Australia’s approach definitely not cricket
CIVIS, useless at catching balls, throwing balls, or hitting balls with bat or racquet (losing, decades ago, at squash, even when playing a very heavily pregnant member of the family), didn’t shine when compelled to play cricket (the default summer option for compulsory sport at Civis’ school, eventually avoided by getting into rowing), but enjoys, from beyond the boundary, the concept of fiveday matches, where decisionmaking demands subtlety in weighing up many unpredictable factors, including the weather, and a game can be played through without finding a winner.
The tactics adopted by Australia against India in the recent test series make the infamous underarm bowling incident pale to a weak joke.
As well as the abusive sledging for which Australian cricketers are notorious, their fast bowlers deliberately targeted the lowerorder Indian batsmen with highspeed, shortpitched balls intended to intimidate (illegal under the rules of cricket) and physically damage the recipients (apparently two players had to retire hurt, one with a fractured elbow, the other with a badly damaged hand, and goodness knows how many were concussed — it’s lucky none were killed, like Phillip Hughes in 2014).
The policy was openly described by Australian captain Tim Paine (the one promoted to captain to ‘‘clean up’’ Australia’s act after the balltampering scandal) and other Australian players, and endorsed by Australian commentators, who talked of putting Indian bowlers out of action by breaking bones in hands or feet. Worst of all, the (Australian) umpires refused to act on such clear breaches of the rules.
After that it was a delight to find that injuryreduced India achieved a recordbreaking fourthinnings score of 329 for seven to win the fourth test and the series, retaining the BorderGavaskar Trophy.
Brutality and lawbreaking don’t always succeed. Well done, India!
A pupil (Civis finds the now ubiquitous use of “student” — once used only for those at tertiary level — inappropriate as a general term for schoolchildren, especially those who return for a senior year primarily to play sport) at Howick College has told Stuff that the school’s external NCEA results had been uploaded to the school’s online student portal on Wednesday afternoon, and were available to view for “quite a few hours”.
So what?
Half a century ago, when Civis and siblings were sitting external exams such as school certificate and university scholarship (no bursary exams, let alone NCEA, then) the full pass lists were sent to newspapers, and local results printed by them, a considerable time before one’s results arrived in the mail.
Civis remembers, on one occasion, because Civis attended a school in another city, being taken to the office of the Nelson Evening Mail (Dad knew someone who worked there) to check the results, but generally an aunt in Dunedin, who knew a staff member of the ODT, commissioned him to check the results, and then rang the family with the information. The sky didn’t fall because the information was known a day before it was printed in the appropriate newspaper.
This year the results made known to schools before official release were embargoed until Thursday, when they were released on to the NZQA website.
But what difference will it make that pupils of one school got their results a day earlier? Has any harm been done?
Much better a marginally early result than what happened to some pupils of Pukekohe High School, who, having submitted assignments contributing to their NCEA internal assessment, found the school hadn’t informed NZQA of the results in time for their official record to qualify them for entry into university or a particular private teaching institution.
Civis can’t help wondering why the pupil (or expupil) of Howick College thought the matter worth bothering Stuff with, and why Stuff thought it important enough to make the matter the subject of a news item.