Daily Telegraph unearths ancient secrets of cricket

In a controversial article, Nick Hoult has stripped bare cricket by publishing “Five Secrets of Success" in today's Daily Telegraph. In bulleted form, the list of guaranteed success is as follows:

1) Good batting
2) Good bowling
3) Good fielding
4) Good captaincy
5) Good coaching

The Professional Cricketers’ Association has denounced exposé, as damaging to players’ future prospects:

“We not saying that we are the magic circle, but players are under order not to unduly reveal any secrets on pain of receiving the feared Ůnchāľŋ Ħğœ order.”

The Ůnchāľŋ Ħğœ is, an ancient disciplinary practice, still shrouded in mystery, but is thought to involve heaping piles of cold Bovril, gimp masks and ritual suicide. The PCA goes on,

“But in revealing these secrets, Hoult is likely to put many hard working cricketers out of business, and flood the market with unskilled amateurs, galvanised by this Gnostic information.”

I’ve only been buying the Telegraph – dubbed wittily by wits as “the TORYgraph” geddit? – because they have all the private lives of dirty MPs outlined in detail in what has become known as “The Great Expensegate Affair Scandal”.

But now, not only do I know about Austin Mitchell’s Secret 59p Ginger Nuts Shame, or that it costs £112.52 to maintain John Prescott’s long suffering toilet seat, but now I can guarantee cricketing success.

Not only has the Telegraph revolutionised the modern game with today’s addition, but it has taught me something new today. Underneath a completely justifiably huge piece about England's path to glory in the up-coming Twenty20, most editors would have been tempted to shoe-horn some random box filled with meaningless copy about generic principles. Not the Telegraph. They lead us into new territory, with hard hitting investigations that have unearthed secrets held since the birth of Dan Brown himself.

What wonders they are in the Telegraph!