Article: The Age - August 26, 2006

McInnes Really Cooking
August 26, 2006

William McInnes was at sixes and sevens over his car despite the news that he is at 10 and four elsewhere, while Cate Kennedy is excited after discovering some icing on her cake, writes Jason Steger.

FOR A POPULAR ACTOR, William McInnes is making a pretty good fist of the writing game. Last year's memoir, A Man's Got to Have a Hobby, was followed up last month by his first novel, Cricket Kings. Now he has become the first Australian author to have a book in the country's top 10 fiction and non-fiction bestseller lists at the same time. His novel has appeared at No. 10 and his memoir is No. 4.

McInnes got the good news courtesy of Bookmarks as he was nursing his overheated car, on which the indicators had also packed up on its way to a garage. ("How do you indicate you're turning left," he wondered.) "Yeah?" was his understated reaction to the news of his double. "Really? That's all right. That'll make up for my car cooking."

He remains terribly modest about his success as an author. "I'm not the best at writing. I just like telling stories. I'm under no illusions. It's tremendous that people are reading them."

According to Nielsen BookScan, which surveys more than 1000 book sellers around the country, only two authors have been in their fiction and non-fiction top 10 at the same time: Patricia Cornwell with Blow Fly (fiction) and Portrait of a Killer (non-fiction), and Mitch Albom with Five People You Meet in Heaven (fiction) and Tuesdays With Morrie (non-fiction). US crime writer Michael Connelly missed out by two weeks last month with his novel The Lincoln Lawyer and his non-fiction book Crime Beat.

You can catch William McInnes at the writers' festival next week.

ABC Radio - Byron Bay Wrap Up

http://www.abc.net.au/northcoast/stories/s1722054.htm?backyard

New Photos

William playing Cricket in Byron Bay while visiting for the Byron Bay Writer's Festival.


During the production of "Ray's Tempest" for the Melbourne Theatre Company.


A Promo Shot

Article - Courier Mail - August 15, 2006

Australian Star is born
Des Partridge
August 15, 2006 12:00am

WILLIAM McInnes is rapidly winning acclaim as an author but it's his acting that made him Australian Star of the Year at the International Movie Convention.

Announced on the Gold Coast last night, McInnes earned the award on the popularity of his most recent films, Alister Grierson's Kokoda (in which he plays a battle-weary colonel), and Look Both Ways (as a cancer-stricken journalist) written and directed by his real-life wife, Sarah Watt.

Previous recipients include Hugh Jackman and Oscar winners Russell Crowe and Geoffrey Rush. The presentation, at the Royal Pines Resort, was a highlight of last night's themed Australia on Show event.

Held for the past three years by the Australian Film Commission, it's designed to showcase the next batch of Australian film releases for more than 500 movie exhibitors from Australia and New Zealand attending the annual four-day convention.

McInnes has been stomping the country to promote his second book, Cricket Kings, and arrived on the Gold Coast yesterday after literary duties in Byron Bay, Brisbane, Sydney and Tasmania in the past 10 days.

His reaction to the award? "It's always good to win, isn't it, even if it's a chook raffle.

"Seriously, it's great. Gee, I'll have to make certain I don't get any tickets on myself."
Later this year McInnes will be seen in the Australian drama Irresistible, appearing with Sam Neill, Susan Sarandon and Emily Blunt.

After duties at the Brisbane Writers Festival in September, he'll spend a month working on the first-feature film by Brisbane-based New Holland Pictures, The Unfinished Sky.

"I'm really excited by that," says McInnes, who will co-star with a Dutch actress, Monic Hendrickx in the film to be made around Beaudesert by writer-director Peter Duncan (Children of the Revolution).

Brisbane producers Mark and Cathy Overett describe The Unfinished Sky as "a powerful love story with a thriller twist".

McInnes, who came to national prominence in the TV series SeaChange says there was no contest between acting and writing. He enjoyed them both.

He wrote Cricket Kings, his second book after his first, A Man's Got To Have a Hobby sold 40,000 copies, on his portable computer each morning while rehearsing a play in Melbourne.

"I have to use the laptop because I can't read my own writing," he says.

The ex-Queenslander, whose mother, Iris, still lives at Redcliffe where McInnes grew up, says he enjoys telling stories, and looks for films that also have strong stories.

After gaining some of the best reviews of his career for his work in his wife's film, he says Watt has "one or two things" in the pipeline that might see them collaborate again.

"It's all about the story.

"We have some great Australian directors such as Sarah, Rowan Woods, Rolf de Heer, Greg McLean, the 2.37 guy, (Murali K. Thalluri), who all recognise the story is the centre of a good film."

Article - Melbourne Age - August 15, 2006

A few in the kennels but actor is top dog
August 15, 2006

William McInnes's latest success puts extra polish on a shining career, writes Garry Maddox.

FOR an actor who has built a reputation as a warm-hearted and very funny writer, William McInnes has kept his film career in perspective.
While he is immensely proud of the offbeat romance Look Both Ways and enjoyed a brief role in the World War II drama Kokoda, he recognises that not every release has been a triumph.

"There are quite a few in the kennels," McInnes says drily. "The same year I did Look Both Ways I did You and Your Stupid Mate."

The ups and downs of any actor's career have not mattered to the cinema industry.

Last night McInnes was named Australian Star of the Year at the Australian International Movie Convention, the industry's annual flurry of talks and screenings on the Gold Coast. The award, sponsored by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald, has been won by Russell Crowe, Geoffrey Rush, Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish, among others.

McInnes won the industry vote, defeating the likes of Cate Blanchett for Little Fish and Guy Pearce for The Proposition.

He sees the award as a tribute to Look Both Ways, which was written and directed by his wife, Sarah Watt, who completed the romance between a newspaper photographer diagnosed with cancer (McInnes) and an angst-ridden painter (Justine Clarke) despite being diagnosed with breast cancer herself. It went on to win best film and best director at the Australian Film Institute awards, and acclaim at overseas festivals.

"It was the sort of job that people really felt proud to put their hand up for," he says.
McInnes has just had his first novel published, after experiencing success with his childhood memoir, A Man's Got to Have a Hobby. This allows him to describe himself as "an early grade of slash-type person - actor-slash-writer".

As well as working on stage, he features in the coming drama Irresistible and two telemovies, playing the title role in Stepfather of the Bride and the wartime prime minister John Curtin in Before Dawn.

He has one more film role lined up - in the romantic thriller Unfinished Sky - and jokes about Hollywood calling. "I got an offer to do the sequel to Gladiator. It's about a florist in Rome - Gladiola."

Despite the odd canine, McInnes thinks Australia has produced some good films in the past two years. Importantly, they were made to tell stories rather than merely make money.

"Kokoda did well, which was good. Look Both Ways, Oyster Farmer, Little Fish - they were all pretty rich films.

"There'll always be a few doomsayers but as long as the film industry gets support from the government, whichever persuasion it may be, it will be secure, I guess. That's something that people in the film industry have got to understand - they rely a lot on the goodwill of the taxpayers of Australia. They're custodians of the taxpayers' money."

Article: ABC Brisbane

Actor and author William McInnes
Last Update: Tuesday, August 8, 2006. 1:51pm AEST

Actor William McInnes is best known for his roles in Sea Change and Blue Heelers, but he also starred in Look Both Ways, a film which won the prestigious Discovery Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

William McInnes grew up at Redcliffe in south-east Queensland with his brother, three sisters, his father Colin, and his mother Iris.

He recalls an era when tropical fruit would drop onto tin roofs, cane toads bounced around on the wet grass, and backyards had concrete incinerators. "Recliffe is still a world of its own, because it's a peninsula that's bound by water and mangroves," he explains. "It's great because it's connecting strip to Brisbane is the long, thin bridge. We were always told at school that the Hornibrook Highway was the longest, unbroken bridge in the southern hemisphere," McInnes says.

"The Bee Gees came from Scarborough and they played at the Speedway. It was a place that had a rural feel. There were three CWA Halls. It still retains a particular character of its own," he says.

William has written the book A Man's Got to Have a Hobby about his childhood in Queensland. His memoir is a humourous and witty homage to his family, in particular his father Colin. The book is about the importance of family and the best ways to let go of the past.

William learnt a lot about life in general by playing cricket with his dad. "His big thing was, play more sport," says McInnes. "He wasn't much of a batsman... when he did deign to play it was a lot of fun... He used to call it the game of life - you think you're doing nothing, and nothing's happening, but what you're doing, you're taking part in this game, and you're watching people and you're listening to them... You think you're idling away the hours, and all of a sudden you'll see someone do something: play a shot in a certain way, or look in a certain way, and you'll suddenly go, that's what that guy's about. It's not just about the game, it's about them, too... You've got to look out for moments like that because they can really be something you can learn from, and you remember and they can be really moving."

That's one of the reasons that William's always loved cricket. "Because nothing happened, then all of a sudden, you're in the middle of it. Or if you're in the outfield, listening to the sounds of the neighbourhood, then the ball suddenly comes out... and it's like, 'I've got to do something!'...
"I really enjoyed the conversation you'd have... The more garrulous the gang the better I liked it - [it was] that sort of conversation about nothing that men do really well. There's some sort of code in there, and if you can actually pick the code, there's something being said."

The Australian actor is now working on his second book about cricket. He lives in Melbourne with his wife, film-maker Sarah Watt, and their two children.

Appearance - Mosman Library - August 9th 2006

Cricket book chat; Mosman Daily (NSW Cumberland, Australia)
08-03-2006

ACTOR and author William McInnes, who is best known for his role in the ABC series Sea Change will be in town to speak at Mosman Library on Wednesday, August 9.

Mr McInnes will talk about his first novel, Cricket Kings about 7pm. The new book is about a team of middle-aged blokes which comes together to play cricket. Pages & Pages booksellers at Mosman have organised Mr McInnes's talk and said bookings would be essential.

Details: 9969 9736.

Article - Sunday Telegraph - August 6th, 2006

McInnes's Winning Streak
Edition: 1 - StateSection: Features, pg. 082

Last year, actor William McInnes proved he could write as well as act when his delightful childhood memoir, A Man's Got To Have A Hobby, became a one of the favourite books of the year.

As the great Canadian author Margaret Atwood says about authors and first books, a lot of people probably have a good first book in them, and it's probably about themselves. The big test of a true author, she says, is when they sit down to write their second book -- and their third and fourth (Atwood has written 45 books, so it's probably unfair to use her as a benchmark).

With his second book and his debut novel, McInnes passes the test with distinction. Cricket Kings (Hodder, $32.95) bears all the hallmarks of his first book: humour, sweetness and light, with hidden emotional depths, a flair for dialogue and an endearing, gruff sort of sentimentality.

It undoubtedly has more of the author in it as well -- McInnes is reportedly a cricket fanatic, and his main character is a middle-aged man who plays in the Yarraville West fourths, a motley crew of "sportsmen''.

Now, there are cricket fans and there are the rest of us who just don't get it. So I hasten to add that although the word "cricket'' is in the title and all the action centres on a Saturday match, this book isn't just about cricket, but about many other little things that add up to a bigger life picture.

McInnes has a good eye for small details that get to the nub of human emotion, but first he builds great characters through which these scenes play out.

Chris Anderson is the lead character here. A solicitor with a wife and two kids, a bit of a boofhead with a big heart and a bullish demeanour, Anderson seems hopelessly inept at communicating emotions. He can't seem to get his big heart and his big mouth to work in synch. Chris loves his cricket, and come summertime, Friday afternoons are devoted to grappling together a ragtag group to play the next day. Chris and the boys have been playing at the Cec. Bull Memorial Oval since forever, and on this particular Saturday, he has to makeup the numbers (again) with his bookish son, Lachlan, the intellectually challenged Brian, a couple of under-17s, and an old friend and fellow cricketer who has cropped up out of the blue.

There's an element of father-and-son tension between Chris and Lachlan, and a quiet mystery about Chris's dead brother, Tony, a professional cricketer. These unspoken issues unfold as McInnes sketches in his characters.

Cricket Kings' gentle action takes place over the course ofone summer's day, and McInnes's funny cast of characters reminisce aboutthe mundane and the meaningful. Surrounding the oval are houses whose inhabitants interact with the players and other visitors to the field, and here McInnes cleverly weaves a community's web -- tracing all the lines of connection between past and present, between stranger and friend. In doing so, he has written a story about the things that unite us more than the things that divide us -- although that's not to say that there is no dramatic tension.

McInnes skirts dangerously close to trying to fit too many moral lessons into his narrative, and it's a relief when he pulls back from potential heavy-handedness into humour.

And there's plenty of that, with the author taking great pleasurein the Australian vernacular and toilet humour which, if it's possible,is delivered with great finesse.

In Cricket Kings, William McInnes has written a big-hearted novel with character, leaving the reader with the urge to stand up and cheer with a kind of smiling optimism about the world and humanity. It's also to his great credit that he makes cricket out to be a remotely interesting sport.

Article - Herald Sun - July 29th, 2006

Going into bat for Oz;
Claire Sutherland
Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia)
07-29-2006

WILLIAM McInnes is at pains, as are so many authors, to point out that the main character in his latest book is not based on him. Chris Anderson might live in the west, play the odd game of cricket with his son and be tall with a voice that can be heard from one end of a cricket oval to another, but he's not William McInnes. And like Chris, McInnes might have sold communist newspapers to impress a girl, and he knows a bowler who took requests for particular bowling styles (Tom Cruise's stocky perambulation, Elvis's showiness), but still -- not him.

"It's a temptation to think, 'It's just him and his son'. But it's not. I just set it there because I thought it was a nice place to set it,'' McInnes says. "In the suburbs, the face of Australia is changing and I wanted these guys to be surrounded by this new wave and multiculturalism. In certain parts of Australia it isn't just talked about around the dinner table as being a good thing -- it's in practice. I think that's something to be celebrated.''

Celebration is a theme of Cricket Kings, set over one long afternoon's cricket match. The setting might be a fourth-grade game, but the action is everywhere else. Each team member has a story to tell. Chris's brother committed suicide, and his batting gloves are still in Chris's gear bag. Brian is "not quite right'' and the butt of jokes from the other team, but he is the only one who notices a newly arrived African migrant waiting in the hot sun for a bus that will never arrive. Michael is a doctor who takes pills to help him cope with what saw while working in the third world. And Livey is a butcher who is lucky he hasn't blown out the bum of his pants, such is the force of his flatulence.

McInnes hopes his book looks at what it is to be Australian. "It's an optimistic book and it's just saying that if you give people a go, anything can happen. I just hope it's a nice story that men and women and kids can read,'' he says."Not little kids. There's language.''

McInnes grew up in a Labor family, but his own leanings are rather more conservative. He is not one to berate his countrymen as racists, and though his book is sprinkled with the odd bit of racism, it is roundly howled down. "I'm a pretty conservative person. Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a flag waver for the Left. I just think Australia is a pretty tolerant place and a pretty compassionate place and too many people want to blame a couple of people in power.''

This proclaiming of conservative roots is an odd statement from a man whose main character is a union rep, and who has just played John Curtin, hero of the Labor Party. But part of what makes McInnes hopeful that the ABC telemovie Before Dawn will be a success is its even-handedness. "It doesn't make any of those hard and fast judgments about people, such as: the Tories are all twits and the Labor people are saints,'' he says. Australians and their foibles occupy much of Cricket Kings. It is set in the present day, but somehow seems to be in a nicer, slower world. "It's like an old Australia. It's the way Australians see themselves, in a really archaic way,'' McInnes says. "The second most important job in Australia is the cricket captain.''

Cricket Kings, by William McInnes is out now, (Hachette Livre), rrp. $32.95.

Article - The Sunday Mail (Brisbane) - August 5th 2006

Well-played Delivery
Mark Hinchcliffe
August 5th, 2006

IT IS impossible to get author/actor William McInnes out of your head as you read his novel about a bunch of social cricketers in suburban Melbourne.The rakish main character, Chris Anderson, seems to have been modelled after the tall and slightly awkward blokey author, best known for his appearances on television in Sea Change and Blue Heelers.

His book Cricket Kings lightheartedly revolves around just one day's fourth-grade cricket match, but with the background, reminiscences, daydreaming and action of the match itself, it holds the reader in a hypnotic daze, fairly similar to an engaging day's play.
McInnes obviously loves his cricket, delighting in its rhythm, the heat, the peace and tranquillity, the morality and the humanity. But his book is about more than cricket. It's mainly about people.

The main character, "Christo", is a bit of a dag. At least that's what his children think and his wife supports the notion: "He's a bit of a dag, your father."

And he is. A loveable dag who organises and captains the Yarraville West Fourths; a rag-tag bunch of misfit characters from the farting butcher to the music-loving bus driver, plus a couple of schoolboy ring-ins, both called Tim.

Cricket is central to Anderson's life. Even during working hours he is lost in thought worrying about getting enough players for Saturday's game. He comes from a family of cricket tragics and everything he does or says seems to relate to the game.

It affects his relationship with his son Lachlan, his view of the world around him and even his politics. When asked by a beautiful Marxist activist in his uni days whom he admired, he blurted out: "Allan Border."

Anderson is a moral man and plays the game in good spirit. He is disheartened when the opposition team elects to bat, despite him asking to bat first so they can muster two more players. Disheartened, but not broken. He rallies his team, inspiring them to "have a go".
But cricket is not the end of his moral view. During the drinks break in the first innings, Anderson and old friend Michael Martin ask for extra time to help an African woman who has been waiting at the bus stop all morning.

Martin, who has just returned from Africa where he worked as a doctor, is a troubled man with an addiction and a lack of purpose in his life.

The pair try to explain to the immigrant mother with her infant child that the bus doesn't come up that street on a Saturday and escort her to the proper bus stop. Anderson explains that cricket is like a bus timetable. "Odd."

McInnes also uses the game's action and the players' daydreaming to indulge in his personal views on interesting subjects such as drug use, our disposable society (it is hard-rubbish collection day), politics (each player takes up a former prime minister's name which provides interesting political asides) and the habit of cricketers to adjust themselves: "The great gift of Ian Chappell to Australian cricket. The art of adjusting."

Anderson has a very Aussie way of moralising and offers some great advice to Martin when he drops his pills and starts to cry about how tough life is since Africa.

"You'll be right . . . just don't come out crying because it'll look like we're sooking about the cricket," he tells him as the side reels from a 318-run first innings flogging.

But all is most definitely not lost for the Yarraville West Fourths.

In the end it is Anderson's encouragement to "have a go" which galvanises the day's play.
No, there is no Mighty Ducks come-from-behind victory. This isn't an American box-office hit, but a warm and genuine Aussie novel. I can't give the final result away, but I can say that only a cricket fan would understand the victory in the lack of an outright defeat.

"Cricket is a game that not everyone grasps," McInnes writes. "It has its odd place names, its silly mid-ons and silly points and short mid-ons and its square point. What sort of a game has a position called square point? It has its interminable delays.

"It's a game more watched than played these days, but it's a game that lets a point . . . be made and an honour won. You may not win a game of cricket, you can be soundly beaten, but there's still a victory to be had. If you know how to go about it."

The end-game moral becomes a rewarding conclusion to a light-hearted, yet deeply thoughtful novel on ourselves as modern Australians.

Well played, McInnes.

William McInnes is a guest at the Byron Bay Writers Festival today and tomorrow; he will also be at the Brisbane Writers Festival, September 13-17.

Photos from ABC Article

Article - ABC - August 4th, 2006

Haigh and McInnes talk cricket
Gideon Haigh and William McInnes talk cricket

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Pub cricket with Haigh and McInnes

Last Update: Friday, August 4, 2006. 9:12am AEST
By Jarrod Watt

"In this session, there will be two microphones: one for questions, and one for sledging." We are at the Bangalow Hotel, and we are attending the session titled Anyone for cricket? hosted and moderated by Radio National's presenter of The Sports Factor, Mick O'Regan, flanked by acclaimed cricketing author and journalist Gideon Haigh on one side, and reknowned actor William McInnes - also and author of two cricket-obsessed books, A Man's Got to Have a Hobby and Cricket Kings - on the other.

Both share a childhood overshadowed by the greats of cricket on the international arena, both share an adulthood of domestic club cricket in the suburbs; both have established themselves as authors who write about the culture surrounding cricket more than the actual sport itself.
After an extensive lunch the crowd is 'relaxed and comfortable'; the sunshine is streaming through the windows, and there's an enthusiastic atmosphere emanating from the 70 or so folk seated at their tables.

"This afternoon we're going to many different places. We're finding out cricket's connection to history, to literature, to vasectomies, to ennuit, Elgar's cello concerto, a lost bus driver and random acts of kindness...," says Mick O'Regan to the crowd, but they are in for more than that. Discussions, comparisons, demonstrations and the history of the cult of pants manipulation peculiar to cricket players, a claim of having been the first to invent protective headwear, the process of multicultural influences upon cricket at a national and a local club level, and how the 'can't go out first ball' rule has made Australia a soft nation will all be driven, edged, cut and hooked out to the crowd gathered at one of the first events on the Byron Bay Literary Festival drawcard.

Mick O'Regan sends down the opening delivery to Gideon Haigh: put simply, why cricket?
Frankly, cricket these days wouldn't get off the whiteboard in your marketing department. That's the thing I really enjoy about it

"From a playing perspective, nothing creative I've ever done, nothing I've written, or said, has ever matched the sublime sensual experience, that harmony between thought and deed, of a perfectly executed stroke, or the off-spinner that I bowled that comes out just right... You can play cricket with a physique like mine - and there is a place for you. There is also always a level of competence for you in cricket. You can play cricket badly, for longer, than any other sport under the sun," he replies. "The thing that appeals to me about cricket is that you wouldn't invent it today. This is an era... where sport is supposed to be this colourful, spectacular, urban spectale. Cricket is slow, it's distant - the action in cricket takes place further from the spectator than in any other sport. It's understated, it doesn't have colour in it - it's got people who play in white. Who would conceive of a sport today in which you play entirely in white? It involves a wide range of very different skills, and it has incredibly complicated laws that make no concession for the unitiated. Frankly, cricket these days wouldn't get off the whiteboard in your marketing department. That is the thing that I really, really enjoy about it. It's uninventable today, but it's always been there."

O'Regan walks back to his mark and sends one down to William McInnes: what was your inspiration to write about cricket? Was it because of a long fascination for the game, or was it a heat of the moment choice?

"I've always played cricket, for as long as I can remember. I've played in the backyard, on the beach, I've played club cricket in just about every state in Australia - at a very low level - I'm a yeoman as a cricketer. I love cricket, because, as my father used to say, it's a game about life," he replies. "I wanted to have this idea of placing this iconic, old Australia, if you like, this colonial game, and these guys playing sub-district, fourth grade cricket. And I think we've all been there - we've all been driving through suburbs somewhere, and out of the corner of your eye you see this odd collection of people standing... [stands and demonstrates a motionless fielder] And that's all they do. All the time I've driven past such a collection of people I've never actually seen anything happen. I've seen a bowler run up and that's about the end of it. So I wanted to put that pastime in the middle of this new Australia, if you like, in this sweltering, seething mass of cultures and peoples and languages and religions - but it's Australia. I wanted, if you like, to have this sense of a nation coming together. It's an optimistic book, this thing... I wanted to point our minds to this idea that Australia is a reasonably tolerant place, and we have to be reminded of that sometimes, I think, and we have to remind ourselves that there's space for everybody."
O'Regan decides to change pace: he is going to come in from the other side of the wicket and ask McInnes about references in his book to particular mannerisms peculiar to the sport, with reference to Ian Chappell 'adjusting' himself, and the later practice of the Captain's Tug employed by Allan Border and Mark Taylor.

"Adjusting is the term which is Ian Chappell's great gift to Australian culture... I think every kid who ever watched him did it in the backyard. It was as important as actually hitting the ball," says McInnes. "What he used to do was he'd have his bat slung up on one shoulder and he'd look around, think what he was going to do, where he was going to hit, and he'd put his left glove between his legs, on his groin, and ruminate over his protector." he'd put his left glove between his legs, on his groin, and ruminate over his protector

"Show us," mutters O'Regan - and McInnes does, standing full stretch, and, well, ruminating, just like the former captain of the Australian team did to a cricket-mad nation.

"I think Michael Jackson and many other pop singers actually made it their own. And when he was really on fire, he'd bend his legs - ["Re-arranging the field," cries O'Regan] - and give that fantastic Greg Norman flick of his collar. Now, the Captain's Tug was a later development of adjusting. Alan Border was the first person who rode the Captain's Tug across the cricket grounds of the world, and it is a rather furtive pecking of your groin, and you don't have to be wearing your box. It's the all-purpose Rodan's Thinker-type thing to do. You stand at a slip, and you're talking, and thinking about who you're going to put on," says McInnes, again, standing to demonstrate to the howls of laughter from the audience. "It was like the radio operator on the Titanic sending the morse, it's that furtive, sort of panicked, almost bird picking at its seed, a chook who's hungry, going after grubs early in the morning. Because Australian cricket was saved and lead by the originator of the Captain's Tug in the late 80s, early 90s, he passed it over to Mark Taylor, who lead a much more successful team, a team on the rise, so his Tug was a more loquacious, a more confident form of rumination."

"With an upward inflection?" queries Haigh

"It was a little like an archer drawing back on a bow, a little more elegant... he may be selling air-conditioners now, but he was a very delicate Captain's Tugger. Poor Ricky Ponting just chews his fingernails and spits a lot," says McInnes.

For O'Regan, this is indicative of the different way Australians approach the game compared to their English counterparts, and touches on a shared element of the writings of both men - the image of Australian suburban cricket versus the village cricket of England. "Is the whole basis of English cricket versus Australian cricket different from the root up, or is it the same tree with different branches?" he asks.

Australian cricket was saved and lead by the originator of the Captain's Tug in the late 80s
"It's one of those dictums that there is no such thing as social cricket in Australia. That's just nonsense. There are always going to be members of your cricket community that take it more seriously than others. There are those of us on the way up, there are some of us enjoying that gentle ride down into obscurity. Australia and England are two nations divided by a common game, so they're more inclined to exaggerate the differences between the two different cultures," says Haigh, going on to discuss the 2005 Ashes and how England played a lot like Australia always has.

There is much rumination from both stage and floor about the Ashes series; whether the English imitated the Aussie style of cricket to win, whether the Aussies imitated themselves poorly, or whether it was all about a bunch of young players who'd never copped a hiding from an Australian team not knowing about the fear they were supposed to exhibit. Someone suggests perhaps it was because not much of the English team were actually English, which provokes discussion of the comparative multicultural nature of cricket in England and Australia
"The immigrant communities that England has fostered are cricket playing communities - they're often Indians and Pakistanis and Sri Lankan and West Indians, who've brought cricket with them ... that is the reason for the disproportionate number of Asian and West Indian faces in the England side," replies Haigh. "I think that grassroots cricket has changed a lot in the time I've been playing it... I don't think the Australian team is particularly representative of Australian society... but if you play at the level that William and I play, you wouldn't believe who's playing, compared to the received image of cricket these days."

It's then that O'Regan comes in off the long run-up: "I want to talk about Shane Warne now..." and leads a discussion about SK Warne's personality and impact upon the game; the audience gets their chance to pose questions about 20/20 cricket and whether it is a companion or a curse to the game they know and love; William McInnes reads an excerpt from his book A Man's Got Have a Hobby, showcasing his claim that a childhood innovation of two beanies and a bucket to defend the golf ball rebounding from the barbeque wall constituted the first protective headgear in cricket.

When the umpire finally knocks the bails off, the crowd's cricketing appetite is sated, somewhat... until, of course, winter ends and we again catch glimpses of those men forever standing, watching and waiting on sun-parched ovals in the suburbs of Australia.

Click here for source.

Unfinished Sky

Finding Unfinished Sky
An Australian remake of a Dutch drama
Source: Variety
August 3rd 2006

To prove that it’s not just the US and UK that can keep the remakes coming, Australia will bring us a redo of Dutch arthouse pic The Polish Bride. It’ll be called Unfinished Sky in the Australian version and follows an Outback farmer who shelters an Afghan immigrant who escapes a brothel. Aussie thesp William McInnes is starring, alongside a recruit from the original film, Dutch actress Monic Hendrickx. Peter Duncan will call the shots in Queensland in September.