Well There‘s Your Problem - Bonus Episode 35 PREVIEW: Bodyline

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

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So, so Don Bradman is like Australia's secret weapon. I have a quote from London's news chronicle. As long as Australia has Bradman, she will be invincible. It is almost time to request a legal limit on the number of runs he should be allowed to make. He's a really good batsman. I don't want to be mean to the Brit. No, that's not true. I love the Brit. No, please, Brennan. That's a really good batsman. Um, I don't want to be mean to the br-no, that's not true I love. No, please bring in that. He's not getting better. He's saying it is. Oh, he's too good. What are we?

He's the buzz to do. Yeah, calling the cops on the haisers. Yeah, I have a question. Uh, are you gonna say what's cricket again? Mm-hmm. Well, I'm not gonna say that, I'm going to say something which is basically the same, which is how do you score a run in cricket? Okay, so, uh, right. If the ball is ball towards you, you hit the ball. There is a boundary around the outside of the sort of like big circular cricket, uh, ground, right? If it hits that, you get four runs automatically.

If it goes over it like a home run, you get six runs automatically. Otherwise, you hit it and it's however many times you and the other guy with a bat on the opposite base can run back and forth before you get to ball gets back and you get threatened with being out. Oh, I see. So they, they, they, they have to like hit you with the ball or like, you have to hit the, you have to knock the, the bales, the horizontal bales of the

vertical stumps. You see behind our outboy here. Oh, this, this thing here. Yes. Yeah, yeah. That's that thing together is called a wicked. That's what a run is. I always wondered what a wicked was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's sometimes used idiomatically for the whole pitch. So if the pitch is wet and drying, that's a sticky wicked, which is also sort of like metaphorically something

that's difficult. But that's what a wicked is. OK. I've learned a lot today. Yeah, this is the promise. You're going to learn whether or not you want to. Yeah, I'm going to get, I'm going to get black bagged by the CIA. One of the people.

You're not going to get black bagged by the CIA. So, so you'll be useful. You can be an intelligence analyst. Yeah. So, so I know what I know a little bit about cricket. Well, I'm going to be like mostly to the embassy in London. The way the test, maybe an India, I think India would be more fun. Yeah. The way the test cricket works is the team goes on sort of like a tour.

It plays probably some like some ancillary matches against like other teams and then it plays a series of tests and then, you know, it scored like a tournament, essentially, you know, you play five test matches and, you know, a best of three wins kind of thing. And so Australia sends a team to the UK in 1930 with Don Bradman in it and he whips our asses. He's really fucking good as the problem. And this becomes a sort of like national level crisis. Next slide please. So this alarming looking man on the left, two alarming looking men on the slide. This alarming looking man on the left is plum warners, so palam warner if you're nasty.

He's the chairman of the MTC, which selects at this point the England cricket team. And he's like de facto, he's the England manager. He goes, all right, we got to do something about this guy. Get me our weirdest, fruziest, most alienating, against looking man. I mean, a real star wars imperial officer looking mother fucker. Like a real strange guy.

Like, give me a few years guy. Yeah, give me the weirdest guy. And the weirdest guy. The department, yes. Yeah, the guy the weirdest guy and the weirdest guy. The worst apartment. Yes. Yeah, the guy from the parts department is on the right here, Douglas Jardin. The one with the sort of like fruity looking knackered

chief on. Yes. And as much as we talked about Don Bradman being so like difficult to get along with, Douglas Jardin is like way more oppositional, personally. Like, to be honest, this is not a controversial point of view. He's the like historical loser of this story. This guy's a piece of shit, like genuinely, like really unpleasant. There's this, he's like alienating to his friends, he's alienating to his teammates, he's,

like, I'll get to this on the next slide. He has a real thing about Australians. There's this, he's racist against Australia. He has a real thing against Australia. That's really hard to do. That's really hard to do. Genuinely, yes. There's this other characteristic of Simon Rockley Wilson who says, when they announce that he's gonna be captain

of the England team that goes to Australia, that we're gonna win the ashes and lose a dominion, right? Like Australia is gonna be so pissed off at this. They're gonna like leave the Commonwealth. So next slide, please. This is, I'm gonna explain the reason why this guy's racist against Australians, and it has to do with this foolish hat. This is a fun hat, I like it.

Yeah, I like it. So, Jordan has played in Australia before. He doesn't get along with Australians, because in Australia, there's this tradition of the crowds yell at you a little bit, the crowds kind of like yell at you a little bit and the other players kind of like make fun of you a little bit. And in particular they really zero in on this hat. This is a- This is a guy who can just take none of it. No, not at all. This is a Harlequins cap. Har a, it's like an Oxford University alumni cricket club.

He wears this all the time and has no sense of humor about it. And so when he runs into like a single Australian man, making fun of his like propeller. He breaks out in some sort of, yes. Yeah, I got the last fellow hat. Yeah, exactly. Like real like, Aristo stuff. Like I am going to wear my gesture hat hat and if you make fun of me at all

I'm gonna cry He's like really has this like aristocratic bearing as well Which is really sort of like David and Goliath to the Australians because like gonna call a principle about this, you know Yeah, exactly exactly. Yeah, like it's not like I'm gonna beat you up, it's like I'm gonna call the principle. I'm gonna give you in so much trouble. Yeah, exactly. And so all of the Australian players that they really

like to fake, like, you know, they grew up doing this, you know, throwing this sort of crick-a-ball-shaped hunks of shit at each other or whatever. And then this guy shows up with his fool full hat. And it's really sort of night and day. There's one sort of like comment from the stands, which is, where's the butler to carry the bat for you? So, so Jordan, he picks three fast bowlers. There's, I'll get into this in a minute,

but if we go to, if we go to the next slide, there's, he picks three, this is the best of them, Harold Laward. If you end up being sort of like the unwilling villain of this story, along with Bill Vos and Gubby Allen, the cricketers were called shit like Gubby Allen back then. And again, there's a class dynamic. Like, like, Lowe would used to be a minor. He like, I got into like, notting him, Shirk, cricket club. And this guy who looks like he should be having a butler

carry shit around for him is gonna tell him what to do. The two sort of like styles of bowling and cricket, there's spin bowling and there's pace bowling. The spin bowling is you make the ball do something weird. Like, you know, like baseball, you have like a curve ball or whatever, because it has to bounce off the thing. It's going to go in some weird directions.

Pace bowling is you just fucking throw the thing as fast as you can, which, as we've established, is pretty fucking fast, like 90, 100 miles an hour. And you sort of try and beat the reaction time, essentially. And Laudvos Nalana all pays bowlers. This is unusual in and of itself. You kind of ideally you want a mix and what Jordan has done has gone, no, all speed, no weird shit, just like all speed all the time.

But when you're bowling, okay, so you got the big, you all the time. Um, when you're, when you're bowling, does, uh, okay, so you got the, you got the big, uh, you got the bad. Uh, when you're bowling, does it have like hit the ground or like, how does that work? Okay. Okay. Yeah, at a hundred miles an hour. Yeah, has to bounce off the pitch at a hundred miles an hour and come up. Fuck no, it has to. Fuck no. it has to be. Fuck no.

Yeah, yeah. I can easily be killed. Yeah, we could do that play sports. Yeah, so a cricket ball, if you're batting the ball, it's like just be in rocks hiding behind the wickets like if they, if we duck lower than they can't see us. So, uh, next, next slide, please. So next, next slide, please.