Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2017 i Inside Sport

Usman Khawaja represents a bold new face in our nation’s cricket. AS A SON of immigrants, I was always curious how my parents and grandparents reacted to my interest in Australia’s favourite sports. They hailed from a part of the world where cricket and footy were so foreign that they might as well have been extra-terrestrial. Nevertheless, the great Aussie pastimes subtly aided us along the path to assimilating. My dad, an athlete in college, could appreciate the indomitable competitive will of a Dennis Lillee, even if he didn’t quite understand cricket; my grandfather, who carried a gun for most of his working life, was often amused at how Aussie rules players would buck and provoke each other, and think nothing of it when the siren sounded. These thoughts recurred…

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Matthew Hayden was a great thumping chunk of Kingaroy; a broad-chested blond bomber; an uber-Australian; Chesty Bond in a baggy green. And lo did he smite the fresh red Kookaburra with his mighty Gray-Nicolls, with its carbon-fibre implants, the sound like a sledgehammer destroying a big thick pumpkin. Thockkkk. And we sat back and fairly bayed for him. And when he’d reach his century he’d raise his bat, get jiggy with Justin Langer, and make the sign of the cross upon his chest to signify the crucifix upon which Romans nailed up Jesus. And he’d look upwards as if to say, Thanks, big man. Top stuff. And we thought, “Haydos is a Catholic? Pass the beer nuts.” In November of 2015, after Usman Khawaja hooked Kiwi paceman Trent Boult to…

“ON THE MENTAL SIDE OF THINGS, CAN IT BE LEARNED? ABSOLUTELY.” A stalwart figure in Australian golf over the past decade and a half, Nick O’Hern made his name as the ultimate underdog who was the only golfer to beat Tiger Woods in head-to-head match play twice. The short-hitting, long-putting left-hander was appreciated on tour as one of those blokes who got the most out of his ability – but that hardly begins to cover just how O’Hern made himself from a struggling trainee (his first swing coach, upon seeing him for the first time, remarked: “You’re a pro?”) into a top-20 player who banked more than US$8m in career earnings. O’Hern is retired from the full-time tour, and is mostly a social golfer now. He was having a hit…

Chances are, you probably started celebrating the festive season weeks ago – an early mince tart, or a glass of bubbles at a work Christmas party. The festive period certainly isn’t a day or two – it spans months, from late November to mid-January. Relaxing your healthy eating habits is no problem for a few days over Christmas, but when you eat and drink yourself silly for weeks on end, you will eventually have to deal with the consequences on your health. In fact, on average, Aussies gain 0.8-1.5kg over the Christmas period – and that doesn’t always fall off in the New Year. While all that ham and shortbread plays a role, what you drink can have a bigger effect on your waistline than what you eat. Alcoholic drinks…

After skipper Faf du Plessis wins the toss and tells the Aussies to bat first, the tourists are off to the perfect start, capturing the wicket of opener Dave Warner for just one in the opening session of the Test. When Adam Voges (pictured below) is caught by ‘keeper Quinton de Kock for a golden duck, the Aussies are in deep trouble at 4/8. When at 5/17, Australia is threatening an unwanted record – its all-time lowest total in a Test, the 36 made against England at Edgbaston in 1902. Fellow opener Joe Burns follows a few minutes later ... also for one. Usman Khawaja looks confused when he's third out with the team score at eight. However, the Aussies are able to steer past that measly total and are…

Entire communities such as Indian and Chinese Australians remain largely apathetic towards rugby league. A CHILD’S footy debut typically evokes a sense of anticipation and excitement. A car ride to the ground filled with inquisitive chatter, the crackle of studs on concrete, rounds of electrical tape on bootlaces and the unique smell of a suburban ground. The nostalgia of the occasion can shape a lifetime of passion for the game. But what if the imagined experience doesn’t match the reality? What if your first game of rugby league entails sideline profanities, having to compete against kids up to 30kg heavier, or 40 minutes of game time without a single tackle or touch of the ball? That was the scenario faced by one distraught 12-year-old, now adamant he was unsuitable for…

Woolloongabba Nights Brisbane, so used to its pride of place as the first cricket Test of the summer, instead had to wait to open this season’s second series. But what it does get out of this Australia vs Pakistan Test (from Dec 15) is the pink ball, the second Aussie venue to take a Test into the night. The players, still sceptical about the concept, might find themselves a whole new ball of complaints at the Gabba, particularly if the conditions there lead to more swing and seam than they’ve found in Adelaide. Bottom line, Queenslanders: don’t count on waiting to day five to show up. One other point to note: the baggy greens’ record at the Gabba is formidable, even as Pakistan arrives buoyed by its recent run to…

Kevin Durant   Occupation NBA player Born September 29, 1988 Washington DC, via Origin Texas, Seattle and Oklahoma City Height 2.06m Weight 109kg Status Four-time league scoring leader, 2014 MVP, dual Olympic gold-medallist, the centrepiece of an offseason move to create potential super-team at the Golden State Warriors REACH As author David Epstein notes in his book The Sports Gene, the typical NBA player has longer arms than his already exceptional height – where the general populace has an equal arm-span-to-height ratio, the NBA average is 1.06 to one. Durant is even longer, and when combined with the shooting touch and ball-handling abilities usually found in a shorter player, you have the perfectly engineered components of an NBA scoring machine. His sequence of 20-point games ended earlier this season (18…

“ want I don to ’t want be that to far be too away close that to I the ’m front sitting at back the start in a lot , but of I dust don . ’ ” t January 2016: cross-country rallying juggernaut Toby Price is lining up for just his second Dakar Rally. Inexperienced though he might be at tackling the apocalyptic beast that is the world’s most gruelling sporting event, he already boasts the smarts to realise this event isn’t just a marathon; it’s a marathon made up of lots of others put end to end. Red Bull KTM is chasing its 15th-straight win at Dakar. To say the pressure’s on the ultra-friendly and approachable 29-year-old from Singleton is an understatement and a half. But there are…

1 With 47 official tournaments each year along with a handful of unofficial ones, there aren’t many pauses in the United States PGA Tour. When it does ask its members to get back to “work”, the circuit at least lets them do so in paradise. The twin stops in Hawaii once again begin the year, with the winners-only Tournament of Champions on Maui and Sony Open in Honolulu launching the odyssey – although the season actually commenced back in October. 2 Bonus points for anyone who knows who Jay Monahan is. The PGA Tour has a new commissioner from January 1, just its fourth in history, after the litigious Tim Finchem stepped down in November. Monahan has been groomed for the top job since joining the PGA Tour in 2008,…

“We learnt to push through the pain barrier.” AFTER WINNING the Aussie and French Opens in 1970, Australia’s Margaret Court was looking an increasingly good chance of capturing a calendar Grand Slam – that being taking out each of the four big Slam events in the same year. Towards the end of Wimbledon (Slam three) however, her dreams took a turn for the worse. How could she possibly beat the legendary Billie Jean King in the final of Wimbledon with torn ligaments in her left ankle? The answer is the stuff of legend. Court, now 74 and a senior pastor at the Victory Life Centre in Western Australia, recently wrote an autobiography illustrating the finest moments of her career, but Inside Sport was lucky enough to steal some precious one-on-one…

The game of T20 has come a long way in a decade. It’s almost unprecedented, recently at least, for a sport to become so wildly popular so soon after its birth, though its parturition from an existing game, long-form cricket (older readers might recall it), gave it an advantageous start to life. The KFC Big Bash has quickly grown to rival the Indian Premier League as a T20 powerhouse. Last season, known as BBL|05 (the “|” is silent), was widely considered BBL’s breakout year, and the exciting Melbourne derby its “Packer moment”. The Renegades and Stars hoped 55,000 would turn up. When ticket sales reached 80,000 the anticipation was frenzied up to fever-pitch. The driving force behind this epiphenomenon was that peculiar Melbourne pheromone, discharged into the softly buzzing colony.…

1 What is going on with Novak Djokovic? From peak Novak – first man since Rod Laver to win four straight majors, biggest lead as No.1 in the history of the rankings – to jaded Djokovic, it’s been a season of two halves for the troubled Serb. All signs pointed to motivational (and marital) strife. While the tour moved on to Beijing, Djokovic played with his son Stefan in a Belgrade park. He led his Facebook followers on a poignant video tour of the overgrown and bombed-out court on Kopaonik mountain in Serbia, where he first took up the game. At the Paris Masters, where he lost the No.1 ranking to Andy Murray, Djokovic was accompanied not by either of his coaches – Boris Becker and Marian Vajda – but…

“HA HA! THEY SAID WE WOULD NEVER WIN A GRAND FINAL, FLANNO!” NOVEMBER EDITION WINNER: Troy Raoley Shane Warne and Kevin Pietersen are cricketing legends, but on this day at Kingston Heath in Melbourne, leading up to the recent World Cup of Golf, they swapped the cricket gear for the metals and irons and had a fun time of it. Who on Earth knows what the two luminaries are discussing in the image above ... If you can suggest something funny and witty, you’ll be in the running to win a $150 CANTERBURY GIFT VOUCHER to enjoy shopping at your nearest Canterbury store or online at Canterbury.com.au. (Email your entries to iscomps@insidesport.com.au, or check out our website: www.insidesport.com.au. You can also post your entries the traditional way to Freeze Frame…

“People used to come to the races for the races. Now they come for the party side of it.” A lot has changed in horse racing since the now-legendary jockey Jim Cassidy rode in his first-ever race way back in 1978 at a place called Wairoa in New Zealand. And there’s plenty he’d change back if he had the chance, starting with the gradual disappearance of the old-school racing aficionado ... Born and raised in Lower Hutt, in the Wellington region on NZ’s North Island, Cassidy would go on to win the 1983 Melbourne Cup on Kiwi and the Caulfield-Melbourne Cup double in 1997 on Might And Power. A three-time winner of the Australian Derby (1990, 1993, 2009), he retired from racing in 2015 with the satisfaction of being the…