The A-League: spread too thin

The furore surrounding Clive Palmer and Gold Coast United has cast more unwanted focus on soccer's position in the Australian sporting hierarchy. The club failing is bad enough, but for component on-field parts to auction themselves to prospective employers is like your soon-to-be ex auditioning potential replacements in front of your eyes.

Most galling of all is for this failure to occur in particularly high-growth area in the fastest-growing state in the nation. If football couldn't survive – demented patriarch or not – on the Gold Coast, there are few options left for A-League expansion. The league looks destined to stay in the same locations. And this may be for the best.

Realistically, there are only two more locations into which the A-League can try and expand naturally into a city with a population large enough to support the game. The league has already failed in both locations, Auckland and the Gold Coast. Despite it's size, Auckland also drags with it the baggage of New Zealand clubs playing in the domestic league of an Asian confederation member when the country competes in the Oceania confederation. Other possible expansion locations are also fraught with problems – the AFL's Cats countenance no rivals in Geelong, while Canberra boasts an enormous fly-in, fly-out population and lots of roundabouts.

Ben Buckley and the FFA, the sport's governing body in Australia and administers of the A-League, let the phenomenally successful second A-League season (2006-07) go to their collective bonces. The league attracted an average of nearly 13,000 fans per game that year, while collecting additional fuel from rivalries which solidified between the league's marquee clubs Melbourne Victory, Sydney FC and Adelaide United.

However, the Victory's remarkable crowd numbers masked the true situation. The now-defunct New Zealand Knights averaged a pitiful 3000 fans. More telling should have been that Melbourne's attendance comprised nearly 30% of the entire league gate. With renewed interest in roundball left over from the Socceroos' 2006 World Cup run and FFA decided to capitalise on soccer's newfound popularity and expand.

They couldn't have been more wrong.

Since that year, four new teams have been created. Half of those have failed and now lie in ruin. A third, the Melbourne Heart is haemorrhaging cash, while the fourth, the Wellington Phoenix was born from the rubble of the Knights. With a population of slightly more than 22 million people The World Game's status as a distant fourth favourite football code, Australia simply can't support a national football competition which has more than ten teams. Thus, any expectation of healthy crowds or shirt sales at every venue is optimism verging on insanity.

While it is understandable the FFA wanted to expand while the game was at it's antipodean zenith, the league was a success in 2006-07 as a result of those nine teams, not despite the shortage of numbers. The game is healthier now than before the A-League's commencement, but to expect public interest to grow from all-time highs – especially when the tail end of the Golden Generation returned to pasture at home after a magical tour of Germany – was fallacy of the highest order. The league should have consolidated, rather than chosen to grow at a remarkably ambitious rate (including next season's likley West Sydney franchise, growing by five clubs in five seasons).

The argument against expansion is easy and tired, yet sport administrators fail to learn. No matter what the sport, clubs in a national competition need one of two things to succeed (and preferably both) – grassroots support for the sport, or a large enough populace to support a “minority” sport. By expanding into Far North Queensland,

When the league embarked on this Mr. Creosote-style inflation, not expecting local talent to be poached by higher-paying leagues, thus thinning the ranks of top players, was naïve. Add to that the established fact that expansion dilutes the talent-pool and suddenly the A-League doesn't provide the product it once did. That the young talent isn't coming through is just as damning – the simple fact is we can't supply the league with enough money, support or home-grown talent.

Because of this, the A-League should remain an nine-team league for the foreseeable future. Even the quick-cloned Western Sydney would be fallacy.

Part of the problem seems to be the FFA's complete misunderstanding of how many people it takes to fuel a football club. A vast majority of Australians couldn't tell you the left-back for their local A-League club, which explains why the sport struggles for recognition as a serious national competition, especially at a local level. It's time for the A-League to accept, for the time being, their place in the Australian sporting landscape. Give the people what they want – quality football. Clive Palmer seems to have forgotten, but this isn't accomplished with teenagers and faded stars, but with well-coached professional athletes.

To quote The Rock, it's time for the A-League to shut their mouth and know their role. It is possible – foreseeable, even, given junior participation – that in the longest of terms, football overtakes Rugby Union and even cricket in the national consciousness. However, that is also unlikely, especially when the FFA damages the A-League brand with repeated failed franchises.

My Favourite Cricketer: Chris Pringle by Mykuhl of Cricketgeek

We've scoured the web for the best cricket writers and bloggers to contribute to our series "My Favourite Cricketer".  Today, Mykuhl from the splendid Cricketgeek tells us why he thinks of Kiwi spearhead Chris Pringle most fondly.

As a child I enjoyed playing cricket, and to a lesser degree watching cricket.  I think what I enjoyed most about watching cricket was that normally it was something I did with my dad.  There were a few incidents as I was growing up that made me fall in love with the game.  Firstly when Hadlee dominated Dean Jones in Australia – I remember standing outside, watching through the window as all my older cousins, my father, my uncles and my grandfather crowded around the TV at my grandfathers house. The electricity in the air was contagious.

The next incident was the 1992-93 world cup. When Martin Crowe chose to open the bowling with Dipak Patel against Australia, and it actually worked, and when I was allowed to go to one of the games at Eden Park and saw Mark Greatbatch hit a six onto the roof.  Both of these really captured my attention.

But the ultimate incident that did it for me was in the next season. 1993-1994 the World Series Cup – Australia, New Zealand, South Africa.  My family were on holiday at Mt Maunganui, and in the little sun room at the front where I was sleeping there was a television.  This was still in the days where sports was broadcast free-to-air, and almost every night there was cricket on.  The performance of one player was a big part of why I still love cricket today.

Chris Pringle took at least one wicket in every match in that tournament.  He actually managed this in 26 matches in a row from March 1993 until October 1994, in the process playing against every Test-playing nation of the time. I believe that the whole story of Pringle is one of the greatest in cricket.

Image courtesy: cricwaves.com

The start

 He started off his international career after only playing 3 first class games.  New Zealand were touring England, and he was over there playing some minor league cricket.  He decided to turn up to the game to see if he could get some free tickets off some of the Auckland players that he knew. He got more than he was expecting. At first they asked him if he could help them out by bowling in the nets.  Then Martin Snedden got injured, and Pringle got told that he was playing. 

After 27 overs New Zealand were in trouble. Gooch and Smith had put together a big partnership, for the 2^nd wicket, and England were 118/1. Pringle was watching Gooch bat and thought he saw a weakness. He asked the captain for the ball, and got him with a slower ball straight away. He ended with figures of 2/45 (Hadlee got 2/45).

It is a Boys Own tale – just out of school, turns up to the ground, gets to play for his country and outperforms (probably) the greatest bowler his country has ever produced.

The skills

Despite being only just over medium pace, and not really doing much with the ball, he managed to have career ODI stats very similar to Waqar Younis (Avg, rpo, sr; Pringle 23.87, 4.45, 32.1; Waqar 23.84, 4.68, 30.5) . He did it by finding weakness in batsmen’s techniques and then exploiting them.

He was not built like a fast bowler, he looked like the guy that comes to fix your telephone. In fact, the first time he ever set foot inside a gym was after he had already been picked for Auckland. He had to get some of the other players to show him how to use the equipment. And perhaps this was why he was such a good bowler. He couldn’t rely on physical ability so he had to learn to think.

One of the most memorable moments was in 1991 where Australia needed 2 runs to win off the final over. Bruce Reid was batting, and all he needed was a single to tie the score. Pringle had the ball. He bowled the over of his life to the bewildered Reid, who eventually tried to sneak a single off the last ball, and was run out for his trouble, giving Pringle a final over maiden and New Zealand a win by 1 run. Pringle’s figures of 1/34 off 10 hardly told the story of his excellent performance.

On the way to a ground in Australia he noticed that there were billboards for the movie Predator outside the ground. They featured Arnold Schwarzenegger with camouflage paint on his face, looking like a warrior. Pringle got some zinc and painted similar marks on his face before coming out to bowl. Anything for an advantage.

His approach worked, and he became the most reliable wicket taker in One Day internationals in history. Here is the table of the top 10 most reliable wicket takers:

 

Player	Innings bowled	Innings with at least 1 wkt	Wickets	Hit rate
C. Pringle	64	54	103	0.844
B. Lee	201	169	357	0.841
P. Patterson	58	48	90	0.828
S. Bond	80	65	147	0.813
K. Mills	129	104	192	0.806
M. Muralitharan	341	274	534	0.804
A. Donald	162	130	272	0.802
T. Alderman	65	52	88	0.800
M. Ntini	171	136	266	0.795
M. Sami	81	64	118	0.790

The controversies

Over the 5 years of his tragically short career he was involved in more incidents than most players are in 15 years. Before long he was just too much of a public relations disaster, and NZ Cricket couldn’t cope any more.

There were sex scandals, concern about his weight and fitness, fall outs with coaches and captains, ball tampering and even a drugs scandal. He made Flintoff, Ryder and Cronje look like beginners.

Even his cricket brain got him in trouble. He figured out that something was going wrong while he was on tour to Pakistan in 1990. The balls seemed to have some strange marks on them. Martin Crowe and him decided to fight fire with fire.  They got a bucket full of balls and experimented with ways of tampering with them.  They devised a method of scratching the balls using a bottle top, to make them swing like crazy. They tried it out in the third match, and much to their surprise, the umpires didn’t care. One of them even commented to him that at least both teams are cheating equally now. Pringle took 7 wickets, but his place in the record books will forever have an asterisk, due to being the “bottletop bandit” test.

He was also involved in the marijuana scandal in South Africa in 1994. He says that he was only in the room telling the others not to smoke it. I heard from a number of sources that he was blamed by the management for it, and his reputation never recovered.  A good friend of mine was a net partner to one of the players involved, and he has privately confirmed Pringles story, saying that there were no players from outside Northern Districts except Stephen Fleming involved. In a way it was nicer to believe that he was involved, and that his success was in spite of such excesses.

There were also rumours of a number of sex scandals, none of which are worth repeating, but Pringle comments on a couple of them in his book.

Overall his story is one of a great talent that was only realised briefly. One of the best thinking bowlers of all time, was also one of the greatest wasted talents. He thrilled us, but like some other potentially great players like Rodney Redmond or Vinod Kambli, he did so too briefly. It would be interesting to see if he would have kept succeeding if he had managed more than 62 matches. Would the batsmen figure him out, or would he keep finding ways to break batsmen down. This intrigue is part of the reason that Pringle is my favourite cricketer.

(Ed: There is now an English cricket team named for the portly Kiwi, who won the England Champions' League in Last Man Stands Cricket).

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David Warner scores a century - time for some humble pie

The following piece was written on David Warner's selection for Australia before the first Test against New Zealand.

Why I hate David Warner

"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to the Dark Side" Yoda

The news that Shane Watson may miss Australia's two Test series against New Zealand comes with the added revelation that David Warner is likely to be called up in his stead. In Warner's defence, his most recent First Class match he scored 148 and boasts a recent double century for Australia A against coughZimbabwecough. The prosecution suggests he has a dominating batting mindset suited best for T20, a minimum of technique (how's that working, Phil Hughes?) and due to this combination, probably a limited lifespan at the top of Australia's Test order.

My Favourite Cricketer: Gavin Larsen by Ken Miller, The Man in Beige

In our series My Favourite Cricketer, we invite respected cricket writers and bloggers to describe the impact one particular player had on their life.  This week Ken Miller, the Man in Beige, presents us with the archetypal New Zealand seamer, Gavin Larsen.

When people are asked to name their most iconic image about New Zealand cricket, some might picture Sir Richard Hadlee, appealing (probably successfully) arms and legs akimbo. For others the image might be of Martin Crowe cutting off the back foot for another glorious boundary. Or maybe it would be Daniel Vettori being left to do absolutely everything by himself like he has for the last decade.

For me however, the enduring image of New Zealand cricket is Gavin Larsen hopping and skipping his way to the crease and the batsman helplessly deadbatting the ball back to him. Not the most glorious image, granted, but for me it typifies all that is great about New Zealand cricket. Palyers doing the most with their, often, limited resources.

Larsen - with my haircut

Being a Wellington boy myself, Gavin Larsen was my hero growing up. So much so that I copied his style from an early age. Not as a bowler or a batsman - my exceptionally limited cricketing skills are beneath the radar even in New Zealand. Instead, I modelled my haircut on him. That’s right, the overly short spiky thing he had going on for most of his career. That was me.

 Larsen was a massive part of the New Zealand one-day side for a decade and did the job that was asked of him very, very well. His reliability with the ball earned him the nickname ‘The Postman’, in the sense that he always delivered. Some less charitable types took his nickname to mean that he actually only delivered on weekdays and sometimes on Saturdays, and this was unfortunate for a cricketer who primarily plays at the weekend.

His main weapon as a bowler was his accuracy. He knew where he wanted to bowl, and the ball went there. Over after over. He got a lot of wickets from batsmen getting frustrated and trying to force the ball. This tactic worked. He ended with over 100 ODI wickets with an economy rate of around 3.5 rpo which was great for the time, and unheard of now. I won’t forget his hundredth wicket, and I suspect he won’t either. At the Basin Reserve – his home ground. The batsman? None other than Sachin Tendulkar. A big wicket for a big achievement.

For some reason, he was never seriously considered as a Test player, competing in just 8 tests during his career. Maybe it was seen that a containment bowler had no place in a New Zealand bowling attack where leaking runs was apparently a requirement. The one-day game changed around him as well. Batsmen started becoming more aggressive (thanks Adam Gilchrist) and towards the end of Larsen’s career his figures did suffer slightly as a result. Whether he would make it in the New Zealand side for a decade in the current climate of Twenty20s and big scoring one-dayers, I’m not sure. What I do know is that he was a very popular player with the Basin faithful and that he was one of the most effective one day bowlers of his generation. Gavin Larsen was a big part of New Zealand’s ODI success through the 90s and his accuracy with the ball made Glenn McGrath look like Heath Davis.

 In preparation for writing this article, I went looking for images of Gavin Larsen to include. I found this:

edibleportland.com

Err. I’ve now got a different defining image of Gavin Larsen than I had.

 You can follow Ken Miller at his blog, The Man in Beige, or on Twitter @ManInBeige

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Portrait courtesy Cricinfo.com

A Good, Ordinary Cricketer

by Balanced Sports columnist Ben Roberts.

Being a Melbourne resident, my football code of choice is Australian rules. I am unsure of its original source, but in commentary on football a phrase used sometimes is to refer to a player as a “Good, Ordinary, Footballer”. While the phrase doesn't leap out at the reader as being esteeming, it probably would mean more to most players than being called a champion. Inherent in the phrase is an understanding that while you may not be overendowed with natural talent, your attitude towards the talent that you do possess is exemplary. Without a doubt your focus always is the betterment of your team. To use the phrase in cricketing context, Daniel Vettori is a “Good, Ordinary, Cricketer”.

The irony is that to think such a player would be interested in personal plaudits such as an article dedicated to them personally rather than their team is counter-intuitive in the least. But Vettori is a, if not 'the', stand-out of New Zealand cricket in the past 10 years, even if he probably wouldn't personally recognise it.

Vettori has carried with him the curiosity of the cricketing world throughout his career. Initially his selection as an 18 year old made him the youngest ever New Zealand test cricketer. Add to this his curly blonde hair and bank clerk spectacles that potentially were not the expected look of a lionhearted competitor. Looks are very often deceiving.

Cricket is a game where players are almost always measured on statistics, and it lends itself exceedingly well to such analysis. But to look at Vettori's statistics sells short his career and what it has achieved and stood for. That being said, Vettori's record is not by any means weak. He has taken 339 wickets in 103 matches at 33, nothing spectacular but certainly not to be ignored.

His batting probably deserves the greater respect. Having begun his test career as a number 11, he has since batted in every position from number 3 down, with 5 centuries and 22 half centuries. Most of his time and his greatest success has been in the lower-middle order. Added to this that for a period of time in the limited overs format he was used as an opener with less success, but indicates the versatility that he brought to the New Zealand cricket team.

Prior to being installed as captain in 2007, Vettori shared the weight of New Zealand cricket on his shoulders with former captain Stephen Fleming, himself also a cricketer of similar ilk. Since 2007 the weight of New Zealand cricket has consistently been carried by Vettori alone. Despite the only spasmodic success of the New Zealand team over the past decade, there have been talented cricketers that have played in the period. However, the vast majority have either elected to neglect the opportunity to represent New Zealand in favour of larger remuneration offshore or have been unwilling to dedicate themselves to the task of international cricket.

It is within this consistently inconsistent state of New Zealand cricket that Vettori has plied his trade as not just a cricketer but in recent years as the captain. At the mercy often of his own team Vettori has continued to lead, attacking the opposition with tactics, and meanwhile not allowed his own performance to decline. Often, however, character is defined by those decisions and actions that do not go to plan and indeed those ones that go awry.

After having defeated England in a one day international early on in Vettori's captaincy tenure, he refused to shake the hands of his opponents. This was in protest against an unsporting decision during play by the English. As a true mark of character, in realising the inappropriate nature of refusal, Vettori was swift in making an apology to his opponents and accepting that he had behaved inappropriately. There were no stage-managed and scripted apologies or deference to social media streams; this apology was of genuine remorse and the evidence of a leader dissatisfied with his own behaviour.

The England captain that day, Paul Collingwood, himself is also a cricketer who is cut from a similar mould to Vettori. He too was direct in his apology for his own behaviour at the conclusion of that spiteful match. Added to Collingwood I can identify two further “Good, Ordinary, Cricketers” of recent history, although there are more, usually going unnoticed. Chaminda Vaas was a solid bowler who held up the other end of Sri Lankan cricket while Muttiah Muralithuran worked his magic, and who went about his job quietly while his captain Arjuna Ranatunga made noise. Shane Watson entered the international cricket scene as the next great all-rounder, but upon his reinvention as an opener his batting and his bowling bears the traits of a cricketer with attention to detail and a willingness to put in his best efforts for the team.

Vettori will most probably end his career as the most capped New Zealand test cricketer and potentially will overtake Sir Richard Hadlee as New Zealand's greatest test wicket taker. But Vettori has given so much more to New Zealand cricket than just his performances. Over his career he has potentially been the only force standing against New Zealand cricket sliding into the uncompetitive abyss. In my opinion, what Vettori has given to New Zealand cricket in leadership and dedication far outstrips any player in Australian cricket since Allan Border – and Vettori probably equals him. Despite clearly a lack of success for New Zealand cricket, I still believe players like Vettori are what great sporting teams are built around.