There were two items in the press today about typing people.  The first was a droll note in The Guardian about how silly it may look if people took offence at being referred to as members of a group.  Some French people thought it was hilarious.  It can be – but it can also be wounding.  I sent the note below with a relevant extract from my last book.

The second item in The Sunday Age was anything but droll.  People in Melbourne have imported a play about people of colour.  The paper says of the play: ‘It’s sharp and funny, filled with biting social commentary and, in this iteration staged at the Malthouse, powered by stellar performances by Chika Ikogwe and Iolanthe.’  The Melbourne producers want it to be reviewed only by people of colour.  For what I regard as good reasons, The Age declined to review it at all.  Elizabeth Flux politely said why.

Two things.

First, the people putting on the play want to exclude people on the basis of their colour. They are doing this to achieve a political purpose.  In doing so, they are indulging in the very evil that they protest against.  And they are damaging the cause they seek to advance.

Secondly, this nation faces this year what I regard as a very simple issue on how to deal with a problem that we have in dealing with people of a different colour.  There are many unpleasant people out there who will try to dredge opposition to a measure we badly need from any source of division that they can find.  This kind of thinking is blood to a tiger for the Murdoch press.

Here is the comment on the other – and related item – and from the book.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/28/ap-issues-clarification-over-its-advice-not-to-use-term-the-french

I can see both sides on this.

It is just a fact of life that group labels are often used for people the speaker looks down on. 

I commonly refer to the ‘French’ and the ‘English’.

With different levels of attachment.

And then you might refer to the Serbs, Irish, gays, Presbyterians, idiots, Jews, elites, or blacks – and the world falls in.

Presumably the French think they are above all that stuff.

Unless, perhaps, you ask what contribution ‘the French’ made to Hitler’s war aims.

The problem is that a label assumes members of a group share an apparent common denominator – and that is demeaning.

Extract from book follows.

The vice of labelling

Some years ago, a woman at Oxford, en route from the reading room to the dining room for breakfast, was heard to say: ‘I have just been described as a typical Guardian reader, and I’m trying to work out whether I should feel insulted.’ A discussion about the meaning of the word presumptuous then followed.

There is no law or custom that says we should apply a label to people – or put them in boxes, or in a file, or give them a codename. There is also no law that we should not. But most of us can’t help ourselves. So what?

Well, most of us don’t like being put into boxes. That is how we tend to see governments or Telstra or a big bank behaving toward us. Nor do most of us want to be typed. When someone says that an opinion or act of yours is ‘typical’ of you or your like, they are very rarely trying to be pleasant.

Most of us just want to be what we are. You don’t have to have a university degree specialising in the philosophy of Kant to believe that each of us has his or her own dignity, merely because we are human. We are not in the same league as camels or gnats. If I am singled out as a Muslim, a Jew or an Aboriginal, what does that label add to or take away from my humanity? What good can come from subtracting from my humanity by labelling me in that way?

So, the first problem with labelling is that it is likely to be demeaning to the target, and presumptuous on the part of the labeller. In labelling, we are detracting from a person’s dignity. We put registration numbers on dog collars, and we brand cattle, but we should afford humans the courtesy – no, the dignity – of their own humanity.

The second problem with labelling is that it is both loose and lazy. If you say of someone that they are a typical Conservative or Tory, that immediately raises two questions. What do the labels ‘Conservative’ and ‘Tory’ mean? What are the characteristics of the target that might warrant the application of the label?

In this country, at the moment, the terms ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ hardly mean anything at all – except as terms of abuse – which is how ‘Tory’ and ‘Whig’ started in England. These terms are now generally only applied by one side to the other. Not many people are happy to apply either of those labels to themselves. The categories are just too plastic and fluid.

Similarly, in Australia the labels ‘Liberal’ and ‘Labor’ hardly stand for any difference in principle any more. At the time of writing, on any of the major issues in Australian politics, what were the differences in the policies of those parties that derived from their platform? The old forms of name calling between Liberal and Labor mean nothing to our children – absolutely nothing. These old ways are as outmoded as name calling between Catholics and Protestants. And there is some common ground in the two shifts: very many people have lost faith in both religion and politics. The old tensions or rivalries just seem no longer to matter.

Unfortunately, and notwithstanding the obvious problems we have just referred to, labelling is not just common but mandatory in far too much political discussion in the press, and certainly for shock jocks or those who make a career out of working TV chat shows. While some people naturally thrive on conflict – Napoleon and Hitler were two bad cases – some journalists in the press engage in conflict for a living. These people rarely have a financial motive to respond reasonably, much less to resolve the conflict. To the contrary, they have a direct financial interest in keeping the conflict as explosive as possible. It is notorious that controversy feeds ratings and that bad news sells newspapers.

If you put up an argument to one of these people who live off the earnings of conflict, the response will very commonly involve two limbs – a personal attack on you (the Latin tag for which is ad hominem), followed by some labels, which are never meant as compliments. For example, if someone dared to query the rigour of the government’s policies toward refugees, a predictable response would be ‘What else would you expect from someone who subscribes to the ABC? How would you like these people to move in next door?’ There is no argument – just vulgar abuse. The disintegration of thought is palpable, but a lot of people are making a handy living out of it – and not in ways that do the rest of us any good.

There is commonly a third problem with labelling: it generally tells you a lot more about the labeller – some would say the sniper – than the target, and the answer is rarely pretty. And if you pile cliché upon label, and venom upon petulance, the result is as sad as it is predictable. You disappear up your own bum.

Let us take one label that became prominent in 2016 right across the Western world. There has been a lot of chatter, or white noise, about ‘populists’. Who are they? One of the problems with this word is that people who use it rarely say what they mean by it. If you search the internet, you will find references to ordinary or regular or common people against political insiders or a wealthy elite. These vague terms don’t help – to the contrary. What do they mean? Is dividing people into classes a good idea in Australia now – or anywhere, at any time? If it is simply a matter of the common people wresting control from a wealthy elite, who could decently object? Is this not just democracy triumphing over oligarchy?

Populus is the Latin word for ‘people’, with pretty much the same connotations as that word in English. Do populists, therefore, appeal to the people for their vote? Well, anyone standing for office in a democracy does just that. The most famous political speech in history concludes with the words ‘of the people, for the people, by the people’.

But ‘populist’is not used to describe everyone standing for office. It is used to refer to only some of those, and the difference seems to be in the kinds of people who are appealed to and the way in which that appeal is made.

So, what kind of public do populists appeal to? Those who use this word say that the people appealed to are anything but the ‘elite’ – those who have got on well in life because of their background or education, or both. In both the United Kingdom and the United States this feeling about the elite – which might look like simple envy to some – is linked to a suspicion of or contempt for ‘experts’. People do, however, tend to get choosy about which experts they reject. (This rejection does not extend to experts who may save their life in the surgery, or at 30,000 feet, or their liberty; but it may explain the curious intellectual lesion that many people of a reactionary turn of mind have about science and the environment.)

Another attribute of the public appealed to by populists is that they have often missed out on the increase in wealth brought about by free trade around the world and by advances in technology. These movements obviously have cost people jobs and are thought by some experts to be likely to cost another 40 per cent over the next ten years.

A third attribute of those appealed to by populists is said to be that, in their reduced condition, they value their citizenship above all else, and they are not willing to share it. They are therefore against taking refugees or people whose faith or colour threatens the idea of their national identity.

Now, if folk who use the word populist are describing politicians who appeal to people with those attributes, they may want to be careful about where they say so. The picture that emerges is one of a backward, angry and mean chauvinist failure. That picture is seriously derogatory. If that is what people mean when they refer to populists,then it is just a loose label that unfairly smears a large part of the population. The term does then itself suffer from the vice of labelling that we have identified.

So, we would leave labels with George Bush Senior, who said that labels are what you put on soup cans

Labels – people of color – black and white – excluding people by color – the Voice – Murdoch press – The Age.

You might find it hard to imagine that some members of the press see themselves as victims of some form of injustice or oppression, but some do. 

There are people who not only believe that George Pell was unfairly treated, but that they have been as well – and just because of their subscription to one religious denomination.  They go further.  They see George Pell as a victim – and somehow or other they share the pain.

This is curious, as it is a perfect example of conduct that their colleagues make a habit, if not a living, out of denouncing.  It’ s called ‘identity politics’. 

I have often wondered what’s wrong with people who have a common interest – such as farmers, plumbers, country women, or coal miners – coming together to advance their interests.  But some in the press see something sinister in this – even though that’s what they get together for every day.

It is curious for another reason.  George Pell and the church he stood for are criticised – that is the soft word – for regarding the church as more important than the victims of its abusive priests.  Whose conduct George Pell chose to overlook.  In the interests of the church. 

But that is precisely the attitude that the vocal defenders of George Pell evidence nearly every time they open their mouths.  People come and go, but the rock of the church abideth forever.

This is not just sad.  It is disgraceful.  Many, many lives were ruined.  Far too many were lost.  People killed themselves.   Because George Pell thought that it was in the interests of the church that he look the other way. 

And now others of that ilk say the same.  With a kind of smarmy contentment, as if they have been vindicated.  And not one word for the families of those who killed themselves, or the many who were defrauded of their compensation by George Pell, and the crafty lawyers who have since retired from the scene.

The mockers of Jacinda Ardern may not quite see themselves as victims, but they have something in common with the supporters of George Pell.   They are aging white males who have not achieved much in life.  Their role is limited to commenting on others.  And when someone succeeds, as this woman did, they show an ugly jealous bile.

Meanwhile, their dark, brooding employer sits out of the light in America, and collects buckets of dollars – and wives.

Pell – Ardern – hypocrisy – lawyers – jealousy.

This letter was not fit for the press.

Your piece (‘Inside Crikey’s plan to monetise the Murdoch defamation claim’) shows that the inanity of hearing libel actions in the Federal Court has reached new heights.

Your report says that Murdoch fils alleges that the publisher ‘created a scheme to improperly use the complaint by Murdoch about the article for commercial gain.’  Thirty times.  In sixty pages.

Did they split the infinitive every time? 

Are they serious?  The Murdoch family is filthy rich because its members have acted improperly for commercial gain.  (But the judge might ask what ‘improperly’ means.)

I have only been at it for fifty odd years, but any claim for libel that exceeds three pages shrieks that it’s bullshit.

And my taxes are being spent on relieving a spoiled child from a mild allergy.  So, the court ushers may hand out smiley koala stamps to any bystander who can keep a straight face.  While the rest of us wait glumly for the next version of War and Peace.

AFR – Murdoch – Federal Court – Libel.

….is the Premier of New South Wales.  No small matter, or easy job.  He succeeded Gladys Berejiklian, whom I admired.  She went out in a way that was sad – even by our suburban standards. 

Dom lacked charm.  He looked more like a Baptist than a Mick, but then I decided to send those prejudices back to the 50’s.  My daughters wouldn’t know the difference between a Mick or a Prot, and could not care less.  That’s as it should be.  There are few relics of that old hate left – although they’re up and about just now.

And then Dom started doing things that made sense.  And then a guy who knows all about this, Paul Keating, said Dom was OK and was actually doing something. 

He and Andrews form a coalition.  I am probably less worried about the former than the latter.  (If anyone can spot a policy difference between the two, you get a smiley koala stamp and a box of Jaffas to roll down the aisle at the flicks.)

Now it appears that Dom put on a Nazi uniform when he was 21.

That was bloody silly.  It’s what we call a faux pas.

But you don’t get sacked for a faux pas. 

Life would not be worth living if you did.  You might as well hand yourself over to the Moral Police of the Persians.

Just look at that bloody idiot in the royal family who gets bathed in lucre for washing his family’s dirty linen in public.

But people are writing to the press screaming for Dom’s blood. 

What mistakes didn’t they make at that age?  What is it about our psyche that makes our minds so small and our hearts so hard that we move to strike as soon as someone better than us stumbles?

Well, one thing we do know.  These stone-throwers do not subscribe to the teaching of the son of a carpenter, who consorted with the fallen and the rejects among us.  Rather, they adhere to that school of political divinity that says as soon as you can see money, politics, or blood on the table, the Sermon on the Mount goes clean out the window.

Has the person been born who believes that by that silly act, Dom Perrottet, the good Catholic family man that he is, endorsed Adolf Hitler?

It is very sad.  Boys mature later than girls.  We all did silly things at that age – shocking even. 

I managed to spend a night in the slammer at Prahran for being D and D (drunk and disorderly) after giving the wallopers some cheek after some boozy university function. 

It was OK.  Mac and Norma were away, and the dog didn’t tell tales.  The sergeant on the desk at dawn said the ten bob I had would go the bail, and I assumed that went into his pocket.  Until some years later, when I had to disclose any priors to the Supreme Court on admission.  I got Robert Heathcote of ABL to phone the court.  He nearly wet himself laughing.  Convicted and fined one pound.  I still owe His Majesty ten bob. 

So, I disclosed that to the court, and that was that.

(I was lucky.  That station had a very bad name then.  Especially if the window you accidentally fell from was the one above the fire hydrant.)

Are the vigilantes so clean that they are merely pains in the arse?

And now, some real rats are coming out. 

According to the internet, Jim Chalmers went to Catholic schools before university, at one of which he wrote a thesis ‘Brawler Statesman: Paul Keating…’ 

Will Jim give it to Dom down the front, as was the wont of the subject of his thesis (the man who endorsed Dom)?  Not on your bloody Nelly, Mate.  Jim holds his nose, and slips the stiletto in right in the middle of Dom’s back.

For all of the rest of us who want our communities to be more tolerant and more inclusive … I think this will be a factor that people will weigh up … in March.

That’s really gutless on a few different counts.  I can just about hear my late friend Jack Hedigan, QC, as real and fruity a Mick silk as I have known, asseverating from between grinding pursed lips, with a little bubble on one corner – ‘Just look at yourself ….!  Willing to wound, but afraid to strike….!’

Mr Chalmers is not just any Minister of the Crown.  He is the Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Australia.  He must be a man of impeccable integrity and clear of the dirt that besmirches what passes for politics here.  Caesar’s wife country.  And he just falls flat on his face in the gutter in what the NRL and he know as a cheap shot.  And what the AFL calls a coat-hanger.  From behind.

He should be ashamed of himself.

But these things don’t change.  Our greatest poet wrote of kings deposed.  One king might fairly be said to have asked for it, but the usurper was shiftiness personified.

Though some of you, with Pilate, wash your hands,
Showing an outward pity, yet you Pilates
Have here delivered me to my sour cross,
And water cannot wash away your sin.

That brings us to the real story.  Judas. 

Someone in the party ratted on the leader.  This was not some casual faux pas.  This was a deliberate and malicious kick to the head given for private political gain on someone who was down.  There you have a true ratbag at work.

And it brings me to my favourite anecdote from our politics.  Billy Hughes was a street fighter.  But face to face.  He handed it out in spades to that nice, decent man from Melbourne Grammar, Alfred Deakin. ‘Then I heard the word Judas.  That wasn’t fair.  It wasn’t fair to Judas!’ 

The speaker then reminded the House that Judas handed the money back – or threw it away – and then he at least had the courtesy to hang himself.

Politics – ALP – Liberal Party – Chalmers – Prince Harry.

George Pell was human.  He committed two great wrongs.  He put the interests of himself and his church over the interests of children.  In the result, priests attacked and injured children in their care.  Theirs was the ultimate breach of trust.  They betrayed God, their church, and Pell.  But their worst crime was the betrayal of children.  Many victims saw their lives ruined.  And most of that ruin could have been avoided had Pell not betrayed the children too.

Then Pell joined with others to design and implement a scheme to deny proper compensation to the victims by putting the church beyond the reach of the due process of law.  This despicable abuse of power and wealth took us back to the time when Beckett told Henry II that the king had no power over the priests of the church.  For this arrogance, Thomas was murdered by friends of the king, and was made a saint in record time by organs of the Vatican.  And the English concluded that they must forever preclude agents of a church from interfering with their governance.  Which they proceeded to do in what is referred to as the Reformation.  (You may recall that Tony Abbott said it was a pity that Islam had not had one.)

We now have a better understanding of the misery wrought on children in the church and their families by these dreadful breaches of trust.  As it happens, all that Pell did to protect the church has come back to damn it.  That church now stands stained and disgraced.  In England now, more people attend mosques than Anglican churches, and that looks to happen here too with this church.

And yet when Pell died, some said that he was a good man, and a victim.  Go tell that to those who were buggered because Pell chose to look the other way.

The moral vacuum and blindness induced in the faithful by their embrace of the supernatural defies belief.  We are used to the lunacy of Abbott when it comes to faith. 

But Peter Dutton’s mind appears to be even more warped.  He chose the death of a prelate as the occasion to make a political statement.  He said that what happened to Pell in one of the cascades of legal cases brought on by the evil within the church suggested that Pell was persecuted by a state Labor government.  I will not insult your intelligence by dealing with what I regard as the most banal political statement I have ever seen.  It does suggest that Dutton is unfit for any office of trust.

But why concentrate on just one case when it is beyond doubt that Pell was responsible for so many others – and then defrauding the victims? 

And I am yet to hear the word ‘sorry’ for the fraud.  And I won’t.  Those withered male prelates in Rome are far too proud for that.

As to that one case, its justification is plain from the reaction of two juries and two justices on appeal.  Most people will be able to live with the fact that the High Court came to a different view, but I would be more comfortable with it if I thought that court had given more weight to two notions about our process in courts.  You must hear both sides – and I stress ‘hear’; and the most important person in the courtroom is the loser.  

The justices declined to hear the evidence of the victim.  They were not there, they said, to duplicate the function of the jury.  That may be so, but what about the rights, interests and expectations of the parties?

 How does the victim feel?  Those who heard him believed him.  Those who did not hear him said the jury was wrong and then put the victim down. 

This doesn’t sound right.  And that was certainly not the best way to dispose of a red-hot burning issue that continues to agitate the Queen’s peace in Australia.  Their Honours look to have been both cold and cavalier. 

And the deployment of the epithet ‘specious’ does nothing to dispel the aura of aloofness.  It is one thing to lose a case.  It is another to hear your argument dismissed as ‘plausible, apparently sound or convincing, but in reality, sophistical of fallacious.’ 

And you cop ‘sophistical’ when your enemy is a prince of the church built on the teaching of Augustine and Aquinas.  A cardinal of the Church of Rome who was kept out of the witness box by the best lawyers that money can buy.  After you got the third degree in court from them for hours and days.  To give evidence that those who decided to release the cardinal disdained to hear. 

You were not broken.  He was not even tested.

No, your Honours – there are times in the law when mere logic is not enough.  What did that man do to cop all this – for nothing – but more pain, and the endless hurt of injustice?

But that one case, sensational as it was, is a distraction from the much wider wrongs of which Pell was guilty beyond doubt.  That some of the faithful now look on Pell as some kind of victim, or even a winner, shows that the power of religious faith and dogma to warp minds has not changed since the fall and rise of a saint in the Middle Ages. 

Nor has our need to ensure that it does not pollute our governance.

Child abuse – Roman Catholic Church – High Court – due process.

After listening to Richard II last night, I turned the cricket on in a desultory fashion.  A big strong man sent the next ball clean into the top tier.  And he kept going.  It looked so easy, so natural.  Very experienced commentators were in awe.  A press clipping about him follows.

Josh Brown looks like he might be a member of the O’Toole family, a wood-chopper from the bush.  In a shy, matter of fact way, Josh told the Fox pony-tailed boundary rider that about five years ago, someone thought he may be able to play cricket.  And so, he tried – while making bats in his day job.  (Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs in The Natural.) 

Josh made that score against a very strong bowling side – who looked spooked – and created that sense of inevitability as if he was living in his own time.  I can’t recall anything like it.

Josh said he was keen to learn from the champions, but that he had two things in mind when batting.  You treat every ball on its merits.  And you make sure you are quite still when you hit it.  And then, as they say in the movie, ‘It’s good bye Mr Spalding.’

We have learned not to put the curse on possible new stars.

Here’s hoping – and may God protect him.  We could all do with a lift.

And one type of bat will sell out very early today.  At a mere $700 – peanuts for stardust.

Bat maker Brown blasts Heat to BBL win

Josh Brown makes his own Cooper Bison bats and showed he can wield them too as he lit up the Gabba with a whirlwind half-century to inspire the Brisbane Heat’s 15-run win over the Sydney Sixers.

The 29-year-old Brown earlier produced his whirlwind innings to score 62 off just 23 balls in the Heat’s 5-224.

The Sixers made a gallant response in their pursuit of a BBL record run chase, but fell short to be all out from the final delivery for 209.

The Heat needed something special to get their season moving and Brown provided it in front of 23,689 fans while using a bat he made himself.

He brought up his fifty in just 19 deliveries, the equal fifth fastest in Heat history in just his second BBL game.

Brown cleared the boundary six times with an assortment of scintillating strokes.

The Heat opener works with Cooper Cricket founder Rod Grey. He has crafted hundreds of Cooper bats himself, and repaired thousands for his cricket mates.

“I made my own bat, the Cooper Bison…it absolutely cannons off. It is one of the new ones I made myself and I fell in love with it,” Brown told AAP after his innings.

“All my mates call me ‘Bison’.”

Brown said “it wasn’t until I was 24 that I started to take it seriously and then I went from third grade to Queensland Second XI in the space of 18 months”.

Twenty20 franchises around the world will no doubt be making further enquiries about him.

Brown told AAP he would “love to” take his T20 game to the world and added that his philosophy while batting was “play with no fear”.

A fairy tale?  Josh Brown

After listening to Richard II last night, I turned the cricket on in a desultory fashion.  A big strong man sent the next ball clean into the top tier.  And he kept going.  It looked so easy, so natural.  Very experienced commentators were in awe.  A press clipping about him follows.

Josh Brown looks like he might be a member of the O’Toole family, a wood-chopper from the bush.  In a shy, matter of fact way, Josh told the Fox pony-tailed boundary rider that about five years ago, someone thought he may be able to play cricket.  And so, he tried – while making bats in his day job.  (Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs in The Natural.) 

Josh made that score against a very strong bowling side – who looked spooked – and created that sense of inevitability as if he was living in his own time.  I can’t recall anything like it.

Josh said he was keen to learn from the champions, but that he had two things in mind when batting.  You treat every ball on its merits.  And you make sure you are quite still when you hit it.  And then, as they say in the movie, ‘It’s good bye Mr Spalding.’

We have learned not to put the curse on possible new stars.

Here’s hoping – and may God protect him.  We could all do with a lift.

And one type of bat will sell out very early today.  At a mere $700 – peanuts for stardust.

Bat maker Brown blasts Heat to BBL win

Josh Brown makes his own Cooper Bison bats and showed he can wield them too as he lit up the Gabba with a whirlwind half-century to inspire the Brisbane Heat’s 15-run win over the Sydney Sixers.

The 29-year-old Brown earlier produced his whirlwind innings to score 62 off just 23 balls in the Heat’s 5-224.

The Sixers made a gallant response in their pursuit of a BBL record run chase, but fell short to be all out from the final delivery for 209.

The Heat needed something special to get their season moving and Brown provided it in front of 23,689 fans while using a bat he made himself.

He brought up his fifty in just 19 deliveries, the equal fifth fastest in Heat history in just his second BBL game.

Brown cleared the boundary six times with an assortment of scintillating strokes.

The Heat opener works with Cooper Cricket founder Rod Grey. He has crafted hundreds of Cooper bats himself, and repaired thousands for his cricket mates.

“I made my own bat, the Cooper Bison…it absolutely cannons off. It is one of the new ones I made myself and I fell in love with it,” Brown told AAP after his innings.

“All my mates call me ‘Bison’.”

Brown said “it wasn’t until I was 24 that I started to take it seriously and then I went from third grade to Queensland Second XI in the space of 18 months”.

Twenty20 franchises around the world will no doubt be making further enquiries about him.

Brown told AAP he would “love to” take his T20 game to the world and added that his philosophy while batting was “play with no fear”.

After listening to Richard II last night, I turned the cricket on in a desultory fashion.  A big strong man sent the next ball clean into the top tier.  And he kept going.  It looked so easy, so natural.  Very experienced commentators were in awe.  A press clipping about him follows.

Josh Brown looks like he might be a member of the O’Toole family, a wood-chopper from the bush.  In a shy, matter of fact way, Josh told the Fox pony-tailed boundary rider that about five years ago, someone thought he may be able to play cricket.  And so, he tried – while making bats in his day job.  (Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs in The Natural.) 

Josh made that score against a very strong bowling side – who looked spooked – and created that sense of inevitability as if he was living in his own time.  I can’t recall anything like it.

Josh said he was keen to learn from the champions, but that he had two things in mind when batting.  You treat every ball on its merits.  And you make sure you are quite still when you hit it.  And then, as they say in the movie, ‘It’s good bye Mr Spalding.’

We have learned not to put the curse on possible new stars.

Here’s hoping – and may God protect him.  We could all do with a lift.

And one type of bat will sell out very early today.  At a mere $700 – peanuts for stardust.

Bat maker Brown blasts Heat to BBL win

Josh Brown makes his own Cooper Bison bats and showed he can wield them too as he lit up the Gabba with a whirlwind half-century to inspire the Brisbane Heat’s 15-run win over the Sydney Sixers.

The 29-year-old Brown earlier produced his whirlwind innings to score 62 off just 23 balls in the Heat’s 5-224.

The Sixers made a gallant response in their pursuit of a BBL record run chase, but fell short to be all out from the final delivery for 209.

The Heat needed something special to get their season moving and Brown provided it in front of 23,689 fans while using a bat he made himself.

He brought up his fifty in just 19 deliveries, the equal fifth fastest in Heat history in just his second BBL game.

Brown cleared the boundary six times with an assortment of scintillating strokes.

The Heat opener works with Cooper Cricket founder Rod Grey. He has crafted hundreds of Cooper bats himself, and repaired thousands for his cricket mates.

“I made my own bat, the Cooper Bison…it absolutely cannons off. It is one of the new ones I made myself and I fell in love with it,” Brown told AAP after his innings.

“All my mates call me ‘Bison’.”

Brown said “it wasn’t until I was 24 that I started to take it seriously and then I went from third grade to Queensland Second XI in the space of 18 months”.

Twenty20 franchises around the world will no doubt be making further enquiries about him.

Brown told AAP he would “love to” take his T20 game to the world and added that his philosophy while batting was “play with no fear”.

Cricket – Twenty/20 – Josh Brown.