For once I think I will celebrate my Australian heritage (my mother was born there, which probably explains why I love following Australian cricket). In both its lower and upper houses of parliament, Australia has voted in a manner which suggests the Archbishop of Sydney is more in tune with Australian society than I am in tune with Kiwi society.
Bill Muehlenberg calls this a massive marriage win.
Australian Cricket. That's a bug, right? Australia has a national insect?
ReplyDeletecarl
Yes, it is named after their national sport :)
ReplyDeleteI don't really think that the Australian Parliament has been listening to The Archbishop of Sydney - on this, or maybe any other matter.
ReplyDeleteHe is is mostly, by my Australian friends, in the Church at least, to be largely irrelevant to the social scene in that great Continent.
The recent vote taken on the possibility of Same-Sex marriage is not totally unexpected. After all, even in the Church, it took quite a while for them to catch up with us on the ordination of women.
Australians are more conservative even than New Zealanders, on many issues. But they're coming along.
“But they’re coming along” - Ron Smith
ReplyDeleteI continue to be both amused and bemused by this Whiggish view of ‘history’ ...! Yet it is what one has come to expect from those ‘fish’ who have yet to gain some discerning distance upon their western cultural ‘ponds’ ...
But, Bryden, would it be a Whiggish view of history if we said of the NZ cricket team that it is "coming along"?
ReplyDelete:)
If Texas can have a state insect (the monarch butterfly), why shouldn't Australia have a national one?
ReplyDeletePeter
ReplyDeleteIf there was a sport based upon a cricket, it would involve people standing immobile (while chirping) on a large field for interminable periods. Days in fact. Perhaps they might even take breaks for tea. How could this be a sport?
And anyways. Isn't Rugby the Australian national sport? Certainly a sport like Rugby wouldn't have anything to do with crickets.
carl
Hi Carl,
ReplyDeleteAmericans are forgiven not understanding cricket.
'Chirping' is also known as 'sledging' (i.e. attempting to unsettle your opponent by comments about inability to play, the opponent's mother's unmarried state at his birth, etc).
Cricket is pretty much the Oz national sport as it is the one summer sport followed around the whole nation. Rugby's support is strongest in New South Wales and Queensland. Rugby League is more popular than rugby in both places. Australian Rules football is more popular in Victoria and Western Australia. And football/soccer is growing in popularity ...
I'm sorry, but despite having lived most of my life in NZ I just do not get cricket. It bores me to tears. Then again I don't get soccer either, and for much the same reason!
ReplyDeleteOn the issue of Whiggish notions of historical progress, I prefer the Biblical view that the world, and thus history, are in decline. We are "men amongst the ruins", pretending to ourselves that we are wiser and more enlightened than our forefathers, celebrating every advance of cultural Marxism as "social progress", when in fact our civilization is in an advance stage of decline and decay.
Carl; FYI
ReplyDeleteYou have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side thats been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.
When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!
Bryden Black
ReplyDeleteYou know, I kind of understood that. I am something of a "Midsomer Murders" addict, so I have seen a little of Cricket through British TV. What I don't understand is how you end up with a final score of something like 170-3 after three days? And how do people watch such a one-sided contest over such a long period of time?
carl
Peter; the Black Caps might "come along" shld they play the likes of Canada and Afghanistan in the present 20/20 ICC Tournament ... In a bit of a slump at present I see!
ReplyDeleteCarl; as that stunning Aussie film, The Castle, puts it: "It's the vibe your honour!" And the vibe in question is distinctly English - understated! And so belonging to an era alien to fast food and smartphones ... Cultivating that vibe is therefore most desirable - not least in the face of those who'd transmogrify a 5 day test into a version of baseball. Which analogy parallels the main thrust of the original post, me thinks!
how do people watch such a one-sided contest over such a long period of time?
ReplyDeleteMany don't. Which is why Kerry Packer introduced some sort of short game. Being one of the ones who are uninterested, I can't recall what the short game is called. I also don't watch other sports. That's why I tend to beg my husband to let me not watch the sports round up (which goes on for almost as long as the piffle that's regularly served up to us on the nightly TV "news") so I can watch Time Team. Of course, my husband finds all that digging of trenches supremely boring so he takes the dog for a walk.
Good on you Janice, I understand that the opponents of cricket see it only as a restful hiatus from intellectual pursuits. although I'm not sure its afficionados can always claim their need of such a diversion.
ReplyDeleteIt probably can't do any harm - unless one gets in the way of a stray ball - or bat, for that matter.
reverting to the original thread topic.
ReplyDeleteCan anyone show me where and if STUFF NZ has actually noted this piece of news? Or have they ideologically and really rather naughtily/nastily refused to notify the NZ public of this Australian fact?