Putting the boot in
The (free) newsletter that slept in features a complaint from cricket clubland, both footy codes, match fixing and fast cars.
A very quick weekend newsletter that should have been delivered yesterday but, not going to lie, I went for a quick nap yesterday that turned into a deep sleep! Apologies in advance for that sport (including golf) you really think should have been covered but is not…
My heart sank a little when I read that All Black preparations for what is expected to be a wet and windy test centred on their kick-chase game ($).
It makes sense, I guess, but hardly fills me with anticipation.
It’s the prospect of inclement weather that has made an improvement in the kick-chase game the All Blacks’ highest priority this week.
Their kicking accuracy wasn’t too bad in Dunedin, but they were poor at getting an ascribed catcher to challenge for the ball in the air, and they were equally slow to react when there were loose scraps of possession to snaffle.
Scott Robertson said that a big part of the training week has been focused on defending kicks, launching starter plays from them and being more alert to the need to flood the landing zone with bodies to increase the likelihood of a successful retrieval from a tap-back, spilled catch or ricochet.
“The aerial game is critical,” he said. “There are a lot more kicks at training. Starter plays, if it’s scrums or if it’s lineouts, where are you going to receive the ball?
“From kick offs to the air battle – where do your starter plays come from? And a lot come from kicking, and you have to make sure you get your reps in and respect the quality of the kicking from the French. Train the way you are going to play.”
Oh goodie.
Those kick-chase plans have again been disrupted by injury, but at least Caleb Clarke had the good sense to blow a fetlock in training, not knock himself out in the first minute.
My favourite stat of the weekend has to be the fact Beauden Barrett has 74 more caps than the entire French starting XV.
It is worth bearing in mind that this is a sold out double-header. Stuff’s Phillip Rollo helpfully has all you need to know about the Black Ferns’ final World Cup audition, including the late addition of Ruby Tui on the bench.
The fan favourite has been given a World Cup lifeline, called into the squad as injury cover for Ayesha Leti-I’iga, who has been ruled out with a hamstring injury. Tui hasn’t featured for the Black Ferns this year but scored two tries against them in last weekend’s trial.
Across the Tasman, the Lions tour continues to ramp up, though I confess to struggling to connect with it thus far in any meaningful way. Perhaps that all changes this weekend?
Black Ferns v Australia, Wellington, today 4.30pm
All Blacks v France, Wellington, tonight 7.05pm
Anzac XV v Lions, Adelaide, tonight 10pm, all SS1
This league fan has largely disengaged from State of Origin over the past decade and even when I was engaged it was a very mild form because I could not give a figleaf who wins.
Thousands of Kiwis do care though, and Chris Rattue explained to Dana Johannsen the origins of the Origin phenomenon:
“It did suddenly grip people here, there’s no doubt about it,” says Rattue. “What I really remember about those early days was the confrontations, the characters and the controversy. You know, the fights, the violence and the close finishes. It just always seemed to have a lot of drama and controversy. That really hooked people in. Then you had larger than life characters like Wally Lewis, who were just incredible magnets for people.”
This year was the first time in a while I took an active interest in all three games, mostly because Queensland were so dismissively written off. Their series-sealing game three win in Sydney on Wednesday was mighty, with Cameron Munster playing a starring role in the week when his father passed away.
Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying I’ve really taken my eye off the Warriors over the past couple of weeks, but they’re back and could do with a win!
NZ Warriors v Wests, Auckland, tomorrow 4pm, SS1
On Wednesday I spoke of the barriers being put in front of cricket fans (see also note below), and that prompted a long-suffering club volunteer to notify The Bounce of a new “stealth technology fee” that will apply to every registered club cricketer.
A $7.50 fee will be charged to each player every season to support the Australian-owned PlayHQ platform, which NZC adopted ahead of the 2022-23 season.
The transition was disastrous, with several reports of clubs moving back to pen-and-paper scoring, though it was largely dismissed as teething problems by NZC. Like most things of this nature, the initial clamour did die down to a murmur, though this levy has the potential to amplify the noise again.
“It’s not great,” said the source. “We’re now having to tell our parents that they’re paying money for worse technology than they got for free a couple of years ago.”
***
Given my dissatisfaction at the way cricket is being broadcast to the country, this feels so timely. The Guardian’s Tanya Aldred takes on the role of English cricket and writes a letter from 2005 (the last year English cricket was on free-to-air) to cycling, explaining why they’ll never have it so good again as the Tour de France prepares to go behind a paywall.
After England won, there was a huge parade in Trafalgar Square. You won’t believe it but thousands of people turned up, tens of thousands, and more as two double-decker buses crawled along from Mansion House, London hanging out of the window like Melbourne did to Frank Worrell’s Australians in 1961. Then the squad, fat with disbelief and bleary-eyed, were invited to a reception in Downing Street, where they strong-armed Tony Blair into opening some wine. It was magical. And then everything changed.
So wave the bunting and enjoy yourselves over the next three weeks. And don’t worry, the coverage will be wonderful next year – knowledgeable and classy and technically brilliant. It’s just that fewer people will drop by, and those that do won’t be strangers unexpectedly falling in love with the spoke and the wheel as the French countryside rolls by. See you somewhere over the paywall.
Yours affectionately, English (and Welsh) cricket.
The third test is shaping up nicely after a very un-England first two days. It’s not Bazball in the news, but soft balls.
The Dukes balls were at the centre of attention once again as India were unhappy with the replacement ball for the second new ball, incredibly just 10.3 overs into its life on the second morning of the Lord’s Test.
The difference in results was stark. Jasprit Bumrah had wreaked havoc with the original ball, taking three wickets in his first 14 deliveries, but India went the rest of the first session without another wicket despite bowling to England’s Nos 7 and 9. After plenty of remonstrations the ball was changed once again, 48 balls after the first ball change.
Ridiculous.
England v India, 3rd test, Lord’s, tonight-Monday 10pm, ICC.tv
Stuart Broad is an excellent addition to the commentary box with both his insights and well-rounded vowel sounds. With such a plummy accent, it’s easy to forget what an arch-agitator he was, particularly of Australia, and here he is again getting on their nerves — and the Ashes are still months away.
“The Aussie selectors generally get it right and they can't be watching the top three currently in the Caribbean going, ‘That top three is amazing.’ I’m not out of place in thinking it’s the most muddled top three in my lifetime. I’ve grown up with [Matthew] Hayden, [Justin] Langer, [Ricky] Ponting, [David] Warner, [Shane] Watson,” Broad added. “But Usman is struggling. Cameron Green at three, he’s a six, isn’t he? Five or six. Konstas is young and learning his way.”..
Getting under the skin of the Australians was a trademark for Broad as a player, and when asked about the comments batting coach Michael Di Venuto had made about being comfortable with the batting line-up, said dryly: “Oh, that’s good… is he a selector?”
Broad was making those comments from afar, but batting has unquestionably been tricky in the Windies where Australia lead 2-0 on the back of their all-time, three-pronged pace bowling attack. I fear it won’t get any easier under the lights at Sabina Park.
West Indies v Australia, 3rd test, Kingston, tomorrow 6.30am, ESPN
The A-League betting scandal involving White Clayton Lewis was a wild ride, but it looks like it’s a reached a fairly tame conclusion, with the ex-All White and his Macarthur FC teammate Kearyn Baccus pleading “guilty in a Sydney court on Thursday to engaging in conduct that corrupts the betting outcome of an event. A second charge of participating in a criminal group was withdrawn”.
Former Macarthur Bulls captain Ulises Davila and midfielders Baccus and Lewis were charged in May 2024 with manipulating yellow cards during games in 2023 and 2024.
Davila, 33, allegedly acted as the contact between the southwest Sydney club’s players and a criminal group in Colombia, organising for the yellow cards to occur during particular games. Baccus, 33, and Lewis, 27, were allegedly paid up to A$10,000 by Davila to deliberately try to receive the referee-issued cautions for foul play.
Lewis had pleaded not guilty, but reversed his plea to one of the charges after negotiating with prosecutors. He is due to be sentenced in September.
The big news of the motorsport week has been the ousting of Drive to Survive’s pantomime villain Christian Horner as Red Bull team principal (Aiden McLaughlin covers it here for Sportsfreak). It’s juicy in that it’s a political power play and morality tale wrapped up in one — and fans of Liam Lawson will feel few pangs of sympathy after he bladed the Kiwi in unceremonious fashion following two bad weekends.
Clearly the Lawson algorithm still runs strong and while this RNZ headline felt like a low point…
… I’m sure we have some way to go to rock bottom yet. Next week: “Liam Lawson spotted near rich-lister’s superyacht that was once in the background of a Lorde music video.” Or something like that.
Elsewhere, there are Kiwi drivers doing truly remarkable things.
While Spain’s Alex Palou is now a class above in IndyCars, the evergreen Scott Dixon win at Lexington, Kentucky, last weekend kept up a remarkable record of winning at least one race for each of the past 21 seasons.
The win moved him to 59, eight shy of the American legend AJ Foyt’s 67. At 44 years young, Dixon is likely to fall short of the race record, and will probably finish one shy of Foyt’s seven championships, but he is firmly entrenched in second on both lists. Put simply, he has enjoyed a crazy good career.
Crazy good is also a term being used to describe Shane van Gisbergen, who has the Nascar world shook to the point that luminaries such as Kevin Harvick, Dale Earnhardt Jr, Richard Petty and Denny Hamlin are already contemplating the idea that he is the greatest road course/ street circuit racer the organisation has seen.
Here’s a deep dive from the Nascar website investigating that simple question: “Is Shane van Gisbergen already Nascar’s best road-course racer ever?”
With a bunch of his trademark road and/or street courses coming up on the Nascar Cup Series calendar, we had a hunch that Shane van Gisbergen was about to go on a sizzling summer hot streak. But even against those lofty expectations, what SVG has done on the twisty tracks has been shockingly dominant. In addition to winning from the pole by a margin of 16.6 seconds at Mexico City in mid-June, van Gisbergen fended off a crowded field of would-be challengers to once again claim victory from pole position on the streets of Chicago this past Sunday.
SvG last weekend won in Chicago, becoming just the second driver in history to complete a weekend where he started on pole and won both the Xfinity and Cup Series races. It followed his win in the inaugural Mexico City event last month.
This weekend another road course awaits in the predominantly oval-based class.
SvG’s struggles on ovals, which was widely anticipated in his first year in the Cup Series, has prompted some to question changing the rules. The thinking being that a driver/car package that is so poor on ovals shouldn’t be involved in the playoffs by dint of winning on such specialised circuits.
The scary news is, however, that SvG is getting better on ovals and is unlikely to be the pushover his 27th on driver standings suggests he is.
Toyota Savemart 350, Sonoma, Monday 7.30am, ThreeNow
The 'clamour' only died down to a 'murmur' re PlayHQ because everyone was gaslit into accepting it. They can trumpet 'improvements' all they like, but they are merely fixes to prevent the system crashing. Still missing are the things cricket nerds/kids loved such as stat tracking, MVP points, wagon wheels, live DLS par scores, seasonal leaderboards, career stats, milestone tracking etc.
It is genuinely a terrible piece of technology whose progress is glacial at best. Perhaps it was made by the same outfit who made the Sky Sport Now app?
If you want to see how utterly disinterested PlayHQ are in the people their system is inflicted on, have a look at the ‘tile’ for Hockey New Zealand (to open the page for NZ hockey comps)
playhq.com/hockey
It uses a photo of a cricket player.