Peter Roebuck, Paul Colgan, John Howard, and YouTube video clips just want to be free ...

The news that John Howard might be getting a gig with the ICC, and that this is generating a fearsome controversy, reminded me of some of my favourite footage from the Howard years.

Sure there's an ugly political message at the end of the clip - we're so over the politics of the long lost noughties decade - but it gives you the goodies up the front. Can't bowl, can't catch.

Meantime Peter Roebuck got things started on the controversy with ICC arena no place for this inexpert right-arm slow.

And there you'll find the same YouTube footage as featured above mashed up and abused by The Sydney Morning Herald, no doubt as a result of its 'fair use' policy, based on its fervent belief that information should be free.

But back to Roebuck, who hits for six John Howard and his nomination by Cricket Australia to the top job at the International Cricket Council:

Convinced that a heavyweight was needed to counter the all-consuming and much resented power of the Indians, thoughts turned to Howard. After all, he was a cricketing man and at a loose end. Pawar himself is a senior member of the Indian cabinet, so it is not unknown for even current ministers to involve themselves in running the game at the highest levels. Suspicions that Pawar might use his position as ICC president to advance a narrow agenda have been a motivation The notion that an aged and conservative white politician with scant knowledge of the intricacies of the game can act as a counterbalance is far-fetched. Howard does not know enough about cricket or cricket business and, besides, is a divisive figure.

There's more than a hint of irony in all this. Roebuck himself, so I'm told, is notorious for the great Viv Richard and Joel Garner Somerset controversy, where he showed all the diplomatic skills of John Howard (here). Talk about being white and a divisive figure.

And then there was the curious matter of the three South African cricketers given a good caning on their buttocks for misbehaviour, resulting in a pleading guilty to three charges of common assault and a suspended jail sentence:

Roebuck met the three young cricketers, Keith Whiting, Reginald Keats and Henk Lindeque, who were all 19 at the time of the offences, while working as a commentator abroad.

He invited the men to live at his home near Taunton and promised to coach them.

He said he warned each young man beforehand that he would use corporal punishment if they failed to obey his "house rules".

He also said he thought they were from a culture in which corporal punishment was accepted.

The offences came to light when one of the cricketers showed the marks Roebuck had caused to the secretary of Bishop's Lydeard Cricket Club, who passed the matter to the police.

... Roebuck said: "Obviously I misjudged the mood and that was my mistake and my responsibility and I accept that." (Cricketer sentenced for caning trainees).

Never mind, I've often thought young men could do with a paddling on their buttocks as a way of shaping their minds. Not so sure what it would do for their cricketing skills.

And there are surely good things to be said about Roebuck, not the least that he drives Tim Blair into a frenzy. Blair at one point invented the "must" rule for Roebuck's scribbles (English Musted), and regularly lashes the "Australia-based English crictator" as the "great summer musterer" piles indignity on cricket ignorance (see Lift unshortened, a totally arcane piece on Biran Lara's backlift). Could Roebuck and his addiction to Hamlet and pea soup save the world from climate change by acting as a lighting rod for Blair's rage?

If there's anything funnier than loon pond, it surely has to be a village green with a cricket pitch.

Not to worry. As usual, we can turn to The Punch, Australia's most illegible and incoherent conversation, and Paul Colgan's Can this man save cricket?, as he springboards off Roebuck and tries to deliver a rebuttal.

Wherein amazingly the same YouTube footage turns up, complete with archaic political message, no doubt as a result of Chairman Rupert's 'fair use' policy, based on his fervent belief that information should be free and that intellectual property owners who seek to lock it up (behind talk of rights and paywalls and payment for use) are in fact behaving like baronial bandits, like lords of the intellectual property manor, like the Sheriff of Nottingham up against the noble Robin Hoods of the intertubes, like self-seeking, aggrandising, selfish destroyers of the right of a democracy to be well-informed and entertained. Because information just wants to be free.

Never mind, it's Colgan's job to refute the wretched Roebuck, and to do so he plays a straight bat of John Howard proportions:

It’s a bit unfair to say that just because he’s “aged ... conservative [and] white” he can’t succeed in the job - not just because it’s discriminatory against Howard on a number of levels but also against a very large segment of cricket fans all over the world.

And while Howard might not know a lot about the details of cricket, he wasn’t exactly an expert in many things when he took office but acquitted himself well enough to stay in for four terms.

The basic argument though is that with cricket going through so much change and experimentation, a leader with conservative instincts might not be the best person for the job. Maybe it’s enough to leave it at that.

Oh sorry, did you just nod off then? Cricket's going through change? From the utterly tedious to the distinctly tiresome?

Yep, buttocks thrashing makes for a more engaging read. I'll leave you to make all the jokes about thrashing balls through the covers, and the thwack of willow on leather.

But reaction to Colgan did produce some solid responses, like this one:

Running world cricket is a larger job than being PM of Australia.

Oh yes, so when the ICC decides to conduct a war in Afghanistan, or perhaps Iraq, that'll show its life and death power over spectators.

Now I imagine you're wondering how I know so much about cricket and the key question of whether John Howard can save Australian cricket from India and the ravages of 20/20 cricket. And why I should care.

Well to tell you the truth I don't care. He gets the gig, meh; he doesn't, meh, someone else gets the gig. The Indians still rule the roost, meh.

It's just a game, after all, not that cricket tragics understand this. But then they understand so little about the world.

Oh okay, to tell the truth, I really don't have a clue about cricket, and yes there's a shadowy figure standing behind me telling me what to say. Begone vile spirit.

Phew, that's a relief. Now between you and me, surely cricket is the quintessential Beckettian existential comedy, wherein mad fools in flannels stand out in the mid-day sun, while mad dogs settle contentedly in the shade. Do they still wear flannels? Who knows, who cares.

Surely the game has long ago gone to the dogs. Sure the current crop make out like bandits, and do their best to upstage thugby leaguers, and if they're Rikki tikki tarvi Ponting they make squillions, but at what cost to their minds? (BRW's 2010 list of Australia's Top 50 Sports Earners).

So let's not speak any more of cricket, or John Howard for that matter, but instead let's cherish the way the mainstream media now regularly devours its own and YouTube and google to deliver the stories that matter the most to folks that care. Oh and keep a sharpish eye out for more buttocks' canings ... like Alexander Downer, we're keen on the things that batter ... (was the man only a fading dream, or a long forgotten nightmare, here?)

Eek, Howard's a batter too. Can't bowl, can't catch anything but Peter Roebuck's ire, and likely enough can't bat his way out of trouble. And only Tim Blair standing at silly point to keep making silly points.


Never mind. Since we've mentioned mad dogs and Englishmen, why not end with a little Noel Coward? Much more fun, and over in a couple of minutes instead of five days. And it's on YouTube and it's free. To think that such a thing could be ...

And now we've covered Australia's national summer sport, roll on Australia Day. Anything is possible, dream the impossible dream, even if you know nothing about the subject to hand but have a gentleman's or gentlelady's fond amateurish enthusiasms, and can remember the day when sordid working class professionals entered the ground from another gate ...