SAME DOGG, NEW TRICK.

What happens when 435 characters on a facebook status update doesn't quite say it? You blog.
So here's the first of many entries to chronicle anything and everything. Ultimately this will be a mix of interesting anecdotes, opinion (keeping controversy to a minimum), and random thoughts that belie any real logic.
So, to open the innings, what sort of entry defines me? What issue is profound enough to justify forever being my debut into the world of internet blogging? And so it begins -

I remember my Year 10 English teacher one day announcing to the class that each student was to prepare a speech for the following week. It was to be two minutes long and could be about any subject we wished. As a student (and some would say in later life) I loved speaking to a crowd. I immediately began planning my speech. There was so much to talk about in 1993. I had dismissed immediately the notion to speak about Steve Waugh's season, due in part to the luke warm reception to my last speech, 'Why Steve Waugh is better than Dean Jones.' Mark Taylor was scoring at will. An ode to Tubby was shortlisted. Perhaps a rebuttal to the common belief that sportsman had to be super fit athletes, using the recent stats of David Boon and Merv Hughes as irrefutable evidence. Shane Warne had googlied, zootered, and flipped the Ashes away from England. Should I attempt some crowd participation and hold a religious ceremony, dedicated to the god of spin? Within 10 seconds my plans were sent into disarray. My teacher continued, "- and Nathan Webeck, you are not allowed to talk about cricket." Why was I being singled out? Had I spoken out of turn in class (which was in any event a distinct possibility)? What else was there to talk about anyway? Despite putting a strong case forward that to deny my right to speak about cricket, she would possibly be denying my fellow classmates an entertaining ball-by-ball retelling of Tubby Taylor's century in the First Ashes Test, my teacher would not relent. So, this first blog is dedicated to that teacher.

All through the current Ashes series I've been pragmatic about Australia's chance of victory against arguably the best English side since Botham. Sometimes we put our best up against their best, and sometimes our best doesn't measure up. On paper they look the goods.
Can someone please explain to me then why, in my car on my lunch break today, I started to get teary when Mitchell Johnson took his forth wicket? I had weeks earlier had a premonition that Mitchell Johnson was going to rout the English just when everyone thought he was a spent force. I told my colleagues about my vision. They were understandably sceptical. I had never displayed any sort of psychic ability at work before.
Maybe my tears were joy at the realisation that my name would forever be used in the same sentences as Nostradamus.
Searching for an answer that wasn't related to some sort of hormone imbalance, I came up with only one. That is the nature of the game. Cricket is not a sport. It is a framework of rules by which players can create their own story. Those stories have the potential to become legend.
Mitchell Johnson's spell of bowling on the 17th day of December, 2010, will be one that will be written about in greater terms than 'line and length'. It was a devastating display of raw passion. To the technique coaches and fitness coaches, Mitchell Johnson said 'give me a ball, and set me loose'.  The results raised the phoenix from the ashes (pardon the pun).
That story is the only reason we watch sport. The emotion. The idea that the darkest hour is always the moment before the dawn. Maybe Australia won't win the Ashes this year. Maybe we can't even win this test. But when Paul Collingwood fell to Mitchell Johnson for 5 on the 17th day of December, 2010, and a grown man cried in his car, a nation stopped and wondered. Maybe. Just maybe we can.

And for the record, in 1993 I stood in front of my Year 10 English class and gave a speech on crime statistics in NSW. Everyone agreed it was the most boring speech that I'd ever written.

Until next time.