Rant

Thursday 23 December 2010

A three and a half hour flight from Perth to Melbourne today enabled me to catch up with the cream of Australian sports journalism. Fortunately that left the remaining three and a quarter hours to catch up with such cultural delights as Simon's new Nintendo DS games and more episodes of Mr Bean than I thought the world would ever need. With around three pages to fill each day on the subject of the Ashes alone, panic is understandably foremost in the psyche of most sport journos down under. This may not be quite so prominent during the matches themselves, when at least two pages can be devoted to the previous day's action, but in the downtime between Tests, it becomes a real issue. Hence some tried and tested "Polly Filler" techniques are required: 1. Interview with has-been Australian Test cricketer: Always a sure fire winner, this is designed to provide lucid, insightful comment by a household name. Or if not, at least it will fill half a page. Today it was the turn of Jeff "Tommo" Thomson, famously the scourge of England's batsmen back in the seventies. Tommo, now 60, has evidently matured slowly from his tearaway days, as his half a dozen pronoucements - mainly aimed at the fragility of England's batting - all seemed to revolve around the word "shit" (or "s**t", as reported by the prudish West Australian). I mean, can't the man express himself without resorting to four letter words? What a tw*t. 2. Recycling an article from another newspaper: Another half page was taken up by quoting what seemed to be an entire article published in a British newspaper by England wicketkeeper batsman Matt Prior. This was deemed to be of deep national interest because it dealt with one of the topical subjects of the moment - the "sledging"* between the two sides which is alleged to have occurred during the Perth Test. Guys, you really are way behind the times - I pointed this out in one of my first blog entries back in November "Snow, sledging and Mr Cricket". 3. Doing a topical issue to death: Or in this particular case, three topical issues: sledging (see above), the likely state of the Melbourne wicket and the likely state of Ricky Ponting's broken little finger. These tiresome topics accounted for over 90% of the content of today's cricket reporting. What's more, it appears to be compulsory for the whole of the Australian media to refer to their captain's injured digit as "Ponting's pinkie". Evey bloody time. In fact the issue of the pinkie is irrelevant: I agree with the TV report tonight which opined that "Ponting's finger would actually have to fall off to prevent him playing at Melbourne". Here endeth the rant of the day. Tomorrow we are going on a day trip down the Great Ocean Road - in our case on a tourist bus rather than the more glamorous modes of transport favoured by Kevin Pietersen, Shane Warne and an actress of the dress-held-together-by-safety-pins persuasion. * Explanation for non-cricket fans: Sledging = verbal abuse of an opponent during play (and I bet you thought cricket was a sport played by gentlemen)