Geoff Lawson in trouble in Pakistan

The Pakistan Cricket Board is reportedly very unhappy with the performance of its current coach, Australian Geoff Lawson. http://wwos.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=644539

There are a couple of points worth considering from this story.

1. Given Pakistan's long history of direct political involvement with things like team selection, who in their right mind would willingly walk into that scenario?

2. Just exactly what were Lawson's coaching credentials to begin with? Nothing so significant in my opinion to warrant him being given a national coaching role. Being a good or even great former player doesn't automatically equate to being a good coach. Sport is littered with many stories of past elite players not doing terribly well in this role, while the real stars have been those who were very much lesser lights in their playing career. Two classic examples come from my beloved Australian Rules Football. Tommy Hafey was a battler as a player with only some 99 senior appearances, yet he went on to have one of the greatest coaching records ever. In contrast, Barry Cable was one of the most exciting and gifted players I have ever seen on the ground yet his coaching record with North Melbourne after his retirement was nothing short of abysmal. Playing and coaching are very different things. There are naturally exceptions to everything. India for example has done pretty well under former Australian great, Greg Chappell. Of course it could equally be argued that Chappelli had a lot more to work with than Lawson did.

3. Why is that Pakistan can so consistently have such players of immense potential and yet perform so consistently badly? The last time Pakistan toured Australia, I was looking forward to a great series but instead, they were little more than pathetic. This is not a new development. Perhaps the problem isn't the coaching.

congratulations to Bangladesh

Big congratulations to the tadpoles of the cricketing world, Bangladesh, for their first ever victory over New Zealand in a one-day match.

The hero of the game was clearly Bangladesh's quick bowler, Mortaza, who took 4-44 to really put the visitors off their game.

So what some may? It was only New Zealand. But I assure you - nobody takes our Kiwi friends lightly on the one-day field. Skipper Daniel Vittori is a handful with his left-arm spin in any form of the game. Allrounder, Jacob Oram, can turn a game around in minutes with the bat.

Now the members of the Australian team who were infamously beaten by Bangladesh in a game some years back, can feel a little less ashamed of themselves.

more controversy and a surprising revelation

I missed the dismissal of Ricky Ponting last night in the First Test, however it sounds like yet another controversy. The bowler appealed for a return catch which South African umpire, Rudi Kertzen, ruled not out.

The radio commentary at this point admitted that they had no television coverage in the commentary box and had to rely on what was shown on the electronic scoreboard. Apparently showing this to the crowd was very quickly curtailed, suggesting that it was indeed controversial.
I think this is a very sad state of affairs when the ground staff have to cut short a replay because of the volatility of a crowd. Now before people start screaming at me, I am not suggesting that Indian supporters are alone in potentially poor behaviour. I well remember listening to descriptions on the radio of Australia players hiding in a dressing room back in about 1979 when a West Indian crowd were rioting. What about the Australian crowd throwing beer bottles at English fast bowler John Snow after he felled Australian tailender Terry Jenner with a bouncer back in 1970-71 with English captain Ray Illingworth leading his team off the ground? Shouting abuse at the opposition is part of the fun of being in the crowd. There always seem to be one or two players that you just love to hate. But acting violently is a pretty different and unacceptable kettle of fish.

Then the real surprise from the Australian Broadcasting Commission radio commentators over there in India - they had to rely on a telephone call from back in Australia to tell them exactly what that televised replay (available on a feed back here in Oz) was showing! Huh?

In the not-so-long-ago bad old days, television broadcasters had to take their own equipment to the sub-continent to broadcast cricket back to Australia or wherever. However the incredibly exciting and successful 20-20 cricket series in India earlier this year was broadcast all around the world. Surely the technology is in place there now to at least get a feed into the commentary boxes?

And it starts...again

As I type, the First Test between India and Australia is little more than a session old. And the stage is set for more nonsense.

Things really got going before a ball had been bowled. Indian opening bat, Virender Sehwag, started jumping up and down claiming that the Australian team had cheated in the Second Test in Sydney during the last Australian summer. Sehwag is adamant that the Australians all ran around claiming non-existent catches. Australian captain, Ricking Ponting, is quite rightly insulted by these claims. http://wwos.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=643741

That Test match shall live on in infamy as one in which the game's authorities simply rolled over and gave in to the demands of the Indian team and its management. Umpire Steve Bucknor was stood down. The veteran umpire, who is respected around the world, did not have a good game in Sydney. Under the microscope he did make some poor decisions. But how is that the result of the Australian team? Apart from anything else, Bucknor is West Indian. The umpires are all independents and have been for years. But with India now being the financial powerhouse of the cricketing world, officialdom just rolled over. Just as it has repeatedly rolled over, doing nothing about the continuing appalling behaviour by Indian player Harbajan Singh. When Singh was reported for racial slurs (yet again), the judiciary hearing the case was not given any details of Singh's five prior trips to the judiciary for consideration during deliberations after a guilty verdict had been handed down. Officialdom claims it was merely an oversight that this was not provided.
Excuse me a moment....sorry but I had to duck for cover - the wretched flying pigs have invaded my place again.


Nobody can claim that Australian teams have been guilty in the past of pretty damned aggressive behaviour. The tag of 'ugly Australians' was not just targetting the large growths of facial hair sported in the 1970s. But that is still a far cry from cheating. Let us compare once more to Mr Singh. It is illegal under cricket's laws for a bowler to have so much as an unbuttoned shirt cuff flapping loose as it may prove an unfair distraction. Yet Singh is simply infamous for his stunts of yelling abuse at the batter while he runs in to bowl! Just who exactly was trying to take unfair advantage of whom?

So now we come to the start of the Australian innings in this first Test match. The wonderboy of the Australian team on Indian soil is Matthew Hayden. He was very quickly dismissed, caught behind. A replay shows that he was not actually out. According the current Indian management's modus operandi, not to mention the likes of Sehwag, it is time to start screaming 'cheat cheat' and demands that the umpire be changed for incompetence.

The really sad part of it all is that we have some of the greatest players of the game on the field - and I am including Indian players in that description - but one can be pretty much assured that it is all going to swamped by more ridiculous allegations.

I have previously insisted in this blog that officialdom needs to act. Stamp on the troublemakers of all cricketing nations. They can start by jumping on Sehwag. If the idiot made such wild accusations at the club level where most of us play, he'd probably get a punch in the mouth for his trouble. Instead, he has the media do his shouting for him. Once upon a time players used to be jumped on from a great height for such stunts. Time to resume shutting them down.

Cricket is about the game. It is about the 22 players taking their turns out in the middle. What happens on the ground used to stay on the ground.

Oh the arrogance!

The Federal opposition in the Australian parliament, reached a new height of preposterous arrogance today. When I heard the latest outpourings from Leader of the Liberals, Malcolm Turnball and his buddy, Joe Hockey, reported on the radio late afternoon as I was driving home from my part-time job, I was so astounded that I was compelled to pull over and scribble the details down.

Last week, in face of an expected announcement by the Reserve Bank of Australia, decreasing in interest rates, the Australian banks let it be known that they would not necessarily pass on the full decrease to its customers. Nothing new there -as rates were rising, they started passing on more than the increases. So when rates drop, it fits with their current modus operandi to only pass on part of the decrease.

The Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, basically admitted that his government lacked the power to force banks to pass on all of any decrease in official rates. Federal Opposition leader, Malcolm Turnball (after recently acquiring the leadership through nothing short of backroom political backstabbing), started jumping and down about the ineffectiveness of the government in not being able to force the banks to comply.

Now hold on there Malcolm, sunshine, your lot prior to November 24, 2007, didn't do anything to stop banks from passing more more than official increases. If it was so important that government have the power to enforce such matters, then why the hell didn't your lot do it during your last decade-plus in office? How can you now make such noise about the Rudd government's inability to do anything when you know only too damn well that apart from anything else, the necessary legislative framework doesn't exist. What did you expect? That Rudd's boys would be able to rush one through in a matter of days? Not flaming likely.

The RBA made its announcement yesterday. To the amazement of many, including financial markets, the decrease was a full one percent. The banks in turn have said that they will be passing on some 80% of that decrease to its customers. Malcolm Turnball then came out with the absolutely incredible suggestion that this only occurred because the Opposition (meaning him) had made a fuss. His exact expression was that they had 'put a stake in the ground'. I'm not even sure what that expression is intended to mean. And since when does business kow tow to rantings by an Opposition party? Especially when they are going to remain the Opposition for probably another two years yet before being able to have a crack at regaining office. And my money says that Turnball won't even still be leader then.

The Australian Treasurer, Wayne Swan, was hard pressed so keep himself from laughing when responding to Turnball's colossal arrogance. In fact the ghost of a snigger actually crept into his voice during an official response.

The Opposition Leader of Government Business (in other words, the one who makes the biggest damn noise from the Opposition benches during Parliamentary sessions), Joe Hockey, then made his contribution to this ridiculous episode.

Now our mate Joe is no stranger to making big statements that have no foundation in fact. Take for example his vehement public statements in the second half of 2007 that the Liberal Party was 100% behind the continuing leadership of then leader, John Howard. Very shortly after the November 2007 election loss by Joe's mob, he appears in a documentary claiming that he had personally advised Howard to stand down from the leadership (as numerous others allegedly also did). So much for Joe's very public posturing of support for Howard.

Today Joe Hockey added another limb to his tree of very much self-proclaimed excellence. He is now, apparently, a greater expert in national economics than anyone in the RBA. Joe comes out, insisting that the RBA was wrong to have made such a decrease. Never mind that all the signs are of inflationary pressures easing, not to mention the current risk of major economic collapse as a result of the continuing financial and economic crisis in the USA. A decrease would appear to have been the correct decision to make. But not according to Joe baby - no, he knows better.

Oh - and another little episode from Joe's background which emphasises that despite all this latest posturing, the Liberals were just as impotent in controlling the behaviour of banks as everyone else. The position with Australian banks is that while they are quite happy to accept an authority from a customer to accept authorised debits to their accounts via Direct Debit, withdrawing that authority from the bank was not sufficient to ensure that deductions ceased. Instead, despite a bank no longer holding the authority to permit these deductions to continue, customers were told it was their responsibility to have the party originating the deductions to cease them.

Now our mate Joe held a minor financial portfolio at the time. In response to some consumer complaints about this behaviour, Joe made a very public statement that he was putting the banks etc 'on notice' that this behaviour was unacceptable and not to continue. Great
sound bite Joe, but guess what - the situation didn't change. Just more noise and no action.

So Malcolm Turnball has the Australian banking industry so in awe of him, that they do what he says? Yeah right. *cough cough bullshit cough* And Joe Hockey knows more about macro economics than the Reserve Bank of Australia. *cough cough cough bull-freaking-shit cough*

So....

I once read that the last year of office for a US president is spent ensuring their legacy. So exactly what is Georgie Dubblyah's legacy for posterity? Here's a few things to ponder.

1. Taking his country and others, including my own, to war in Iraq on what was eventually proven to be a lie.

2. Gradually dismantling practically every welfare initiative put in place by the Clinton administration.

3. Proving the most inept response to national disaster in the Western world in the wake of Hurricane Katrina yet refusing the offer of assistance from other agencies around the world (the cartoon, Family Guy, showed Georgie hiding in a treehouse after Katrina - it's as good an explanation as anything else).

4. Electoral practices widely believed to be dubious at best although I doubt we will ever learn the full story of that first election win.

5. Flatly refusing to acknowledge the threat of global warming, even forcing government scientists to rewrite reports playing this down (did you really think pretending it didn't exist that this would just go away Georgie boy?)

And now...

6. In the wake of a string of major financial collapses, Georgie Dubblyah has admitted that the entire US economy is about to go into meltdown.

In an global environment where energy commodity prices have driven enormous revenue potential all around the world, how is that the USA has managed to avoid being a recipient? How is it that such a massive economy has been allowed to descend into such chaos? Just what role has the hideous expense of the Bush vendetta in the Middle East played in this by robbing the US economy of obviously badly needed funding?

President Trueman famously kept a sign on his desk: 'the buck stops here'. So where is the buck going to stop now? At a time when hundreds of Americans are reportedly loosing their homes every week, you can be sure that Georgie Dubblyah and has buddies won't be losing anything. Instead, Mr Dubblyah will be spending the remainder of his life in protected luxury, significantly funded by the US public purse. And you can be pretty sure that when the inevitable book comes out, although you can be equally assured that the infamously inarticulate Georgie Dubblyah will have someone else write it for him, it will all be somebody else's fault.

And many Australians thought we had it bad with Johnny Howard.

An update on the hunt for the kangaroo abusers

The RSPCA inform me that there has not been any luck as yet in tracking down the clowns who bravely attacked an injured kangaroo - see my last post. However due to the collected wisdom of these [expletive] first videoing their stunt and then posting it to the Internet, they are being tracked down courtesy of the marvels of our Internet age. I would award them one of my Popsicle Awards except that there definitely is more than an icy pole stick keeping their ears apart - their heads are stuffed full of idiocy and sadistic cruelty.

Let us hope that justice is meted out soon and severely.

Again I ask, if you can help, please contact the RSPCA.

I shall continue to track this story and post more news on it as it comes to hand.