Key gets the early season big score

The season doesn’t really start in England until a freakishly large score comes out of no where. The plaudits for 2010 go to Rob Key, who smote 261 against Champions Durham.

Last year, Anthony McGrath scored a double hundred in Yorkshire’s first match of the season. In the previous season, Nicky Boje struck a 226* in April. In 2007, Marcus Trescothick battered an early triple century.

There is no reason why this is. All-knowing convention suggests that wet and windy early season matches are dominated by seam and swing. The flat pitches of late summer offer the best opportunity to cash in.

Yet, there are always flamboyant big scores that stand out for attention.

Of course, there it could always be statistical happenchance, but, there is something special about these early big scores. Even if they are coupled with other large centuries, our attention is unfairly directed towards the towering figure, that we see lording the coming season in a Ramprakash-like dominance.

They never do mind, and those that are first out of the blocks are soon over-taken by others.

But the specialness of the crisp big hundred of the summer, still fresh upon the eager eyes of fans, will happily rest in our minds as the other figures, calculations and statistics as gradually dispersed.

Name That Bum #14: Answer

Oh whoops! I forgot to award the Name That Bum winner.

The answer to latest conundrum was, of course, Robert Key, hero to millions.

Congratulations to House Monkey, who is awarded a real, actual picture taken of Robert Key by yours truly.

Now. I spent some time, at the Kent match I recently attended, conducting a study of Robert Key’s bum.

The bum, in itself, not particularly interesting. It is much like all the other bums in this world. Yet, it is holds an absorbing, fascinating draw. It’s not its healthy plumpness nor masculine firmness that compels the eye, but its relative proximity to the ground. Much like that of a Basset Hound.

Whether Key simply has stumpy legs, or a weirdly extended torso, seems rather irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that his bum, either through design or accidental downward droop, lowers Key’s centre of gravity.

This might, one supposes, heighten his leverage enabling superior stroke-play. It might simply be a frivolous gift to the crowd to enhance our amusement at the site of his running. The reasons for its vertical unambitiousness are unclear.

But the fact of the matter is that his bum is uncommonly close to the ground.