Brian Micklethwait's Blog
In which I continue to seek part time employment as the ruler of the world.
Homewww.google.co.uk
Recent Comments
-
Brian Micklethwait on Jamie Hannah's new video
-
6000 on Jamie Hannah's new video
-
Michael Jennings on Four Channel Islands and a fifth Channel Island
-
Brian Micklethwait on Tulip approved
-
Michael Jennings on Tulip approved
-
Brian Micklethwait on A new (remote) control tower for City Airport
-
Michael Jennings on A new (remote) control tower for City Airport
-
jack whiteley on Food photo
-
Cynthia Coleman on Spring in the air
-
Brian Micklethwait on New Big Thin Things in New York
Monthly Archives
-
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
Most recent entries
- Brian Micklethwait’s New Blog starts now
- Now you see it now you don’t – then you do again
- Quimper Cathedral photos from a year ago
- Another symptom of getting old
- Quota photo of a signpost
- Three professional Japanese footballers play against one hundred children
- Sculptures and scaffolding
- There is no day that can’t be improved by seeing pictures of how they weigh an owl
- Meeting Oscar again
- A musical metaphor is developed
- Mobile phone photoing in 2004
- France is big
- Pink windscreen
- Just kidding
- Capitalism and socialism in tweets
Other Blogs I write for
Brian Micklethwait's Education Blog
CNE Competition
CNE Intellectual Property
Samizdata
Transport Blog
Blogroll
2 Blowhards
6000 Miles from Civilisation
A Decent Muesli
Adloyada
Adventures in Capitalism
Alan Little
Albion's Seedling
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
Alex Singleton
AngloAustria
Another Food Blog
Antoine Clarke
Antoine Clarke's Election Watch
Armed and Dangerous
Art Of The State Blog
Biased BBC
Bishop Hill
BLDG BLOG
Bloggers Blog
Blognor Regis
Blowing Smoke
Boatang & Demetriou
Boing Boing
Boris Johnson
Brazen Careerist
Bryan Appleyard
Burning Our Money
Cafe Hayek
Cato@Liberty
Charlie's Diary
Chase me ladies, I'm in the cavalry
Chicago Boyz
China Law Blog
Cicero's Songs
City Comforts
Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog
Clay Shirky
Climate Resistance
Climate Skeptic
Coffee & Complexity
Coffee House
Communities Dominate Brands
Confused of Calcutta
Conservative Party Reptile
Contra Niche
Contrary Brin
Counting Cats in Zanzibar
Скрипучая беседка
CrozierVision
Dave Barry
Davids Medienkritik
David Thompson
Deleted by tomorrow
deputydog
diamond geezer
Dilbert.Blog
Dizzy Thinks
Dodgeblogium
Don't Hold Your Breath
Douglas Carswell Blog
dropsafe
Dr Robert Lefever
Dr. Weevil
ecomyths
engadget
Englands Freedome, Souldiers Rights
English Cut
English Russia
EU Referendum
Ezra Levant
Everything I Say is Right
Fat Man on a Keyboard
Ferraris for all
Flickr blog
Freeborn John
Freedom and Whisky
From The Barrel of a Gun
ft.com/maverecon
Fugitive Ink
Future Perfect
FuturePundit
Gaping Void
Garnerblog
Gates of Vienna
Gizmodo
Global Warming Politics
Greg Mankiw's Blog
Guido Fawkes' blog
HE&OS
Here Comes Everybody
Hit & Run
House of Dumb
Iain Dale's Diary
Ideas
Idiot Toys
IMAO
Indexed
India Uncut
Instapundit
Intermezzo
Jackie Danicki
James Delingpole
James Fallows
Jeffrey Archer's Official Blog
Jessica Duchen's classical music blog
Jihad Watch
Joanne Jacobs
Johan Norberg
John Redwood
Jonathan's Photoblog
Kristine Lowe
Laissez Faire Books
Languagehat
Last of the Few
Lessig Blog
Libertarian Alliance: Blog
Liberty Alone
Liberty Dad - a World Without Dictators
Lib on the United Kingdom
Little Man, What Now?
listen missy
Loic Le Meur Blog
L'Ombre de l'Olivier
London Daily Photo
Londonist
Mad Housewife
Mangan's Miscellany
Marginal Revolution
Mark Wadsworth
Media Influencer
Melanie Phillips
Metamagician and the Hellfire Club
Michael Jennings
Michael J. Totten's Middle East Journal
Mick Hartley
More Than Mind Games
mr eugenides
Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism
My Boyfriend Is A Twat
My Other Stuff
Natalie Solent
Nation of Shopkeepers
Neatorama
neo-neocon
Never Trust a Hippy
NO2ID NewsBlog
Non Diet Weight Loss
Normblog
Nurses for Reform blog
Obnoxio The Clown
Oddity Central
Oliver Kamm
On an Overgrown Path
One Man & His Blog
Owlthoughts of a peripatetic pedant
Oxford Libertarian Society /blog
Patri's Peripatetic Peregrinations
phosita
Picking Losers
Pigeon Blog
Police Inspector Blog
PooterGeek
Power Line
Private Sector Development blog
Public Interest.co.uk
Publius Pundit
Quotulatiousness
Rachel Lucas
RealClimate
Remember I'm the Bloody Architect
Rob's Blog
Sandow
Scrappleface
Setting The World To Rights
Shane Greer
Shanghaiist
SimonHewittJones.com The Violin Blog
Sinclair's Musings
Slipped Disc
Sky Watching My World
Social Affairs Unit
Squander Two Blog
Stephen Fry
Stuff White People Like
Stumbling and Mumbling
Style Bubble
Sunset Gun
Survival Arts
Susan Hill
Teblog
Techdirt
Technology Liberation Front
The Adam Smith Institute Blog
The Agitator
The AntRant
The Becker-Posner Blog
The Belgravia Dispatch
The Belmont Club
The Big Blog Company
The Big Picture
the blog of dave cole
The Corridor of Uncertainty (a Cricket blog)
The Croydonian
The Daily Ablution
The Devil's Advocate
The Devil's Kitchen
The Dissident Frogman
The Distributed Republic
The Early Days of a Better Nation
The Examined Life
The Filter^
The Fly Bottle
The Freeway to Serfdom
The Future of Music
The Futurist
The Happiness Project
The Jarndyce Blog
The London Fog
The Long Tail
The Lumber Room
The Online Photographer
The Only Winning Move
The Policeman's Blog
The Road to Surfdom
The Sharpener
The Speculist
The Surfer
The Wedding Photography Blog
The Welfare State We're In
things magazine
TigerHawk
Tim Blair
Tim Harford
Tim Worstall
tomgpalmer.com
tompeters!
Transterrestrial Musings
UK Commentators - Laban Tall's Blog
UK Libertarian Party
Unqualified Offerings
Violins and Starships
Virginia Postrel
Vodkapundit
WebUrbanist
we make money not art
What Do I Know?
What's Up With That?
Where the grass is greener
White Sun of the Desert
Why Evolution Is True
Your Freedom and Ours
Websites
-
Answers.com
Arts & Letters Daily
archive.org
Arts Journal
b3ta
Bjørn Stærk's homepage
Brussels Journal
Butterflies and Wheels
Cato Institute
City Journal
Civitas
Clivejames.com
Comment Central
Commentary
Cricinfo
Daniel Barenboim
Dark Roasted Blend
Democratiya
Digital Photography Review
ECB
FaithFreedom.org
Flickr
Frikoo
FrontPageMag.com
galinsky
Ghana Centre for Democratic Reform
Global Warming and the Climate
History According to Bob
Howstat
Imani
InstaPatrick
Institut économique Molinari
Institute of Economic Affairs
Lebrecht Weekly
Libertarian Alliance
LiveScience
Ludwig von Mises Institute
Mark Steyn
Oxford Libertarian Society
Pajamas Media
Paul Graham
Sean Gabb
Signal100
Soundstage Communications
Stockholm Network
Syed Kamall
Technology Review
TED
The Christopher Hitchens Web
The Inquirer
The Register
The Space Review
The TaxPayers' Alliance
This is Local London
Toccata Classics
UK Libertarian Party
Victor Davis Hanson
WSJ.com Opinion Journal
YaleGlobal Online
YouTube
Mainstream Media
BBC
Guardian
Economist
Independent
MSNBC
Telegraph
The Sun
This is London
Times
Syndicate
RSS 1.0
RSS 2.0
Atom
Feedburner
Podcasts
Categories
Advertising
Africa
Anglosphere
Architecture
Art
Asia
Atheism
Australasia
Billion Monkeys
Bits from books
Bloggers and blogging
Books
Brian Micklethwait podcasts
Brians
Bridges
Business
Career counselling
Cartoons
Cats and kittens
China
Civil liberties
Classical music
Comedy
Comments
Computer graphics
Cranes
Crime
Current events
Democracy
Design
Digital photographers
Drones
Economics
Education
Emmanuel Todd
Environment
Europe
Expression Engine
Family
Food and drink
France
Friends
Getting old
Globalisation
Healthcare
History
How the mind works
India
Intellectual property
Japan
Kevin Dowd
Language
Latin America
Law
Libertarianism
Links
Literature
London
Media and journalism
Middle East and Islam
Movies
Music
My blog ruins
My photographs
Open Source
Opera
Other creatures
Painting
Photography
Podcasting
Poetry
Politics
Pop music
Propaganda
Quote unquote
Radio
Religion
Roof clutter
Russia
Scaffolding
Science
Science fiction
Sculpture
Signs and notices
Social Media
Society
Software
South America
Space
Sport
Technology
Television
The internet
The Micklethwait Clock
Theatre
This and that
This blog
Transport
Travel
USA
Video
War
I’m now watching the TV highlights of the final day at Sydney, and now I’m celebrating. Like the England team itself, I am now happily counting the chickens of this series, because they have now all hatched. Three innings victories, to set against the one weirdly big defeat inflicted by the otherwise ineffective Mitchell Johnson at Perth. Wow. Was there ever such a tonking in a series the win-lose-draw result of which was still in doubt as the last game began? The Guardian reports, in this, that a Sydney Daily Telegraph blogger has opined thus:
A 3-1 result flatters Australia.
Ouch.
The series win count for the last four Ashes series now stands at England 3 Australia 1. But because of that 2006 Australia 5 England 0 bollocking, and because an outclassed Australia did still sneak one win this time around, the test match win count for the last four series is: Australia 8 England 7. How about that?
Anyway, a few more random thoughts and a little more linkage. I don’t normally have asterisk type gaps between this bit of a blog posting and the next one, but this time, I think it may help. If you get bored, don’t give up on on the whole thing. Just skip down to the next asterisk.
*
A reason that so many of us find it hard to think of Jimmy Anderson as the great bowler he surely is may be that, when he takes a big top order wicket that really matters, he celebrates by running about and skipping and high-fiving with both hands, and jumping up and down like an excited girl on her birthday. Yes, he’s doing it again, on the telly, as he takes the ninth Aussie wicket.
While doing his regular bowling, and when reacting to bowling disappointment, Anderson has learned to get his “body language” right, i.e. suitably statuesque and impervious and manly and undefeated:
“Body language is a huge thing,” he is reported as saying. “I try to keep my shoulders back now and to be positive. In the past I’ve been pretty average at that.”
The point being that he has had to make himself do this. It does not come naturally to him. And as I say, when he takes an important wicket his default body language (happy version) still asserts itself. When he gets a big success, there is no still, calm posing, like Flintoff did, and none at all of the even better unposed pose, so to speak, where the triumphant bowler is an expressionless tower of calm in a crazy sea of team-mate congratulation. Anderson is the opposite of that. Most of the stills of him celebrating don’t show this, because they usually freeze him into a pose of some sort. You have to watch him on the telly to see what a girlie man he still is, when very happy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If he carries on bowling for England like he has in this series, he can do it in a bikini for all I care. There was a great self-send-up by Anderson in one of the Swann videos, where he celebrated his feminine side by appearing with his hair wrapped in a towel, girlie style. Yet “Anderson” is now going to be on lists also containing words like “Larwood”, “Tyson”, “Snow” and “Botham”?
Anderson took twenty four wickets in the series, without once taking five in one innings. Has that ever happened before? Those numbers speak both to Anderson’s relentless leadership of the England bowlers, and the fact that he was always followed by the other bowlers also taking wickets, every time. In a team with less good other bowlers, Anderson might have taken even more wickets. But, England would not have won the series.
*
As for the other dominant England player in this series, did you know that although Alastair Cook may look like a movie star, he talks like Noel Fielding? Do people realise how hilarious this will be when Cook is the captain? Plus: is that an original observation? You can’t google to see if anyone else has said this because it’s Noel Fielding. There’s a lot of fielding in cricket reports so you get a million irrelevant hits.
Cook quote (from an admiring piece about England coach Andy Flower):
We’ve had an amazing two months since we got here but we’ve already said we want to improve, that’s one of our team ethoses,” said Alastair Cook, whose own partnership with Flower grew in stature during his spell as captain in Bangladesh, and whose tally of 766 runs was the outstanding performance of the Ashes.
Shouldn’t that be “ethoi”?
*
In other England batting news, Ian Bell has finally learned how to be a tough bastard by doing cage fighting.
*
Good teams – in fact good enterprises, groups, firms, outfits, operations of any kind – get lots of luck, or they seem to. This is because when they get a bit of luck, they make maximum use of it.
Trott, supposedly a clogger in the field, runs out Katich for a duck in the first over at Melbourne Adelaide, and soon after that Australia are three down for two wickets. The Perth blip is immediately reduced to a blip. England are on their way to their first win.
At Sydney, Cook gets caught off a no ball when in the forties, and goes on to make 189. Bell challenges a caught behind, gets away with it, and goes on to make another hundred. Prior, who also made a hundred in that last huge Sydney innings, when asked what had changed for him as a batsmen as the series went on, said that he just got luckier. If an Aussie had been caught off of a no ball in this series when in the forties, he would soon have got out for about fifty, and we would all have forgotten. In fact, the Aussies did have lots of luck, as all sides do in cricket games, in the form of close play-and-misses, nearly catches, balls shading the stumps, nearly run-outs, nearly lbws, etc., but because they did not exploit these bits of luck, we don’t now remember them. There was general commentator agreement that, on the first morning at Sydney when England got just the one wicket off the final ball of the session, England could in another version of the same morning have got nearer to five wickets, so well did they bowl but so lucky were the Australian batters. But that is now quickly being forgotten, because soon after that Australia were their usual 140 for 5 or whatever.
*
The English celebrations immediately following the Sydney win, consisting of journos and commentators talking to England players, featured a perfect storm of sporting cliches, “perfect storm” being one of the cliches, or so I seem to recall. Strauss in particular spoke almost entirely in verbal plasticene, and the others mostly copied him. “The guys deserve all the credit in the world, and not just the players but also the backroom staff”. “Pressure”. “Bowled in the right areas.” “We stuck to our plans.” Thank God for Swann. “So, Swann, what did Strauss bring to this team?” Swann: “Nothing. Nothing at all.” Looks at other England player standing next to Swann, who goes along with this joke: “No, nothing whatsoever.” Both together: “Nothing.” Strauss joins in: “Well I was going to congratulate the other players, but I don’t think I will now.” Ho, ho. Under Swann’s influence, even Strauss was saying unprepared, vaguely funny things. But it couldn’t last. “But seriously, the guys deserve all the credit in the world and not just the players but also the backroom staff, the bowlers bowled in the right areas, we stuck to our plans, pressure pressure pressure, blah blah blah, cliché cliché cliché.” All true of course.
Wonderful.
*
Provided you weren’t trying to listen to it on Radio 4:
It was unfortunate – some might say extraordinary – coincidence that it was the third time in the series that Radio 4 had cut to the shipping forecast at the moment of an England victory, missing the climax to all three of the team’s Test wins.
*
But what if you’re an Australian? Not fun. Favourite incoming email to Cricinfo during the Sydney game:
Sam Warburton, thanks for the best feedback of the day so far: “I reckon my phone must be Australian. When I try to text ‘Ashes’, predictive text suggests ‘cries’.”
Indeed.
*
To get a bit more serious about the Australian cricketing pickle, I earlier said that Michael Clarke had a chance in this final game to strengthen his claim to be the next Australian captain for real, rather than just as a stand-in for Ponting. Strangely, I rather think he has done that, despite the immensity of the defeat his team suffered. His second innings 41 may not seem like much, but until Smith went into futile gesture mode right at the end of the game, it was the top Australian second innings score, and was made under immense England pressure. More to the point, Clarke looked the part when talking to the journos, or he did to me. At least, with his talk about learning from England, he seemed to communicate an understanding of the scale of the defeat, while nevertheless managing not to subject Australia to a public psychological disintegration of the Kim Hughes 1981 variety. I now rate Clarke as a possible regular captain more highly than I did before this final match, although that isn’t saying much.
I see that another Guardian guy, Kevin Mitchell, agrees:
Clarke has impressed immensely in his brief tenure. He has been derided in the media, booed in the stands and utterly destroyed in the scorebook. Yet he has kept his explanations short and considered, neither railing at provocative questions nor dodging the really tough ones.
As for all the rumours flying around that some of the Australian players don’t rate Clarke very highly, well, they are in no position to expect their opinions about how well or badly they either have been lead (by Ponting) or will be lead (by Clarke) to have any great influence on anyone, given how they performed in this series, and given that about a third to a half of them may well be out of test cricket in a couple of years.
*
But here is some serious consolation for Aussies. I met up with Tom Burroughes last night, and he told me that somebody or other has now proved that countries doing better economically always do worse at sport. Not enough desperation to do well because if you don’t do well you rot in the slums, presumably. Too much else to do that is profitable and/or fun. The Aussie economy is motoring just now, compared to most other places. England’s, on the other hand, …
*
Since it’s Friday, here is this, which is a reminder of better Aussie times. (Warning: best to keep the sound down. The woman making the video occasionally shouts.) It’s Boxing Day at the Melbourne test in 2006. So very different from the 2010 Melbourne Boxing Day nightmare, which was the defining day of this latest series. At the time I speculated that while England were then very much on top, Australia might yet get up off the floor and land a few more big punches of their own. Because, you know, cricket is a Funny Old Game blah blah, and they just might. They never did.
>The Guardian reports, in this,
>that a Sydney Daily Telegraph
>blogger has opined thus:
A small amount of pedantry: that should be the Sydney Daily Telegraph like it should be the London Times. Australian newspapers tend to follow the London tradition of the city not being part of the name of the paper. The one big exception is the Sydney Morning Herald, perhaps because there used to be a Melbourne Herald as well. (On the other hand, the Sydney paper was founded first and has always had “Sydney” in its name).
I don’t buy the theory that a 3-1 result flatters Australia, in truth. I think the result is about right. England were completely dominant for the three matches that they won and the last two days in Brisbane, but were completely dominated by the Australians for the remainder of the series. There was virtually no close cricket in the series. England were mostly smashing Australia, but when they weren’t, Australia were smashing England. It was quite odd.
The moment in the series that intrigues me is Strauss being not out to a very close LBW decision off the first ball of the England second innings. Would England have gone on to lose that match, and what would then have happened in the series? My hunch is that England would still have won the series even if they had lost that match, but we might be talking now about the series having been close if that had happened.
Anyway, England host India at home in the summer. This is by all rights a bigger event than the Ashes just past, and England will have genuine reasons to crow loudly if they win it. I hope the series is treated as the big deal that it is.
I think Australia’s great failure was in the batting. Ponting and Clarke in the middle order were hopeless. Hussey was great lower down, and Haddin was good, but by the time they came in Australia was on the back foot. I think Hussey should have been moved to three in the order early in the series, but it didn’t happen.
Going into the series, Australia had a very effective opening partnership in Watson and Katich. Katich would hang in there, and Watson would score quick runs. Unfortunately Katich got injured, and Hughes didn’t work. Watson still batted okay, but without the right kind of support. In the last couple of days I have read a couple of comments from English commentators saying things like “Watson is not an opener and should be batting at six”, when the problem really was all Hughes. (There is also the problem that Watson doesn’t like batting at six and this showed in his batting when he previously batted there, but the English commentators weren’t watching when that happened).
I support a complete clean house. New selectors, new captain, and a largely new team. I wouldn’t have Clarke in the team, let alone as captain. He’s just Ponting all over again.
The sporting cliche’s are actually magic. When the lads are heading out to hunt antelope, they all know how hard it’s going to be; antelope are fast, they twist and turn like mad, and even if the warriors catch one they have to fend off the hyenas and lions etc. To insure the success of the hunt, the chief must take them to the witch doctor who blesses the enterprise with these mumbled incantations.
“Bowl as a unit! Keep the pressure on their batsmen! Execute your plans! Bowl in the right areas! Field as a team!”
The rest of the incantations are best not repeated, which is why the hunters come out with the abridged version when interviewed by Athers.
Oh, on the subject of ethoses/ethoi, I’m inclined to go with Cookie’s version since he is an Ethics man.
Even when getting totally shit-faced, the England team were still executing their plans:
The squad even performed an impromptu “sprinkler” dance made famous by spin bowler Swann – but he turned down a request for a live TV interview because he had downed too much champagne.
Cameramen were told not to film any close-ups of the tipsy players when they returned to the pitch after several hours of partying.
Plus they got drunk in the right areas, and got plastered as a unit.
I have now added “Food and drink” to the category list for this posting.
Further on that point about the sometimes inverse relationship between one guy getting a great set of bowling figures in one innings, and his team doing well, it is a strange fact about this series that the four best sets of innings bowling figures are all Australian, each one a six-for.
Here are the numbers.
The next eight in the list are all English, headed by Finn, who got England’s only six-for, six-for a lot, in England’s most costly bowling performance. Basically, the other England bowlers then didn’t cut it, and neither did Finn, really. Too many of Finn’s wickets came too late. Most of those next eight performances are four-fors, including three four-fors by ... Anderson.
It must be admitted, though, that the top two sets of figures were in each England innings at Perth, both helping Australia to win handsomely.
Even so, these numbers reinforce the much made point that England did indeed bowl well as a unit (cliche alert), pretty much throughout the series.