Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2018 i Inside Sport

We’re often guessing ahead of time who will be there playing. Sometimes it does have the quality of temptingfates. WHEN WE saw that batsman Matt Renshaw had been dropped from the Australian Test side, the words rang out in our offices: “The Inside Sport curse strikes again.” Renshaw had a spot on our December edition cover – not the main person up front, but prominent. And sure enough, our excitement about his prospects coincided with the Queenslander’s shocking run of form in Sheffield Shield. While he was backed in some quarters to be retained, he couldn’t escape some fair logic – don’t make runs, don’t keep your spot. It’s an unavoidable hazard for a long-lead publication such as ours. We’re often guessing well ahead of time who will be there…

1 The bluewater classic sets sail for the 73rd time, and will again have us switching over the channel during the lunch break at the MCG (apologies to those who turn up at Sydney Harbour to view the spectacle, or devote their Boxing Days to spending time with, you know, their families). The theme for this year’s race: keeping track of all these boats with changing names. 2 As mentioned: last year’s line honours winner, Perpetual Loyal, having won the big prize for accountant-to-the-stars Anthony Bell, was sold. The new owner, software entrepreneur Christian Beck, has dubbed his acquisition InfoTrack, taking the name of his new firm. This is no mere branding exercise – Beck says he wants to integrate, as tech people always seem to be doing, the boat…

Setting in the west Bade a fond farewell to the WACA, as the last Ashes contest to be played at the ground takes place with the third Australia vs England Test (from Dec 11). The WACA served the nation well over the years, with its bouncy pitch flummoxing touring batsman, particularly the short blokes from the subcontinent who didn’t know that cricket could be like this. It made our quicks’ eyes light up, dialling their aggression levels to the maximum. However, the place was also good for a quick-fire score, from Dougie to Gilly. It brought the term “Fremantle doctor” into the Aussie vernacular. Above all, it gave us Lillee versus Miandad. Thanks, WACA. New sporting palace in Burwood – you have a lot to live up to. Gift basket…

The folklore of Sydney grade cricket goes that when Jeff Thomson and Lenny Pascoe were dropped from Bankstown’s first grade side to fourth grade – for turning up three hours late to a match half-pissed with a couple of recent girlfriends in tow – that their opponents the next weekend couldn’t find anyone who wanted to pad up against them. Probably fair enough, they did open for Australia. Similar nerves happened to first-grade bats when their club was slated to face Wayne “Cracker” Holdsworth’s Bankstown CC. Because Cracker was rapid. He was stupid-quick. I once saw 20-year-old Holdsworth bouncing 19-year-old Michael Bevan at Manuka Oval, would’ve been ’89-90, NSW seconds versus ACT. And Holdsworth, fair dinkum, looked like Malcolm Marshall. It was skidding, searing heat. It looked ridiculous. And Bevan’s…

“She’s just a few years older, a lot more mature, can maybe grasp things better, so just a different Ash this time round. I mean, same Ash for me, but just in a lot better space.’ – Casey Dellacqua Ashleigh Barty, tennis player, finished 2017 as the world no.17, just one full season after returning from an emergency 20-month break from the game. The exquisite talent who won junior Wimbledon at 15 is now the irresistible force who upstaged Venus Williams and Garbine Muguruza and reached a fourth career grand slam doubles final while earning prizemoney of more than $1.85 million. She is 21. Barty, the cricketer, was only a child when she mimicked a Shane Warne leg break she had just watched on TV, but had played little beyond…

Call it the hunter-gatherer in us, but nothing satisfies the taste buds quite like a juicy, perfectly cooked steak. The good news is that barbecuing doesn’t need to be a greasy affair of fatty snags and T-bone slabs. Here’s how to choose the healthiest meat cuts, so you can enjoy fantastic flavour without harming your health. First of all, think about quantity. Most of us are already raising our steak intake above and beyond what we actually need. According to Australian Dietary Guidelines, a serve of beef is about 100g — a piece that size should fit in the palm of your hand — but the steaks in supermarkets can weigh up to 300g! Next, trim the fat. Try eye fillet and rump steaks, both of which offer loads of…

1 Italy is out of next year’s World Cup. And for a national embarrassment of this magnitude, the Italians did not disappoint. The newspaper La Gazzetta Dello Sport was appropriately unsubtle with its headline: “This is the apocalypse.” The elimination at the hands of Sweden will see the famed Azurri missing from the World Cup for the rst time in 60 2 Former English spinner Graeme Swann compares Aussie cricket crowds to Rocky IV: “They start screaming for ‘Drago, Drago’ but by the end, it’s all ‘Rocky, Rocky!’ That’s what the Aussies are like. They don’t like losers, and if you’re beating them, they quickly turn on their own.” All we need now is Ben Stokes to come here and cry out in the middle: “If I can change, you…

$5,942 NIGERIA World Cup victory has historically been a rich nation’s prize – every champion except Uruguay is an economic power. Pele famously said there would be an African winner by 2000; we’re still waiting for one to advance past the quarters. Nigeria, with the second-largest population and second-lowest GDP per capita, typifies the poor nation dilemma – but the Super Eagles, who have made six of the last seven WCs, could be the ones to end the hoodoo. $4.9tn JAPAN With the United States’ face-plant in qualifying, Japan takes pride of place as the richest economy at the World Cup. Curiously though, the J-League is only the tenth-richest football league in the world, trailing Russia’s, the US Major League Soccer, and even England’s Championship in revenue. 80.1 PANAMA The…

GETTING NOEL MCCABE to talk about his accomplishments is tougher than 18 holes at Carnoustie with a brutal wind whipping off the North Sea coast. McCabe admits he likes flying “under the radar” and downplays his years of dedication nurturing future generations of golfers. But after picking up the 2017 Best Club Stalwart Award, there’s simply no denying it – the quietly spoken Queenslander is a deadset local legend. For more than 25 years he has pitched in at the McLeod Country Golf Club south-west of Brisbane, helping to create a welcoming environment for the club’s juniors. He often walks the course with first-time players, runs the special Pee Wees pennant competitions and takes care of the small details, right down to laying out the junior tees. It’s a dedication…

Predicting anything at all about the BBL before it’s begun makes you feel like some Cambrian trilobite trying to describe to its little trilo-mites – in that Paleozoic lingo they used to speak – what their descendants might look like in 2017. You try researching BBL even a mere month out from its start. For a start, blokes like Starc, Hazlewood and Lyon for the Sixers and Cummins for Thunder tantalise fans with portraits in their respective franchise colours when they have no intention of turning up, if they can help it. Or if the national selectors can help it, anyway. For the true, passionate fans of these franchises (they do exist, we are just not sure what they do the other ten-and-a-half months – the theory of spontaneous generation…

To listen to Britt Cox tell it, her life as a potential Winter Olympic champion involves chasing snow as much as skiing on it. “We’re travelling pretty much the entire year,” says the 23-year-old, the top-ranked female mogul skier in the world. “We start off with water ramping in Australia early in April. Then we head to Whistler, which is in the spring, so we call that spring camp. Then we train in Park City, Utah for a bit of water jumping half the winter. Then back to Australia for the second half of the winter. Then we train in Switzerland in October each year, with a bit of work in the gym in between. Then we head away for the season.” She estimates she spends a total of three…

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“You take your kids to the Tests, and the kids take you to the Big Bash League … What nonsense.” REASONED ARGUMENTS IF YOU’RE A FAN “Sorry old man; the 20-over version of the game is the new cricket. It’s new, it’s fast, it’s exciting. There are plenty of sixes and run-outs and colour and thrills and spills. The kids love it. They’re the future and they’re voting with their feet and eyeballs. And it’s all over in three hours, a neat entertainment package.” IF YOU’RE NOT “Entertainment package? You’ve been got at by the ponytail-and-Porsche brigade. Yeah, I’ve heard the theory: you take your kids to the Tests, and the kids take you to the Big Bash League. What nonsense. If you want your kids to follow real cricket,…

Occupation T20 cricket professional for various teams, including the Brisbane Heat of the BBL Origin Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand Born September 27, 1981 Height 170cm Weight 70kg Status Former NZ Test captain, and holds record for fastest Test century and most career sixes; second man to score a T20 international century, and first to make 2000 career runs in the format; made 158 in first-ever IPL match; ranked fourth in runs scored and fifth in strike rate in 2016-17 BBL. EYE As with so many T20 dashers, you would assume McCullum has a terrific eye. He claims he doesn’t – he can’t even see the seam coming out – but he does have the elite batsman’s knack for picking up the length quickly. It’s this ability that allows him to…

DEANNA KYRIAZOPOULOS is one of the nation’s young prospects in the Olympics’ preferred kick-and-punch martial art. The diminutive Sydneysider competes in the under-46kg category, the lightest weight class on the women’s side. She jokes that people are surprised when she tells them she is an international representative in taekwando, but at 19, she has already been a member of the Australian senior team for three years, and carried the flag for the country at the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games last September in Ashgabat, in Turkmenistan. Those are the kinds of places the sport will take a person – taekwando has become surprisingly global, aided by its Games status – and Kyriazopoulos estimates she travelled away for competition a dozen times last year. Not bad for a kid who…