Michael McKenna, in The Australian,22 September 2011
CARL Rackemann put the fear into batsmen when he took the ball – now the former Test cricketer’s ambition of taking to the field of politics is gathering the same pace his once-devastating bouncers had. A third-generation Kingaroy farmer, the 12-Test bowler is firming as the frontrunner to win the state seat of Nanango, held for 40 years by former premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, as a candidate of Bob Katter’s Australian Party. The start-up political entity is expected to win registration within days from Queensland’s Electoral Commission, as the party ramps up its campaign to challenge the political mainstream at the next state election, due by March. Party insiders are boasting of a campaign war chest that will exceed $2 million, with more than $500,000 already donated from a disparate band of backers that includes a union, an arms dealer and fishing and ethanol lobbyists normally welded to the Nationals. Continue reading
Cricket as warfare
Don Hodges, courtesy of SPORT, 25 November 2013, where the title is “Ashes 2013-2014: Sooner or later, arms and ribs will be broken”
The news that Jonathan Trott is returning to England as a result of a “long-stand stress-related” condition puts England’s defeat in the First Test at Brisbane into perspective. Cricket is not, as Alastair Cook said at yesterday’s post-match press conference, “a war”. It’s a game. A highly professional, intensely contested, increasingly well remunerated game. But a game nonetheless.
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