Headley, Worrell, Sobers, Kanhai, Lloyd, Richards, Richardson…and Jason Holder.
I confess to doing a double take when the winning Windies skipper was interviewed after their recent win over Pakistan.
Jason Holder, to me, is “Stubby”, a journeyman hoop who is one of the better jockeys in Adelaide.
This Jason Holder, I’d never heard of.
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Talk about exalted company.
Who else has reached lofty heights before you’ve even noticed them?
Very hard to beat that but it’s fair to say that Travis Head would have crept under the guard of many non-South Australians (and maybe even a few locals). And at the time he was appointed 20/20 skipper I’m not sure many non-Tasmanians would have known what George Bailey looked like.
What’s the name of those blokes that coach Adelaide and the Bulldogs and who did they used to play for? What did they do in their last job? DId they really put the jobs out to the lowest price tenderer?
If we really want to push the envelope, who were the Windies last five captains prior to Jason Holder ? Then, for the really bright Almanackers in our ranks, name all the Windies captains between Richie Richardson and Jason Holder.
Glen!
Peter Snowden, Julia Gillard
Hard to find many examples in this endlessly analysed world of today.
The biggest sporting surprise on its merits (Bradbury was a fluke – grand all the same) I can remember was Jon Sieben in the 200m butterfly at the LA Olympics in 1984.
Sieben was ‘the shrimp’ at 173mm up against the 200mm World Champ Michael Gross ‘the octopus’ and Pablo Morales the 100mm World Record holder.
Sieben swam 4 seconds better than his PB in the final to win the gold. Even Norman May had as much disbelief as jubilation in his voice calling him home.
On another front my political and personal hero is Abraham Lincoln – the list of his failures before turning 50 is legendary. While the failures don’t capture the full context of his intellectual prominence in the nascent Republican Party they would have discouraged most people.
Business failed, sweetheart died, nervous breakdown, defeated for State Legislature, US House of Reps, US Senate Itwice).
I always loved that his party only nominated for the Presidential candidacy in 1860 as a compromise candidate because two far more powerful and prominent men threatened to tear the party apart with their egoes. Abbott/Turnbull; Rudd/Gillard anyone?
What is clear to me is that without this grounding he would never have had the persistence and resilience to hold his course and get through the difficult early years of the Civil War without either military defeat or compromising his principles.
The greatest nobody in history.
Alan Joyce take your pick Hawthorn/Qantas
Every friggin boy band in history!
Anyone who’s ever played for Freo, the Giants, Port or the Suns.
Lee Harvey Oswald
Tenzing Norgay tisssshhhh booom..thank you i’ll be here all week
Cowshedend, I’ll see you Tensing Norgay and raise you a Neil Armstrong (though technically Michael Collins perhaps got even “loftier”)