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Cricket
- Thread starter mb64
- Start date
Who could forget all the great Tasmanian bowlers, like Ricky Ponting's Uncle.It’s a futile exercise anyway because we don’t have any Tasmanians.
Take a walk through Fawkner Park next Saturday afternoon.
But they could beat us both here and there ?
On a more serious note, I’ve never been to India (except Bombay International airport as a kid on the way to London - that was an experience in itself) but is it true that besides the heat (which often isn’t any worse than Australia) and dead wickets, that dealing with the humidity and smell coming off the streets in some cities is as hard to deal with as anything ?
Think I remember reading that from an Australian cricketer or two.
Is that right ?
True. I drive through some heavily populated Indian suburbs regularly. I often stop and do some shopping. It’s quite cool. I find Indians here quite friendly and jocular. That’s my experience anyway…
I’ve spoke to an Aussie Test bowler that was on the periphery and he reckons its exhausting humidity, makes you want to sleep after being outside for 30 minutes and even worse in the sun. The players drink that many liquids to replace what’s been lost, they are all up half the night peeing and therefore don’t get the quality sleep. But if they don’t drink the required amount they don’t recover well. Vicious cycle. And the smell would linger in your nostrils and come out of your skin for a week after coming home. Would be better now but in 60’s-mid 90’s it would have been so hard.
I've worked with many including Sri Lankans in the office. Always friendly....and funny at times.
Yep. Let's not forget what happened to the late and great Deano.
I think it might have been him I was reading or watched and he said the smell in the air was unbearable. Could be wrong. It was a while ago. I seem to recall him saying he was crook leading up to that innings, but it was the smell in the air and suffocating humidity with it that he couldn’t handle (or did ultimately handle) during that legendary innings.
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Yep, along with the heat.
I can't stand humidity in Melbourne.....geez....imagine I went to India or China etc... Never bothered going to Qld either.
No comparison between the worst Indian heat and what we get over here.
Places like Kolkata and Chennai are just brutal and days in Rajasthan would regularly be in the mid 40s.
The big difference for me is it seems to be able to capture the worst of all heat, it has that sitting in an oven feel of a hot day in Adelaide or Melbourne, but also the stifling thick humid air of Queensland.
The other difference here is you rarely get a test match where every day is brutally hot. You'll get one or two or three but then it will break. Over there you would get months where the average temp was 37 so the test will be 5 straight days of unbearable heat.
Scoop is spot on, a big sweater like Brett Lee would drop up to 10kg in a day in the field and when you get to that level it is bloody hard to hydrate. There's only so much water and gatorade you can drink before you start feeling physically sick of it so we'd be getting coke or lemonade or mineral water or anything they could stomach just to get some fluid in. Not a nice place to be when you tell the boys to avoid having a beer until their fluid levels got up again either.
The only way to really recover was after the game when you could go intravenously and that would still be a 2 or 3 day process. It really is a miracle that Dean Jones didn't die after that 200. They basically just gave him a beer and said drink it slowly.
They tend to play touring teams at this time of year which is a bit cooler but the IPL cops the worst, which is March to May. Even at night those games are regularly played in high 30 degrees and the humidity at night is bloody awful.
The smell is less of an issue now, most of the stadiums have good infrastructure around them but you certainly get a few good sucks on open sewer waft as you travel around. For a lot of people the toilet is the gutter and the gutter has no infrastructure anyway so it's pretty brutal, especially in the heat.
Latest one was an Indian in my last job who felt pissed off he wasn't in the conversation when myself and 2 managers (one was Scumwood fan and the other a Bummer fan) chatted about footy nearly every day. He felt left out and was funny to watch how he 'tried' to understand what we were talking about.
Interesting. De Castella used to have a couple of beers after a marathon as well.
That's half the trouble with the insta gratification world we live in now. Everything has to be attack and excitement right from the first minute. No such thing as spending an hour or so just getting settled n reading what the pitch and the bowlers are doing, then picking and choosing which balls to go after and which balls to present the wall at It's all well and good to be able to get your hundred in a session or two on a pedestrian track, as soon as things get tough n dicey there's very few got the temperament n technique to graft through a session never mind a whole day. Even five day Test matches are too much like hard work these days. Charge in flail away n hopefully the game will be over in three days n they can all go n play golf.
The beauty of that is he didn't have to run the next day or anytime soon.
I reckon I had the same conversation after every day of cricket in India with the Aussies.
'I can't drink anymore water/gatorade/cordial I'm sick of it.'
'What would you like then?'
'A beer'.
'Can't have a beer until we get your fluids up a bit, it will dehydrate you more.'
'*smile* you I'll drink *smile* water then'.
The exception was Warne who would just drink Midori and Lemonade while having a smoke and eat a bowl of vanilla Ice Cream as 'hydration', no ifs or buts considered.
