We Just Enjoy Life

I saw this beautiful little film last night and was

What He Said

Here's someone else talking about tennis, far more eloquently than me (it's a great article, but I particularly like the phrase, "Roger is so cool and frictionless", which refers, of course, to Federer; and the description of Nadal's forehand: "you know, the one where he swoops the racket all the way around his head like he's whipping the team pulling his chariot.")

I didn't know which player I wanted to win in the Djokovic-Nadal Australian Open final - Nadal is the one I had a soft spot for, but I couldn't help admiring Djokovic's self-discipline and the apparent disappearance of some of his earlier more unattractive mannerisms. However, after seeing Djokovic tear off his shirt and strut about in victory, I knew Nadal would remain my favorite. In the article I've linked to above, Brian Phillips mounts a convincing case for why.

One other admirable thing about Nadal is that, apparently - I'm relying on a Twitter source for this one - he used to be a right-handed player but, having damaged his shoulder, he taught himself to be left-handed. Now that takes guts, if true.

So yes, to put it in a nutshell: after all these years, I'm once again experiencing the sensation I had when the Beatles arrived upon the scene, (and yes, I am a Tintin/Beatles wimpy kind of person, not an Asterix/Rolling Stones cool individual, but that was probably obvious already). Once again I'm enjoying understanding just what it's like to be a fan.

My Favourite Reality TV

According to the New Yorker,  researchers at the National Institute of Health have discovered that "diazepam - more commonly known as valium - has no discernible effect on anxiety unless a person knows he is taking it."

I read this odd little piece of information just after I'd written about the steps I climb most days and the odd fact that, were I to encounter them at a different point on my walk, I might find them very much harder to bear. Shortly afterwards, I heard Ricky Ponting say this, in answer to a question about his long period of poor performance on the cricket pitch:

"It's amazing when you're going through a lean trot, how many little things creep into your head and get in the way of what you're trying to do."

"How strange a thing is the human mind," I thought, "sometimes it is unable to recognise that a chemical is at work on it, unless it is told that that is what is happening; in certain circumstances it is happy to put up with something that at other times it would find unendurable; if not watched carefully, it is more than capable of undermining a considerable talent like Ricky Ponting's with creeping, slithering, self-perpetuating fears ."

Then came the annual feast of wall-to-wall tennis that is the lead up to, and then the actual, Australian Open. We saw Samantha Stosur, (who, in beating Serena Williams to win the US Open, proved she knows all there is to know about technique, when it comes to playing tennis), lose a "battle with mental demons", as one newspaper put it.  Despite facing a far less daunting physical opponent than Serena Williams, she went down 6-2, 6-4. The only explanation she could offer was this:

"I think the whole emotional side of things really took over today ... I certainly didn't handle that side of things at all well."

Ponting, I suspect, would understand.

A week or two later, we saw Kim Clijsters damage her ankle during her fourth round match against Li Na but continue playing, eventually prevailing, despite considerable pain. This is how the Australian reported her triumph:

'"I have no idea how I won," Clijsters said ...The drama began when Clijsters went over on her left ankle, serving at 30-30 and 3-3 in the first set. Incredibly she got off the floor and finished the point after her ankle gave way. Most thought she would be lucky to see out the set as the WTA trainer applied three layers of different tape to support the ankle. Clijsters also gulped down two painkillers. "It definitely crossed my mind a couple of times," Clijsters said referring to thoughts of retirement at that stage. "But I knew if I could just try to kind of let the medication sink in or, if I could get through the first 20 minutes, half hour, you know, I think the pain would go away a little bit ... and I did and I'm happy that I didn't give up."'

Even more spectacularly, a few days after that Lleyton Hewitt came from being ranked 181 on the eve of the open, only allowed in on a wildcard, to reaching the fourth round where he gave Novak Djokovic, the world number one, a reasonable run for his money, despite being riddled with injury.

"A couple of months ago I didn't know if I would be able to play," Hewitt was quoted as saying, again in the Australian, which went on to report that the player has 'more crook joints than Dodge City...Wonky hips, knee and toe have required five significant surgeries" (and I have also read that one of his toes no longer has any cartilage and causes him  constant pain).

It is this that makes me love watching tennis - the way it reveals so starkly the influence of the mind. For the successful players are not the ones who possess physical skill alone but those who also embody a tough unneurotic sense of endurance, an untiring persistence which carries them through to either win or at least to have the tenacity to return again to the arena following defeat.   It is the only sport I know where what you come to see is not only a physical battle but also a test of an individual's mental strength. Out there, alone on the court, the scene is almost gladiatorial -  the two combatants pit themselves against each other, and the skills they need are often more to do with mental state than technical or physical prowess. They have to conquer their opponent's merciless backhand, but they must also overcome the little things Ponting described that 'creep into your head'.

And that  is why I believe that telecasts of live tennis tournaments are the only true reality TV. While in theory Big Brother reveals a lot about human nature, relaying what happens when random people are forced to coexist, what it presents is actually a fair way from the truth. In reality, (as opposed to reality TV reality), crafty editors transform the events in the 'Big Brother household' into a kind of unscripted fiction; they shape our understanding of the personalities involved and allow us to see only a fraction of what really takes place.

On the tennis court, by contrast, there is no opportunity for manipulation. Nothing can be edited out. What is presented to viewers is as close as it can be to an unfiltered record of what is actually happening. The struggle between two individuals unfolds before us, and in the few hours it takes to reach a conclusion we see more real human behaviour than in months of what is designated as 'reality tv'. Instead of false emotional crescendoes, manufactured through tampering with the flow of scenes, we witness displays of ambition, fear, tenacity or ingrained pessimism, as each player's true nature is revealed. The way each one masters or lets their emotions get the better of them makes all the difference to the outcome. The power of the mind is vividly on display.

As a result, the game often delivers huge surprises. For example, halfway through the match between Birdych and Nadal, it seemed certain that Birdych would overcome the Spaniard, who seemed to have no answer to the other man's relentless aces. However, somehow, as we watched, Nadal found reserves of energy and hope and intelligence, and eventually, largely through pure determination, managed to win through.

Similarly, I remember sitting through that long and astonishing Wimbledon final between Federer and Roddick some years ago, a match which Federer won, seemingly entirely by dint of being determined to do so, despite at moments looking as though he had not a single chance (and, incidentally, the most disappointing thing about that game was the fact that, although we were given long interviews with the victor, we had no chance to hear Roddick's side of the story - I would love to have been given some insights into what it felt like to have fought so hard and come so tantalisingly close to victory and then to have had it slip from your hands).

Even the extraordinary struggle that took place between Djokovic and Nadal on Sunday evening, in which the  power seemed to move almost tidally between the two of them, may ultimately have come down to psychology rather than technique. After all, according to the commentators, this was Nadal's response to a question after the US Open about whether Djokovic had somehow psychologically mesmerised him:

"You all know, I know, he knows, that he has got inside my head."


Could the thing finally have come down to this one factor - a mental chink of weakness, of lack of self-belief that dictated from the first moment that Nadal was heading for defeat?

Of course, there is always the criticism that this is all nonsense, that tennis is merely a few silly - or greedy - people running about hitting a round thing with a an odd shaped loop that's been threaded with strings. While that's true on one level, I still think the game represents more than that. Patrick Smith, a journalist at the Australian, appears to agree with me when he speculates about whether we can learn from Lleyton Hewitt's example on the tennis court:


"Have you ever thought what our lives might have been, or might be, if we were Little Lleyton? Not our tennis game, forget the lob and the volley, but our lives themselves ...It doesn't matter what we do, how we make a quid, run the household or maybe play the piano. Journo, accountant, carpenter, musician, mother, partner. Whatever. If Little Lleyton was the voice inside our head there would not be one part of our endeavours that was not pushed, probed, stretched or pulled apart to see if one more morsel of success could not be unlocked ... If all of us chased our dreams with the commitment Hewitt practises, prepares and plays his tennis, we might write a better story, build a better house, play a better tune."

I can't add a thing to that except, 'Roll on Wimbledon.'

All Things Must Pass

Cup Day

What else could you post on Melbourne Cup Day but Peter Porter's poem about Phar Lap? Especially now we know that So You Think will not be joining Phar Lap on his pedestal just yet.

"Phar Lap in the Melbourne Museum

A masterpiece of the taxidermist's art,
Australia's top patrician stares
Gravely ahead at crowded emptiness.
As if alive, the lustre of dead hairs,
Lozenged liquid eyes, black nostrils
Gently flared, otter-satin coat declares
That death cannot visit in this thin perfection.

The democratic hero full of guile,
Noble, handsome, gentle Houyhnhnm
(In both Paddock and St Leger difference is
Lost in the welter of money) - to see him win
Men sold farms, rode miles in floods,
Stole money, locked up wives, shomehow got in:
First away, he led the field and easily won.

It was his simple excellence to be best,
Tough men owned him, their minds beset
By stakes, bookies' doubles, crooked jocks.
He soon becaome a byword, public asset,
A horse with a nation's soul upon his back -
Australia's Ark of the Covenant, set
Before the people, perfect, loved like God.

And like God to be betrayed by friends.
Sent to America, he died of poisoned food.
In Australia children cried to hear the news
(This Prince of Orange knew no bad or good).
It was, as people knew, a plot of life:
To live in strength, to excel and die too soon,
So they drained his body and they stuffed his skin.

Twenty years later on Sunday afternoons
You still can't see him for the rubbing crowds.
He shares with Bradman and Ned Kelly some
Of the dirty jokes you still can't say out loud.
It is Australian innocence to love
The naturally excessive and be proud
Of a thoroughbred bay gelding who ran fast."

Do Keep Up London

I was glad to hear that there is going to be a Radio 4 series, written by Ian Hislop, having a stab at making a few jokes at the expense of the coming UK Olympic Games. It's about time. After all the British are supposed to be the ones with the sense of humour, but so far very little opportunity has been taken to make fun of the coming event.

Before our Olympics, many people here thought the whole thing was going to be an utter embarrassment. Reflecting that mood, we had a wonderful series called The Games, involving John Clarke, Brian Dawe and Gina Riley:












Of course, during the actual proceedings, we had Roy and HG's superlative commentary, served up in The Dream:













And huge thanks to Brit, who, despite disapproving of Australian humour, provided invaluable technical expertise.

Retirement Plans

The sports news usually washes over me, a blur of groin strains and bruised hamstrings, but yesterday there was a gem hidden in the sweaty mess. Some man who plays some sport had decided to retire. When asked why, he said, 'I want to be the dog that's got his head out the car window and the warm air blowing in his face.'

Bradman Museum

Yesterday, on the way back from a trip to Sydney, I broke the journey with a visit to the Don Bradman Museum in Bowral. I love Australian country towns, and Bowral is one of the nicest - and certainly one of the most affluent. It is a leafy place with lots of spacious early 20th century houses - deep verandahs, ornamental woodwork, pretty roof finials et cetera - set in large gardens.

Don Bradman is the town's favourite son,(although if we're being pedantic, [and when have I ever resisted?] Cootamundra shares the honours, since the future cricketer was actually born and spent the first three years of his life in that town.) Still, it was in Bowral that Bradman learned to play the sport in which, according to Frank Keating, the Guardian newspaper's sports columnist he remains "history's untouchable, unarguable champ of champs."

The museum has been built beside what is now called the Bradman Oval and the first thing you see on your way in is a statue of Don Bradman at the end of a 'Commemorative Water Feature' which John Howard opened in 1996 by bowling the first coin into it. Judging by the accuracy of Mr Howard's only other recorded bowling efforts that coin almost certainly did not reach its target but is probably now somewhere in the surrounding bush. (While on the subject of politicians and Bradman, didn't John Hewson nominate Don Bradman as one of the dead heroes he would like to have at a dinner party, only to be telephoned by the man himself, who pointed out that he had not actually expired? [although he has since.])

The museum is divided into a gallery dealing with the history of the game of cricket, another gallery looking at the history of the Ashes and the cricketing rivalry between England and Australia and, upstairs, a gallery devoted to Bradman himself.

I went in knowing nothing about cricket. I picked up a lot of information, most of which presumably everyone else interested in the game is already aware of, but I'm so proud of how much I learned that I'm going to list it anyway:

1. It is thought cricket was first played by shepherds and the word comes from the Anglo Saxon word 'cricce', meaning crooked staff.
2. Wicket supposedly comes from the Anglo Saxon word 'wican', to give way (can't quite follow the logic there, but that's what it says at the museum)
3. Bail may come from the word Baile, which was something used to secure a wicket gate.
4. The earliest reference to the game was to 'Craiget' in 1300
5. The first certain reference to the game was on 16 January 1598 when one John Derrick wrote that at the free school of Guildford 'several fellows did ... play there at Kricket.'
6. The first known women's cricket match was in 1745 (there is a picture in the Bradman museum of the Countess of Derby and her friends playing a sedate-looking game in Surrey in 1779)
7. The first balls were small rounded stones.
8. Bowling used to be underarm along the ground and overarm bowling was only legalised in 1864 and not in general use until 1885
9. In early games one batsman defended a hole and the bowler rolled the ball from 9 yards away. In the 1680s the distance the bowler stood was increased to 22 yards and then it was decided he would therefore need a marker so two sticks each 12 inches high and 28 inches apart were put beside the hole. The third stump was introduced in 1775. At this stage, it appears that cricket was really a peculiar kind of golf.
10. The urn the ashes are kept in was presented to Ivo Bligh, the English captain on the 1882-83 tour, by two women in Melbourne and is thought to have been a women's scent bottle.

That is the extent of the possibly obscure facts I picked up from my visit. However, I also found out about the all Aboriginal XI, of whom I'd been vaguely aware before. It turns out they came from the Western District of Victoria and were trained by a former English first class player called Tom Wills. They played against their local team very successfully and then in 1866 at the Melbourne Cricket Club in front of 8,000 people. Another English player, Charles Lawrence, who toured Victoria with the first all England XI became interested in the financial possibilities of touring an all Aboriginal XI and organised a tour for them through Australia and England in 1867, which ended up getting no further than Sydney due to money problems and the fact that four team members died (why? how? such a sad fact is left unexplained, but one of them, I suspect, since his name doesn't appear in the subsequent line up was the team member with the rather surprising [to modern eyes at least] name Tarpot). In 1868 another tour was organised and a team sailed from Sydney on 8 February 1868. While in England, the team played 47 matches in 15 counties, (won 14, lost 14, drew the rest). They only had 11 fit players as two were sent home sick and the handsome figure on the left of the photograph of the 1867 team, King Cole, died of TB (and is buried somewhere in Tower Hamlets - I think I will make a point of going to find his grave next time I'm over). They played on 99 days out of the 126 they were on tour and six of them ended up playing more than 45 of the matches.

The museum has so many exhibits in its history section that I cannot list them all here. My favourites though were Victor Trumper's gloves - he didn't normally wear gloves to play but had to during the 1902 tour to England because the conditions were so wet (good old English weather).

No judgment is expressed on Bodyline, but there is footage showing Larwood in action in Adelaide. For me the images looked more like the television coverage of the Redshirt barricades in Bangkok than anything to do with the game of cricket. There is also a recording of Don Bradman saying that during that time each Australian player thought it 'beneath his dignity to speak to an Englishman and vice versa.' However, it is also pointed out that when Larwood was playing in Sydney, following the incidents in Adelaide, he got a standing ovation for scoring 98 runs in 138 minutes. It was the last Test Larwood ever played in and, having broken down in the 11th over of the second innings and then been forced by Jardine to keep going, he stood at the stumps in pain and bowled to Woodfull who patted them back, even though Larwood had whacked him full in the chest with a ball in Adelaide. Larwood ended up migrating to Australia. Frank Keating writes movingly about that here .

There have been some half-hearted attempts to dismantle the legend of Bradman recently (his post-cricket business dealings have been raked over and claims have been made of some possible lack of probity.) That's as may be, but in the sphere in which he excelled Bradman remains a magnificent figure. In the upstairs gallery, his interest in the game is traced from its beginning and there is also a replica of the water tank Bradman first practised against in his youth. A stick and a ball are supplied so that visitors can have a bash themselves. My favourites among the exhibits in this section were a) a photograph of a very awkward looking scene, showing Bradman sitting up in bed in his pyjamas on the day his knighthood was announced, being congratulated by a trio of men in three-piece suits who he clearly wasn't expecting and b) a letter he wrote at about the age of 18 reluctantly turning down the first offer he was given of a place in a Sydney team. In neat, flowing handwriting, he thanks the man involved for his help and thoughtfulness and explains that he doesn't have enough money to pay for the travel costs from Bowral to Sydney that the offer would entail. He doesn't complain about this. He seems merely apologetic, commenting that he had never imagined that this would be a difficulty, in a tone that suggests he feels he has messed people around. It is his undemanding modesty that is so striking. How the world of sport has changed.