Meckiff conspiracy ?

I still don’t have any idea or plan on what shape this blog will take. One of the options is to link to the better threads or articles from cricket forum, and possibly comment on them.

For now, Martin Chandler inspects the circumstances of  Ian Meckiff’s noballing at Brisbane, 1963-64 in cricketweb.net.

The question remains then as to whether the events of that Saturday in December 1963 were part of a plan, carefully hatched, to demonstrate that Australia was taking the lead in ridding the game of the curse of unfair bowling. The accusation was that the Australian Board, their selectors, their captain and their umpires had conspired to achieve this and that Ian Meckiff was the man who would pay the price.

In this writer’s opinion the only reason that there is a conspiracy theory at all is because the Board, the selectors, Benaud and the umpires did not bother to meet in advance of the selector’s decision in order to resolve an issue which, it must have been obvious to all, was going to cause controversy one way or another before the season was out. Adding to that failure the shabby treatment of a genuinely popular sportsman, and the loose cannon that was the good Alderman, and it is hardly surprising that a very straightforward set of facts were manipulated in various ways in the weeks, months and years that followed.

http://www.cricketweb.net/blog/features/154.php

Cricket in Finnegans Wake

A mention by Gideon Haigh in his Cricinfo article on Ranjitsinhji made me look up Finnegans Wake. Turns out that James Joyce wrote much more on cricket.

But the tarrant’s brand on his hottoweyt brow. At half past quick in the morning. And her lamp was all askew and a trumbly wick-in-her, ringeysingey. She had to spofforth, she had to kicker, too thick of the wick of her pixy’s loomph, wide lickering jessup the smooky shiminey. And her duffed coverpoint of a wickedy batter, whenever she druv behind her stumps for a tyddlesly wink through his tunnilclefft bagslops after the rising bounder’s yorkers, as he studd and stoddard and trutted and trumpered, to see had lordherry‘s blackham‘s red bobby abbels, it tickled her innings to consort pitch at kicksolock in the morm. Tipatonguing him on in her pigeony linguish, with a flick at the bails for lubrication, to scorch her faster, faster. Ye hek, ye hok, ye hucky hiremonger! Magrath he’s my pegger, he is, for bricking up all my old kent road. He’ll win your toss, flog your old tom’s bowling and I darr ye, barrackybuller, to break his duck! He’s posh. I lob him. We’re parring all Oogster till the empsyseas run googlie. Declare to ashes and teste his metch! Three for two will do for me and he for thee and she for you. Goeasyosey, for the grace of the fields, or hooley pooley, cuppy, we’ll both be bye and by caught in the slips for fear he’d tyre and burst his dunlops and waken her bornybarnies making his boobybabies. The game old merri-mynn, square to leg, with his lolleywide towelhat and his hobbsy socks and his wisden‘s bosse and his norsery pinafore and his gentleman’s grip and his playaboy’s plunge and his flannelly feelyfooling, treading her hump and hambledown like a maiden wellheld, ovalled over, with her crease where the pads of her punishments ought to be by womanish rights when, keek, the hen in the doran’s shantyqueer began in a kikkery key to laugh it off, yeigh, yeigh, neigh, neigh, the way she was wuck to doodle-doo by her gallows bird (how’s that? Noball, he carries his bat!) nine hundred and dirty too not out, at all times long past conquering cock of the morgans.

Where there are multiple players, I have linked the mostly likely name.  Don’t know who the Magrath and some others are.

If any of the above makes sense, do let me know.

Thanks to finwake.com for the text of  that very entertaining work.

Update :  I  read somewhere that 31 cricketers are referred to in Finnegans Wake.  So there is still more work to do.

Bankrupt WICB

JS Barker writes in Summer Spectacular, his 1963 book on the West Indies tour of England that year about the troubles in getting the team together.  The team was selected seven months before the tour, at which point one player was in Japan (Conrad Hunte), two were in Australia (Sobers and Hall) and some in England.

.. the geographical separation of one territory from another by hundreds and thousands of miles of ocean does pose tremendous, and unique problems to the administrators of West Indian cricket, particularly since the West Indian board exists in a permanent state of chronic bankruptcy.

I felt mildly surprised by the last few words.  Don’t know why.