Heat by Rob O’Neill

While the Indians are raining on Steve Waugh’s valedictory series with some tremendous batting (they surely have the best batting line-up in the world right now), and New Zealand battle manfully against Pakistan, a series half a world away has gone largely unmentioned in the media.

Which is strange, because it has left NZ in a clear third place in world cricket rankings.

A week or so ago England lost a test to Sri Lanka. That result has promoted good old NZ to third. Yes, that’s right: NZ is the third best team in test cricket. Ahead of India. Ahead of the West Indies. Ahead of Pakistan. Ahead of Sri Lanka and ahead of England.

When I ask people over here, Australians that is, where they think NZ is ranked they say maybe sixth or seventh and react with disbelief when I break the awful truth.

Third.

The team has earned this position not through the failure of other sides (though that helps), but through stringing together a fine series of winning test performances. If you think of who the Black Caps have beaten over the last couple of years, including the West Indies away for the first time ever, it’s an impressive tally.

The way the rankings work is that a score of 100 means you are beating teams of your own rank as often as they beat you. We are slightly ahead of the game there with 104.

So in that context the upcoming series against number two team South Africa is crucial. As is this week’s result against Pakistan. According to ICC's forecasts of possible results, losing this test could drop us to fifth. A drawn series will leave us in third place even if India wins its series against Australia by one test.

Now I’d be the first to admit the Black Caps’ limitations and they have been dogged by serious injuries, most notably to Bond and Astle, but that just make their un-Heralded achievement even more notable.

The boys are battlers and we should be proud of them.

Now, let's move up to second!

Update
Such is the life of the NZ cricket supporter. Barring a total rain-out on the last day the Pakistan test has gone west. And that will mean Pakistan moves up to 102 points on the ICC table and NZ falls to 100 - and fifth place.

As the Herald points out that breaks a run of nine unbeaten tests. Solace could be that we may have found another quick.

It is in times like these pundits usually roll out George Orwell to explain our seemingly unending loss of liberty. But the latest news on David Hicks, if correct, is pure Joseph Heller.

“Okay David, we’re going to give you a fair trial, just like the President said, but first you have to plead guilty,”

“Plead guilty?”

“Yes. That’s if you want a fair trial.”

“So to get a fair trial I have to plead guilty first.”

“Yes, but it’s your choice, David. No pressure.”

“What happens if I don’t plead guilty?”

“Why wouldn’t you want to do that, David? If you don’t plead guilty you obviously don’t want a fair trial.”

Of course, it is now impossible for Hicks to have any form of "fair" trial. He has been detained without legal aid for two years. Without charge. His persecutors have a two-year head start over his defence team. The rules of evidence at these “fair trials” allow the admission of all sorts of hear-say evidence. And it goes on and on.

And his government refuses to take a stand, not for the liberties of Hicks but for those of all Australians.

And these guys, the coalition of the corrupt, is the vanguard of freedom and democracy? What a sad state this world is in.

A major contributor to that situation is the PR industry, the Sultans of Spin. Web Diary names the spin doctor its most memorable person of 2003:

“We can all rejoice at the sight of Saddam in chains, and congratulate the soldiers who caught him. But we should also congratulate their Spin Doctors. In January they sold the line that toppling Saddam did not alone justify invasion, but disarming him of WMD did. In December they sold the line that Saddam turning out to be disarmed of his WMD already didn’t make the invasion unjustified, because Saddam had now been toppled. Spin Doctoring at its finest, where what was said yesterday no longer exists. Oh, except that they do keep reminding us anti-invasion types that we’re all still appeasers. You figure it out.”

The Girlie appears to have taken up jogging. I’ll keep you posted on that one. Yesterday she asked for $85 for her year 12 school jersey then “forgot” to buy it and came home with a ticket to the Big Day Out.

Revenge will be mine. Oh yes. It will be mine. And it will be sweet: if I go too!

It was the night of the premieres over here on Wednesday and unfortunately it sounds like LOTR wasn’t the winner. While Peter Jackson’s opus debuted in George St, it had some stiff competition down the road as Nicole Kidman turned out for the premier of Cold Mountain.

Nicole received the best news coverage too, though there was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald speculating on the Rungs’ Oscar chances.

Now I suspect there’s no comparison between the films themselves, but the LOTR premier was a bit subdued. I didn’t notice any stars at all, only a guy that looked a lot like David Wenham but wasn’t. There may have been a few Orcs hanging around, but with all the Australians you couldn’t really tell.

The after-party down near Darling Harbour was pretty good, mostly because I got to imbibe a few Monteiths, but hardly a gala occasion. Which leaves us, as it should be, with the film.

And the film really is magnificent. I was unconvinced by the first two LOTRs, didn’t get into them at all. So this is coming from a bit of a sceptic. The final film is superb. The battle scenes are so huge, the tension so high you really do forget how very long this film is. Yes, it does wallow in sentiment a bit, especially at the end. But by then even this seems well judged.

There was just one advertisement before the film, the 100% pure ad, which in its own way was great to watch, with “Don’t dream it’s over” ringing out gorgeously. But I can’t help feeling the occasion was underdone. The major sponsors were acknowledged in a brief address before the film. But where was the signage? There were big empty walls all around. A tiny model of an Air NZ 747 to the right of the screen was the only visual evidence this was something other than a standard screening.

Branding guys.

It’s time to go out on a limb.

Saddam is captured and that’s great news. How or where they try him I don’t really care, but it would seem fitting for it to be done in Iraq by Iraqis. They are the people he’s brutalized for so long.

That’s the good news and now for that limb. There’s a lot of talk about how this will affect politics in the west but it seems to be based, in part, on the belief that now Saddam has gone, Iraq will stabilize and George Bush will be seen to be a true hero and far sighted visionary leader.

I can’t buy that. For starters the sequence of suicide bombings just doesn’t strike me as the work of Saddam supporters. Nobody would commit suicide in the cause of Saddam. In the cause of Allah or in the cause of independence maybe, but Saddam?

In that regard I think Saddam’s a bit of a Furphy. My guess is resistance, suicide bombings and ambushes of coalition forces and their supporters will continue. That’s the bad news. But I could be wrong.

It will make it easier for George to say "job done" and get the hell out of there.

In the meantime there is no denying the joy that has greeted news of his capture. This is genuine joy, unlike the put-up job in Baghdad on liberation day. I just wish they’d be a bit more careful with all that ordinance.

I’ve been absent from posting for a bit over the last 10 days or so. AWOL. There’s no good excuse except I’ve been really, really busy and feeling a bit uninspired as well. And I’d hate to blog just for the sake of having something up.

So uninspired was I yesterday that I spent much of the day cleaning up my bedroom. Why would that take most of a day? You don’t want to go there. It’s something me and the Girlie have in common. Getting into or out of our rooms is a bit like playing hop-scotch. You can’t remember what breakables are under those piles of dirty clothes, bedding, bags, papers and so forth so you jump left, then right and then forward onto the rare spaces of visible carpet and then make a mad lunge for the door – and freedom.

Anyway, I’d had enough of that.

Girlie was mocking. She’d walk past my door and say things like: “Why don’t you go out, Dad?” and “Haven’t you got any friends?” Such is the status, and rarity, of cleaning around our place.

When I’d finished I stopped and looked around and realized there wasn’t really all that much there. My possessions are few. Minus the mess my room was a bit of a monk’s cell. That’s a good thing, I think. Having finished Vincent O’Sullivan’s fine portrait of John Mulgan, I’ve been reading Keith Ovenden’s life of Dan Davin. I share Davin’s belief that possessions enslave you.

It’s best not to have too much baggage. Travel light. What more do you need beside the clothes on your back, the shoes on your feet and a good book?

And your stereo… And your PC of course…

And your PS2…

Juicer, espresso machine…

After a surprise and dramatic selection there’s now a strange sense of excitement. As Melbourne flooded and Sydney was lashed by lightning storms and mysterious explosions, Mark Latham began his honeymoon as Leader of the Opposition.

He’s starting to look the part already, promising to drop the crudity of language that produced such memorable quotes as "arselick" and "a conga line of suckholes". That's a shame, but Latham does not look like a guy who will tone down his directness. When he speaks he usually says something. That in itself is refreshing.

In fact I find myself asking if this is the same guy that just a few days ago I thought wouldn’t be up to the job? It’s funny how in politics once you win the title, you get the aura of leadership as well.

On reflection, Latham’s selection could be the most influential move in Australian politics so far this century.

I say that because when Latham talks of “generational change”, you have to ask yourself what that means and whether that will deliver political traction to his stalled party. Labor now has the opportunity to tap into something huge.

While all the talk in politics is of economic performance indicators, health, welfare and security, ticking away in the background of both Australian and New Zealand politics and across the western world is a changing demographic. An ambitious, hungry and somewhat angry generation X (yes, I’m talking about the slackers of 1990) is eager to move into prime-time and displace the comfortable, complacent boomers (yes, the hippy revolutionaries of 1970).

Not only are these boomers not planning to do the decent thing and turn up their toes at seventy, they are planning to keep working as well , way past the age their own parents retired. And that is a big issue.

One Sydney Morning Herald writer described Howard congratulating Latham, focusing on how the young man reached out to grasp Howard's "boney" hand. There will be many more such comparisons.

For anyone who has witnessed generational conflict, whether in politics or in business, there is often blood on the floor. Talent will not be denied, whether it is in the possession of a young pretender or an old hand. People want and need opportunities.

At 42 Latham just scrapes into the more generous definitions of Generation X. Sitting on the cusp as he does he has an opportunity to reset the agenda. Labor was going to fight the next election on issues of health and welfare. The economy is doing all right and that makes life hard for an opposition. But now the Liberals are seizing the high ground by pumping money into Medicare and education, pulling the carpet form under Labor.

Crean had no response to this, except to get more and more shrill. Latham may be able to perform a political run-around. He may be able to steal back John Howard’s “battlers” and still hang on to the boomers and “elites” (Howard’s term for what kiwis would call Chardonnay Socialists).

Best of all, it'll be fun to watch. Latham may just be able to shake off the cloak of political indifference that has smothered politics here for the last few years, and played strongly in Howard's favour.

People may find they really have a voice.