Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes sadly passed away
yesterday, as the result of an unlikely injury sustained while batting. Hughes
was just 25 (his 26th birthday being in a couple of days), meaning
that he was expected to have several years of cricket left in him, and many
years of life after that. His Test
record ended with 26 matches, and 1535 runs at an average of 32.66.
It made me wonder: what could have we expected from Phillip
Hughes in the years ahead? Of course, there are many possible outcomes – Hughes
may have picked up his performance substantially like Matthew Hayden did in the
latter years of his career, or he may never have played another Test (though he
looked well in the running for a spot in the upcoming Test series). What we do
know though is that he was reaching a point in his career where batsmen are
expected to have their best years.
A few years back, Adrian Worton at The
Game Is A Foot looked at batting averages by age for players whose careers
started after 1990 and played at least 50 Tests. He also restricted his
analysis to those with batting averages over 25.00 – what I will call ‘good’
batsmen (not all of them may be specialist batsmen). In the chart below I have
compared Hughes’ average for each calendar year of his Test career, against good
batsmen of a similar age. Since Hughes was born in November, using his calendar
year stats is I think a good enough approximation.
Phil Hughes had a great year when he was 20, and was far
above the average of other good batsmen at that age. In each year since he was
a little below average, meaning that overall his record was about average for a
good Test batsman of his age.
Hughes though was approaching what is usually a batsman’s
best period. Over the next ten years, if Hughes had managed to hold down at
least a semi-regular Test spot, and performed at around the average of good
Test batsmen it is reasonable to expect that he could have averaged around the
mid-forties per dismissal. Hence by the end of his career he may well have had
an overall Test batting average of around 40.
Of course to his family and friends the loss of
Phil Hughes goes beyond mere figures. To be sure Hughes’ career going forward
would have had its bad days; it is unfortunate for cricket fans though that we
will not get to enjoy the centuries he may have made as well.
A few months
ago I resolved to pay more attention to more of the world’s major sports
leagues, specifically the major European football leagues, and the major
American sport leagues. While this was helped by my upping my data allowance,
it is restricted by my not having pay-TV, and also that for most of the weekdays
I would not be around to watch the TV anyway.
One sport that
does conveniently fit into my life though is hockey. American sports are on at
a time that I can listen to them on radio during the day here in Australia, and
while my radio app does not pick up American football or basketball games, it
has access to a plethora of hockey broadcasts. Typically I only tune in for
games between the more ‘iconic’ teams – from the US: Pittsburgh and
Philadelphia, the NY teams, LA and Anaheim, Boston, Detroit, and Chicago, and
from Canada: Montreal, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Toronto. But with hockey games
played every day throughout the season, there is usually one game a day that I
will tune in for at least a period.
In an age
where most of the sports coverage we have access to is visual – either TV or
internet – listening to the radio feels like an interesting throwback. For me,
it reminds me of listening to Australian rules football in the 1980s and 1990s;
nowadays I barely listen to Australian football, as I can easily get my fill
just from TV broadcasts. Hence listening to a game on, say, the Edmonton or
Pittsburgh network, and hearing the ads for local stores, somewhat feels like
an alternate childhood in which I grew up in one of those cities listening to
the clack of the puck and the swishing of skates on ice. (For the record I can’t
skate.) For NY Islanders games I listen to the Hofstra University radio coverage,
which leads me to imagine being a college kid in a dorm, listening to the
hockey as I study and then drift off to sleep. I get a similar feeling
listening to English Premier League matches on radio, as if those matches rather
than Australian Football League matches are the ones that me and my town have
been looking forward to all week, although the less favourable time zone
differences between here and England means I experience that less often.
I’m not sure
I get the same invented nostalgia from TV coverage – you don’t get the local
ads and it is clearer from TV that the game is taking place in a foreign city.
And as I said radio sports coverage reminds me specifically of a time in my
life where waiting for the weekend’s matches was a bigger deal. Listening to
the hockey makes me think that growing up Canadian would have been OK.
‘He shoots … HE SCORES!’
Best
Book: ‘Flash Boys’ – Michael Lewis. The opening chapters about fiber
optic cable were not all that compelling, but after that the ‘us against them’
story had me hooked. Sergey Aleynikov, the Russian computer programmer with his
remarkably zen attitude to shit going down, was my personal ‘hero’ in the book.
Best
Album: ‘Lost In The Dream’ – The War On Drugs. In his book ‘Retromania’,
Simon Reynolds talked about ‘hypnagogic pop’ – music with eighties sounds that
referred back to the music that today’s musicians listened to when they were
toddlers falling asleep. The War On Drugs’ wonderful third album is kind of
like that; it’s like the music I listened to as I drifted to sleep in the back
of my parents car: Springsteen, Don Henley, etc. A ‘cool’ album built from ‘uncool’
sounds.
Best
Song: ‘Come To’ – Bombay Bicycle Club. I wonder if anyone else will pick
this as song of the year; I had to check if it was even a single (it was
actually the fourth from the album). Bombay Bicycle Club’s latest album was
their best yet, mixing in Indian influences without seeming forced, and ‘Come
To’ for me was pure bliss to listen to. ‘Bamboo’ by Deers is a close second.
Best
TV Show: ‘The Walking Dead’. If you had asked me which would be
my favourite show at the start of the year I would have said ‘Game of Thrones’
or ‘Mad Men’, and would have put long odds on ‘The Walking Dead’, which I
barely paid attention to as I was watching the third season. But the fourth
season was fantastic, as the series cut out the padding, and almost every
episode felt distinct from the others.
Best
Film: 12 Years A Slave. Absolutely devastating movie, and a worthy Best
Picture winner at the Oscars. ‘Boyhood’ was really good as well.
Best
Comic: ‘Saga’ – Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. For the third
year running this gets my nod even if it was not quite at the same level as it
was in its first two years. Very close was Bryan Lee O’Malley’s ‘Seconds’,
which will appeal to fans of his wildly successful ‘Scott Pilgrim’ series.
Best
Sporting Event: The
football World Cup – particularly the group stages. I have only watched a
few World Cups, but this was the definitely the best one I had seen, and kept
me bleary-eyed and addicted to coffee for several weeks.
Best
Sportsperson: James Rodriguez. Yes, Lionel Messi was named the
player of the World Cup, and he is still the best footballer in the world. But Colombia’s
James Rodriguez was every bit as good in the World Cup, and he provided the
tournament’s finest moment against Uruguay.
Best
Website: Fivethirtyeight. It’s a group of
writers using advanced but intuitive analytics to answer questions about sports
and economics (and other stuff as well). It’s like it was designed for me! …
well, me and thousands of other nerds …
Best
Post:
The Ten
Worst Cars To Have Sex In. Possibly I love this post more than I
should.
Best
Beer: Bacchus Sex, Drugs & Rocky
Road. Yes,
rocky road flavoured beer. I had a really good peppercorn steak-flavoured beer
that day as well.
Best Twitter Feed: Tim Harford. The Undercover Economist author always seems to receive links to
something interesting. Bastard.
No. 5 No Way – Young Fathers
Who the - ? Young Fathers’ first album
‘Dead’ recently won the Mercury Prize
for ‘best’ British or Irish album of the year; apparently it was time to reward
hip-hop acts from Scotland. I thought it less deserving than Bombay Bicycle Club, but hell, it was more deserving than Royal Blood. For some reason I
like the album tracks where the title is repeatedly chanted in the back-up
vocals, such as ‘Mmmh Mmmh’ (it delivers what it promises), and opener ‘No
Way’. Overall I found Young Fathers’ music to be OK, and if they do point towards the future of music it’s not in a bad spot, but I think I am still a bit
more inclined to your classic rock structures.
No. 4 Satan Speeds Up – King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
For example, like King Gizzard & The
Lizard Wizard, who as their name suggests have based their entire sound around late-‘60s/early-‘70s
psychedelic rock. They also seem to want to follow a late-‘60s/early-‘70s album
release schedule, with five albums in the past three years. I imagine ‘Satan
Speeds Up’ as the soundtrack to some Haight-Ashbury cartoon featuring a giant,
long-legged red devil wandering across a dark landscape, scaring hippies out of
their wits. There’s some Jethro Tull-like flute thrown into the mix for good
measure. Plus, King Gizzard’s album cover is so striking that I even selected
it as an image for this post over the next group’s, who would barely ever get
bumped when it comes to selecting favourite album cover images.
No. 3 Lovely Rita – The Flaming Lips,
featuring Tegan & Sara, and Stardeath, and White Dwarves
Psychedelic I said? The idea of the
Flaming Lips covering the Beatles’ era-defining ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts
Club Band’ is like …
Miley Cyrus’ appearance on ‘A Day In The
Life’ has gained the most notice,
and while she does a decent job on my one-time favourite track, I prefer Tegan
& Sara breathing some life into Paul McCartney’s ‘Lovely Rita’ meter maid
ditty. It seems more like what the track might have been like if it had
originally been written in 2014, whereas some of the other efforts on the album
seem more like The Flaming Lips trying to pull apart and inject some more ‘crazy’
into the Beatles’ tunes. I wonder though is the gender reversal in singing
about scoring with a female parking inspector intentional, or did the Lips not
even really think about it? (Maybe I’m the only person who’s even given this
more than a passing thought…)
The Guardian did a pretty good article
on the Beijing indie music scene recently, and it got me to checking out some of the
bands mentioned in the article. Most are worth a listen, but the shining light
for me is ‘perhaps China’s best indie band’
Carsick Cars. Each of their first three albums is full of good fun rock. But
listening to them has reinforced that lyrics
barely matter for me as long as the tune is good; the band usually don’t
sing in English, particularly in their early stuff, and even when they do I can
barely understand them. And even if I could understand the lyrics they don’t
seem like they would be revelatory – one of their most popular songs ‘Zhongnanhai’
seems to be about nothing more than smoking a brand of cigarette. Regardless,
there are heaps of good tracks on their latest album ‘3’ – ‘Wild
Grass’ and especially ‘She
Will Wait’ are favourites – really, I could have filled this whole post
only with songs from Carsick Cars and the next band, but if I had to recommend
one I would pick ‘Reaching The Light’… just.
When talking about And You Will Know Us
By The Trail Of Dead’s classic
album ‘Source Tags and Codes’ earlier this year I said that every track was
listenable, and no track stood out. That description pretty much applies to
their latest album, ‘IX’ as well – in fact, it pretty much applies to their
entire back catalogue more so than any band I can think of. There are rock
solid tunes all of the way through this album – how do I pick a favourite? ‘The
Dragonfly Queen’ is reminiscent of Alex Turner and the Arctic Monkeys, but also
sounds better than almost anything that band has ever written. ‘Bus Lines’ is
the classic bar song that will probably never actually catch on in bars, albeit
classic bar songs do not tend to have the wall of noise that Trail of Dead
attach (as they generally do) to the end of this track. The track that sticks
in my head most though and the one I tend to play first up is actually the
single ‘A Million Random Digits’ so I will go with that. The whole album is
worth a listen however; it’s surprisingly almost as good as ‘Source Tags and
Codes’ was.
