Why England losing ensures the continuation of time

Another day, another useless England performance. As vital to the universe as the celestial clockwork of the heavenly bodies, the English trouncing denotes the even progress of time.

Spending a lot of my own time with those blighted by the continental disease of Being Foreign, I am required to explain the nature of cricket to them. The thrashing is an event that I am frequently required to account for.

Our forefathers, being far-sighted, all-knowing geniuses, predicted the coming of our saviour: the game of cricket.

Thus, when the Julians and Gregorians were establishing their calendars, they required a divine consistency to propel time forward. Something so over-whelmingly predictable was needed, yet nothing so catastrophically unavoidable existed.

Thus, the Lord brought into existence the England cricket team. Wired into the slow ticking of each clock is the insipid confidence of each blue capped wearing numpty.

It would be with their defeat, that time would move forward. Each enfeebled collapse marked ever hour, the tides turned with every dropped catch and a gutless run rate marched time steadily towards judgement.

Although the Englanders provide opportunities to roll eyes amongst the cricketing fraternity, and extraordinary high levels of mirth for Muggle-like continentals, it is upon their failure that our own success depends.

Laugh all you like, but without our sacrifice of inevitable and constant humiliation, our whole world would come crashing to an end.

So England win

Put your Smug Boots on, chaps, England won a test series abroad. It has been a while since anyone has said that. Nevertheless, some England fans are treating this as an effective loss. I’m not sure why, I think that most of them are stuck on “whine” mode.

Some are confused as to where their loyalties lie, others focus on the positives, and the rest don’t care.

Generally, I think our boys did well – players AND management. We went there under-cooked and over-confident. The Kiwis taught us a lesson during the ODIs, but we still didn’t get the picture and consequently lost the first test.

Then, drastic action was taken, and we saw a substantial improvement. Shockingly, both Matthew Hoggard and Steve Harmison were dropped. And I suspect the rest of the team received a barracking.

Then centuries and five-fors began to emerge – a sure sign of a settled side composed of quality individuals.

Sure, the New Zealanders aren’t the Harlem Globetrotters, but all you can do is beat the team in front of you. England did that, so fair play to them.

More encouraging, was the decisive way in which the temporary inadequacies of the performance were dealt with. So, plaudits to Peter Moores, too.

So, do we make any special mentions? Yes. Yes we do.

Firstly, to the Kiwis, although you looked generally rubbish and at times desperate, but there are some positive indicators for the future: Ross Taylor looks competent; Jamie How should be scoring runs soon; and young Tim Southee put in an exceptional performance on his debut. His mad innings of 77 from 48 balls, giving him a test average of 136, and his five-for opening the bowling is an impressive feat for the most gormless man in international cricket.

Lastly, to the England, what to say? A typical up-and-down knock-a-bout for us loyal fans. However, by far and away the most consistent and penetrating team-member was Ryan Hairybottom. His awesomely simple bowling destroyed the Kiwis. And for that… I appoint Sir Siders as the new OFFICIAL GOD.

Hurrah!

England not bad, but incredibly stupid

I think more or less every person in England wants to hunt down Andrew Strauss and beat him to death with the MCC manual. Well, perhaps not to death – he wouldn’t be much good in the second innings. Although I doubt whether the scorers would notice the difference.

Why are you playing a hook shot? WHY?

Anyway, that was yesterday’s rubbish. We have yet to look at today’s beauties: Consider Ian Bell’s flailing willow, Ryan Sidebottom’s moment of monkey fuck and Matthew Prior’s decent into Geraint Jonesdom.

All balls.

So, it’s left to Monty Panesar and Chris Tremlett to put on a 700-run partnership to put the game safe for England and win the game. You think this is not possible? You think that there is something that Monty can’t do? Duncan Fletcher thought that, and he’s fat. Do you want to be fat? Do you? Do you? Well then.

I would say “well done India”. But I’m not going to.

I will say: ANIL KUMBLE HAVE MY BABIES. I have long championed the skills of this hardy warrior. Just look how tough he is. Anil Kumble is the God. Yes, that’s right, we have a new GOD here at Ayalac.

Almost Monty amazing. But not quite. Monty’s going to double Kumble’s score. Just you wait.

Alastair Cook: Officially God

This man is amazing. So amazing, he must be a deity.

I have therefore declared young Cooky a God. You may worship him by turning your childhood cricket bat into a shrine to the Essexshire opener. Offerings of tea and cream cakes are advised.

Today he hit another hundred. Not a huge one, a mere 106, but his consistency is reaching Mark Ramprakash proportions. Although, it is against the Windies. They're a bit like the cricketing version of Bangladesh.

Saying that, they’re a versatile bunch. The keeper, Ramdin, is injured, and Dwayne Bravo, of all people, has filled in. Sir Viv reckons he’s the talisman of the side. Jonathan Agnew thinks that he must be exhausting to go out with.

I think that would be an accurate description of me. But usually because I’m hard work to talk to and would rather be in bed. I’d rather be in bed now. But instead, I’m increasing the word’s supply of tyops.

That’s the sort of talisman I am.

Cricket averages

Statistics is an important part of cricket. Heck, it is an important part of life!

The most common statistic in cricket is the average, or, to be more precise the arithmetic mean. Averages apply for both bowlers and batsman, but it is more of a concern to batsman who are not as numptied in the head as bowlers. “My average” is the most important number in a batsman's small world; he is obsessed by it. You can tell how well someone is doing this season by how they talk about averages in general. If they emphasise the usefulness of averages, they scoring well, whereas if they’re having a stinker they seem indifferent and even aloof to blind statistical practices.

Being rubbish, I have always had doubts over statistics, especially since there is so many ways of calculating measurements of central tendency. Let’s put stats to the test.

Below is a histogram of Michael Atherton’s test career – one of my favourite cricketers.

First off, I’m afraid the complex mathematics involved in sorting out the not outs is far beyond me, so I shall assume all innings are complete. This gives us an arithmetic mean of 36 (which is not far off his true average of 37). The standard deviation is absolutely hopeless, given N, but I’m not sure that really applies to cricket.

However, you will notice that the normal distribution of the line graph has kurtosis, and is definitely slanted to the left. In such instances, working out the mean doesn’t always give an accurate middle value, and gives undue influence to large outliers.

So! What are the alternatives? Well, there are a number of incredibly complicated methods of working out means (generalised mean, harmonic mean, etc.) but I don’t begin to understand them. I can work out, however, three other GCSE mathmatical measurements: the mode (the most frequent value), the mid-point (that value between the lowest and highest x) and the median (the middle value). They are:

Mode: 0
Median: 23
Mid-point: 92.5

The mode is clearly useless. Yes, Athers got a lot of ducks (20), but we didn’t expect him to score naught every time. The Mid-point is a very dodgy way of working about central tendency and should be ignored. (Although, it is nice to dwell on a possible world where my hero averaged over 90.)

The median shows an interesting phenomenon. Although Atherton was regarded as one of the best batsman of his generation, in more than half of his innings he failed to meaningfully contribute. If, like me, you have ranked all his scores on excel and divide them into quartiles, then you will see that it is only the upper quartile that has anything over fifty.

In essence, it is a quarter of Atherton’s total innings that does the work for his average. If he returned to test cricket again, we should expect three quarters of all his innings to be a failure. And yet his average is nearly forty, this doesn’t seem right.

In hindsight, I should have analysed an Ozzie’s career, and said how he was really over-rated and averaged seven, or something. Maybe at another Ashes whitewash.

There was going to be another graph saying something brilliant. But I’m simply too exhausted by all the stats. Sorry. Just know that I cast doubt on the general averages-in-cricket direction. But not Athers. He’s a god. No. The God.

Australia and God win World Cup

Well. I suppose I ought to write something about those Ozzie blokes.

Apparently, they won a cricket game the other day. Although, I’m not sure; it was too dark to make out much.

I listened to the fag-end of the Sri Lankan innings on Test Match Special. I was monitoring progress on the internet intermittently whilst watching a rubbishy film on Channel 4. At 100-1, I thought that Sanath Jayasuriya and Kumar Sangakkara were well set to chase down the huge Australian score.

Sadly, I knew all too well what was going to happen. Also, the strange gravity of crap films started to pull. What is it with bad movies? Why must you watch the end? First of all, you don’t care what is going to happen and secondly you already know how it’s going to end.

Anyway, the weather conditions changed. The ball started swinging (which it didn't for the Lankans), clouds came and crucial wickets were lost. Despite the solid platform that Sri Lanka had built, the pressing demands of the Duckworth-Lewis calculations required them up their rate. Resulting in more wickets.

Eventually, night-time came, but the brave little tail-enders continued. Christopher Martin-Jenkins was left with rather ludicrous scenes to describe:

“In comes Clarke, I think it’s Clarke, only I can’t see his head. And he bowls. I’ve lost it. No idea…oh! I think he’s bowled him! Yes! He’s bowled. Oh no, it’s gone for four.”

This match was so stacked against the Sri Lankans I have decided that God must have intervened. This leaves us with the rather troubling corollary that God, therefore, is an Australian. Fortunately, this revelation goes a long way to explain why my socks always seem to be magically stolen.

Look at the picture. Such was the supernatural ability of Adam Gilchrist, that he was able to smash the ball around without a bat.

Grave times for cricket fans. Worse still for atheists.

World Cup Final starts! (ish)

This is not soggy London. It is Barbados. A sunny, warm Caribbean island. Just before Sri Lanka play Australia in the final.

It is 15:32 GMT and it is, according to the bloke on Test Match Special, it’s “hosing it down”.

So, the Final has been delayed. The Ozzies, up to their usual cheating tricks, “won” the toss and elected to bat.

Everyone is very worried about this match. Partly because 95% of the population of the cricketing public want the Australians to lose. But also, they’re concerned that they’ll see another “steam-rolling” - Sri Lanka sinking in the Barbadian damp without a trace.

Seeing as the cricket hasn’t started yet, I’ll have a bit of a ramble. Please bear with me.

Now, some of you may have noticed my name. This denotes a philosophical position. I justify this stance by pointing to the Australian Cricket Team. These players have been dominant in international cricket for over a decade, maybe even two decades.

They have probably played a form of cricket most opposed to the original spirit of the game (with the exception of Douglas Jardine 1932 touring side). They have bullied opponents, intimidated them and sledged heavily. They are, in short, bastards. Yet they have won.

Why does God reward bastards?

If I was the All-Mighty, I’d make a team of decent, good-natured chaps win. Like Bangladesh. Now, although they are young, they are a nice set of blokes it seems. I’d let them win. They would grind the Australians into the dust. Every time. Every. Time. Divine Justice, is that.

Surely, the Australian nation is the greatest proof that atheism must be true?

Anyway, it’s still raining. Maybe God is softening up the pitch and slowing the outfield…?

Oh dear. Such is the rain that there’s talk of this match turning into a twenty-twenty. That would be a truly terrible end to a rather disappointing World Cup.

Here’s a final thought or a rather rambling blog: of the six matches played in the Kensington Oval so far, four have been won by the side batting second. Perhaps this and this post might have the final word in this World Cup. I hope so.