Blogs & Pods

Date: June 25, 2013 / Posted by Glenn Mitchell

Australian cricket continues to lurch from bad to worse. The axing of national coach Mickey Arthur just a fortnight out from the first Ashes Test is the latest in a string of controversies to beset the Australian team. After a competitive home summer where Australia pushed the world number one South Africa before conceding the […]

Date: June 21, 2013 / Posted by Glenn Mitchell

Australia entered the Champions Trophy as the titleholder and bowed out without a whimper. It now has three weeks ahead of the first Ashes Test at Trent Bridge on 10 July to try and turn around the nation’s cricketing fortunes. It is a Sisyphean task and recent history does not augur well. There are two […]

Date: June 15, 2013 / Posted by Glenn Mitchell

David Warner is a man with issues – serious ones. His off-field behaviour of late has been fraught with immature acts and senseless shenanigans – behaviour that has effectively ruled him out of the opening Ashes Test at Trent Bridge on 10 July. Twice in the space of three weeks he has been called upon […]

Date: June 14, 2013 / Posted by Glenn Mitchell

One of the key tenets of any business is to grow your client base. The same principal should automatically apply to elite level sport. With that in mind, Cricket Australia – and more particularly its CEO James Sutherland – has been leading the charge towards day-night Test cricket. The recent signing of a $500 million […]

Date: June 8, 2013 / Posted by Glenn Mitchell

Pakistan-born leg-spinner Fawad Ahmed’s qualification to represent Australia has been a mini version of that which surrounded Zimbabwean-born Graeme Hick’s qualification to represent his adopted England in 1991. Hick, of course, had a far more imposing first-class record than Ahmed’s by the time he debuted. And, unlike Ahmed’s situation, there was a finite countdown to […]

Date: June 7, 2013 / Posted by Glenn Mitchell

The news could not have been any bleaker for Australia upon its arrival in England with the fact that skipper Michael Clarke has again had a flare up of his back complaint. After nursing his way to 92 consecutive Tests by carefully managing a condition he has had since his late-teens he was finally forced […]

Date: May 31, 2013 / Posted by Glenn Mitchell

Australia knows only too well how big a thorn England captain Alastair Cook may be in the upcoming Ashes series. The left-handed opener was the leading run-scorer in the most recent series between the two teams in Australia in 2010-11, compiling a Bradmanesque 766 runs at 127.6. In a series that saw England triumph down […]

Date: May 11, 2013 / Posted by Glenn Mitchell

If ASADA doesn’t come up with some sort of direct sanctions at Essendon, the AFL must. With every day that has passed in the last couple of weeks, the Bombers’ story has become more and more fraught. The latest revelations don’t augur well. But, it may be difficult in the end to prove that Essendon […]

Date: May 10, 2013 / Posted by Glenn Mitchell

Ever since the Brownlow Medal was first awarded to Geelong’s Edward ‘Carji’ Greeves in 1924, the umpires have been responsible for awarding the votes. Currently after each home-and-away fixture the three field umpires get together in their change room and decide on the three best players on the ground and award votes on a 3-2-1 […]

Date: May 7, 2013 / Posted by control

The Essendon Football Club has gone public with the findings of the internally launched Ziggy Switkowski Report into the club’s management and administrative protocols. Citing legal reasons, the club has said the document itself cannot be made public. Club chairman Davis Evans summed up the findings thus – “Problems occurred in selection, recruitment processes, induction […]