Why island quarantine constitutes an absolute requirement

The revelation that Victoria has been forced into a lockdown as of tomorrow due to an Indian escapee from an Adelaide quarantine hotel has made me think of something I thought of last year but have not written about yet. This is that – regardless of transport costs – Australia must develop isolated islands as quarantine centres regardless of cost so that dangerous diseases cannot spread.

The problem with non-isolated hotel-based quarantine is quite simple: that it is easy for an inadequately tested person to escape, and that if such a person does escape it is extremely probable that they will spread coronavirus into a large community. This is what happened during the disastrous escape from the Rydges and Stamford hotels last winter, which I discussed previously here, and happened again in Adelaide this month. It is extremely difficult to create a secure environment anywhere on a large continental landmass. Australia’s arid interior and drought/flood tropical north are remote enough to be difficult to escape from but suffer from extremely inhospitable climates and long distances to move those to be quarantined. Somewhere rural but closer to major cities is inevitably very risky as an alternative to the obviously dangerous urban hotels. Contrariwise, an island quarantine actually acts as a real quarantine so that nobody can escape. Quarantine on a relatively small island also offers the advantage of being easier for tracking those under quarantine, as people are kept in a relatively small area.

Places I have seen as potential quarantine islands are French Island or one of the Bass Strait Islands, which have the advantage over more northerly localities of a far more livable climate. Some of South Australia’s islands could also be possibilities: the climate there is hotter than on Bass Strait islands and thus a bit outside the 12 ˚C to 22 ˚C comfort zone during the summer months, although it might be back inside the “comfort zone” if wind be factored in.

The obvious difficulties of building a quarantine island are:

1. inconsistency of need – such facilities are likely to be out of use for long periods
   
2. difficulty of transportation and the environmental cost thereof
3. the direct environmental and cultural impacts that a quarantine facility will have

How to plan or eliminate these is a difficult question. Islands are by nature very vulnerable even if they often can remain free of dangerous invasive species (such as rabbits, cane toads or foxes), so that a permanent inconsistently-used quarantine area may be very damaging. This would be even more true if the diseases being quarantined actually affected the island wildlife, although paradoxically this is less likely in Australia than in most other places. Helicopters – except for people arriving by sea the only possible means of transport of potentially contaminated people to an isolated island like the Bass Strait islands – are very energy-intensive and expensive at the same time, a critical issue for a country with such a low-energy ecology as Australia. A large quarantine facility would be very disturbing for the small rural populations of islands like the Bass Strait islands, and would also severely affect tourism to them if needed in the summer.

Even if these are substantial costs, if combined with efforts to revegetate land and improve Australia’s abysmal emissions performance via improvements in other fields like non-emergence transportation, there could be mutual gains.

“The Rhyme That Lies” — 100 years ago: #3

Ever since my interest in old county cricket began, I noticed Arthur Mold, a leading fast bowler from Lancashire in the 1890s, for his large hauls of wickets. When I first studied old county cricket, I was not able to afford Wisdens old enough to cover Mold. Nevertheless, a few fragments of his most notable feats from the State Library of Victoria, alongside a more detailed overview from Wisden Book of Obituaries, made me realise an extraordinary paradox. This being that the most successful “chucker” in cricket history has a name that rhymes with “bowled”! I noted the paradox when discussing my fortieth birthday a few years ago. This observation I especially like regarding Wisden’s frequently lavish praise for Mold’s work in county cricket during the 1890s:

“The fast bowler [Mold] maintained a wonderful pitch and pace, and occasionally whipped back in a manner which the visiting [Sussex in 1894] batsmen were quite unable to withstand”

“After the triumph of the Lancashire batsmen [against Kent at Old Trafford in 1895] Mold bowled so grandly that in three hours fourteen Kent wickets went down for 115 runs, and altogether Kent were twice dismissed for 196, Lancashire winnings most decisively by an innings and 291 runs”

“The way he made the ball break back on the hard ground [at Trent Bridge in 1895] was quite marvellous”

Times report for 1895 Nottinghamshire match.
Mold took 15 for 85 including 4 in 4.

Times report for 1895 Lancashire v Kent match.
Mold took sixteen for 111

In the second case, The Times said that the wicket had worn and was assisting Mold to break the ball back, and it hinted at that with the last one a little later. Before I read The Times’ frequently (though by no means always) more detailed analysis, I assumed that the pitch must have continued to favour batting and that Mold’s sixteen wickets (of eighteen that fell) simply reflected superlative work. Nevertheless, my knowledge of the Wisden Book of Obituaries even before reading John Woodcock’s list of the top 100 cricketers of all time made me realise how tainted Mold’s achievements were by the fact that he bowled for so long before being no-balled or being openly criticised.

I soon came to call the phrase “Mold bowled” “the rhyme that lies”. It is indeed a very simple and obvious rhyme, yet one that was never actually true given that Mold had been recognised by astute observers as a bad thrower before he had ever been seen in first-class cricket. Two other phrases in Chinese — “老好” and “现代坏” — I have also occasionally thought of as the “rhyme that lies”. However, the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s Wisdens I cut my teeth on said firmly that there were terrible flaws in modern (现代) English cricket that had always got worse, so I never accepted them as the definitive “rhyme that lies” as I did “Mold bowled”.

When Mold was at the height of his powers — he took over 200 wickets in 1894 and 1895 — a number of famous batsmen did obliquely comment upon his delivery. Rather than naming him, they merely said there was an important case of throwing consistently high in the averages, which was always understood to mean Arthur Mold. Little was said in Lancashire reports of this era about Mold’s action, and as he declined and began to suffer from knee problems later in the 1890s even less was said until he recovered his form surprisingly in the 1900 season before James Phillips no-balled him at Trent Bridge and Mold sent down just one over in the whole game.

Subsequently, in a vote of twelve out of fifteen county captains, Mold’s delivery was condemned by a vote of eleven to one. He would go in and out of the Lancashire eleven for the rest of 1900 and all of 1901, and although he was still near the top of the averages it was clear after Phillips again no-balled him sixteen times in ten overs that Mold would not be retained by Lancashire for the 1902 season.

Studying English bowling over the years, I have long been convinced that the reason “the rhyme that lies” got away with throwing for so long and to so much effect was that in Mold’s prime English bowling was unusually strong. Lohmann, Richardson, Lockwood, Peel, Mold’s longtime partner Briggs, John Thomas Hearne and William Attewell formed a group of high-class bowlers that has since been rivalled only once — in the middle 1950s. Consequently, although England knew there was potential for Mold to be called for throwing if he bowled in front of unfamiliar umpires, there was no need for this as there would have been in most other eras.

It does seem as though the decline of English bowling when Bedser, Laker, Appleyard, Tyson and Wardle disappeared from the scene in the late 1950s coincided with the wave of no-ballings for throwing circa 1959. However this is much more likely due to England’s own concern about the actions of Australian pacemen Meckiff and Rorke, not the exposure of criticised English bowlers like Tony Lock. Nonetheless, the unusual quality of English bowling in the middle 1890s would have protected Mold from a lot of wider scrutiny vis-à-vis what he would have got in county cricket.

The “Revolution of 1959” and its prequel

 One of the more striking features of the history of English cricket is that:

• before the late 1950s, slow bowlers usually headed the averages and especially the wicket totals
  
• since that time, almost no spinners have headed the averages, and no England-qualified spinner has done so since Derek Underwood in the 1970s
• in fact, from 1900 to 1958 a spin bowler was leading wicket taker in 38 of 49 seasons, whereas since 1959 an England-qualified spinner has been leading wicket taker only six times
  
• from 1900 to 1958 spin bowlers headed the averages in over half of all seasons, whereas only Derek Underwood and Don Shepherd — neither classic slow spinners — have done so as an England-qualified spinner since
  

The transition can be clearly seen from looking at the leading bowlers both by averages and wickets taken.

For a long time, I have referred to this change as the “Revolution of 1959”, as it was that summer that spin bowlers ceased gaining their formerly large wicket totals due to increased covering of pitches.  David Green in his 2001 ‘Back to Grass Roots’ viewed — not unfairly in my mind — full covering as a blatant rigging of pitches against the spin bowler, and argued that commercial interests were the reason behind covering. However, Green did not mention who actually is responsible — television broadcasters for whom the amount of spin bowling seen before the late 1950s would limit advertising opportunities and revenue since there would be much smaller breaks for advertisements between balls.

The “Revolution of 1959” was financially disastrous for first-class county cricket. Without attacking spin bowling to give opportunities for free strokes by batsmen even at the risk of losing their wicket, attendances at county matches — which as fast bowling strengthened and rival attractions to cricket developed declined by fifty percent between 1947 and 1957 — would by 1990 free-fall to a mere one-thirteenth of their 1947 peak as spin became insignificant to the strategy of the game. This created a vicious circle as first-class cricket became subsidised by one-day cricket, where the need to not give away runs excludes the buy-at-all-costs spinner so critical to first-class cricket being self-supporting.

However, what I have come to realise is that short-sighted policies by English cricket authorities had already prequelled the “Revolution of 1959” before that season. Most especially, a standard 75-yard [68.58 metre] boundary was introduced in 1957. The hope was that shortening boundaries would encourage big hitting, but instead they encouraged even more defensive pace and seam bowling, mutually exclusive to self-supporting first-class cricket, and hastened the death of the crowd-attracting wrist-spinner.

In 1958, a summer notorious for dreadful weather and an appalling New Zealand team who averaged fewer than twelve and a half runs per wicket in five Tests, what one finds studying closely is that the “Revolution” was already underway despite only marginally increased pitch covering. Despite the success of Tony Lock and Jim Laker in the Tests, and Lock still being the leading first-class wicket-taker, only five spin bowlers took 100 wickets. Contrariwise, as recently as 1955 eighteen spin bowlers had done so. Moreover, the New Zealand team — in some respect a few years ahead of England in cricketing trends — was so weak in spin that it completely failed to exploit ideal pitches in the Old Trafford and Oval Tests.

With hindsight I think that England could possibly have learned more from this New Zealand team than from any other tourist in history. What New Zealand were doing — especially overgrassing pitches and excluding spin bowlers — seems to have been unconsciously copied by England with a lag of several years. The result is that late 1980s England teams remind me of the 1958 New Zealanders — to paraphrase Kyle Wright, “they were bad and they were boring”.

What I have noted today is that commentator Denys Rowbotham had indeed noted the unusual success of pace bowlers in 1958 in his description of the season in the Guardian, which I will show below:

Description of the 1958 English cricket season by Denys Rowbotham from the Guardian, 17 September 1958

It is fair to say that Rowbotham has overlooked that the prominence of pacemen in the averages compared to previous wet summers may be substantially due to an unusually high quality of English pace bowling. Also, artificial drying may have helped pacemen gain a foothold on wet ground.

However, what I have discovered but which not noticed until later is how experimental rules — and, very likely, changes in pitch preparation like the use of “dressings” [pesticides] to kill “worms” [insect larvae] — were already causing a revolution in English bowling even compared to a few seasons previously. Already in 1955 Wisden was already noting a decline in wrist-spin bowling and a related decline in attendances. Although Wisden only once (1961) made an explicit link between the two, the correlation between declining wrist-spin and declining attendance is striking both in England and outside.

There is no doubt that the “Revolution of 1959” produced a transformation in English cricket history — necessitating the birth of the modern “instant” game as the attacking spinners essential to longer forms of the sport being self-supporting disappeared. The figures tabulated above clearly illustrate its effects, and today the game played beforehand is lost to history and seldom talked about after those journalists brought up in the interwar years died out. Yet, I have always found something romantic about the county game as it was played before the late 1950s — a sport requiring much less athleticism and much more endurance and technical skill than sports played today under the hegemony of television. It is possible that I romanticise it too much given the abysmal failure on Australian pitches of almost every English spin bowler of this era, but it is an interest I have not lost ever three decades.

Rolling Stone’s discards – how political are they?

Although always sceptical thereof because of having read Joe S. Harrington’s Top 100 Albums and David Keenan’s The Best Albums Ever...Honest in the early 2000s, I have always loved lists of bests and worsts, and albums have been a natural face of this tendency ever since I read Harrington for the first time.

Former amazon.com writer “janitor-x” introduced me to Rolling Stone’s original 500 Greatest Albums from a very critical perspective in the middle 2000s, and I have since viewed this and most other professional lists in a very negative manner. That has not meant I have lost interest in these lists – comparing lists has always been of interest to me.

The criticisms of Rolling Stone’s earlier 500 Greatest Albums lists were many and varied. Danny A. Vogel argued the list took no account of the genuine underground history of rock, whilst “janitor-x” viewed Rolling Stone as a purely pop magazine trying to base its selections upon politics and relevance to Boomer hippie culture. In “janitor-x”’s view, a pop magazine must base its charts purely upon sales.

Whilst the 2012 revision was minor, for 2020 Rolling Stone made a variety of major revisions:

1. increasing the number of albums since 2000 to 86
2. a radical change of the top 50 to reduce the dominance of the Beatles and Bob Dylan
3. a major emphasis on music viewed as relevant to the Millennial Generation (born since about 1980)
4. a major effort to expand the presence of black and female artists on this list
   

On the Internet – mainly on YouTube – I have recently been devouring criticism of Rolling Stone’s updated 500 Greatest Albums. The majority of reaction is undoubtedly unfavourable, and often downright critical. The common argument – somewhat echoing “janitor-x” from fifteen years ago – is that Rolling Stone’s list essentially reflects the taste of left-wing “social justice warriors” (commonly known as SJWs), or musical affirmative action for blacks and women.

There is also widespread criticism of omitted artists present in 2012 and 2003. Having made a table comparing various best-albums list as an .xlsx file, I added all the albums from Rolling Stone’s 2020 list to compare with its 2012 one. Once I began studying YouTube and Reddit assessments of the new Top 500, I began asking myself to what extent Rolling Stone’s discarded artists reflect the musical preferences of those politically opposed to Rolling Stone – working- and middle-class white Americans. To do this, I:

1. tabulated all the artists who were unrepresented in the 2020 list but had been represented in 2012
1. this tabulation was approximately in chronological order of their earliest album on the 2012 list (some exceptions were made for compilations)
   
2. categorized these artists by genre to see if they belonged to a genre typically associated with working- and middle-class whites. Genres associated with working- and middle-class whites include:
   
1. heavy metal
2. hard rock
3. heartland rock
4. punk excluding art-punk
5. country and country-rock
3. added other details of individual artists’ religious and political views if they would have affected whether Rolling Stone might have discarded them for political reasons
4. added a green background for artists clearly not discarded for political reasons
5. added a brown background for artists who may have been discarded for political reasons
1. in this group, three shades of orange were used for the text in order of increasing likelihood of politics being behind Rolling Stone’s discarding of the artist in question
   

My results are tabulated below:

Artist	Approximate category	Comments
Little Walter	Early blues artist
Bobby Bland	Early blues artist
Howling Wolf	Early blues artist
John Lee Hooker	Early blues artist
Phil Spector	Pop
Stan Getz and João Gilberto	Pop
Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Jackie Wilson	Early soul artist
John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers	Early blues artist
Frank Zappa/The Mothers of Invention		His satirical tendencies make him a possible target for big-city Millennials, as satire was popular with poor whites
Albert King	Early blues artist
Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band	College/hippie music	May have been removed due to the unavailability of Trout Mask Replica on streaming services.
Moby Grape	College/hippie music
The Drifters	Pop
Boz Scaggs	Pop
Quicksilver Messenger Service
Carpenters	Pop
Neil Diamond	Pop
Linda Ronstadt	Pop/Country	By genre a possible target for Rolling Stone and big-city Millennials, especially as she performed in apartheid South Africa
Alice Cooper	Hard rock/metal	As a Republican and Christian a certain target for Rolling Stone and for big city Millennial critics
Jethro Tull
Mott The Hoople	Hard rock/metal	By genre a quite possible target for Rolling Stone and big city Millennial critics
ZZ Top	Hard rock/metal	By genre a quite possible target for Rolling Stone and big city Millennial critics
Professor Longhair	Early blues artist
The O‘Jays	1970s soul
War	1970s soul
Jackson Browne	Singer/songwriter	A possible target as a standard white rocker, but political sentiments in 1980s make this less likely
Barry White	1970s soul
Gram Parsons	Country	By genre and Christian sentiments (read Bill Kaufmann) a certain target for Rolling Stone and big-city Millennial critics
LaBelle	1970s soul
Cheap Trick	Hard rock/metal	By genre a quite possible target for Rolling Stone and big city Millennial critics
Steve Miller Band		A quite possible target as a standard white rocker, and much more likely so than Browne
Bee Gees	Pop
Meatloaf	Hard rock/metal	By genre a quite possible target for Rolling Stone and big city Millennial critics
Graham Parker and the Rumour	College/hippie music
Public Image Limited	College/hippie music
Echo and the Bunnymen	College/hippie music
Eurythmics	Pop
Jesus and Mary Chain	College/hippie music
The Pogues		Their punk and Irish leanings make them a quite possible target for Rolling Stone and big city Millennial critics
Steve Earle	Country	By genre a likely target for Rolling Stone and big city Millennial critics, although politics should reduce this
Def Leppard	Hard rock/metal	By genre a quite possible target for Rolling Stone and big city Millennial critics
EPMD	Rap	Surprising omission give Millennial focus on rap and the left-wing politics of the genre
Jane’s Addiction	College/hippie music Hard rock/metal	Although to a large extent a college band, their metal links make them a possible target
Don Henley	Pop
Soundgarden	Hard rock/metal	By genre a quite possible target for Rolling Stone and big-city Millennial critics
Moby	College/hippie music
My Morning Jacket		Some genre labels do suggest a possible target for Rolling Stone and big-city Millennial critics
MGMT	College/hippie music

Of the fifty omitted artists, about a dozen (circa 25 percent) do seem to seriously reflect the political polarisation of modern America, in coming from genres that are perceived to be consumed by working-class whites supportive of a far-right Republican Party that over the past half-century has created systematic social injustice towards black Americans.

Eight omitted artists fall approximately into the category of “college music” or, for earlier bands, hippie music. Although these tended to share the left-wing politics of urban millennials – who, opinion polls suggest, may prefer even Stalinism to capitalism – they differ in being much less confrontational than the ghetto blacks who form the core audience for rap. Although rappers were never so critical of hippie culture as punks and metal artists frequently were – no doubt because hippie culture was never relevant for blacks – I do not see the natural compatibility between them tacitly assumed by “janitor-x”. “Peace and love” are opposite to the ideals of (most) rap, which are based upon brutal confrontation with the ruling class.

Another eight omitted artists fall into the category of “pop” – highly popular artists who did not make a single important musical innovation and who have lost cultural significance. Interestingly, as many as eleven omitted artists are black, something that contradicts popular claims of affirmative action. Except for rappers EPMD, all of these achieved their reputations before the “punk revolution”.

Alongside the omitted pop artists – all of whom come from before the original Bush Senior Era rap revolution – the omission of ten pre-punk black artists does support the claim that Rolling Stone’s primary reason for updating its 500 Greatest Albums was to become relevant to Millennials, rather than politics. Nevertheless, it should not be assumed that relevance to the Millennial Generation is necessarily a purer motive than promoting left-wing politics – something “janitor-x” has seen as always fundamental to Rolling Stone.

100 years ago, #2

A few years ago, I noted the death of champion Kent left-arm spinner Colin Blythe in World War I.

Over my long obsession with old county cricket, one figure who attracted my attention very early on because of his bowling records was Schofield Haigh of Yorkshire, who died 100 years ago as of tomorrow. Haigh attracted my attention in part through being born fifty years before my father to the day, as well as from his feat in heading the national bowling averages four times in five years between 1905 and 1909, and five times in eight years between 1902 and 1909. Despite his exceptional averages, Haigh was notable for bowling very few overs vis-à-vis other professional bowlers of his era, never passing 1,000 (6,000 balls) in a season when other top bowlers sometimes passed 1,500 overs.

Haigh’s low output was due to partly his slight build, which would make him quite unsuitable for bowling on today’s covered pitches. Related to this, Haigh generally was nothing more than accurate on good pitches, and was never so much as considered for a tour of Australia. However, on sticky pitches, Haigh could despite his small fingers and the larger ball then in use spin the ball more viciously than anyone. With his accurate length and medium pace, Haigh was virtually impossible to hit off – the only tactic to score runs when the ball turned far faster than it does on any covered pitch – and it is striking how not even the most superbly skilled batsmen like Hobbs, Hayward, McLaren, Johnny Tyldesley, or C.B. Fry ever mastered Haigh in form on a drying pitch.

Having devoured 1980s and 1990s Wisdens, which again and again lamented that English batting techniques were consistently deteriorating, I have often imagined what would happen to modern batsmen if they had had to face Haigh on a sticky wicket after rain. My most frequent discussion relates to a notorious “sticky” at Leicester in 1911 after a thunderstorm on a 35-degree day (one of the hottest on record in England). Marginally thankfully, Haigh received no opportunity to bowl and was bowled out by Jack King for a duck as that bowler took seven for none in twenty balls to give Leicestershire their only win for the season. Often I imagine Haigh would have got any modern side all out in ten balls – unplayable in the strictest sense of the term, as my father said back in the 1990s.

I have often imagined that, assuming what 1980s and 1990s Wisdens said to be perfectly true, that:

• Leicestershire against Haigh on that Leicester pitch would have not managed a target of 30 runs to win
• the lowest target actually set to a defeated side in first-class cricket is 33
  
• even recognised modern batsmen would look like Frank McHugh – who has by far the worst batting average of any regular first-class cricketer – if they were required to face Haigh on pitches affected by rain.
  
• if modern batsmen had had to bat against Haigh on that above-mentioned Leicester sticky, 99 balls out of 100 would have got them out
  
• even on less vicious sticky wickets almost every ball from Haigh in form would have dismissed the best modern batsmen

Proving those points above correct is of course impossible.

In recent years my mother and brother have come up with alternative explanations for why those 1980s and 1990s Wisdens said what they did about English batsmanship, and argued that improvements in training mean that modern players are much better than older ones. Moreover, the tendency of Wisden to criticise contemporary players did not start in the 1980s, but had developed by the 1964 issue which I have been reading as I write this.