Irregular Expression

THE world cup in South Africa is slowly coming down to the business end with the conclusion of the group matches in a day. Four groups have finished their fixtures, two more will complete their engagements in a few hours and the rest will finish off tomorrow.

Australia bowed out as expected, leaving everything to the end by expecting to record a big win and also be helped by a result from the other game in the group. The team was humiliated in its opening fixture and that put paid to any chances of going into the round of 16.

Thus far, the traditional powerhouses Brazil and Argentina have looked the goods. Germany put up a horrible show in their second group tie but are still a force to be reckoned with, and teams like Portugal, Holland and Paraguay are also showing signs of being competitive.

Holders Italy, normally a sluggish starter, have to win their final game to qualify, with a shock draw against minnows New Zealand putting them somewhat off their stride. Pre-tournament favourites Spain have also left it to the end to qualify.

The teams from Africa have been a disappointment - only Ghana will be there when the knockout phase begins. Ivory Coast was the strongest contender but unfortunately is in a group with Brazil and Portugal. The other African team to perform well in the past, Cameroon, looks like a shadow of what it used to be. The hosts, South Africa, have been knocked out as well.

But none of the games played so far have produced classic soccer. There have been upsets a plenty - Switzerland defeated Spain, New Zealand drew with Italy - but the kind of top-drawer performance that one sees at every world cup is yet to be seen.

There is no star player either. Nobody can yet call this world cup his own. It’s a reflection of the fact that football is now a game which attracts so much money that not losing has become paramount.

THERE are times when mismatched teams go up against each other in sporting contests and the team expected to get massacred gets the expected whacking, but only after putting up a fighting performance. But if the lower-ranked team capitulates without a fight, then there is reason for despair, reason to panic, reason to think that the defeat will affect more than just that game.

Australia is bleeding this morning after its national football team, the Socceroos, gave as abysmal a display as possible in their opening World Cup fixture, getting a 4-0 hammering from world football powerhouse Germany. There have been bigger defeats in the World Cup, there have been more mismatched contests. Yet this defeat is going to ensure that Australia finishes bottom of the group as it would have lowered the team’s morale to zero.

Some factors which have never been highlighted have masked the definciencies in the Australian team. In 2006, after 32 years, Australia finally managed to qualify for the finals. The coach, the canny and experienced Guus Hiddink, had a clever mix of defence and attack and knew the limitations of the team. Hiddink came to Australia after having guided South Korea to the semi-finals in the 2002 tournament and earned that country’s praise in buckets.

For the 2006 tournament, Australia was in the Asia-Oceania group for qualifying, a much tougher set of opponents than the current set in its Asia group. Politicking enabled Australia to compete in a less difficult group for the 2010 qualifying process but that has also resulted in masking several weaknesses in the team and allowed the new coach, the ultra-cautious Pim Verbeek, to retain older players instead of focusing on the essential process of team renewal.

Verbeek has still retained the team’s dependence on players who are at, or near, the ends of their careers; he has also infused the team with a cautious style of play, that has not done it good at all. And he hasn’t made any effort to bring in new blood, probably since he knows he cannot be deemed a failure if the team qualified for the Cup.

Going up against a German team that was without its captain, the mercurial Michael Ballack, things were not made easier for Australia by Verbeek’s decision to experiment by leaving out any genuine striker for the toughest match that Australia will have in the group. Most national teams play a lone striker these days. It looked as though Australia had come to play for a draw. Expecting a roving midfielder like Tim Cahill to play striker was a silly decision.

Germany’s pattern of play surprised everyone. Deutschland has a reputation for dour, solid performances; the young team played with a freedom that one would expect from a south American team. They were given ample space to play in by the Australians whose sole tactic seemed to be one from the dark ages, that of catching their opponents in the offside trap. Professional players of the calibre of Mesut Oezil and Lucas Podolski spend hours and hours practising the right moment to break for an overhead pass and hence this tactic was clearly a waste of time.

The Germans were dynamic in their approach, constantly forming and re-forming pretty patterns as they roamed upfield in a quest for goals,. They could have scored a dozen if Miloslav Klose had been on target half the time and the gifted Oezil had done likewise. They exposed the gaping gaps in Australia’s defence and the foolishness of the use of the offside tactic. And they kept physical play down to a minimum.

The Australian goalkeeper, Mark Schwarzer, put up a poor show as well but then that was not much different from the rest of the team. Disappointingly, the Australians resorted to far too much physical play, their frustrations increasing as the Germans made them look like amateurs time and time again.

The red card for Cahill was probably a bit harsh given that he had touched the ball less than half-a-dozen times before that. But referees have been asked to clamp down on contact, especially when it involves key players, and there is no-one more central to the German team than Bastian Schweinstager. Cahill has probably played his last World Cup match; the FIFA panel that sits down to decide on his punishment will probably out him for the remaining two group games.

But the scoreline apart, one doubts if any Australian would have been disappointed had the team turned up to play, fought and lost. That was not the case. They had clearly come looking for a draw and any team that does that in the World Cup deserves to lose and lose badly.

NOT since I heard the music of a young Harry Chapin or an equally youthful James Taylor have I listened to a voice as clear and beautiful as that of the Aboriginal blind singer Gurrumul Yunupingu. He has been around for some time, as part of the well-known band Yothu Yindi, but it is only after he went solo that his name has become better known.

Gurrumul, who like many other Aborigines who rise to prominence, has now been christened with an English name, Geoffrey, has a voice that is haunting, that speaks directly to the soul, that makes one weep.

For anyone with even a slight knowledge of the history of dispossession that his people, and all the Australian Aboriginal tribes have endured ever since the white man stole their land, his voice also speaks to that part of his people’s history, without ever having to write lyrics either angry or accusatory.

His lyrics lose a lot when translated into English; on the surface they appear to be simple and, at times, even puzzling. But it is the music that counts, the music that endures, the voice that carries everything before him. His tones are at times strident, but mostly mellow, stirring and pure.

There is a plaintive quality about his music, creating a sense of sadness, loneliness, and at times there is the upward lilt that transports one to a realm of hope. But above all, the music is pure, untainted by technology and crosses the boundaries of many genres - blues, folk, rock and reggae - without ever sacrificing its own heritage.

After his first solo album, simply called Gurrumul, was released, he has attracted a remarkable amount of attention, played with Sting, taken a turn at a concert with Elton John, and is shortly due to tour the US. Exactly how he will fare in that land where fluff is more important than substance is uncertain.

He is a shy, retiring type even though he is a year short of 40, and the adulation of those he has admired - bands like the Eagles, Sir Cliff Richard and Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits - probably would mean much more to him than the meaningless media merry-go-round which is geared towards extracting the soul from the soul musician.

His music is essentially simple; he plays a regular guitar left-handed as he could never obtain a left-handed instrurment when he was growing up. His mastery of the instrument is plain once one has listened to just a single one of his ballads.

The mix of a little English and his own Ylongu language which he uses is basic but powerful; the lyrics are unimportant, the voice is everything. Truly, these are tones from above, the voice of an angel.

“In Mozart’s time, word of mouth built an audience. People found him and heard him play. Then someone came along and said, ‘We can sell this experience.’ Right there, you’ve got trouble. Music comes from the spirit, but where does the guy selling the music come from?” – Prince

THE music that you and I hear on radio, on TV, in the theatre is strictly controlled by the four big music companies - Sony Music, EMI, Warner and Universal.

These companies specify how often various songs should be played on public radio. They determine which artists should be promoted and which should take a backseat. And if you do not get one of them to sign you on, the chances of making it big are all but zero.

Musicians need advertising dollars, they need marketing, they need to travel and play gigs in order to become known. The big four pay these costs but recoup them more than adequately. If a musician has no chance of making money for the companies, he or she will not get a contract.

That’s why there is little or no innovation in the music industry these days. What is produced is like the food from McDonalds - all in the same style, tasteless crap. As with all other industries once consolidation takes place and huge monoliths start running the show, everything tastes or looks or sounds the same.

The period from the 1960s to the mid-1980s was a glorious one when there were creative bands galore like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Dire Straits, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, to name just five outfits. And there were Santana, Hendrix, Marley, Guthrie, Clapton, Sting, Baez, Frampton, Lightfoot, Croce, Taylor, Chapin, Winwood…

What equivalents does one find these days? Those that do produce music are plastic imitations of each other. Oasis and Coldplay are garbage. So too Lady GaGa, Beyonce, and their ilk. Buble is forced to sing songs from the 70s when he wants to create a hit album.

Commoditisation works for some things. Not for creative trades like music. The McDonaldisation of the music indutsry has put the lid on human ingenuity.

THERE’S a trend that is common in the US - driving four-wheel drive vehicles in the city - that seems to be spreading to other countries. These vehicles are meant to be driven on sand or gravel, they are very high-powered and are slow to take off from traffic lights.

They are very heavy, built of steel and will wreck an ordinary car if a collision eventuates. They also make visibility for those cars behind them impossible. Yet there are plenty of idiots who travel in these monstrosities in a city. Why?

With some, it appears to be the fear factor, so common in America, where people are pumped full of fear by the government, the media and everybody who has a voice in society. People figure that they have a better chance of survival if they are travelling in a four-wheel drive vehicle - not realising that when their time to die comes, they will croak no matter if they are bunkered down in a nuclear shelter.

Then there is the desire to do as others do, not to appear different. If one fool buys a four-wheel drive, others follow. And people like to appear “normal”, whatever that means. If everyone owns a four-wheel drive vehicle, then that becomes the norm. Keeping up the with the Joneses is another way of putting it but that doesn’t go down well with those who endeavour to do so.

There are plenty of reasons to avoid four-wheel drive vehicles. They consume much more petrol than the average car, are extremely expensive to maintain and are not meant for city travel. They are meant for negotiating desert tracks, mud roads and mountain paths. You only have to see a car that has been in an accident with a four-wheel drive to realise that anyone driving a four-wheel drive vehicle in the city is nothing short of an idiot.

One would think that with all the talk of peak oil and the oil price at very high levels, the car manufacturers would think twice about manufacturing such huge, unnecessary vehicles. But then, car manufacturers only look at ways of making money - if there are fools lining up to buy four-wheel drives, why the manufacturers will make them available.

Ultimately, it comes down to commonsense. Which is the commodity most in short supply, especially in the US of A.

WHEN a heterosexual relationship breaks up, the man generally takes much longer to get over it than the woman. This may not be true in all cases but in a majority it certainly is. Why is this so?

I have a theory. Traditional relationships between men and women had men doing the task of earning a livelihood for the whole family while women were the ones who played the role of home-maker.

Thus in those days, it was more difficult for a woman to consider getting out of a relationship, even if she was getting the short end of the stick. She had to stick on, as she had no means of support. Even today, when many women are employed, it is very difficult for them to manage alone and bring up children while supporting them.

If women had also to cope with a massive emotional fallout from a broken relationship, it would make things even harder. I think it is nature’s way of compensating for the disadvantage - women take much less time to recover from a broken relationship and get together with someone else.

Men take a long time to get over a broken relationship and at times go through their whole lives unable to get over a particular woman, but then they generally do not have the problem of not having a job and having to raise children as well as courts generally give custody of the kids to the women.

One more example of how nature compensates people for natural inadequacies.

IT APPEARS to be a feature of society nowadays that the trait of honesty has disappeared in toto. One of the major manifestations of this is in the utterances made by public figures - they say one thing and then, the very next minute, they deny they said it.

Else, they try to spin things - and the problem is, they actually believe their own spin. A small variation on the method advocated by the greatest spinmeister of them all, who once said, “if you tell people a lie repeatedly and they have no way of finding out the truth, then they will believe the lie.”

Two examples from the city in which I live: recently, Mick Malthouse, the head coach of a local Australian rules football team, called an opposing player a “fucking rapist” during one of the regular breaks in the game.

The coach first denied saying it; later, when witnesses came forward to contradict him and TV footage showed him mouthing off, he said he had denied it because what happens on the field stays on the field!

In other words, here is a man who dwells in two different worlds - you don’t need something like Second Life for him to live a virtual life or a virtual lie.

When the media quite rightly attacked him, the coach took things one step further - he wrote a column in a newspaper and claimed he had acted as Winston Churchill did, for the greater good. Yeah, sure. You can’t get more into denial mode than that.

And then we have the former commissioner of police in Victoria, Christine Nixon. who has been twisting the truth in testimony to a royal commission which is investigating the bushfires that took 173 lives in the state in February 2009.

On February 7. 2009, which has come to be known as Black Saturday due to the ferocity of the fires that raged, Nixon went out to the pub for a meal with friends at 6pm. To put this in context, at 5.45pm on that day, the emergency services commissioner, Bruce Esplin, had called the state’s police minister, Bob Cameron, to say that there was a ”very dire” fire situation and asked him to come to the emergency control centre.

For three hours Nixon was not contacted, despite her role as one of the senior people in tackling this emergency. It looks like her mobile phone was turned off though she will not admit it. But then she was reluctant to admit that she went out for a meal until it was raised by the commission. Talk of Nero fiddling while Rome burnt does not seem entirely out of place here.

Nixon stepped down from the post of police commissioner last year and now occupies a nice government-paid sinecure, in charge of rebuilding the area devastated by the bushfires. She refuses to quit and the lameduck state premier, John Brumby, a man who has been in power for 10 years and appears to be blind to her dereliction of duty, is backing her.

Many people reach a dangerous stage of being when they cannot see that there is some black and white alongside the grey. When they enter this nebulous zone, their conscience dies and they function in a manner that is essentially inhuman.

IN AUSTRALIA, shows like Customs and Border Security are prime time material. There is one reason for this - they cater to the innate sense of xenophobia among the Australian masses.

It is extremely unlikely that one will ever see a white man nabbed for carrying anything illegal on either of these shows. There are countless Thais, Vietnamese, other Asians, Jamaicans, or other black people, caught carrying anything from soft drugs like marijuana to the hard stuff like cocaine.

Of course, if programs like these did show white couriers and drug smugglers, the number of viewers would drop like a stone. These shows are just a means to drive up the fear factor and pull in white people who think they are superior to brown- and black-skinned people.

There is an inherent message in shows like this: brown and black people are bad, we white people are good. It is a necessary message at a time when the Western world is rapidly losing its economic superiority which, for long, enabled it to dictate things to the rest of the world.

Western commentators are quick to admit the hold that China has, in economic terms, over the rest of the world, but boy, does it leave a sour taste in their mouth!

WITH the nomination of former Australian prime minister John Howard to the ICC vice-presidency - he will become president in 2012 - the power-brokers in the countries that play the game have ensured that priority will be given to politics, not cricket.

Howard was prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007. He was a divisive figure, refusing to apologise to the country’s first people for atrocities committed by white settlers, supporting the US in its crazy Iraq adventure and ensuring that the rich got richer and the poor poorer. Australia’s economy was doing well during his time - due to the boom in resources exports, not due to any financial reforms introduced by Howard’s government - but none of the money was saved; it was spent on buying votes through pork-barrel politics.

Howard is known for his support of apartheid South Africa. He was also quick to brand Sri Lankan spinner Muthiah Muralitharan a chucker, because, in his own words, “they proved it in Perth with that thing”, as stupid a statement as one can find uttered by a politician in any part of the world. His contribution to the game, in other words, is a big zero.

What makes the selection of Howard all the more amazing is that the man who was ranged against him, Sir John Anderson of New Zealand, has impeccable credentials to hold the post. Sir John became chairman of New Zealand Cricket in 1995 and then represented his country on the ICC board.

Sir John was one of the main figures in restructuring the ICC’s internal make-up and he also re-drafted its articles and committee manual. He served for 13 years. And a man like Howard has now been pushed in ahead of him. Australia, a bigger player in world cricket, has once again heavied its smaller Tasman neighbour to promote an unworthy candidate.

Cricket’s world governing body has not exactly covered itself with glory in its administration of the game. In the days when Australia and England were the dominant powers in the game, the MCC was running the show and rarely did it make decisions that ensured the progress of the game. Cricket was confined to a few counties while the officials enjoyed their sinecures.

In 1969, following the omission of a coloured player, Basil D’Oliviera from the England team to tour apartheid South Africa, the MCC had to finally rise from its slumber due to the pressure from the media. It’s worthwhile recalling that after the Gleneagles Agreement was reached, Howard was still keen on visiting South Africa.

It’s not as though politicians have not been appointed to head the ICC. But rarely has there been so much of a gap in quality between candidates and the less qualified one selected. Howard loves sinecures, parading the world stage and free travel. He used to attend the Test matches in Sydney every year but then any Australian prime minister who does not turn up at big sporting events is a fool, given the nation’s obsession with matters sporting.

Some of the most damaging things to happen to world cricket took place during the reign of Jagmohan Dalmiya, a Bengali, as ICC head. It was during his time that Bangladesh was made a Test playing nation. Nearly 13 years later, the folly of such a decision is apparent - unlike Sri Lanka, which has a good cricketing pedigree and an almost fanatical devotion to the game, Bangladesh is more attuned to soccer.

Dalmiya also brought in the infamous future tours programme which has all Test nations constantly playing games. It has ensured that there is too much of Test and one-day cricket. Players perform poorly - they are human and their bodies and minds can only handle so much.

The West Indies, a powerhouse from 1980 to 1995, and not exactly a pushover even before that, has fallen away to become little more than a joke - and the ICC has done nothing to try and prevent this disaster taking place. Now it is too late.

If the ICC wants to keep making money off cricket, it needs to look at the health of the game in all its constituent countries and take measures to ensure that teams remain at their full potential. It is not only the responsibility of the national cricketing bodies. (This is not to say that those who followed Dalmiya were much better than him when it came to looking after the health of the game.)

I think Howard will follow in Dalmiya’s footsteps. And if a situation like that which arose with Darrell Hair comes up again, it is clear in which direction he would go. World cricket is already in trouble and has had to resort to gimmicks like Twenty20 to draw crowds to the game. With Howard, a man who has the imagination of a dead duck, leading the organisation, it may well be time to start writing the game’s obituary.

ON February 24, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar set a record that a few have looked like achieving but nobody has - a double-hundred in a one-day game. He set the record against South Africa, the team that is currently ranked third in the ICC one-day rankings, and this gives an indication of the achievement. (Australia stands first in the ODI rankings, followed by India; in the Test rankings the same three teams hold the top positions, with India being first, followed by South Africa and Australia).

One must go back fo 1983 to trace the progress of high scores in one-day cricket - during the world cup in England that year, India’s captain Kapil Dev made a swashbuckling 175 not out against Zimbabwe. At that time, the latter was still a fairly decent outfit, and nothing like the rabble it has become after the political troubles that have engulfed the nation. A year later, Viv Richards knocked the stuffing out of England with a knock of 189 not out, an outstanding effort which was made out of 272 and in an innings where only two others reached double-figures.

Pakistan’s Saeed Anwar eclipsed Richards in 1997 when he made 194 against India in Madras (now Chennai), a score which ZImbabwe’s Charles Coventry equalled last year. Coventry’s innings was somewhat devalued because he made the runs against Bangladesh, a team that should not be playing top-level cricket.

In some ways, Tendulkar’s unbeaten 200 - he reached the mark in the final over of the game - was not as taxing a knock as the 175 he made against Australia last year. The pitch at Gwalior was flat, India was batting first, and the ground was small. Hitting over the top and reaching the boundary was far easier on this ground than in Hyderabad where Tendulkar made his 175.

But that should not detract from the achievement. At 36, any cricketer would normally be devoting his attention to the longer form of the game; that Tendulkar still plays the one-day game and performs so well is testimony to his ability. And an important thing to note is that unlike many others, he has never adopted ugly improvisation to keep making high scores; practically all his shots are genuine cricket shots that the connoisseur can appreciate.

Indian batted first in this game, the second in a three-game series against South Africa, with the advantage of having already won the first. The innings began at at a fair pace but Virender Sehwag, who normally relishes batting on a flat track, fell early. Thereafter, Tendulkar shared three partnerships, with Dinesh Karthik, Yusuf Pathan and skipper M.S. Dhoni. He dominated the first two but Dhoni was in such a savage mood that for a while it looked like Tendulkar would be denied his 200.

Tendulkar scored at a cracking pace - 100 in 90 balls out of 176 (his 46th one-day hundred), 151 out of 264 (18 balls to go from 100 to 151) and 200 from 147 (29 balls to go from 151 to 200). He was lucky to be adjudged to have made his ground when sneaking a run at 159. In total, he hit 25 boundaries and three sixes as India, 213 for one in the 32nd over, reached what was ultimately a match-winning 401 by the end of the innings.

South Africa did not play Morne Morkel in this game and Makhaya Ntini is no longer in the team. Dale Steyn, Wayne Parnel, Charl Langeveldt, and Roelof van der Merwe were the main bowlers for the Proteas, a decent attack by any standards. Jacques Kallis and Jean Paul Duminy provided back-up.

When great batsmen strike a certain vein of form, there is nothing any bowler can do; Steyn, who has been a vital cog in South Africa’s move up the ladder in international cricket in recent years, could only watch in resignation as Tendulkar played some incredible shots against his pace. One particular shot stays in the mind - he moved outside the off-stump and hit Steyn to the mid-wicket boundary. That degree of control against a man of Steyn’s pace is reminiscent of the great Richards at his best.

Records are just one indicator of a cricketer’s greatness. The way a player makes runs, the opposition, the circumstances, all count. No matter what factor one measures him by, Tendulkar stands tall.