The Rave

In which we ruminate on the Woman Slayer’s approach to life, pontificate on the scintillating NZ v Bangladesh Test series, Billy ducks in for a moment, emos from Reg, a magnificent News or Ruse and a song that will bring tears to your eyes as we salute Jacob Oram’s demise.

 

 Episode 77 of The BYC [26:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It is not rocket science - but if you’re old, decrepit, blind, inflexible, infirm and possibly off your head then a picket fence can be a little bit like the Krypton Factor…”Sometimes a little bit of assistance is worse than none at all.”

Yet another reason to visit Cricinfo - the Different Strokes blog (nothing to do with Gary Coleman or batting for the other side):

Paul Ford is a co-founder of the New Zealand cricket supporters’ cult, the Beige Brigade. He was once described by a current New Zealand cricketer as “looking spastic” even mucking about with an Excalibur and a tennis ball in the backyard. Paul bowls right-armed Nathan Astlesque “nudes”, his batting would make Ewen Chatfield look elegant, and he is a committed fielder. He sometimes grows a beard to hide his double chin and inhabits a periphery of cricket that Cricinfo is proud to be glimpsing through this blog.

Nice to have Radio NZ pop in for a chat the other night…wonderful! Listen in below…

 

 Black Caps show signs of hope [3:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A group of [Australian cricket] fans watching the Mohali Test were arrested by police for wearing T-shirts with offensive slogans, the Press Trust of India reports. “Today, we found some Australian fans wearing these T-shirts,” a police officer said. “The slogans written were ‘Beer with Mahatma, Bets with Gupta, Dancing with Indira and still getting runs’. We took strong objection to it and summoned them.”

Here is the story from India.

And check out the news broadcast. (The last line when she repeats the bit about getting the runs is hilarious.)

And the Ocker perspective is here.

Regards,
Woz

An analysis of the NZ cricket team’s uniforms couldn’t overlook our pithy insights:

But an unscientific straw poll of 40 people had just one respondent agree with NZC and that was the Beige Brigade’s founder Paul Ford.

“It would be a disaster if it wasn’t black given how much they have invested into the ‘Black’ Caps brand,” he said.

So it might be that Canterbury and NZC have pulled off one of the great optical illusions - inventing a black uniform that looks a deep shade of blue…There seems to be a fashion crime-cricket ability continuum. We play some of our best cricket in the worst uniforms. I love the beige, obviously, but it was horrific, and New Zealand’s World Cup uniform in 1992 was awful but we were pretty good then too.”

Love your work Rigor!

WINNING THE RACE: Mark “Rigor” Richardson, left, beats Tony Veitch in a celebrity 100m race at a Twenty20 cricket international in 2006. Richardson has now won the race to take Veitch’s place as frontman for Radio Sport’s flagship breakfast show.

Episode 76 of the BYC in which Madison welcomes us back after a lull in which we received threats to our security, we moan about NZ’s worst ever one-day cricket loss of all time, OWT is stuck in the Mt Victoria Tunnel hunting Bangladeshi takeaways, we provide a run down on the last 7 weeks of activity in world cricket, emos from around the world and a reworked BYC version of a song from one of the world’s greatest tail-enders.

 

 Beige Brigade podcast: Episode 76 of the BYC [33:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A group of BB stalwarts headed to Norway last week to add some home-bred support to the New Zealand shearing team at the World Shearing Championship held in Bjerkreim, Norway over Friday – Sunday (2nd – 5th October)….here is their story…

Norway is a country somewhat similar to NZ with sheep, fiord’s, mountains, sometimes snow as well as oil and gas (just like Taranaki really) it is therefore somewhat surprising to find that it’s a part of Europe not commonly travelled by the numerous young kiwis taking in Northern Hemisphere OE’s and work experience. This could be a directly proportional to the limited links into Norway from the UK and lack of thrift (budget) airlines visting its shores and possibly more reflective of the common view that that social refreshments are somewhat prohibitively priced.
For this reason it was a rather peculiar decision for a group of London and Dublin based kiwis to don their Beige Brigade finest and head over the North sea in support of a sport that will not doubt draw much ridicule from their less ‘sophisticated’ colleagues. But as the tour instigator Richard Taylor knows there’s a thin line between classic adventure and catastrophic misadventure and fine art lies in finding just the right mix of the two.
With the Norwegian wind chill factors fore-casted around balmy -3degrees Celsius the tour party of 5 supporters packed several jackets although difficult to find negative rated BB kit we were fortunate enough to grab a set of locally made Kairanga Singlets and moccasins for added comfort. This in combo with our well packaged brown stubbies and beanies we were always going to set the local hearts fluttering

Fortunately for the boys along with the cold October also signifies the start of the Red King Crab Season which runs for approximately 2 months and has been made somewhat famous for the low life expectancy of the fisherman potting them. A common documentary on the Discovery channel being entitled – Deadliest Catch or something like that.

For the record the touring party pictured consisted of:
Richard ‘Tricky’ Taylor
John ‘Holmes’ Aldridge
Simon ‘Moose’ Devane
Luke ‘Jawbone’ Senior
Rhett ‘Derelict’ Grover

Derelict was certainly on a mission and after chopping half a bottle of vodka (we were prepared for the local pricing issues by ensuring our luggage was well stoked duty-free) on the 2hr Friday flight over there while chatting up a Norweign chicken returning from Bognor Regis (England). Unfortunitely for the no aptly named Derelict his mind didn’t actually land until a good 6 hours later…. meaning he’d forgotten the path of his short walk into town and ended up sleeping on the docks laying a pallet down as a mattress and covering himself with trash from a skip to keep himself warm (good to see the bush survival techniques can still kick when your in that many pieces).

In all fairnest I’d also prematurely dived into the duty-free supplies and reverted back to my uni type darkside state and also wandered the streets for 4hr something looking for the apartment just metres from the pub.

We were staying in an apartment which is definitely the way to go over there other than the fact it had only two sets of keys and three of the lads again roughed it Saturday night – after again knocking themselves for a six on duty-free spirits sleeping on it’s door mat and stairs for a few hours following a poor pre dinner performance and sending themselves back to the pavilion early while Moose and I donning the beige attended a 7 course meal with several Norwegian oil dynasties and yacht owners at one of the posh-est restaurants in town (Nobu trained chef and only one serving the elusive King Crab).

Back to the actual champs - we rocked up to what was a very ‘intimate’ venue of several hundred and immediately struck up a conversation with Dawn and Robin Avery - the parents of the eventual winner…Dawn was a huge exponent of the ‘rabbit ears’…as you will see from the first image in this story and the one below she was prolifically dishing them out!
It certainly was a big night and minus the wig and cow bell on Holmesy. he came ridiculously close to following the NZ team on stage as official flag bearer for the closing ceremony parade - only his better judgement stopped him…which is unusual and well out of character for Holmesy….but note for future tourists - grab a kick arse official looking flag and Norwegian security will let you do pretty much anything - very trusting people Scandos.

After the shearing - and all very wasted we ended up out side waiting for a taxi – while relieving him of a few unwanted morsels we asked the Hotdog stand man if he could call a taxi for us, which he did and then informed us of the significant wait due to the fact we were an hour out of Stavanger…so the kind gent invited us back to his house. and gave up a couple of bottles of his homemade plum sherry to take the chill off, which was all very pleasant….then things got a little weird. He decided about now that it was an ideal time to show us his private armoury… which could be easily confused with the world’s biggest cache of rifles, pistols and knifes. All very surreal as demonstrated in the photo of Jawbone below but surprisingly un-sobering even though he was trusting a Jaffer with guns and looked a bit like Joseph Fritzl. It has been suggested the picture below is a bit blurry due to Tricky shaking with fear when he took it I wasn’t about to start shooting any images myself so not starting a trend or risk capturing the guy with all the guns on film. We all had a crack on a few anti tank and air to surface missile launchers and bid our red neck arms dealer good bye and headed back across the country to unleash ourselves on the unsuspecting but aptly named Stavanger Super Sunday (it was that last day of the summer season).

After a few more settlers in the apartment we managed to hit the previously scouted club admittedly the lads had a few close shaves demonstrating their new found shearing prowess on local club furniture and Luke with a juiced up gym gorilla that took a liking to him but thankfully all came through the evening unscathed and in one piece.

We bumped into Peter Race (kiwi shearer who finished 3rd in the Hand Shearing division) the next day as we were retracing our journeys around the town and looking for a pallet so Rhett could show us all how to survive on the street in -3 degrees. I was good to catch up with one of the NZ team when we could remember what was being said he mentioned “It was great surprise to see you Beige Brigade fellas here as we don’t get a lot of support at these foreign events”

We commented that we hoped we hadn’t disgraced ourselves too much to which he replied – “nah not at all you beige boys were the life and soul of the entertainment”. Heart warming stuff from the old salt…if the champs are back in Norway next year then get on board!

Regards and thanks for the Kit,

John Holmes