Cricketers: hard as frostbite

In an article I’m gratefully stealing from the BBC, I note that a group of cricketers are planning to play cricket on Mount Everest. For those of you who don’t know, cricket is a game played with a bat and ball which takes forever.

This is a standard textbook definition of the game. However, every single cricketing guide neglects to point out one key feature: the presence of oxygen.

Kids, try this at home: attempt to play cricket in a low oxygen atmosphere. You’ll find that your lead bowler swiftly collapses to plead for a quick mercy. It’s next to impossible score many runs – even when you force your disabled aunty to act as a runner. It’s funny how the MCC missed something so rudimentary from their supposedly authoritative literature.

Anyway, three teams from the Professional Cricketers' Association will play six-a-side matches of five overs each. When you look at the picture of the flat terrain and the predictable weather conditions you wonder why no one thought of this before.

Andrew Baud, spokesman for the Professional Cricketers' Association said,

"They are taking 40 spare balls up there - I can imagine they will need them."

I doubt it. Your seam bowlers will expire in the first three strides. Your leggie’s fingers will snap in the cold. Forget slog-sweeps into cow’s crevice; imagine the effect on the digits when a ball rears off a length. Appendages will fall to the ground like dollies in the Indian field.

It is for this reason that I am praying to my absent god for video footage from the surviving stragglers. It’s always the fat blokes that last. Here’s hoping that Darren Lehman will do his bit for his country and malicious sadists everywhere.

The climb starts Monday.