I know. It’s a weird sporting week in Australia when a key talking point seems to have nothing to do with sport itself, as it is an alleged extra-marital affair of a sportswoman that has caused deep unhappiness outside the team.
To this point – you will note, I hope – TFF has declined to engage in the whole kerfuffle in the Australian women’s cricket team, where one of the players got married, only to have an affair with a team member, and her hurt wife go very public with her anger.
The whole thing feels so desperately unhappy – and private – that I just couldn’t quite bear to go into it. At which point, I pause. For, yonks back, I did go very deeply into the Wayne Carey saga, when he slept with his best mate’s wife. What’s the difference?
I think it’s that the Carey saga blew up the entire team and was always going to. Or that it grossly offended the very Australian male code that I was a major subscriber to. “Rule No.2: you don’t sleep with your best mate’s missus.”
Or it might be because I have such a bad case of double standards, it’s approaching a triple standard. Anyhoo.
But this saga has gone on so long, and the coverage has been so over the top, it did remind me of something.
Three decades ago, the brilliant ABC series Frontline had an episode called Add Sex and Stir, which featured Jane Kennedy’s brilliant portrayal of gun tabloid reporter Brooke Vandenberg interviewing a woman who had been dropped from a netball team. In a piece of tabloid heaven, Vandenberg and crew spliced the grabs together to make it look like the woman was pushed out because she refused to participate in lesbian activity with teammates.
Still, when the weatherman with a conscience questioned the executive producer, Thommo, on why the show cared so much about netball when it had never covered it, the wizened old newsman, with a gleam in his eye, leans in and says: “It’s not about netball. It’s about lezzos.”
Thirty years later, in my view, little has changed.
Australian cricket’s olden generation
Sorry, what?
The mighty Australian cricket team might be about to lose to Bangladesh? That’s like the Australian Kangaroos being on the point of defeat against Wests Tigers. How can that be?
I’ll take the Bleeding Obvious for 50, please. The average age of the Australian team is – dot three, carry five, subtract six – 33 years and 10 months! There is one – count ’em, ONE – player in his 20s, and he’s not performing well.
Prima facie, you’d have to reckon that somewhere along the line the selectors failed to bring in new blood, and we have a gerontocracy in the line-up that tends to wilt on hot days?
Getting into the swing of it
Meantime, still on cricket, and I note with bemusement much of the commentary on the Australian batting collapse against Bangladesh on Thursday in Darwin was that it might have been due to the humidity and cloud cover in the Northern Territory causing the ball to swing more.
It is a cricket commentary staple, so no surprise. And yet, once again, I note that scientists don’t accept any such effect.
When I did a story on this for Channel Nine’s Wide World of Sports – by crikey, by gee, by jingo! – circa 1992, I interviewed two scientists who had definitively proved that humidity and cloud cover had no effect whatsoever on whether the ball swung.
Then I interviewed Steve Waugh and put their findings to him.
“They’ve never faced Patrick Patterson on a cloudy day at Sabina Park,” he deadpanned.
Why left is so right
As if you didn’t know, Thursday was International Left Handers Day. In old-time Australia, until at least the 1960s, they were often known as “cacky-handers” or “mollydookers” – both of pejorative origin.
If I tell you “cack” was convict slang for “poo” – from Latin’s cacāre, “to defecate” – you’ll get the drift.
Ditto, “molly” was slang for an effeminate man, and “dook” was as in “put your dukes up”. It meant mollydooker was one with an effeminate fist.
And left-handedness really was oft regarded as just wrong until about then. Stories abound of teachers smacking left-handed kids with rulers, until they started writing with their right hand.
Oddly enough, it was big-time sport that helped change perceptions. For it was there that left-handers have traditionally had an advantage. This was most apparent in sports such as cricket, baseball and tennis, where the left-handers were batting, bowling, pitching, serving and hitting at angles much less familiar to their opponents.
Peter Roebuck – thank you, I know – once put it well in these pages: “Because something like nine out of 10 batsmen are right-handed, the standard bowling attack is designed to get through a right-hander’s defences … which may not necessarily be the ideal attack to get a left-hander out. The whole science changes and mathematically, a bowler will always have less experience at bowling to left-handers than to right-handers, which is important.”
Allan Border, himself a left-hander, was all up on his fellow left-handers always upsetting field placements, and for that reason, framed his batting line-up to have left-handers and right-handers in batting pairs as often as possible.
“This creates maximum disruption to the opposing field placements,” Border said, “as they have to change every time a different batsman is on strike. That can be a colossal pain and a crucial factor in tiring out an opposing team.”
Now, you’ll note that Tuesday night’s census did not include a question on whether you’re left-handed or not, but the accepted incidence of left-handed-ness is about 10 per cent. And yet, a study of left-handed winners of Wimbledon in the professional era – including Rod Laver, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Rafael Nadal and Martina Navratilova – found that for the first three decades of the professional era, 17.17 per cent of finalists were left-handed, while for winners, the figure was even higher: 21.15 per cent.
Get it? Left-handers twice as successful!
In baseball, an advantage for left-handed batters is accepted lore, backed by stats. The usually right-handed pitcher is unused to pitching to left-handed batters, and so is unsettled. The left-handed batter is completely used to it, and is also hitting to fielders who will have the ball coming to them from unfamiliar angles. And with a left-handed pitcher, the effect is reversed. The left-handed pitcher is so valued they got a name all their own – “Southpaws”.
Why?
When they were laying out baseball diamonds in the 1880s – build it and they will come – they put the home plate on the west side, so the afternoon sun would stay out of the batter’s eyes. That means the pitcher faces west. When the ball is in the left hand, it is to the south, hence southpaw. Neat, yes?
What they said
Steve Smith on his DRS reprieve against Bangladesh: “Technology saved me today. You’ve got to take it sometimes. Maybe I didn’t nick it, but I certainly felt something. If I’d been given out I was going to walk off.” If you’d been given out, you were going to walk off? Mighty big of you. Personally, I miss the approach of Adam Gilchrist. When you know you’re out, you walk.
A heckler in Darwin, when Smith was fussing about, asking a man to be moved from his line of vision near the sightscreen: “Just hit the damn thing Smudge! Stop being a princess! You’re not bigger than the game Steve! Deal with it!”
Raiders coach Ricky Stuart on Corey Horsburgh giving away a penalty by slapping Dane Gagai, right when they had Newcastle at their mercy, and a way into the top eight:“It was a f—ing brain explosion and [we] lost the opportunity. There’s one shit bloody decision that choice that has cost us.” He’s right. Just not sure that naming and shaming your player helps. Stuart dropped Horsburgh on Tuesday.
Former 49ers, Raiders and Vikings running back Roger Craig, 66, revealing he has dementia during his NFL Hall of Fame induction speech: “Football gave me opportunities beyond anything I can imagine. It helped shape the man I became. At the same time, we know more today about brain health than when I played. I hope sharing my story encourages people to pay attention to their health and seek help when something doesn’t feel right.”
Craig again: “I want people to know that this diagnosis doesn’t define me. I am still Roger Craig. I am still a father, still a husband, a teammate, a friend and someone who loves this game and the people who brought it to my life.”
ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys on the NRL’s ambitions: “Global Round will definitely be going ahead in 2028, no doubt about that.” First we take Manhattan. Then we take Berlin.
Ethan Fulton, the grandson of league great Bobby and son of the late Terry Hill, on leaving league to play loose-head prop for the Manly Marlins Colts in the Tele: “I love the mateship. When I come to training the coaches really seem to care about me and what I do, they care about me as a person before me as an athlete. I love it all. I feel like great parts of my game have come from rugby league, but I’m definitely learning the game.” Welcome, Ethan. Zach Fittler, the son of league great Brad, meanwhile is off to play rugby in France.
Rebooted England Test cricket captain Joe Root doesn’t want curfews: “I don’t want people to feel like they can’t enjoy winning a Test match. If they want to have a beer at the right time, go and let their hair down, then that’s absolutely fine. You know what your responsibilities are. Be smart, be sensible and just be an adult about it.” It’s the last part that’s the problem.
Interim Essendon coach Dean Solomon on the drama surrounding the hiring of the new coach: “I feel like it’s a bit of an episode of Home and Away.”
Ben Simmons, practicing with the Boomers, asked if this was his way back into The Show? “That’s why I’m here. It’s a long way to fly just to not do it, man.”
Team of the week
Wallabies. Take on Japan on Saturday in Townsville, after the Les Kiss era got off to a decent start last week with a tight win.
Sydney Swans. Look to have locked down second spot in the AFL, while you and I weren’t looking.
Nestory Irankunda. Socceroo looks like he’s moving to Sporting Lisbon.
LA Lakers. Sold for a reported $US12.5 billion ($17.7 billion), after being purchased last year for $US10 Billion. Astonishing.
Des Connor. The great Wallabies AND All Blacks halfback – he played 12 Tests for each nation, before coaching the Wallabies in the late 1960s – turned 91 last Sunday. Happy birthday, Des.
Brian Smith. RIP. Former Wallabies and Irish rugby international passed away at the age of 59, after savage bout of cancer.
Peter FitzSimons is a journalist and columnist with The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X.From our partners
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