Has 20-20 Ruined Test Cricket?

Let me preface this by saying that my interest in cricket is pretty limited. I occasionally used to watch it on the TV (when I had a TV, which is now a long time past), particularly if the tail was wagging on an otherwise lost innings, and every few years I go to a day of the Boxing Day Test with a friend or two, mostly as a social thing.

At such events, we will drink much beer and try to endure the heat as best we can, it being summer.

It was my turn in the beer queue yesterday at the MCG around 1pm or so when I mentioned to the bloke standing behind me: ‘I think we will have an outcome today.’

His reply was: ‘I feel sorry for my dad – he has tickets for tomorrow.’

Yesterday being day two of what ostensibly is a five day test match.

I was right. The game ended when an English batsman hit a four around 5.30pm, taking England past the 175 run target it needed to defeat Australia.

That an outcome was likely was obvious to everyone, even those like me who do not have great love for the World Game (I annoy fans of soccer when I describe cricket thus), several hours before the eventual conclusion.

I am not too familiar with what conditions cause a wicket to be particularly favourable to bowlers, but when the first two innings end on day one with both teams bowled out, you might have to conclude that it was very much a bowler’s wicket.

What I could observe is that the weather (a maximum of 21 degrees celsius) was quite mild and pleasant – which might have impacted adversely on beer sales. Mild weather also means that when a team is out on the field rather than batting, they do not get as exhausted as they would when the day is sweltering hot, as when I last watched the Boxing Day Test a few years ago when South Africa toured.

On that particular occasion, Australia batted until tea time, giving the South African team enough time to get exhausted on the field, before declaring and sending them in to bat and to get slaughtered by our very fresh bowlers, who had spent the day resting up in the airconditioned comfort of their dressing rooms, spared by the declaration from the inconvenience of having to bat in such warm weather.

Mild weather levels the playing field in favour of the team that is bowling.

It also means that the game can move much more quickly.

But that the wickets fell so quickly that a test match ended within two days rather than five, and not for the first time in this series (the First Test also ended in two days, but with Australia winning), did make me wonder. This is very unusual.

It has gotten even me thinking about why it is so.

Commentators for many years have speculated as to whether One Day Cricket (a version of the game where each team faces 50 overs) was influencing the way that cricketers were playing in Test matches, particularly if they were more likely to go for reckless high scoring shots whilst batting. Limited overs requires fast scoring and taking more risks than the more strategic and cautious approach needed for a Test match.

Recent years has seen the introduction of an even shorter and faster version of the game – 20-20 cricket, in the form of the Big Bash league in Australia and more significantly in the Indian Premier League. Most of the world’s best cricketers of every nation play for part of the year in the Indian Premier League. It is fast and exciting (as much as cricket can get) and very lucrative for the players.

I firmly believe that there is a direct causality between this current failure of Test matches to last out their entire five day duration and the participation of most top international players in the 20-20 competition as a regular part of their top level careers.

Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed my day out yesterday, even though I was sitting in the Southern Stand which is rather too cramped for comfort compared to the Members’ Reserve (making me regret that I did not ask for favours 30 years ago to get onto the MCC waiting list). The weather was very pleasant, the game went at a great and engaging pace, and the Barmy Army was appropriately… Barmy. So did 92,000 other people, and 95,000 on Boxing Day – the crowds do love to turn out at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for an Ashes Test.

But this was not Cricket – or at least not Test Cricket as we know it.

There are people who were planning to go on Days 3, 4 and hopefully 5. Those days will not be happening, and Cricket Australia will suffer a financial hit, as will the casual staff who otherwise would be selling overpriced beer and snack foods to people like yours truly. The same happened in the First Test, which was similarly a two day watershed but with the Australians winning.

I suspect that this might be a turning point in the sport. Where Test matches start to regularly end less than halfway through due to the way they are played, rather than abandoned due to the weather (as sometimes happens where there is unseasonably heavy rain), this will have an ongoing financial impact on the game. That will cause the governing bodies of international cricket to take notice.

There possibly will be two avenues of action. One could be to limit the ability of Test cricketers to participate in 20-20 and other limited over cricket. The other would be to downplay the importance of Test cricket and reduce the number of Test matches are played, in order to reduce the exposure to possible financial losses.

I am curious to see what transpires.

A Revival Of The Melbourne Pub Scene?

One of my minor regrets is that I have never set foot in a lot of the now long gone pubs which used to occupy the Melbourne CBD and surrounds, particularly those which were still around when I first came of drinking age, or that if I have, it was a singular visit and I have little memory of it.

The Stork Hotel near the Vic Market – never set foot in it at all. That other place on Victoria Street which until recently was a La Porchetta restaurant – only time I went in there was in 1995 when it had already been converted to a pizza joint. Mac’s Hotel on the corner of Spring and Flinders – I think I went in there once, into a side bar with framed photos of Fitzroy Football Club teams from the days of yore. Kilkenny Inn – before it became Goldfinger’s – an evening playing pool and sipping Subzero (a long since extinct and unlamented alcoholic soda which I regretted when the extreme heartburn hit the next morning). The Phoenix on Flinders Street – one office Christmas party circa 2007, not long before it got demolished and replaced by a very skinny apartment tower. The Lord Cecil on Queen and Lonsdale – that disappeared in late 1988 and I had never been inclined to stop in there for a quiet ale before that occurred.

The Royal Mail in Spencer Street – currently closed and apparently has structural issues.

Well… you get the picture.

King Street alone has several former pubs – the Kilkenny is a shell following a fire, and the Great Western is a facade with an apartment tower rising behind it (and I was fond of the Great Western with all its authentic bogan charm).

Which brings me to the Waterside.

Between 1991 and 1996 I worked in an office building in King Street, a short walk up from the Waterside. Originally myself and the other younger staff did not go there, as we preferred the Grainstore, a tavern which had been converted from an old Gold Rush era warehouse with a blue stone facade. That changed when the ownership of the Grainstore turned over and the new owners ran the place into the ground.

Back then, the Waterside was very much the same as it had been since the 1930s – tiles up to shoulder height inside and out, so as to easily hose off the vomit from when the regulars left after the six o’clock swill. There was a small bistro to one side which had leadlight on the doors and which served $2 steak sandwiches. The place had a lot of other vintage fittings.

That changed in the late 1990s when it got renovated and opened up, losing all its vintage fittings and becoming a much higher capacity venue.

It closed again in 2019, for renovations. As it transpired, structural issues arising from it being built mere metres from the Yarra (it was not called the Waterside without good reason) meant it needed more than a refresh. It needed to be knocked down entirely and rebuilt, with only the facade of the old building remaining.

I do not know how much this would have cost, but I assume it would have been tens of millions.

Now, last month, it finally reopened, so, in memory of the old days, I went there with a friend for lunch and to sip a few ales.

What exists now is very different. It has been opened up on the inside, with the main bar area overlooked by areas on several upper levels, the entire building now being seven stories tall.

We speculated as to where, in this post Covid work from home era, the clientele would come from to fill this pub and to pay off the bankers. After all, this might be the commercial office end of town, but the suits don’t drink like they used to in public, and most people try to stay at home most of the time. Nor are any wharfies employed near this location anymore. My observation is that it is the closest pub to Crown Casino (there used to be one adjacent to it, but that has been redeveloped long since), and that Crown did not like it when off duty staff stuck around to drink in the various bars of the Casino.

Waterside is not the only pub to recently reopen after a redevelopment or major renovation. I spent Cup Day inside Hickens Hotel on Russell Street with some friends. Hickens is the newly restored historical name for a pub which, in the course of my adult life, has been known as Santa Fe (pub before becoming a table dancing venue in the 1990s), Portland Hotel, and James Squire Brewhouse.

The amount of room for customers in the latter two manifestations was limited. The renovation includes opening up extra bar capacity on the ground floor, a giant sports bar area on the first floor, and a rooftop bar.

Similarly, just prior to the Covid, the Imperial on the corner of Bourke and Spring (a pub I long considered my regular due to proximity to my office), converted its function area upstairs into additional bar space, discovered an outdoor courtyard on the first floor as a smoking area, and installed a rooftop bar.

When the Duke of Wellington was renovated a decade or so ago, in order to free up room for an apartment tower, additional space was freed up for bar patrons in the form of a bistro and an upstairs bar area.

And then we get to Young and Jacksons, Melbourne’s most iconic pub. It opened a rooftop bar a decade ago, to supplement all the existing capacity.

The moral of the story seems to be that whilst we have lost a lot of pubs from the centre of our city, those that remain appear to be making the use of their existing footprint to become bigger venues – hopefully also better venues.

Mind you – I hope that the Exford remains as it is, and that no one thinks of doing anything different to the Mitre Tavern.

Some Early Reflections On Nuisance Calls

At the end of June this year, several weeks after I had added my mobile phone number to the Do Not Call Register maintained by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), I started a spreadsheet where I record all the nuisance calls I now receive.

Ultimately, at the end of this coming June, I plan to send those numbers to the ACMA and hope that they take some action against those account holders.

Whilst recording the two latest nuisance callers onto my spreadsheet just now, I noticed a pattern emerging in terms of the non-landline numbers inflicting themselves on me.

I will share those with you now:

0485-961-598 Solar Panel pitch

0480-852-242 Hung up when I answered

0485-962-123 Call about electricity providers

0485-837-704 Health Insurance comparisons

0485-837-539 Solar Panel pitch

You can see some patterns there – most of the numbers start with 0485, and the one outlier starts with 0480. Two of the numbers start with 0485-837.

Which suggests these are all part of one big block of phone numbers which have been sold to those telemarketing call centres which operate in violation of relevant consumer law protections.

In terms of landlines, I have received nine calls from numbers which start with 03-9022 – one of those calls was a solar panel pitch, another was a cleaning services pitch, and the other seven all hung up when I answered.

So the takeaway from all this so far is that you should not answer calls from those numbers, and I do hope that when I provide my spreadsheet to both the ACMA and Telstra in mid 2026, one or other or both of those bodies takes action against these sacred cowboy call centre operators.

In the meantime, if you are so inclined, feel free to call those mobile numbers above to enquire about their services. If enough people do that, it might give them some mild annoyance, which they richly deserve.

But… as I found out to my lasting regret when, last year in a very benevolent mood, I actually agreed to get solar panels installed by one such company who rang me on spec like that, don’t actually agree to any services from them. They will do a half-arsed job.

A Quick Look Through Footscray Shopping Centre

My mother wanted her hair cut last week, so I accompanied her on the bus to Footscray, to attend the Vietnamese hairdresser in the Footscray Market.

Footscray has changed a lot since I was a kid, so I did a bit of reminiscing whilst I waited for her.

Describing Footscray to outsiders might help make it seem more intriguing, so perhaps more people might come and visit.

Leeds Street was the first part of Footscray to turn Vietnamese, in 1981. There were two Vietnamese jewellery shops which opened up – one in the Footscray Market on the Leeds street frontage, and one on the other side of the street. The one in the Market is still there, although I am not sure as to when it is open as I have never seen it thus in recent years. The other one has since closed. Quickly after that, the rest of Leeds Street was filled up with other Vietnamese shops and then, by the late 1980s, Vietnamese restaurants replaced the moribund Italian cafes (apparently hives of the newly booming heroin trade) in Hopkins Street opposite the market. The only remnant of the former Italian presence is Cavallaro, the cake shop which has been there for almost 70 years.

There are a lot of Vietnamese restaurants still there in Hopkins Street, although Hy Hy, the first generation restaurant I used to enjoy visiting 25 years ago, has been gone for at least 15 years, replaced by fancier next gen establishments which might be more swish, but seem less yummy to me (sorry folks, I like sizzling beef with plum sauce and I hate that I can’t get it anymore).

I would say when looking at Footscray Shopping Centre now that the Vietnamese precinct is more or less restricted to Leeds Street and Hopkins. A lot of businesses have apparently moved further west, to Sunshine or St Albans. (I rarely visit St Albans anymore – I don’t have family there these days, and I don’t currently have any friends in Sunshine, so I can’t really comment at great length on those suburbs.)

The rest of the main shopping area, Nicholson Street and Barkly Street, and the non-medical part of Paisley Street, is now an African precinct, although it is peppered with hipster bars and abundant kebab shops. At one point, about 14 years ago when I was at the height of my mania for Ethiopian food, I has tried just about each and every Ethiopian restaurant in Footscray, and knew the owners of several by name.

Some are still there, and some new ones have opened, but the ones I enjoyed most are now long gone. I miss them, but I do have an Ethiopian restaurant a little more accessible to me in Maribyrnong Road which I can frequent more easily.

A lot of the pubs of Footscray are gone, or going, or replaced with hipster bars. Between the Plough (early convert to gastro pub) on the Geelong Road corner, and the Footscray Hotel (whose days, I suspect are very limited) just after the newly converted Moon Dog Brewery (a giant rodeo beer barn), there are a huge number of bars along Barkly Street – Slough, Josephine, Little Foot, Cheeky Pint, just off the top of my head. But I miss some of the pubs – the Barkly and the Royal are redeveloped facades. The Bayview was flattened almost 40 years ago, as was more recently the Belgravia on the corner of Nicholson and Buckley. The Courthouse is business as usual, poker machines and pub TAB, much as it has been for the past 30 years, at the south end of what used to be the bottom half of the original mall area.

When I meet my friends to eat these days, it is either opposite the Town Hall at the Station Hotel, which has a good steak house, or for yum cha at Golden Horse, at the Leeds and Barkly Street corner of the Market.

There are still lots of worthwhile places in Footscray to visit, although I mostly will avoid the problem area which is Nicholson Street, and you will not catch me there after dark any longer than it will take for me to find a taxi.

Posh Spice Officially Becomes A Lady

It’s now almost 30 years since the Spice Girls burst onto the pop scene with Wannabe, their debut single. They did not go by their nicknames Ginger, Baby, Scary, Sporty, and of course, Posh at that time. The media quickly gave them those monikers.

At the end of Wannabe, they introduce themselves by their Christian names, and when Victoria is named, they sing that she is a lay-dee

Victoria Adams, the artist soon to be known to the world as Posh Spice, did not actually sing on Wannabe. I suppose her voice was not quite up to it in comparison to the others.

Later, after Ginger left the Spice Girls, she did finally get to sing on Wannabe.

Not that it really matters. They all made their pile of cash, and no one more than Posh Spice, who chose a husband who matched her celebrity and ability to generate cash.

With David Beckham receiving his knighthood from the King this past week, his wife, who has popularly been known as Posh Spice for almost thirty years, has now officially become a Lady, just as the Spice Girls insisted when she was introduced in that song so long ago. She is now Victoria, Lady Beckham, if you want to know how exactly to address her.

And as a Commonwealth Constitutional Monarchist, this pleases me greatly.

Suzanne Vega To Fly With Angels To Australia!

As anyone who knows me well would know, Suzanne Vega has been my favourite singer since I was 17. Kate Bush and Tori Amos come in closely behind her.

Suzanne Vega has toured Australia five times – 1987, 1993, 2008, 2014, and 2018. I was not cashed up enough for concert tickets in 1987, and I was not aware of her 2008 and 2014 concerts until it was too late.

A music reviewer did describe the 1987 concert as ‘as exciting as a Carlton – Hawthorn grand final’, which was to say that it was so perfect as to be boring. I do hope that reviewer lost their job, as obviously they had nothing sensible to say.

But I did attend her 1993 concert at what is now Hamer Hall, and her 2018 concert. The 1993 concert was in support of 99.9 Fahrenheit Degrees, her fourth studio album. Whilst it was, in my view, a weak album in comparison to her self titled debut, and her most successful second album, Solitude Standing (I still prefer the debut album), in concert there was not a weak song in the entire set.

Then, in 2018 she toured to mark the 25th anniversary of that album, and the 30th anniversary of Solitude Standing. That concert was at the Palais, and the supporting act was Deborah Conway and Willie Zygier (fun fact – I used to work with Willie Zygier’s brother).

I am more prepared in these days of ubiquitous internet. I signed up to her fan email list for updates about two years ago, and today it all came to golden fruition with an email advising that she is touring next September. I have already hopped online and bought my ticket, carefully picking an aisle seat (I like aisle seats).

Concert will be at Hamer Hall, so I think it will be a pretty good one – not stadium sized like Taylor Swift, but still a decent crowd.

It’s something to really look forward to.

Charlie’s Pizza Reopens

It is now nine months since my paesano and Footscray stalwart Charlie Morabito died. His pizzeria in Droop Street near the Ballarat Road corner has been a Footscray institution since 1974 and I was worried that it was going to close forever.

Good news! One branch of the family has taken over management of it and reopened the shop on 21 October.

My brother, who was a regular customer there late night, is quite pleased and has already resumed dining there, although the new owners are not as chatty as Charlie was.

There is not much left of the old businesses of the Footscray of my childhood, and I am relieved that this one relic of that era will survive, for a few more years at least.

The Catering Test – A Hidden Sign Of Economic Downturn

I suppose, as Honorary Secretary of a small Italian group, I probably count as an Italian community leader.

Yeah maybe. Sort of.

Last year that community involvement bore some fruits. I got an invite to a gala dinner organised by the Italian Embassy. I also had a pass to the VIP section of the Italian Festa. So some fun events there.

This year, it does not appear that the Italian government is having a gala dinner of any sort in Melbourne, and nor was there a VIP section in the Italian Festa (over the past weekend). I suppose that this was due to reduced funding from the Italian government for such activities.

Similarly, as I have written in this blog recently, the catering at the Treasury Wine Estate AGM last week was rather underwhelming compared to last week. There were hardly any canapés, and only a few trays of lamingtons as dessert.

Nor did the wine last to 1pm like last year. The fun ended at 12.30pm.

One of the more sour shareholders at that AGM did also raise a question about the number of staff parties which Treasury employees seem to hold.

Looking at these incidents all coming together at the same time, I get the feeling that probably, this year, there is less money flying about to pay for hospitality. That in itself is probably an economic indicator.

Vale Ace Frehley

I’m actually not objective about the significance of Kiss as a part of rock history. I’m not sure whether their impact is that of a true super group, or whether they were just a niche band with a large and loyal fanbase.

That’s because they have a large foothold on my childhood memories. Just like ABBA when they toured in 1976, Kiss initiated a giant frenzy in Australia in 1980 in the lead up to their November tour.

Or… at least it was the case in my primary school, where Kissmania ruled. The perspective of an eleven year old is a tad more limited than that of an adult.

Forty five years on, I believe my brother still has the combined collection of Kiss cards we had at the time (I let him have all of mine).

The concert at VFL Park in Waverley in November 1980 drew 45,000 people. That I remember details about a concert which I did not even attend is significant.

I’ve been to see Kiss three times since then, twice in the 1990s, and once about three years ago. Those concerts, at the Tennis Centre, were only a third the scale of that first tour in 1980.

When Eric Carr, the replacement drummer when Peter Criss got booted out, died in 1991, the number of death notices in the Herald Sun was quite impressive.

‘Goodbye Little Caesar’, one of those death notices read.

Now Ace Frehley, the original lead guitarist from Kiss, has died, after falling and injuring his head in his home studio.

74 is not that old – not when compared to the fragile souls I visit regularly in nursing homes in my local area. So I cannot help but feel a degree of shock at this.

But Ace did not live a sedate life. He partied quite hard, and drank very heavily for much of his career, hence causing his forced departure from Kiss in the early 1980s. Given that I have read the autobiographies of all four original members of the band, I am skeptical about the sincerity of the loud lamentations from Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. Gene did seriously bag Ace in his memoir, Kiss And Make Up, some 20 years ago. Ace returned the favour, somewhat more articulately, in his own memoir, No Regrets, 5 years later.

But Ace is dead, and perhaps Gene and Paul have felt it best to bury the hatchet in memory of their lost band mate, rather than out of commercial self interest. After all, no man is an island, and all that. Ace’s death might well remind them of their own mortality, and indeed of that of all of us.

I cannot help but feel sad about Ace passing, as it represents the severing of yet another of the links to my childhood, to the frenzy which enveloped my school for most of 1980.

At the Treasury Wine Estate AGM

As is now my custom, I attended the Treasury Wine Estate AGM on Thursday.

This time I planned in advance – a friend got a proxy from his wife to attend and two other friends who are not shareholders simply bluffed their way in.

Even though the share price has crashed in recent days, the meeting was relatively calm, although I would have to say that I do not find the governance issues raised by the Australian Shareholders Association monitors to be particularly original nor convincing.

What did disappoint me though was the quality of the catering. Last year was best practice – two hours of open bar and lots of canapés and yummy desserts. That would rate 10/10. This year, hardly any canapés and dessert was a tray of lamingtons. I rate that 4/10.

But having three of my friends there to share the freeloading fun made up for it a little bit.