Ranking the Australian Male Cricketers, 2018-19

It's time to rank the current Australian male cricketers again!

I ranked all of them in 2015-16 and 2016-17, then kept it to a more sensible 20 (plus 10 honourable mentions) in 2017-18. For season 2018-19, I've decided to stick with thirty players again.

This is a ranking favouring "red ball" cricket - Test matches and Sheffield Shield. I may (or may not) do a Big Bash League listing later in the summer.

Eligibility is all cricketers that have played Sheffield Shield through the opening four rounds, or have been unavailable for Sheffield Shield in that period due to Australia T20 committments.

That means pretty much everyone was considered, except these three guys, for some reason:

Put your OLED's out.

Now here is the list, and like an expertly sandpapered ball, we are going reverse...

Stuff My Kids Say, Part 17

Pictured, from left to right: J, O, R

I was on the train last week with my three boys - we were coming home from work and child care respectively. As per usual, I gave the boys each a banana to eat. They were slightly green, not quite ripe. J soon discovered how this makes them more difficult to peel.

He frustratingly cried out, "I can't peel this bloody banana!"

I quietly suggested he ask for help next time.

At that point, as I avoided eye contact with other passengers, I decided it was really time for another edition of Stuff My Kids Say. Recently, I gave toddler O his turn in the spotlight. However, it's been so long since R and J got a run, that some of the stories in this come from a time when we had a different prime minister!

(Okay, so it hasn't been that long. This is Australia, after all.)

So here are some selected tales of the last four months or so. I've had to edit out some stories I collected in this period for brevity. Other stories have been cut because I can't make sense of my shorthand notes from so long ago. So unfortunately we will never know why J said, "I'm not an octopus!"...

Bloody octopus bananas.

The Scream

The Scream happened in the early hours of the morning, about one week ago...

Dramatisation of the events.

Stuff My Kids Say, Part 16 - Toddler O Special Edition!

I thought it was time to give the youngest - soon to be middle - kid his big break and dedicate an entire blog entry to his escapades.

NRL Grand Final 2018

MELBOURNE STORM vs SYDNEY ROOSTERS

Sunday 30th September 2018

On NRL Grand Final Day, I reposted all my previous NRL grand final entries to my Facebook page (give it a like!).

The 2018 edition combines the best elements of the three earlier editions:

• It's really late, like 2015's The Latest and Best Review of the NRL Grand Final You Will Ever Read;
• It's in a diary format, like NRL Grand Final Diary 2016; and
• Uhh, it has words and pictures about the game, like NRL Grand Final 2017 (I was struggling to extend the introduction).

Let's get to this!

BIG NEWS~!

I'm so excited to announce that on the weekend we bought an eight-seat Kia Carnival...

And also, the reason we did that is because we are having a fourth child due in late-February 2019.

The Real NRL Champion for 2018 is Already Decided

There are six teams left in the NRL finals - by the way, my Week 2 Finals tips are the Sharks and the Rabbitohs - but the holders of the NRL championship belt bowed out last week...