Continue reading "Too shocked to gloat"

	'Though both Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar are on the mend, everyone gathered at the outdoor nets was waiting for just one man' © Getty Images

Seldom can one man have so dominated a training session. Sourav Ganguly arrived 90 minutes after everyone else, having driven straight from Oliver Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, barely pausing to drop off his bags at the Willows Hotel. And though both Rahul Dravid, the captain, and Sachin Tendulkar are on the mend, everyone gathered at the outdoor nets was waiting for just one man.

He made his entrance quietly, shook some hands, exchanged pleasantries, padded up, and then went across to do some stretches under Greg King's supervision. And just before he made the acquaintance of the bowling machine, Anil Kumble had a quiet word and a smile for him.

Ian Frazer led him in, and the first ball sent down from a height sneaked through bat and pad. Reassuringly for those watching, the next few all thudded into the meat of the bat. Ganguly, who averages 32.44 from his five Tests in South Africa, was getting into line and playing mostly from the back foot. At one point, as a ball sped off in the direction of cover, Frazer yelled, "I like it."

By then, Greg Chappell had asked Sreesanth and VRV Singh to be prepared. "Full-match intensity, boys," he said, and soon after Ganguly moved to the adjacent net for his first taste of real pace. The first ball was a bouncer that he ducked, and there was a "well bowled" for the bowler. Sreesanth and VRV were up next, along with a brawny local pace bowler
whose pace wasn't quite in sync with his immense physique.

Sreesanth, who professes to always having been a fan, tested Ganguly with a couple of deliveries that moved off the seam to fly off the bat airily in the direction of point, but a superb fast yorker that VRV bowled was expertly dug out. Then, as the local kept trying to bounce him, Chappell took him to one side and said: "You should follow it up with one that tempts him to drive instead of keeping on bouncing him."

Soon after, with Sreesanth discussing wrist positions with the local boy, Ganguly moved to the next net for the far less arduous task of facing some spin. For a man who had landed on South African soil just five hours earlier, the first glimpses were more than encouraging.

	'The manner of Graeme Smith's dismissal - shuffling across to be struck in line - had all the inevitability of a sunset in the west' © Getty Images

At one in the afternoon, it was doubtful whether the Pro20 game would take place at all, with a leaden sky and distant rumblings of thunder. But by the time we arrived at the ground, an hour before the scheduled start, most of the dark clouds had vanished, and a carnival atmosphere was slowly being built up. Cheerleaders dressed in blue set the tone, and a Bollywood-style dance routine and the national anthems roused a less-than-capacity crowd to fever pitch as the teams walked out to commence the game.

There were ironical cheers when Graeme Smith middled the first ball from Zaheer Khan. His travails have been well documented, and though he managed 16 today, the manner of his dismissal - shuffling across to be struck in line - had all the inevitability of a sunset in the west. Zaheer was in sensational form, conceding just 15, and by the time he completed his spell, India were right on top. Justin Kemp and Albie Morkel briefly had the home fans up on their feet, but all the Indian bowlers contributed significantly in restricting the final total to 126.

Morkel's six off Harbhajan Singh soared high over the scoreboard and into some distant street, and Virender Sehwag, captaining the side a day after he lost the Test-match vice-captaincy, appeared determined to match his efforts with a violent slashed six over point. During the mid-match break, the mystery behind the Pro20 moniker had also been solved, with Kate
Johns, a Public Relations Manager for Standard Bank, explaining why it wasn't called Twenty20 as it is in other parts of the world.

"Three years ago, when we started playing the format, there was another bank called Twenty20 in existence. So, to name it that wasn't possible,"she said. "Since then, we've worked very hard to build up the Pro20 brand.There might be a few issues when the World Cup is hosted next year though, since the ICC call it Twenty20."

Continue reading "An electric atmosphere as thunderstorm plays truant"