The latest film on Bob Dylan, A Complete Unknown, is a masterpiece and makes tangential reference to how Dylan came to write the lyrics for A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.
At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, “the thirteen days that shook the world”, when Dylan thought the world was so convinced the world was going to end, he crammed every idea he had for songs, written down on napkins, phone bills and loose bits of paper down the back of the couch, into just one song.
And out it burst. Sing it Bobby!
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
And where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans . . .
But how funny I should say that.
This column is kind of that in reverse. For yes, the world as we know it more or less has ended with Trump being back in the White House – don’t get me started – and yet, on holidays for six weeks, there was no opportunity to say much in the public domain on either that or anything in the world of sport, despite so many things happening all at once!
American great Bob Dylan.
So this column is a catch-up, on my way back from twelve misty mountains and six crooked highways. Which brings us to …
The Test cricket series against India. Thank you, thank you all. I told yers, but you wouldn’t listen, that Test cricket is far and away the highest form of the game, and that series was the proof. Those Tests will still be talked about decades from now, while you can’t even remember what happened in the Big Bash League last week. And I suppose there were one-day internationals played this summer, but I can’t remember them, either. Can you? In my view, the Indian series now surpasses the Ashes in terms of level of interest.
As to Sam Konstas, his first innings in Melbourne was cricket’s answer to the Cuban Missile Crisis – in this case, thirteen overs that shook the world. (Or however long it was – I just remember staggering shots, and an amazing number of runs, from bugger-all balls).
That episode also provided the Quote of the Summer, with Konstas’s elder brother Billy, recounting how, as a young fellow, the family prodigy tuned up his family skills.
Australian cricket prodigy Sam Konstas.Credit: Getty Images
“When we were kids,” he recounted, “Dad took us to a bowling machine for the first time. He set it to 90 miles per hour, thinking it was 90 kilometres per hour. Despite the speed, Sam hit the ball right out of the middle. That experience helped him develop confidence against fast bowling from a young age.”
As to Konstas being dropped for the Sri Lankan series, no big deal. All of the best batsmen Australia has produced, from Don Bradman to Allan Border to Steve Waugh, were dropped early in their careers, and he may as well get his dropping out of the way early.
The Sydney to Hobart once again made headlines galore, as in days of yore, alas this time for tragic reasons – with two deaths in two separate incidents only a short time after the race had started. And again, the fact that neither you nor I can remember who won when it was only five weeks ago, is indicative of just how much that race has become summer wallpaper, not a main event the way it was.
Early stages of the 2024 Sydney to Hobart.Credit: Janie Barrett
The NRL? The odd thing about this summer is a notable lack of the usual atrocities. Traditionally in the off-season, we have any number of mad Saturday nights to go with the Mad Mondays of September and October, but this off-season has felt as quiet as a Sunday morning. (Cue the classic: “Suddenly things were quiet . . . maybe a little too quiet.“) Never mind. And never forget: the rule is that what happens in Vegas . . . often ends up on the front and back pages, so one way or another expect plenty of NRL Las Vegas headlines soon.
Which brings us to Greg Norman, who made many headlines in the past six weeks, all of which made me lightly chunder down under. The worst was all the fanfare three weeks ago, when he resigned as CEO of LIV Golf, if you remember that. According to all the press releases, his work here was done, and now that LIV is launched, it was time to hand over the baton. Blah, blah, blah. The truth, as you know, is that LIV has been a commercial and public relations disaster. Yes, the Saudis have put billions of dollars towards it, but none of those dollars have come back in terms of lucrative TV deals, paying spectators and all the rest.
Greg Norman is no longer running LIV Golf.Credit: Getty
And in terms of “sport-washing”, using those dollars to improve the Saudis’ image, who thinks that has worked? What they’ve mostly done is anger the golfing public, for having launched a golfing civil war, that denies the game if not its best players, at least all those prepared to hold their noses long enough to take the money. In his tenure, Norman showed no capacity to spin the un-spinnable, and with so many of the PGA mob actively against him, they have changed to a CEO with less baggage.
Finally, there is the matter of the Australian Open and the rise of Jannik Sinner. He looks to me like a bloke who will be at the top of his game, and the game, for a decade – and good luck to him.
Jannik Sinner with the spoils of victory – the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup – after his win in the Australian Open.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
But geez, he is not the one to make us forget Nadal and Federer in one swoop, is he? I attended the final of the Australian Open and can’t recall a less interesting match.
And not just because it was obvious after the first two games that Sinner was going to win. As a court presence, Sinner has to be one of the most emotionless players out there, yes? Barely a smile, never a grimace.
Not quite a humourless automaton, but not far off. Meantime though, what truly struck me about the whole Open was the appalling booing of the Australian crowd. Why are we the only grand slam that does that? Why us? What has happened to us? So you don’t like a particular player, so what?
So you want to be part of the anonymous, amorphous, bullying mass rounding on players? It is bullying bullshit, and un-Australian. Stop it!
We now resume our normal transmission. Onwards into 2025, and it is indeed a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard rain gonna fall.
