RIP 2019
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@Donsteppa said in RIP 2019:
Very sad news about Qadir. I think he was the first leg spinner I saw playing live, my memory is very hazy, but I remember a very ‘busy’ action.
Busy indeed. He was the Steve Smith of spin bowling with his pre action antics and fidgeting. Class bowler though.
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A good cricketing yarn about a 43 year old Qadir spending a season in Melbourne that's well worth sitting down with your favourite beverage for.
Two parts that I loved...
Eleven years on, Bakker's head is still shaking. "An hour - he was prepared to wait an hour. There was I falsely thinking I had broken him, when all that time he was working up a trap for me. I mean, my God, the mentality of the man, the mindset."
And ...
WHEN Jason Bakker remembers the day that he did not play a false stroke and was deceived by the most mysterious ball he ever faced, he thinks of the heat. At tea-time he galloped upstairs to the Kardinia Park dining room and began gulping down water. "I was tucking into rockmelon and watermelon and whatever else I could find." That's when he glanced out the window and saw that Qadir, who had bowled through the entire afternoon session without a rest, was still on the oval.
Qadir was out there with Craig Whitehand, known to all at Geelong Cricket Club as "Douggie", the guy who fronted up every Saturday in his whites and his spikes to drag off the pitch covers and carry out drinks and take care of the equipment. As Qadir was walking off, Douggie had stopped him at the players' gate and asked, how do you bowl a wrong'un. Now the two of them were standing on the grass, metres apart. A couple of balls lay between them. Qadir would wave his arms and talk a bit. Then he'd bowl a few. Then Douggie would bowl a few. After a while Qadir would wander across and say something. Then Douggie would bowl a few more.
Bakker went back to his watermelon and forgot what he'd seen. Twenty minutes went by before he thought about strapping the pads back on.I was coming down the stairs," Bakker recalls, "I looked out on the ground. And the two of them were still there. Abdul had given his whole break on a hot day to this guy from Geelong who he knew nothing about."
At Geelong training the next week Douggie was gleefully flighting wrong'uns. A few short years later he was picked for Australia's team of intellectually disabled cricketers. He has since represented his country in South Africa and England, this stranger who had never bowled a wrong'un until the day he met Abdul Qadir and asked how it was done.
Full story: http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/447092.html
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@Donsteppa I have several mates who played against Qadir during that season.
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@ACT-Crusader said in RIP 2019:
@Donsteppa I have several mates who played against Qadir during that season.
Any stories on what he was like to play against? Sounds like Carl Hooper was their overseas pro the following year.
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During the 90s Victorian club cricket had a healthy sprinkling of quality internationals.
Qadir liked a chat on the field. Nothing untoward at least from what I’ve heard, but liked to rev himself and his team mates up.
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RIP Daniel Johnston
Underrated lyrical genius
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@MiketheSnow said in RIP 2019:
RIP Daniel Johnston
Underrated lyrical genius
Yup. It's almost a cliche to say that because of the attention he got from people like Bowie, Cobain etc etc
It's justified though"The Devil and Daniel Johnston" was a decent documentary which covered his mental issues. I was aware of the hype around him but that doc actually got me to listen to him
He had a knack for pop songs
One of my favourites
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Oh my god
Way too soon. In the shadow of his brother but he had an excellent provincial career and was an AB
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Would be remiss if not mentioning the passing today of one Mr. Eddie Money. He was often an awkward stage performer and critical punching-bag copping a lot of snark, but he was also at one time a New York City cop, and he recorded at least three certifiable Seventies classics in “Baby, Hold On,” “Take Me Home Tonight” (feat. Ronnie Spector), and the immortal “Two Tickets To Paradise,” songs that will long outlive him.
This is a very tasty vintage live version of the latter.
R.I.P. Eddie.
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From the New York Times obit:
[...]
“Mr. Money, whose birth name was Edward Mahoney, announced last month that he had stage 4 esophageal cancer.
He and his family have been the focus of a reality television show on AXS TV, “Real Money.” The episode in which he learns he has cancer was broadcast the night before he died.
[...]
He began training to become a police officer at 18, but by night he was rocking with a band called the Grapes of Wrath.
“Those were the days when students were fighting with cops all the time,” he said, “and the band eventually fired me because they didn’t want a ‘pig’ in the group.””
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A long excerpt from a lovely Rolling Stone tribute:
Baby Hold On: Why Eddie Money Was the Patron Saint of Rock Uncool
With a string of immortal hits, the late singer ignored trends and hit FM paydirt time and time again
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For decades, we’ve been taught that pop stars, especially rock stars, are supposed to embody a certain type of cool. But the accidental genius of Money, who died Friday of heart valve complications at 70, was that he almost never was. Throughout pretty much his entire career, he was rock’s endearing every-palooka, a clumsy, somewhat overwrought guy who was one of rock’s most relatable acts and, during a 45-year career, stumbled onto some of the most enduring radio hits of his era.
Money threw himself into songs the way he threw himself into stage shows: with a sloppy passion. Rock lyrics don’t get any more generic than those in the frisky “Think I’m in Love” or his first hit “Baby Hold On” — “the future is ours to see/when you hold on to me” — but Money sang them, and other songs, as if he believed fully in every single word and that his life depended on conveying them with as much intensity as he could.
This was also the era of the pillow-soft sound now called Yacht Rock, a fairly loathsome term dripping with ironic appreciation for the likes of Christopher Cross and Rupert Holmes. But again, Money was never quite right for that moment, either. Hardly a suave crooner, he stood in for every person who was all sputtery emotions, bereft of the polished or articulate gene. As seen repeatedly in his videos, he couldn’t quite pull off the glam-sultry look either, even when he was pretending to be a vampire (“Think I’m in Love”).
Five minutes of bleating desperation, “Take Me Home Tonight,” the 1986 hit that put him back on the charts after a dry spell, remains a wondrous record. As always, he sang it as if his world was falling apart and there was nothing he could do about it — a tension only released when Ronnie Spector emerged to pay homage to her Ronettes hit “Be My Baby” in what may have been the first “live sample” in pop, not cribbing from an old record but actually using the original singer to recreate the part.
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Baby Hold On: Why Eddie Money Was the Patron Saint of Rock Uncool
We pay tribute to the trend-oblivious hitmaking prowess of the late, great Eddie Money.
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