Losing streak

Today's all about the Power of Three and we ain't talking that half-arsed Buffy-ripoff Aaron Spelling witch show either. Ben Elton once outlined the most concerning question facing Western civilization as 'the Australian question', which he defined as 'which one of Hi-5 would you shag first?' No such quandry faced the 'fans' of Charmed, who were faced with a 'choice' of that chick from 90210 with one eyebrow freakishly higher than the other, the dull-as-fuck one with three names, and Alyssa Milano.
As the Monaro ads used to say: GAME OVER.





















Charmed, I'm sure
(somewhere out there, Tony Danza is feeling very, very wrong about this)

GAME OVER it is once again for the annual Aussie cricket tri-series, except this time it's for good. From season 2008-09 the Strayan summer will no longer feature the triangular one-day tournament between Australia, Someone Half-Decent and Someone A Bit Shit which has been around for only marginally fewer summers than your correspondent. For some reason the demise of the tri-series has been met with something near celebration by players and media alike. Matt Hayden's recent foray into radio gardening advice wasn't the only dumb-arsed comment the celebrity chef and part-time opening bat offered the press over the summer, with earlier comments bagging the tri-series format and declaring the team as a whole were pretty much over it. The BaggyGreen Dot Com concern duly backed up Cardinal Haydos' pronouncements by playing like a busted arse in both finals (just like last year against the Poms) and sending Gilly out a big fat loser, the only highlight of the two Indian victories (aside from a couple of Sachin tons for those into that sort of caper) being Andrew Symonds' epic shoulder charge on a drunken Adelaide bogan fucktard who'd ventured out to the centre square with only his undersized tackle for company. Speaking of tackle, Symmo's effort proved he'd been paying attention during his off-season training with the Broncos, though he can forget chasing the cross-code dosh in union; he'd have got two weeks from the Super 14 judiciary for not using his arms. In any case, one is mildly confident his $1.47 million from the Hyderabad IPL outfit will keep Symmo from needing to go play for the Reds anytime soon in order to keep up the payments on the boat.

By way of comparison, in the 1981/82 season WA swing bowler Terry Alderman tried something vaguely similar on a Pommy pitch invader (clothed this time) but unlike Symmo, Alderman was (a) not armed with a bat and pads and (b) a soft poofter from an AFL background, buggered his shoulder comprehensively and took several years to get back into the Australian team. Of course he went on to be one of the heroes of the 1989 side who won back the Ashes in England, proving even that soft AFL poofters with bung shoulders can come good on their day.

And of course in the season of 1976/77 one Gregory Stephen Chappell, later captain of his nation, went to town on a volunteer nudist with his Grey-Nicholls in full view of television and newspaper cameras, which is just sick and wrong. Although at least it gave him a few 'alternative' management techniques to draw on when his relationship with Sourav Ganguly went arse up while was coaching India.

You see, that's the point that's being missed by stories like this. One-day cricket has fuck-all history, but the history it does have is tied up inexorably with just two tournaments: the World Cup, which in its most recent iteration was utterly and undeniably wank, and the World Series Cup, and its later derivatives, the only link still left with the Packer-led revolution of the late '70s, without which rasta-haired Queensland bogans like Symmo would probably be tagging bridge supports and torching stolen Cortinas on the side of the Ipswich Motorway between the odd (unpaid) game of cricket, rather than becoming instant millionaires at the whim of an Indian billionaire. But now, because Haydos is an eensy weensy bit tired of the format - and because Nine are sick of their dynamite non-ratings-period daytime schedule of shit, more shit and Kerrie-Anne Kennel being interrupted by having to show India-Lanka games from Bellerive - all that history gets flushed down the pan in favour of another couple of featureless, distinctionless, identikit five or seven match ODI series. Could in be Australia, could in be Sharjah, could be in fucking Latvia. The point being what exactly?

Sad. Because I grew up with 'the tri-series' (as probably did you) back when it was the Benson and Hedges World Series Cup, at least until the mid-90s when the gummint decided the tobacco references were far too likely to compel 12 year olds to start compulsively honking onto fistfuls of Special Filters (which are Special in that that they feature pretty much no Filter whatsover and no less than 12mg of tar - somewhat akin to smoking the track surface at Bathurst.)

(As an aside, I wonder whether anyone's looked into whether the ban on cigarette sponsorship of sport - the B&H WSC, the Winfield Cup, half the race teams at Bathurst et al - actually had an effect on decreasing smoking and in particular teen smoking, as intended. Brocky's day-glo Marlboro HDT Commodore from the mid-80s looked fucking cool winning Bathurst as it did in the metal at the Alstonville Motor Show (actually it was probably just the show car), but I can't really remember it making me want to scare up some fake ID and rock down to the shops for a pack of Phillip Morris' finest. Nor for that matter does the sight of Grand Prix-winning Ferraris and Ducatis resplendent in Marlboro signage (on the three occasions each year they're allowed to run the sponsors' logos) today. It'd probably be near impossible to dissect out the effect of the ban against other social factors mitigating in favour of smoking rates dropping off.)

Where were we? Yeah, the World Series Cup. And the thirty years of history which Cricket Australia have just taken a stinking dump thereupon. Stuff like The Underarm Incident, 1980-81. Bruce Reid's hat-trick against the Kiwis at the SCG in 1985/86. The 'Hit Parade' of 1990/91 with the Sri Lankans and the Shaky Isles contingent - some may even remember the fairly bloody awful TV ad which promoted the series - with the latter heading into the final over in Hobart with a lead of 1 run over us and still managing to win the game after bowling a maiden. 1994/95, the season the Someone Half-Decent and the Someone A Bit Shit (England and Zimbabwe, in any order you like) were so fucking dreadful Australia ended up playing Australia A in the finals. The year after, where Michael Bevan hit the winning runs with a flat-bat to straight hit off the last ball of the New Years Day game at the SCG against the Windies, and the Sri Lankans first busted out the idea of putting their lunatic wickie-batsman Kalu at the top of the order to thrash around like buggery in the first 15 overs. And Murali got called for chucking pies, and Ranatunga went postal...





















And on top of all that, World Series Cricket also delivered the nation THE GREATEST TV AD JINGLE EVER RECORDED (Vale John Meillon; you oughta be congratulated.)
Altogether now: "Symmo's knockin' streakers on their arse..."


Then the name changed to the CUB Series in 1996/97, with the result that the previous year's highest runscorer Tubby Taylor led a side so shithouse they didn't even make the final; then there was the series in 1997/98 where Australia got touched up by the Saffers in every game bar two, those being the Second Final and, ahem, the Third Final; and then... problems. In the last ten years there has only been a handful of seriously competitive matchups - 2001/02, again with the Yaapies and the sheep-shaggers, who again contrived (conspired?) to edge us out of the finals; and the last three seasons, where the visiting side have managed to take a game (Sri Lanka) or two (England and India) off us in the finals. The rest of the time it's been Australia installing a Rheem. Which, while entertaining in itself (particularly when the opposition, by dint of their stellar collective appeal - I'm looking at you, Graham Smith's Saffers of 2005/06 - deserve the rubbing of the nose in the soiled carpetry) is not a long-term crowd-puller. But neither is replacing the storied triangular tournament with a bunch of anonymous, pointless, meaningless series with the atmosphere of Adelaide Airport, the gravitas of Brendan Nelson and the significance of the ARIA singles chart.

And yet CA, in their infinite, BCCI-underwritten wisdom seem to think this is a good idea.
To which we can only say: Come on, Aussie. Come on.

The Doctor is OUT.