Who Said Cricket was Boring?

As Richie Benaud and his alter-ego Billy Birmingham have said ad nauseam, it's a funny game, cricket. What other game in the world involves standing round in the blazing sun for 5 days in uncomfortable attire with the possibility that at the end of the match, there won't be a winner? This very fact has been the cause of many a household argument in Australia, as wives simply cannot comprehend how their spouses can stay glued to the television for 5 consecutive days watching a spectacle in which the participants, to the untrained eye, barely seem to move.

The argument usually escalates when the watching of cricket interferes with the moving of heavy objects or other household chores that the lady of the house considers would be a better use of her husband's time. The argument typically ends with the husband reluctantly flicking off the television and shuffling off to resume chores while a shrill voice behind him screams: "How can you watch that boring crap all day?"

I can handle being berated for being a sloth but I do take exception to that last comment. Because to me and millions of other Australians, cricket is patently not boring. While it is true that a lot of test matches turn out to be one-sided, there is nothing quite as gripping as a game that goes deep into the 5th day with the batting side needing to score only a modest total to win but with the pitch wearing fast and starting to keep low and turn sideways. It's in these high pressure situations that legends are made and you learn which teams have the mettle necessary to win the fight. Good examples are the 1992-3 Adelaide test where the West Indies defeated Australia by 1 run despite a gallant rearguard action by the Australian tail and the more recent Ashes test (also in Adelaide) which looked to be headed for a tame draw before a dramatic English collapse handed Australia an unlikely victory.

That said, and despite my enthusiasm for all forms of the game, I regret to say that during parts of last summer, I found myself agreeing with the wives of Australia: the cricket was fairly boring. Still smarting from losing the Ashes, the capable but far from great Australian team wiped the floor with two very poor sides in the West Indies and Pakistan. The Pakistanis in particular were very disappointing. Despite possessing some good young talent, the coaching staff had clearly neglected to teach them even the basics of fielding. I lost count of how many "sitters" went down but the number must have been well into double digits.

As for the Windies, the rise of "Twenty20 Cricket" seems to have polluted the mindset of their team to such an extent that they are now incapable of applying themselves for the full 5 days necessary to win a test match. They would perform convincingly in the odd session here or there but would then squander it in the next with awful shot selection or wayward bowling, which completely released the pressure on the Australians. It's hard to see the South Africans, Indians or even the English performing so poorly, so as a forerunner to next year's Ashes, it was not a very good build up for the Australians.

Off the field, it was the same story - highly tedious. The retirement of Shane Warne has left a huge void in this area. No players were caught trashing schoolkids cameras, there were no texting scandals and no-one was sanctioned for on field sledging or getting plastered in a seedy Kings Cross bar. Also in this era of uber-fitness, David Boon's Melbourne-London benchmark of 44 cans is likely never to be broken. It was if the whole cricketing community had taken a leaf out of Kevin Rudd's book and resolved to bore everyone into submission.

That is, until about 4-5 weeks ago, when cricket once again found itself on the front page. For probably the wrong reasons, granted, but nonetheless at least cricket had become interesting again. First, naked pictures of Michael Clarke's fiance, Lara Bingle, found their way into the public domain, sparking a controversy that eventually ended with Clarke breaking off the relationship. Secondly, John Howard crawled out from under a rock and was nominated by Australia and New Zealand to take over as the ICC president from 2012.

The media circus surrounding "Bingle-gate" was extraordinary. All sorts of people seemed to have something to say on the issue, including politicians, past Australian captains, the head of the AFL and respected cricket writers like Peter Roebuck, who really should have known better than to weigh into such a tawdry debate in the manner in which he did. Reading some of the vitriolic rubbish written about Bingle, you would think she had not only slept with every sportsman in Australia but broke up the Beatles, brought down the Profumo government and generally surpassed the Whore of Babylon as the most notorious scarlet woman in human history. It's easy to forget amongst all the gutter press that the girl is only 22 years old, and who among us could claim not to have made some mistakes with relationships at that age? Gee whiz, Madonna is still doing it and she's way past 50.

I don't know how much of what what written was true, and frankly couldn't care less. The only relevant thing to me arising out of the whole fiasco is how Michael Clarke the cricketer responded. For that, he gets full marks. Fresh from giving Bingle the boot, he flew straight back into a scrum of annoying Kiwi journalists and then proceeded to tear the New Zealand attack apart in the two tests.

It is truly the mark of a great sportsman when you can put aside your personal issues like Clarke did and perform to the best of your ability. Clarke's performance was reminiscent of Warne in the 2005 Ashes when despite going through a divorce, being busted on camera sporting Playboy underwear and a massive inflatable condom and having his more sordid text messages published daily in the local rag, he delivered a series of heroic on-field performances and almost single-handedly retained the Ashes for Australia. As for whether Clarke is better off personally after the whole sordid affair - frankly, that's no-one business but his.

Turning now to the Howard appointment, you have to seriously ask what on Earth the Australian and New Zealand delegates were thinking. I don't dispute that Howard is passionate about cricket; in fact, I would say that his love of the game is matched only by his complete inability to play it. However, I would seriously question his ability to deal appropriately with the ICC nations who have predominantly coloured cricketers - which these days is pretty much everyone except England, Australia and New Zealand.

We have all witnessed first-hand Howard's behaviour while Prime Minister of this country. While too canny a politician to ever promulgate or explicitly adopt racist policies, his conduct over his long tenure as PM would no doubt have raised the eyebrows of even the most ardent Howard apologist. As a great prophet once said, "by their actions you shall know them". Further, as the maxim goes "leopards don't change their spots".

In an era where the game's power base is moving towards the sub-continent and away from England and Australia, what effect will the appointment of someone with Howard's attitudes have on the administration of the game? Is he likely to encourage and promote the massive Twenty20-driven revenue growth coming out of India, which has the potential to underpin the viability of the game worldwide for decades to come? Hardly likely, as that would undermine the position of the game's traditional powers. More probably he will endeavour to frustrate the Indians through measures such as banning overseas players from the IPL and thereby promote the interests of England and Australia. The result will invariably be a divided ICC board, with the likelihood that in-fighting will severely retard the global advancement of the game at a time when it could, instead, be entering a new golden age.

Morally liberated people like Bingle make me wonder while morally repugnant people like Howard make me sad. However, you do have to acknowledge they make life, and cricket, much more interesting.

Take note, Kevin Rudd.

And the Oscar goes to ... "The Hurt Locker". We Hope.

It's Oscar time again, and the suspense is building. Despite a field of reasonable contenders, two films stand out. The first is a big budget fantasy laden with one dimensional characters. It has a hero, a predictable storyline and ultimately ends implausibly but happily and predictably with the meek inheriting the Earth. In fact, whoever wrote the Beatitudes could just about sue for copyright infringement.

The second film, however, is dark, gritty and somewhat violent. It contains many anti-heroes, but no obvious heroes. Like its competitor, the film is long, yet so gripping and suspenseful that the time spent in the cinema passes in a flash. You leave with the feeling that you have witnessed something quite special, but you are not quite sure what that is. It is only much later when you have had time to digest it all that you truly grasp the brilliance of the movie and the genius of the director.

Naturally, given it's a bunch of unadventurous Americans who award the Oscar, the first film wins hands down.

You could easily think I am predicting the outcome of this Sunday's Academy Awards, when James Cameron's 10 foot purple aliens go up against Katherine Bigelow's malediction on the Iraq War. Instead, however, I am recollecting what happened at the 1994 awards, where "Forrest Gump" swept all before it and Quentin Tarantino's brilliant "Pulp Fiction" went largely ignored. History has since proven the Academy's decision to be flawed, as "Pulp Fiction's" influence continues to reverberate around the film industry today, while "Forrest Gump" has proven to be just another forgettable "feel good" movie.

Will history repeat itself? It's entirely possible, as "Avatar" is indeed an impressive visual spectacle - but then so it should be, given the phenomenal budget. However, if the true measure of the worth of a film is the extent to which it leaves an indelible effect on its audience, then "Avatar" plainly should not win. In terms of its plot, characterisation and themes, it constitutes fairy floss next to "Hurt Locker's" meat and potatoes. One hopes that the Academy will recognise this, ignore the James Cameron cheer squad (aka the mainstream press) and award the Oscar to his ex-wife's film.

What was so good about "The Hurt Locker"? War movies are a dime a dozen - let's face it, the way the USA executes foreign policy ensures there is plenty of material to exploit - and most of them are complete rubbish. Some of them are no more than "splatter" movies set against the backdrop of a war, with multiple explosions and one-dimensional villains being the order of the day. Others make the mistake of trying to depict war as a glorious battle of the righteous USA against whoever their current arch enemy is, be that the Vietcong, the Japanese or Saddam Hussein, when any moviegoer with half a brain knows the reality of war is far more complex. (NB- In this vein, I hope the idiots who made "Pearl Harbour" are reading this; then again, I doubt they can actually read. They certainly can't read history books accurately).

The ones that work don't fall into these obvious traps and ensure that the human element of war is squarely in focus and that the main characters are properly developed. This is not to say that the films don't involve plenty of carnage - it is just that the carnage is there to complement the storyline, rather than be the storyline itself.

"The Hurt Locker" certainly fits this category. The film, while not a documentary, is filmed in a documentary-style and centres around the travails of a 3-man US Army bomb disposal team working in Iraq. When the leader of the team is killed by a remotely detonated bomb, he is replaced by a battle-hardened maverick, Sergeant Will James, whose cavalier but highly competent methods immediately create a conflict with the other two members of the team. The action flows thick and fast as the team are confronted with a succession of nerve-jangling situations including expertly concealed bombs, getting caught in a sniper fight in the middle of the Iraqi desert and finding an Iraqi child who had been befriended by James earlier in the film killed and stuffed with explosives during a raid on a warehouse. With each new scene, a caption runs across the bottom of the screen identifying how long the team has to go in its tour of duty and leaves the viewer begging the question: are all of the team going to make it through? As this is clearly not a movie destined for a happy ending, this is far from a certain thing. The team gradually come to appreciate James's considerable skill, but remain wary of his often reckless behaviour and as a result, the built up tension between them simmers beneath the surface before erupting in a drunken barrack room fight one evening.

The climax of the film involves James attempting but failing to save an Iraqi civilian who had been strapped with bombs by his captors. After this incident, the team's tour of duty finishes and we see James trying unsuccessfully to re-adapt to civilian life back in America with his wife and child. The movie ends with James rejoining the war effort for another year long tour, leaving the viewer with the distinct impression that given the events of the last 30 days, James would be very unlikely to survive.

What distinguishes this film from one such as "Avatar" is that the characters are very real and therefore behave in a realistic fashion when confronted with a variety of ghastly situations. As such you find yourself getting under their skin and empathising with them, something that is impossible in "Avatar". Also the main messages of the film, such as the value of maverick operators in otherwise regimented armies, the futility of fighting a campaign such as Iraq using conventional warfare and the issues faced by war veterans trying to reintegrate into normal society, while clearly evident, are not rammed down your throat like they are in "Avatar". Instead of feeding you mind candy, the "The Hurt Locker" aims like all good cinema to provoke, shock and most importantly, get you to think about its subject matter and themes.

I was impressed enough to rank it second behind "Das Boot" in my list of favourite war movies. Other worthy films, in no particular order, include "Full Metal Jacket", "Platoon", "Apocalypse Now", "Bridge on the River Kwai", "Gallipoli", "Memphis Belle" and "The Deer Hunter".

Let's hope the Academy agrees. Filmmakers ought to be encouraged to make original, thought-provoking films like "Pulp Fiction" and "The Hurt Locker", and apart from a killing at the box office, what better encouragement is there than an Oscar? While it's a big ask to knock off a contender with a $230 million budget to spend on the production, hopefully the judges see past the whizz-bang special effects and look to the underlying quality of the movie. At that level, it really is no contest. "The Hurt Locker" by a mile. Check it out if you haven't already.