Monkey magic

Well, an unbeaten 162 in the first dig, then knocking in another sixty-odd and taking 3 for 51 on a bum ankle is more than decent.

Yes after all that unseemly smut from the Munter we're back onto cricket (it's the Liver Cleansing Diet for the soul) and still wading through the unanswered questions in the aftermath of the fairly remarkable SCG Test. Having just watched the Day 5 highlights again, some questions seem to be finding answers, such as why Punter just kept sending batsmen over the top to oblivion for no apparent reason in a demented bid to push their score above 400 - it was either an attempt (eventually aborted) to get Hussey an unbeaten 150, or they knew Sachin was into numerology and figured a target score of 333 would really fuck with his head (333 being halfway to hell, as it were.) Worked.

However many imponderables remain, some of which include:
- Why on Earth did Pup Clarke stand his ground after being caught at slip having hit the cover off it?
- Did he know he was starting a trend?
- Was Brad Hogg serious or was he taking the piss?
- Was Steve Bucknor serious or was he taking the piss?
- Who was it that decided Mitchell Johnson was any good?
- Do you think they could un-decide it again fairly swiftly as he's actually rather pants?
- Is India (team and nation) now the worst losers in international sport, at least until the Portuguese footballers drop out of Euro2008 and Cristi Ronaldo cracks the shits again?
- Given the attention of their rabid media, are India's cricketers now the England footballers of world cricket? Although maybe without so much of the sinking of piss, the spit-roasting of Page 3 slappers and the pedalling of ghostwritten World Cup 2006 diaries (memorably summarised by Newcastle's Joey Barton as 'I played shit, here's my book')
- But most of all, what the Jesus suffering fuck was it that we did that was 'contrary to the spirit of the game', given that four Indian batsmen dissented from leaving the field on being given out by the umpires, one of their players continued a sustained programme of racial abuse against the only coloured member of the Australian team, and Indian team management and officials have subsequently conducted a systematic campaign of disinformation and slander against the umpires in order to have the appointed match officials replaced with ones more of their choosing, to the point of threatening to cancel the tour, quite literally taking their bat and ball and going home?

You can tell it's me and not the Munter from the big words, hey.

Of course most of those questions I can't answer because, basically, I haven't been paying attention. I haven't been watching the cricket that much, because I've been too busy... watching the cricket. On the other channel, and in person. Sadly, I am one of several thousand people in Dunedin and the Otago area who deliberately and willingly paid money to see Bangladesh play a test match. Then again it's been 10 years since Dunedin actually got to host a test match (which was rained out without a ball being bowled... not so surprising about the hiatus then) and the first to be hosted at the awesome 'village green' style University Oval, as bigged-up previously in this column, and let's face it there's fuck all else to do in Dunedin in the first week of January as everyone else has fucked off home or on hols. So Dunedin, or what was left of it, brought its picnic blankets down and sat in the sunshine on the grass banks to watch the game. And basically it was just a bit spesh. The sun shone throughout, the beer was cold, the kebabs were non-fatal, the kiddies were playing pick-up games of cricket on the surrounding fields, and it was about as far from drinking warm plastic cups of XXXX Gold at a kiln-hot Gabba and shouting encouragement at Simon Katich to stop being quite so funereally glacial at scoring fucking runs for Christ's sake (not that anyone I know would be in that position) as you could get. Of course it was over in three days, but that didn't matter - nor did the fact that other than centuries from Matthew Bell and Jacob Oram, the BLACKCAPSLOCK batting lineup was as per usual as sturdy and weatherproof as a condom knitted from Kraft Singles. It didn't even matter than newly returned Otago old-boy, wickie-batsman Brendan McCullum, made a serious attempt to kill me and Lucas. (We were standing ten metres beyond the boundary and his six still cleared us and almost landed in the drainage canal ten metres behind. He got out next ball. Instant karma.) Better still, despite new BLACKCAPSLOCK captain Daniel Venturi (because his captaincy sucks - who lets Bangers get to 161 for no wicket in their second dig after bowling them out for 137 in their first?) whinging about the small boundaries it seemed everyone was thrilled with the success of the venue and the match (getting ANY sort of crowd, let alone a couple of thousand peeps a day, to test match cricket in NZ is a massive achievement) and we might even get to play someone vaguely good at cricket next time tests are scheduled. The Windies are down here next year, which would be perfect - NZ aren't likely to beat them in three days, nor vice versa. Only problem is that getting more than three glorious days in a row might be a bit beyond the great random weather generator stationed over Dunedin. But hey, that's why we invented global warming. To give Al Gore something to do after inventing the internet.

The Doctor is OUT.