Australian Autopsy

Jarrod Kimber

Description

English cricket fans will love Jarrod Kimber's second Ashes book Australian Autopsy - Australian cricketfans perhaps less so! Using his own unique brand of dry humour Aussie Kimber tells the story of theevents of the winter 2010/11 series and England's record breaking 3-1 victory Down Under. Kimbertravels around his homeland staying in flea-bitten motels, getting whispered at by Cricket Australiaofficials and when his book isn't chronicling his dreams about Alastair Cook, it is watching England cutdeep into the Australian cricket system.

Sujets

• Críquet
• Cricket

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing (Brighton) Ltd
• Date de parution: 20 septembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908051240
• Langue: English

Extrait

AUSTRALIAN AUTOPSY
AUSTRALIAN AUTOPSY
The gory details of how England dissected Australia in the 2010/11 Ashes

Jarrod Kimber
This book is based on true events.
Table of Contents
AUSTRALIAN AUTOPSY
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
SYDNEY
BRISBANE
THE GABBATOIR
DAY 1 - THE GABBA
DAY 2 - THE GABBA
DAY 3 - THE GABBA
DAY 4 - THE GABBA
DAY 5 - THE GABBA
ADELAIDE
DAY 1 - ADELAIDE OVAL
DAY 2 - ADELAIDE OVAL
DAY 3 - ADELAIDE OVAL
DAY 4 - ADELAIDE OVAL
DAY 5 -ADELAIDE OVAL
MELBOURNE
PERTH
DAY 1 - THE WACA
DAY 2 - THE WACA
DAY 3 - THE WACA
DAY 4 - THE WACA
MELBOURNE (AGAIN)
DAY 1 - MCG
DAY 2 - MCG
DAY 3 - MCG
DAY 4 - MCG
SYDNEY (AGAIN)
COPYRIGHT PAGE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thank you to mum and PK, Sarge, Mimi, Joel and Nicki (Issy and Lucy as well), Astrid and the Lees, Blair and Gazz and Mazz for letting me crash and mess up your places. Thanks to Pitch, Cricket Victoria, The Wisden Cricketer and Cricinfo for giving me cash to make the trip. And thanks to Sampson, Soph, Hendo, Paul, Sally and most of all Miriam (for letting me disappear for a couple of months).
SYDNEY
Sydney was like the end of a made-for-TV-based-on-a-true-crime story starring someone off Melrose Place and a child actor from a sitcom that didn t last its first season. The Melrose Place guy is playing the older brother - big, strong, the main guy in town and with one of those creepy smiles that tells you he s gonna enjoy hurting you. The sitcom kid is small, wiry, emotional and has the eyes of a friendly puppy. The premise is simple: younger brother accepts 20 years of torture, really sadistic stuff like the gluing of cocks to stomachs, public nudity and cigarettes on the nipples, plus mental torture about adoption, not having enough money for an abortion and everything else an older brother can do to break his younger brother.
Then the younger kid goes to join the Marines, gets that stupid haircut, beefs up, becomes real tough and learns to kill a man with a beer coaster. He comes home and his older brother acts like he is still the swinging dick in town. It s clear to everyone else that he is a fading force; he s still big, but now it s turned to flab, and he s still trying the same piss-weak jokes he did for years. Everyone has stopped laughing and he s taken the odd beating.
One day, the older brother is pissing off everyone at the local bar and some of the locals are getting angry. Then the younger brother walks in. The background noise fades out and all you can hear is the older brother being an asshole and the footsteps of his younger brother. The older brother turns around when he realises that no one is listening to his shit, sees his younger brother and can t help question his sexuality. The younger brother uses all his training and preparation to force his brother to the ground.
The locals all gather, cheering for the little brother; this is a raucous, entertaining ass-whipping. The older brother s head is smacked against the floor. The older brother still has one last play left in him and he squirrel grips the younger brother hard and then gives him some lip. In the past this might have been enough to put the younger brother off, but this time he grabs his sock knife that he had for just such a need and digs it deep into his brother s chest.
It s not an angry stab, but a precise thrust. The anger is why he is there; the training is why he is winning the fight.
The younger brother could stop there, his brother has now given up, but he doesn t want to. So he continues to stab with all his force over and over again, thrust after thrust. Powering the blade into the chest until he is covered in blood. Bits of flesh and organ are scattered all over the place. The brother hasn t moved in an hour. The bar has shut; no one wants to watch anymore.
The younger brother doesn t stop. He s trained so hard for this moment, so every time he stabs he remembers a time when his brother ruined his life. Once the flesh is gone, the knife hits bone a while, but soon that is gone and the younger brother hits the concrete floor until the noise of the knife striking it snaps him out of it. He drops the knife, stands up, wipes off some blood.
And does the sprinkler.
BRISBANE
Good luck, mate said the complete idiot. Me. In retrospect it was a dick move. I mean, he had a frown on his face, was looking down, and most importantly was dragging his cricket kit into the airport two days before the Ashes series was about to begin in that very city. To his credit, he said thanks. He could have stopped me and said, Seriously, mate, how stupid are you? I m walking into the airport with my kit, clearly I have been let go from the squad. Try and pay more attention.
It was Steve Smith, the young batsman who people were trying to pretend is a leg spinner. Since Michael Clarke, no player had arrived on the scene with as much boundless enthusiasm and energy. It did him no good; the selectors had gone for Xavier Doherty instead. I didn t need to spend an hour questioning him to know he was pissed off at the decision. I liked that though. Too many players seem to say things like, I understand the decision and I ll go back to state cricket and try hard. Deep down you know they want to grab the nearest sharp implement and start cutting up people in Cricket Australia uniforms.
Like any micro-blogging, social-networking wannabe journalist I tweeted the information. It was perhaps the best way to start the tour as I accidentally broke the story. Since my journalistic instincts are so poor, I often end up breaking things by accident rather than on purpose. On the trip to Sarge s house, my accommodation for the trip, I thought about whether I d see Smith in the Ashes. And whether I should apologise for my stupid remark. I d like to think that a real journalist would have seen Smith, worked out why he was there, tried to interview him, and then tried to file before the announcement was public.
This was my first time back in Australia for three and a half years; I d left Australia as a bit of a fuck-up and, until the Smith moment, I thought I d moved on. Not that Queensland was like home to me; I d never spent much time here and, as a Melbournian, I d spent most of my life mocking the place.
Sarge s car radio was playing talk radio, and the reason I nickname Queensland New Texas was painfully aware to me straight away. The DJ had one of those voices that implied everything he said was nothing but the truth, and he then said, Of course in the great state of Queensland The great state of Queensland? It was like riding through the Deep South of America. I ve never got Queensland. I m one of those left-wing pinko commie assholes that DJs in New Texas like to take the piss out of. I don t blame them; I take them piss out of their right-wing, pseudo-Christian, sponsor-paid, ill-thought-out-hate-of-the-week crap as well.
Part of the reason I don t get New Texas is the heat. I don t do hot. I may have spent 28 years in Australia, but in all that time heat and I never got on. I once got sunburnt in Wales in September. I m whiter than white, my wife laughs at my skin colour on a daily basis, and even redheads mock me. It wasn t just the sun in New Texas, it was, the humidity, mate, that s what kills ya . And it fucken does. It makes me irrationally mad at the place I am in. It could even explain my hatred of New Texas. That or conservative nut bags.
Sarge took us to his main house. He has a few. He is a white-haired short man who is painfully working class - and a millionaire. On some people being a working-class millionaire looks rather odd. For Sarge it fits about right. He is my dad s best friend.
My dad was also in the car. I don t know how I d explain him: a grumpier, older, fatter version of me, without the need to write about things. He was the one who got me into cricket. By that I don t mean he bought me a bat and a ball (we couldn t afford bats, we were too poor, one was cut down from a big bat for me), I mean he taught me how to be a cricket fundamentalist. I knew about field settings before I learnt fractions. My dad is a very thoughtful person who comes up with opinions and who sticks with them even in the face of great evidence. As a cricket teacher he was perfect. He coached me in cricket from the age of eight till 16, and without cricket I don t think I d ever have really got to know him.
During much of his working life he was a stony son of a bitch. Spending day after day working for people who he was - or thought he was - smarter than, and not being able to jump them due to a lack of subtlety and college education. When he came home he was silent or thunder for much of the time. And that was when he was working; there were also the three times when he was made redundant. So he had a well-earned chip on his shoulders. This meant that when he came back very late from work, he wasn t in the mood to know what went on in anyone s day, but he had a view about the world in sport.
In those days, sport meant cricket or football (Aussie rules). Getting pissed off at the sports news was his vent during the week; playing golf was for the weekend. We bonded through this sort of grumpy joint hatred of every stupid thing happening in sport. When he talked about the actual sport, and not the bullshit administration, he was much different. He went from Darth Vader to Yoda. At his best he could pick out the important moments in a sporting contest and explain them to me in such a way that I always understood what he meant. It was just him chatting to me. Now it s clear all that anger and information was setting me up for a life doing the same thing for money.
Sarge and Dad were also the perfect representation of Australian cricket fans. Sarge was the sort who only really watched the cricket when it was the height of summer. He cared little for his state team, and didn t really realise what had happened in the months prior,