The last place...

There are some things that strike me as redundant in our language.  For example, when you are having difficulty finding something, people will often tell you "it's always in the last place you look". Well of course it is!  If you keep looking for something after you have found it, there is something seriously wrong.  You may look in one place, or one hundred and one places for your misplaced keys or phone or whatever.  But generally speaking once you have found it, you stop looking.  By definition it was it he last place you looked.  For organised people, that is quite often also the first.  For me it is usually somewhere between first and fiftieth.  But I stop looking once I have found it, so it is redundant to tell me it was in the last place I looked.

And don't get me started on those who helpfully ask where it was last while you are searching...

It ain't broke

It has been interesting listening to, and reading, people complain about the micro-parties like the "Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party" (who look like pinching a spot in Victoria despite only capturing about .5% of the primary vote) getting into the Senate.  There have been calls for a reform of the voting system.  However the system is not broken.  It is just that the really small parties have found a way of exploiting people's laziness.  

In a preferential voting system, you get to decide where your votes flow.  You number all the candidates in the order you would prefer them to get in.  That way if your first preference gets eliminated, your vote goes to the next available preference (i.e. whoever is next on your list that has not yet been eliminated).  In the senate, even if your candidate gets in, a proportion of your vote flows to your next preference (a formula related to how many votes they have over the 'quota').  

However in voting for the senate, the majority of people abdicate their responsibility to the party of their choice by putting a "1" above the line rather than filling in all the boxes below the line.  This is understandable since there were 97 people on the Victorian ballot paper this year, more in NSW. However it means that the party chosen gets to direct the preferences whichever way they choose rather than whichever way the voter chooses.  Many of the small parties preferenced each other over the other parties, and some of them managed to get the medium sized parties to preference them.  So the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts got preferences from every party except the following:

Liberal/The Nationals

Australian Labor Party

The Greens

Australian Christians

Australian Democrats

Country Alliance

Secular Party

Socialist Equality Party

If you were in Victoria, and voted above the line, unless you voted for one of the above parties, your vote helped get Ricky Muir of the aforementioned party into a position where he is expected to win a senate seat.  That is how a party which got 11770 of the approximately 2.3 million votes counted so far managed to get into a position to win a seat.

It is not that the system is broken, it is just that people don't choose to use it properly.  Of course there is still the chance that the 800000 or so Victorian whose votes are yet to be counted (early voters, postal votes and below the line voters) might just edge Ricky Muir out.  Or we might have preferred him to the other options available.  

A good day, DRS and Swann

Day 2 at Old Trafford was, for the Aussies, a good day that they would have liked to be better.  For the first time in a while, the Aussies passed 500.  They managed to bat five session, and may have batted longer if they wished (after all the key 10th wicket partnership never got to bat).  Five of the eight batsmen got passed fifty.  The area that the Aussies need to improve is the fact that only one went onto a hundred.  Admittedly, both Haddin and Starc were batting well enough to get there given more time.  But then again, Rogers and Smith looked that good in the 60s too.  Clarke has now scored two of the three centuries the Aussies have managed this year.  The other was Wade's hundred against Sri Lanka.  

The bowlers did well at the end of the day, snaring a couple of wickets and almost having one or two more.  If Clarke had been able to readjust after being wrong footed, and get to Cook's edge, the day would have been even better.  However, there was a bit of luck with Bresnan's dismissal.  Cook did not let Bresnan review even though it was fairly clear he did not hit it.  

England's use of the DRS in this game has put Australia's use of it in the first two tests into perspective.

Rogers and Clarke

Clarke and Khawaja were all over the headlines after yesterday's play, but the man of the day for me was Rogers.  A highlight reel of his innings shows great shot after great shot.  More than that, I believe it was Rogers that was responsible for the good position that the Aussies were in at the end of the day.  It was his stroke play that gave them a good opening partnership (Watson only scored 19 after all).  It was he that kept the scoring going while Clarke was struggling early on, and took the pressure off his captain so that Clarke could settle in.  I have written before about the pressure on Clarke as the only performing batsman, and to have Rogers take control as he did allowed Clarke to work through the pressure.  It is just a shame that Rogers couldn't find the extra sixteen runs to get a century.

Clarke will be proud of his innings, largely because it was a fight early on, and he still made it to the hundred.  The best bit was that it was against Swann that he started to find his stride.  Swann provided plenty of balls that tempted Clarke to get his feet moving.  By the time the seamers came back, Clarke was looking good.

I guess I can't write about yesterday without commenting on the DRS and Khawaja.  It was a bad decision by the umpire.  A worse one by the 3rd umpire who could watch it over and over and still got it wrong.  I am not sure how either of them have him out.  However, for those calling for the end of the DRS, a reminder that without it, Khawaja would still have been out.  I think that the problem with DRS is more the people operating it.  On the whole they are good umpires- even if they are having a bad series.  However they are trained, and have years of experience as centre umpires.  They are not technology specialists.  They may not get the impact of the telephoto lens etc.  The other problem is that the third umpire is restricted to answering direct questions by the on field umpire, and can't suggest the sorts of issues that might be pertinent.  Enough on that for now.

One final comment.  Watson didn't go out lbw this time, but he still managed to waste a start.  I think they replaced the wrong player to get Warner back in the team.  Oh well.  Then again he might score a ton in the second innings, or take five for not much and win the match.  We can only hope.