Why Batsmen Don't Walk Anymore

These days, it’s considered old-school for a batsman who edges a ball through to the keeper to simply walk off without waiting for the umpire’s decision. “Walking” used to be considered the gentlemanly thing to do. So why has it disappeared from pretty much all levels of cricket?

There have been a few much discussed incidents at international level. Andrew Symonds being “caught behind” on 30 and then going on to score 162 no against India is one which comes to mind. Opinion was divided. Those supporting him argued that Australia had poor decisions go against them, so why not get one back?

In contrast, I can remember Doug Walters’ character being assailed in the mid 1970’s when he allegedly didn’t walk on a much thinner edge. He denied hitting it at all.

Today, in the Australia vs Sri Lanka test, Mahela Jayawardene asked for Michael Clarke’s claimed catch to be referred to the TV umpire. There was no way he was walking until it was independently verified that the ball had not hit the ground before it went into Clarke’s hands. Most people thought this fair: what’s the TV umpire for if not to adjudicate based on objective evidence?

One explanation proffered for why professional cricketers no longer walk is that they are professionals. At international or provincial level, a cricket "career" means the same thing as it used to in terms of statistics, but now there is another dimension: money. You’re paid to score runs and win matches. If you don’t produce consistent results, you’ll be dropped and you’ll lose your livelihood.

Playing elite sport is a job. Cricket is no exception. In fact, elite cricketers’ earnings began to rise with the advent of World Series Cricket in the late 70's. Not only have their base salaries greatly increased as they secured a greater share of television rights, for the most popular players, advertising endorsements now provide even more income than they receive from playing actual matches.

According to the Courier Mail, in 2007, Australian captain Ricky Ponting was on a base contract of $800,000 and in form opener Matthew Hayden was on $650,000. Adding in endorsements, Ponting, Hayden and Brett Lee were estimated to each earn over $2M per year.

In 2006, players in the English test squad had base contracts of £300,000.

Even Australian state cricketers have contracts worth $25,000 - $50,000 p.a.

That’s a lot of income at risk if you’re out of form, have had a couple of bad decisions, then get a faint edge. But is keeping your job sufficient to explain not walking at elite level?

No. If the rest of the population still thought walking was the right thing to do, proven non-walkers would lose advertising endorsements and possibly even be fined for “bringing the game into disrepute”.

But this never happens. We rarely, if ever even hear former cricketers say: “He should have walked. That wasn’t right. Someone should have a word with him about sportsmanship”.

In fact, walking is rare at grade or even park cricket level, unless it’s a blatant edge which can be heard from the boundary … and sometimes not even then.

If it’s rare to walk at any level, retention of employment can’t be the sole explanation for the change. To say that winning per se has become more important than how the game is played is not an explanation because this is a symptom rather than a cause. Such an attitude definitely exists more now than it used to, but there must be some cause which initiated and then supported this change.

Did the change trickle down from elite level, or was it a change in general attitudes which is now so established that elite cricketers have grown up with the new mores?

I suspect it was originally the former and now it’s the latter. Cricketers took cues from their role models and now take them from their peers.

Look at Tony Greig’s run out of Alvin Kallicharran in 1974. That was well before cricketers’ pay or prize money could justify such an action (if ever it could be). Such behaviour would never have been contemplated in a club game at that time. It represented a change in attitude toward winning at all costs by some at the elite level. Tony Greig, always a complete prick, was one of its pioneers.

The Indians recently tried to pull the same stunt on England’s Ian Bell.

Commensurate with the decline in "walking" is the increase in highly speculative and often outrightly dishonest appealing. Umpires will make some bad decisions and the more appeals they get, the more bad decisions they will make. Why would a batsman previously given out LBW from a thick edge onto the pad or caught behind from a ball they were nowhere near, now walk on a thin edge?

I don’t walk for precisely this reason. I’ve been given out LBW to an overly enthusiastic appeal on the last ball of the day from a clear inside edge onto the pad, then had the opposing captain say to me: "You were a bit unlucky there, mate" as we were walking off. No shame about it. "Fuck off!" I said.

I’ve also played matches without official umpires (the batting side does it) and the cheating here is appalling. I’ve had LBW appeals turned down where the batsman has padded up to a ball which would clearly have hit the stumps.

It’s usually the same people who make blatantly dishonest appeals who whinge the loudest if you don’t walk. The batsman’s typical response is: "When I stop getting crap decisions from bullshit appeals, I’ll start walking."

Let’s also not pretend there aren’t cultural factors involved. Plenty of test cricketers from all nations have been fined for excessive appealing in tense situations, but anyone who has umpired or played against a team of subcontinental players knows they are by far the most prolific and blatant offenders. They only care about the result, not how it was obtained. When you look at the corruption in their societies, you can see where the attitude comes from.

I play with a few teammates of Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan origin and they freely discuss what every cricketer knows: If you play a team consisting entirely of curries, expect a lot of cheating. Our guys rip into them in Hindi. It’s hilarious to watch.

No-one is trying to pretend that white players don’t cheat.

Here’s a summary of 10 controversial test cricket dismissals. Only 3 are absolutely beyond the pale cheating: Carl Hooper’s run out of Dean Jones, Tony Greig’s even more disgraceful run out of Alvin Kallicharran and the worst in history, the slimy Sarfraz Nawaz’s appeal against Andrew Hilditch for handled ball.

The offenders: A white South African émigré, a West Indian and a Pakistani.

What I’m saying is what every player has experienced: there is in general more frequent and more shameless cheating from subcontinental teams.

It’s not their DNA which causes it: it’s culture. Interestingly, you don’t see the same level of cheating in culturally mixed teams.

A culture in which transgression is principally understood externally via shame rather than internally via guilt is far more likely to lead to cheating in group situations where responsibility can be diffused and shame is not felt due to the support of colleagues.

One team cheating can make the other cheat in response. Teams who “confidently” appeal for anything will cause the opposition to not walk even for thick edges, as well as make speculative appeals themselves, although one needs use psychology to temper the latter to the disposition of the umpire, who is generally looking to give you a few LBWs to punish a team of shifty pricks.

In summary, a batsman has to deal with dodgy appealing, poor umpiring decisions, and regularly playing against a bunch of shifty, often mouthy pricks who would never walk themselves. Add to that the financial incentive at elite level. Why would you ever walk?

Corporate Clowns Blow $150M Of Other People's Money

The title says it all. How is it possible for VERY well paid, VERY senior people to sign off on a $150M loan which is provisioned only 5 weeks later? That’s what happened when CBA and NAB lent $150M to UK listed company Healthcare Locums.

A loan of this size written by banks as large as CBA and NAB would not require board approval, but it would almost certainly need approval from the executive committee, which would normally contain the head of credit and the chief risk officer. These people are on high six figure salaries, with big bonuses. In return, shareholders should quite reasonably expect competence in their specific area of alleged expertise.

Statistical credit risk models can only work well if the balance sheet and P & L information they are given is true. Competent humans need to look carefully over board minutes, audit reports and ongoing business activities of the counterparty to ensure the accounts are a correct representation of the state of the business.

Equally important in a credit assessment are criterion scored assessments of behavioural factors such as the quality and experience of management, budgeting and financial reporting and risk management strategies. Shareholders expect that for a $150M loan, these assessments would be overseen by senior credit and risk people.

There doesn’t appear to have been any such competent human oversight in this case. Healthcare Locums had recently spent $10 million buying a business whose auditors refused to sign off on its books. How could this not have been picked up?

How could the “aggressive accounting practices regarding revenue recognition and extremely poor levels of corporate governance” which surfaced barely one month after the loan was signed off not have been found by competent, senior credit staff?

One possible explanation is the corporate lending unit riding over the top of risk management in order to push the deal through. I’m not saying that happened in this case, but I’ve seen it before. It should be particularly alarming for shareholders if the lending areas of these banks have once again gotten the upper hand over risk management, given the current credit and economic climate.

It’s all very well to claim ''bank advisers crawled all over the transaction'' and “bank executives were shocked by what followed”. The first statement sounds like typical corporate, arse-covering bullshit and the second like damning evidence of gross incompetence.

But I’ll bet no-one loses their job over this. They should.

I'm not holding any CBA or NAB at the moment, but I often do. Were I a shareholder, I would expect the people who signed off on this transaction to be sacked.

The thing that really makes people angry when they read this is that many of the hopeless twats who signed off on the deal are paid huge salaries and bonuses compared to most: 5 to 10 times the average wage.

For this, they appear to have blown at least half of the $150M of shareholders’ money. The recovery rate won’t be great: what’s the collateral? That’s our super you clowns are pissing up against a wall.

Even worse is how conceited a lot of these people are; the air of entitlement they have. Entitlement to their excessive salaries, entitlement to bonuses utterly incommensurate with their true contribution to the business, entitlement to spend shareholders’ funds on expensive lunches and dinners with the corporate credit card, entitlement to lay off lower level staff in order to cut costs.

Most people don’t mind seeing someone get paid 500K or even over 1M a year if they have actually invented, created or manufactured something useful which generates a lot of revenue. Most don’t object to those salaries for wise investment or risk managers whose decisions genuinely make high returns or prevent significant losses in an economic downturn.

They don’t object to a string of executives on 200 – 300K if they actually have real talent and knowledge and work 60+ hours a week.

What they do object to is a cabal of corporate cunts with their snouts in the trough, walking around like they deserve their rewards, then producing results like this. Ordinary performers on three or four times the average income because they are good at networking and sucking the right cock does not make people on the average wage feel like putting in "a fair day's work for a fair day's pay".

Society is becoming more fractious. A significant element of the discontent stems from what is felt to be an unfair allocation of remuneration and hence access to resources such as quality housing in good locations. This will only get worse if the world economy struggles over the next few years, as I believe it will.

Very few things make people angrier than a sense of injustice. If we want society to be more cohesive, we need to ensure high salaries are earned rather than stolen in an organized senior executive racket.

Scientists Create Artificial Arseholes

Not sure I want my first science entry to be about artificial arseholes, but the need for practice “greens” for my new game show seems an appropriate segue.

New Scientist reports the world’s first artificial sphincter, made with human cells, but so far only implanted in mice. They initially tested if it would grow by implanting one onto a mouse’s back.

I don’t know if I’d like another arsehole in the middle of my back. However, I can think of plenty of people who deserve one sewn into their mouth.

I like the quote: "We can custom-make them the size and diameter we want". I’m saving up to buy a huge one and plant it right in the middle of the school oval where the famous Fairfield Phalluses were drawn.

I liked that they tested their lab built sphincters with “electric shocks and chemicals”, to make sure that they “contract and relax like normal sphincters”. Because I always wire mine up to a battery to make it behave normally. Although, perhaps testing it out with a few drops of amyl nitrate has some practical value.

Surely more practical test conditions would have elicited more useful data. Sew one into Roxxxy the Sex Robot and give her a solid reaming. Instead of using electric shocks to see if the arseholes "contract and relax like normal", I’m sure Bob Brown, Christopher Pyne and other "professionals" would volunteer to give them a couple of licks to see if they react properly.

Apparently Alan Jones has ordered one gross of the arseholes to enjoy in the privacy of his well appointed closet. Seems an appropriate unit of measure: a gross of arseholes. Jonesy just goes through them like lollies. Tears through them like a puppy with a new toy.

The name of the scientist who engineered them gives us a clue as to the master plan hidden behind their development: Khalil Bitar. That’s right: it’s Karl Bitar, former ALP national secretary. I always suspected the name “Karl” was an Anglicism.

So now we know what he’s been up to these past months: cloning himself for a new round of branch stacking to take over the ALP.

Thass Yo Ass!

I was recently watching a scene from Blacks On Blondes in which two well endowed coloured gentlemen were giving a correspondingly well endowed, but not terribly bright blonde lass a double bunger.

The one who was poking her up the bum pulled out, went around and stuck it in her mouth. As she looked up at him, with his dick in her mouth, he said: "Thass yo ass … Thass YO ass!" She just nodded in agreement.

After I stopped laughing, I thought: what a great name for a TV game show. Here’s how it would work:

There is a centre stage, raised three to four feet above the ground, but covered in a curtain so no-one can see what’s underneath. In the stage are cut six circular holes, each about one standard bum width in diameter. Six people stick their bums up, one through each hole, so that the bum surfaces are approximately flush with the stage.

A contestant has to putt a golf ball into each of the six bums. The balls are then placed in egg cups and the bum owners lined up in random order at the opposite end of the stage.

The contestant then has to match each golf ball to its correct bum. They take each ball, sniff or lick it and then yell, along with the crowd: "Thass … YO ass!", pointing and tossing the golf ball to their chosen bum owner.

Prizes would work like the final showcase on The Price Is Right. As each bum owner is guessed correctly, another prize lights up on the list. The prize for getting all six right could be a car, with four brown eye chucking arses for hubcaps.

To make the game harder and more fun, you could have the stage set up like putt-putt golf, maybe with a rotating windmill which could knock the ball into a different arse. Or the contestant might have to putt the ball up a ramp into a laughing clown’s mouth, which would then deposit the ball into a random arse.

Of course, the bums would have to be clamped open somehow so the putts would not "rim out", but that is a simple, logistical matter. The best method would probably be for the host to shout: "Ready … all bums … brown eye!" before the contestant putts.

So, who would be the bums? People who wanted to be on TV while earning a hundred bucks and a petrol or grog voucher. Out of work actors, uni students, suspended footballers, people sentenced to community service. Each set of six would need to have fairly similar physical characteristics to ensure the only senses used in the ball allocation were smell, taste and ESP. But you could have a set of six middle aged, white guys, followed by a set of six young, black guys, followed by a set of six Asian girls. Just to make it interesting, you could throw a set of trannies in once in a while.

I imagine a very popular spin off would be Celebrity Charity Thass Yo Ass, where a celebrity putted the balls into the arses of six other celebrities, with each correct guess earning progressively higher donations to their favoured charity.

Of course, you’d have to choose the celebrities carefully. If you made Alan Jones one of the arses, the ball would just fall in and you’d never get it back. If Bob Brown was doing the putting, he might just take the ball out of the egg cup, give it a couple of licks and put it in his pocket for later.

The Weakest Link, The Million Dollar Drop, Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader, Celebrity Big Brother … these shows are rubbish.

Celebrity Thass Yo Ass … now that's a TV show worth watching!