Happy Hooker Re-Hired

That Adelaide via Sutherland via Adelaide boy Andrew Hilditch, has had his cricket visa restamped by Cricket Australia and will be free to continue the splendid job he has been doing for our cricket reputation as Chairman of Shysters. If there is one thing to be learned from being a Cricket Tragic, it's that in Australia, we look after our own. Once that membership badge to the exclusive Australian Cricket Club is stamped, you have to die to be rejected and even then, they'll prop you up for months until the smell gets too bad.

It's interesting to parallel the fates of Sutherland's opening bats of the early to mid seventies. Hilditch was a Baggy Green vice-captain who kept playing the hook shot as though it was a short Roman sword in a Botham-assisted honourable death. He spoke well, even when handling his balls with foreign gentleman from the sub continent who Neverwaz. All this and hours of paying 12 year olds to bowl at him at all hours between dawn and dusk at Carringbah Oval proved his mettle ... apparently. It meant he was determined ... a thinker ... success oriented ... a man of grit, true grit ... or was that Rooster Cogburn?

Then he married Bob Simpson's daughter. Beyond death, the greatest career move is marrying the boss's daughter.

Appointed a selector in the second half of the '90's , when it was summertime and the livin' was easy and Chairman in 2006, his grim determination to prove the rest of the nation wrong is no different from his days as a hooker, when cheap shots, long hours for lousy pay and arrogant johns like Botham and Hadlee used him for their own means. Now, despite a growing concern among what the SMH describes as the "other 20 million selectors", fiascoes including Andrew Symonds and losing the Ashes this year have not been enough to stop Cricket Australia giving him a new contract. With twenty million to choose from, is he the best we can do?

John Dyson, on the other hand, although sharing a similar mediocre Test batting record, has always made his work memorable. He was a prolific run scorer for Sutherland and NSW and his two Test centuries both made a mark - a fine 127 not out as Australia saved the second Test against the Windies in 81/82 and but for the impossible freak Ian Botham, a match winning 102 and top score 34 in the debacle at Headingley in 1981.

Dyson seldom dropped the ball, even when caught out of position as anyone who remembers "that catch" at the SCG will attest. A chalkie, he learned his own lessons but has never been frightened to step out in faith and walk in the opposite direction from the "pink gin set" who generally run the game. Hence, he was a rebel tourist to Sarth Efrika and lost his job with the NSW Dept of Education.

Taking up coaching, he was Sri Lankan coach earlier this century and did some excellent work to point the Lankans back in the direction of international success. He was doing much the same job for the West Indies but by refusing to play the game the way the inept Carribean administrators wanted it played, he was sacked. He sided with and advised senior playes and joined them in refusing to sign contracts which locked them into poor returns for their effort.

John Dyson will find more work because he's too good a man manager not to but it won't be in Australia, where we grasp egalitarianism and rebellion as links to our national heritage but prefer not to employ people who demonstrate it in the every day.

We prefer nice people with round faces who's membership badges clearly show on their double breasted lapels. We trust solicitors more than school teachers. We'd rather the safety of earnest failure than the sweet smell of risky success.

We prefer Andrew.

By we, I'm excluding myself and the other 19,999,999. We, here, refers to Andrew and Cricket Australia. After all, when you're in the poo, it's best to use the royal wee.