Prior makes bald claims

Some of you may remember that I don’t like Matt Prior. It’s not really, a bitter, obsessive loathing, more a generalised hatred. It’s akin to the feelings you have for the person who has just taken up that seat next to you on the train. Nothing personal; you just find their presence insufferable.

Here’s what he has to say for himself, in a recent BBC column:

“It's been two weeks now since we arrived in Sri Lanka and, so far, pretty much everything has been going according to plan.”

If England planned to lose their best bowler’s boots and the use of his spine; if they planned for James Anderson receiving an injury; if they planned to have no idea who was going to fill the number six spot; if they planned to get humiliated in the first warm-up game then everything has gone splendidly.

He then proffers the usual cricketers’ line of “playing too much” and being over-worked. Then he goes on to say that he is addicted to a non-cricket related computer game. (For shame!) But re-assures us that “[t]he work ethic of this squad is second to none.”

Second to perhaps more devoted people? Perhaps to me, even, who have never been addicted to a computer game involving football.

It’s at this point that my hatred moves from the generalised, to the specific: when the over-adjacent passenger pulls out her mobile telephone and relates to the carriage the romantic failings of her “over half”, Darren.

I imagine we all expect Prior to disappoint on some level. But we’re used to a shambles in the number seven department. And no matter how strongly you argue that there is an obvious replacement in the form of [insert name of mediocre county trudger here] you know that we’re just going to have to put up with nonsense for some years to come.

It’s like the Northern Line all over again.