A tale of ruin and redemption
Spring is almost sprung and old Curmudgeon’s fancy has turned to sport. Not the playing of it, as was his wont in his young, middle-age and early senility period, but watching it on television, the only feasible option for a 20-pills-a-day mid-octogenarian.
I’d like to report that Australian sport, in general, is in a state of grace. Unfortunately, I can’t do so, although it is not in such disgrace as it sometimes has been. Nick Kyrgios, the quite-good tennis player, seems determined to make his name as a recalcitrant, a spoilt brat, a spoilsport, instead of developing into the grand slam contender he could be.
He has used up our good will, thumbed his nose at our tolerance, thrown the forgiveness of fans back in their faces. He is not just another John McEnroe playing to the gallery; he is a nasty tempered, 24-year-old tantrum-throwing baby, the Donald Trump of tennis.
His latest antic in the Canadian Open, when he took two new tennis racquets into a corridor for the express purpose of smashing them noisily, publicly, is beyond childish. It moved a tennis-playing friend to ask: “Has he been potty trained yet?”
But while Kyrgios fumed, one of sport’s great redemption stories was in play at Lord’s cricket ground in London. It was written, produced and directed by Test batsman Steve Smith, who also played the leading role. The Steve Smith story is full of twists and turns with a surprising new development every season.
Cricket followers tend to forget he first made the Australian test team as a leg spin bowler who could bat a bit. The purists watching him weren’t impressed. “Just as well he can bowl,” one of them told Curmudgeon a few seasons back, “because he’s a shambles with the bat.”
Smith did everything wrong. He moved his body across in front of the off stump as the ball was bowled to him. A sucker for leg-before wicket, the experts warned.
He was an unconscious comedian; he patted specific parts of his body with his hand before he faced up, every ball. Always in the same order, always in the same places. He went through specific jerky movements to withdraw his bat from a possible edge when he pulled out of a drive and another purely Smithsonian movement to abandon his hook shot. He walked in his own peculiar stilted fashion, away from the wicket between balls, always in the same direction.
He was Clockwork Man, a puppet programmed to deliver his own very distinctive reaction to any given circumstance. Curmudgeon recalls asking himself two or three years back, is this man an obsessive-compulsive? If so, his clockwork made the team tick. Smith began to make big scores. He bowled his leggies less often when it became apparent that he was the heart of the batting line-up.
Schoolboy cricketers began to copy his idiosyncrasies, the patting, the jerkiness. They copied his stance at the crease, his first movement to the off. He was a moral to take over as Test captain when Michael Clark retired. Steve Smith was a hero.
Curtains went up on Act Two of this tragi-comic drama 18 months ago when Smith, along with openers David Warner and Cameron Bancroft, was caught out in a sublimely stupid, idiotic and inept attempt to cheat in a Test match in South Africa by rubbing the ball with sandpaper to try to make it more conducive to swing
+ a couple of paces from the opposing batsman
+ a short distance from the umpires
+ in front of a big crowd of cricket enthusiasts, and
+ with the forensic eye of the broadcaster’s cameras trained on the offending sandpaper so that anyone, anyone in the world interested in the game, could tap into Krazy Kricketing Kapers whenever they wanted to.
Smith cried on television as he confessed that he knew in advance of the Sandpaper Strategy; it wasn’t his idea, but he was captain and should have stopped it. The three culprits were each given a year out of representative cricket. Their mortification was global and public. Many a man crushed under such a weight would have given the game away. All three played on and were eventually selected for the Ashes First Test at Edgbaston.
Before his suspension Steve Smith was rated the best batsman in world cricket, statistically the greatest since Don Bradman. In his comeback Test at Edgbaston, with centuries in both innings, he made clear that he intends to maintain that ranking, to redeem himself. There may be more fluent, graceful batsmen — India’s Virat Kohli comes to mind — but for runs on the scoreboard Smith, with all his odd characteristics, remains the master. (The same criticism was levelled at Bradman when he was king of cricket.)
Smith’s road to redemption was surely sealed when he was felled by England’s new express bowler Jofra Archer with a screamer of a ball into the batsman’s neck. Smith wanted to bat on and did come back for a furious assault on England’s bowling, which ended eight runs short of giving him three centuries in a row.
Curmudgeon was left with four thoughts by the end of the Lord’s Test:
- Steve Smith has earned his redemption. He has played heroically in the first two Tests, perhaps in his best form ever; he’s learned a very hard lesson, not only about cricket, also about life. It’s all right, kids, you can start doing the Steve Smith Twitch again when you’re batting.
- Test cricket is far from finished as a spectacle.
- Wherever you go in the world you’re sure to find idiots … such as the morons who booed Steve when he gamely came back to resume his innings, sore neck, throbbing head and all. Curmudgeon is convinced the ratio of idiots to reasonable people has climbed steeply since tweeting etc became common practice.
- Anyone who faces bowling as fast as Jofra Archer’s deserves a medal. He was clocked at a smidgeon over 155km/h, still short of the fastest: Shoaib Akhtar of Pakistan set the speed standard with a 161.3km/h delivery during a match in England in 2003. Australian bowlers Mitchell Johnson, Mitchell Starc, Jeff Thompson, Brett Lee and Shaun Tait all get a mention in an unofficial Top Ten speedsters list, but that list excludes England’s Frank “Typhoon” Tyson, who pulverised Australia in the 1954–55 tour. Richie Benaud, Australia’s captain, rated Tyson the fastest ever. Richie’s view might have been coloured by the fact that he had to face Tyson repeatedly that summer. Curmudgeon, who watched the Typhoon blow away our team on Sydney Cricket Ground one afternoon, can’t imagine anyone bowling faster.
Speaking of speed, some gratuitous advice for young blowhard Nick Kyrgios: You only get one shot at harnessing your innate talent. Use it or lose it, mate.
His Royal Highness is appalled
“The Duke of York has been appalled by the recent reports of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged crimes. His Royal Highness deplores the exploitation of any human being and the suggestion he would condone, participate in or encourage any such behaviour is abhorrent.”
That’s what Buckingham Palace says about the mounting evidence that Prince Andrew was hanging about with Epstein long after the pedophile had been charged with running a sex trade using and abusing underage girls, some as young as 12; that he had visited Epstein’s home in Florida and had played host to the scumbag at the Queen’s Sandringham and Buckingham palaces.
Let it go on the record that the Curmudgeon is appalled by the appalling weakness of the royal response. The prince has been caught cold, with pictures. It’s true that photos and video can be doctored. But if that were the case in this case, the authorities would be swarming all over the British newspapers that published them.
It’s time for the royals and their minders to take stock. We’re not talking about a traffic violation or some other misdemeanour here, we’re talking about the depths of depravity in human behaviour. We’re talking about exploitation of children. If Prince Andrew has an explanation, he needs to give it.
On a broader front, the Palace needs to rethink its dealings with the public. Look at the calendar. It’s 2019, not 1215 when the Magna Carta was signed, or 1689 when England imported a monarch to end its sectarian wars. We should be way past the point in which “the Palace” issues a press release and that’s the end of the matter.
With Brexit, the UK is taking a step back in time. Curmudgeon, who believes it is a disastrous step, is apprehensive about the likely consequences — isolation, financial and defence disasters, renewal of ancient enmities and so on. The United Kingdom is clearly not united.
Whether it remains a monarchy will be tested in coming years. Its survival may rest on its dealings with ordinary people which at present seem appallingly complacent.
