Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Whooooooo are you? Who-Who? Who-Who?

Now then. Watching your side lose to another side is generally a miserable, if familiar, experience for most England fans.

Watching them destroy all national pride in under five days, whilst you are thousands of miles away is, strangely, no less tolerable.

In fact, having English cricket conveniently timed between dinner and bed in India is like some sadistic stab of fate. You would have thunk that prime time cricket was a wonderful, fantabulous gift.

No.

No it is not. It is a curse on the soul. A dark, England selector shadow in the heart. A beating on the bum.

The pain is amplified by England’s wilful stupidity. You see, at the moment, there are few, reasonably good contenders for quicks around the county circuit.

In fact, it would be difficult to pick a team. Hard but possible. We pay clever people to do that for us. Like lawyers: no one in their right mind would ever want to read the law, we just want give heaps of cash to some intelligent-sounding bloke in the suit who will smooth over everything.

But the England selectors were not suave, or clever. Although they did try their hardest. Only, they smoothed like a slug smears against the road whilst interfacing with the wheel of a ten-tonne autorickshaw.

Imagine my joy when I emerged, rosy-cheeked and cheery after finding one of the few bars in Mysore, when at the bottom of England’s scorecard displayed the following name:

N.O. BODY

Who? What? What is this? Why have I never heard of this person?

The anger began to take over. Some bed linen was thumped and, I am ashamed to admit, a dirty sock was thrown in rage.

This gormless roof-tiler comes from Australia’s dodgiest state: Victoria. He was born in England’s dodgiest slum: Grimsby.

He is a trundler. A trundler from Grimsby and Victoria. He only learnt to play cricket two years ago.

What are they doing?

Really.

WHAT ARE THEY DOING?

Why aren’t they picking Chris Tremlett? Tremmlers is great. He has bounce. He does stuff. He offers loads of things. Things like the ability to take wickets. At the moment, with these collection of feckless goons, taking twenty wickets is harder than getting a nights sleep in Bangalore.

RAH’BISH

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ryan Sidebottom was a trundler 18 months ago, now he's our best bowler.

It's not as if Pattinson bowled badly, anyway. Broad and Flintoff managed two wickets between them in 70 overs, maybe one of them should be dropped.

Jrod said...

I know there was an insult in there directed at me, but i just can't put my finger back on it.

What did you eat today, cause i was really enjoying that in your other blog.

Anonymous said...

At least Broad can bat.

The Atheist said...

I'm back home now.

I went to Waitrose supermarket. I bought the most British foods I could find.

None of them tasted of anything.

I was a wonderful, wonderful time in my life that I will remember for ever.

The Atheist said...

Oh yeah, there was more angry things I wanted to write about.

I was going to write about Matthew Hoggard.

I was going to write about how ace he was, and how unfairly he has been treated and how he should be captain and that he was ace and things.

I was going to write all about this. But I didn't.

Shame, really.

Anonymous said...

Catherine, Broad can definitely bat, but at the moment he'd be lucky to get Geoff Boycott's mum out.

Samir Chopra said...

Photos. We want bloody photos. Preferably of you playing cricket in the streets. (It'll help you forget about the test)

captains-trousers said...

my mum went to australia once, and has watched cricket on the telly before, so she's expecting a call up any day now.