Wronged Radio

Right. First things first. Who turned the cricket off?

Us Englanders in Germany used to follow live cricket over the radio. TMS, it seemed, was available to the entire world.

This was the case yesterday, when I woke up and, as is my want, listened to cricket in bed whilst breakfasting of muesli. A German AND English experience. The cultures are compatible.

Today, these simple pleasures in life, that all of us enjoy, were taken from me as cruelly an abruptly as a Bolivian grabs a child’s hamster to prepare in their dastardly Rodent Gravy.

Instead, I had to listen to BBC “We Don’t Do Adverts, We Only Constantly Spam The Airwaves With Trailers To Programmes You’ll All Probably Hate Anyway” rubbish.

Rubbish.

So, now I’m at work, and, consequently, in my usual angry mood (the Finance Department is being a right pain – but you know how finance people are, right?) following the OBO coverage, but without the usual colour and romance that TMS adds to my mornings.

Oh bastards in the BBC. If you were here, I’d give you a right going over with this pile of invoices and reimbursements claims, I would. Then, and only then, would you realise the wrong you have done.

Next item on the agenda: Graeme Swann, another player who hails from Burkina Faso or wherever, shoved in an England kit, given a few “patriotic” tattoos and thrown into the team. Why oh why, I have no idea. He is not one of my favourites. He, along with KP, Pratty Prior forms England’s Axis of Evil.

I mean, we know all foreigners are terrorists, so why are we letting them in the England side? To ease surveillance?

Anyway, just to cap off my bad mood, he’s only gone and bloody fluked two wickets in his first over of test cricket. Not only does this mean that he’s probably pushed Monty out of the spinner slot for about a year, but apparently, no other decent cricketer has ever done this before.

Why don’t the amazing blokes do amazing things, whereas the dreary, rubbishy geezers breeze through test cricket without a hitch. This explains a lot about the powers of Finance.

England waylaid by cobras

England continue to be attacked by the wild-life of Sri Lanka. In their last tour, which, I understand, was about five minutes ago, I reported that England were badgered by gangs of feral dogs and hounded by killer pythons.

England’s return has heralded the re-emergence of Sri Lanka’s secret weapon: terrify the crap out of the touring opposition with beasties.

This is a tactic that Australia have successfully employed for many years. Most people erroneously believe that the Ausslers win at home because they are “better” or have wider bats. This is untrue.

Preceding every game, the touring party is harassed by a specialised animal team, which places scorpions into slippers, black widows in coffee and rare Australian Death Eels down the pyjama bottoms of sleeping tourists.

This campaign of using Australia’s weirdly dangerous fauna effectively destroys the nerves of the overseas squad and ensures test victories every time.

The ECB attempted this strategy in 1997, but the tourists got all excited at the “really cute” invading squirrels in the hotel rooms and increased the frequency of barbeques. It was later argued that this gave unnatural strength to touring squad and the mistake was never repeated.

Anyway, TMS, as ever keen to distract themselves from the cricket, took great pains to report in detail the “snake incident”. Apparently, there was a split within the party; Graeme Swann was convinced they were anacondas, whereas Matthew Hoggard was certain that they were just heavy drinking worms.

Here’s a TMS picture so you can judge for yourself:
Personally, I think it's a Plasticus Bottalias, which can be dangerous if you stand on them.

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.

England fails

I decided to watch the fag-end of the England/Sri Lanka match in the pub around the corner. By “fag-end” I obviously meant the opening overs. I watched the openers lose their wickets in their usual way. They played the traditional English innings of nurdling the ball around for hardly any runs and then losing your wicket after facing down ten overs. Brilliant.

It was at this familiar point of despair that the publicans revolted and decided to watch an interview with Alex Ferguson. He droned on about something. How he loathed the world and everyone in it, or something. Operatic scores and images of footballers footballing followed. The match didn’t seem to start until tomorrow, but that didn’t bother the hype-mongers. God I hate football.

So I head home after a while. A nice pint, at least. I turn on the computer to get Test Match Special over t’internet. I also checked my emails and the people I went to a job interview for thought I was a twat, and offered the job to someone less twat-like. My mood improved when I discovered that Ian Bell and Kevin Pieterson were doing alright. We racked up 100 runs without further lose. Great stuff, we can actually…win. “Screw you!” I thought to the rejectionist firm “I don’t need you now that I can live my life through English cricketers!”

It was a thought I later regretted. England did what only England can. They capitulated feebly like a French army.

Bell out in crazy circumstances. KP, as Vick Marks put it, let his ego get the better of him. Paul Collingwood and Andrew Flintoff similarly fell for not much. 133 for six, chasing 236. I knew this story. Depressed at my lack of job and Australian passport, I decided to spend the rest of the evening watching The Apprentice.

Rory the Rah was fired because his lack of performance and poshness wasn’t what his obnoxious, red-faced boss wanted. Which is what happened to Andrew Strauss, I suppose.

Whilst I was watching quality television, exciting were happening. And we nearly did something amazing. Which was nearly worth writing about.

Oh, a World Cup has started.

Is it just me or is Duncan Fletcher looking more frog-like every day?

Sorry for my absence. I went to a job interview yesterday. I smoozed them, as you would expect. I smiled at them, and everything. I pretended not to be a gutless bastard; I even suggested I was “nice”. But, one question stumped me.

They: So, what do you like to do in your spare time?
I: Um….

My brain went into unparalleled overtime: what should I say? My first thought was to mention my blog. I’ll go on about how many hundreds read it and the bloke in North China that views it every day. But then I decided that bringing up the internet would reveal my geekiness. And no one likes geeks. Because they are, on the whole, twats. So, I decided to mumble something about reading philosophy and drinking tea.

Then I realised that it is not me that I should be worried about, it’s you. You are the people reading this nonsense. You are the real geeks. You don’t create geekiness, like me, the artist, but you consume it, like a giant geek guzzler. You people are seriously messed up. Bad luck.

You’re still reading. Wow. You people are pathetic. So, I take it you want me to talk about cricket now? OK.

So anyway, Kevin Pieterson, in a recent interview, said:

“… the World Cup starts for England on Wednesday. It’s a massive game and there will be no complacency there I can assure you.”

This is exactly the sort of witless spin that drives me up the wall. Don’t you think that the World Cup would have started shortly after the Opening Ceremony? You know, the big thing with the fireworks and the dancing, do you remember that, KP? Do you remember poncing around in your little England suit? Ring any bells?

Even if you are talking about the “real” start of the World Cup, would you not think that the New Zealand game was pretty important? Perhaps the number one batsman in ODIs was swept off his feet by the stunning beauty of his new team mate, Paul Nixon, that he failed to notice the World Cup was underway.

Or perhaps it is the usual post facto media puntery that the England team love to play. They didn’t lose their games because they’re rubbish, they lost because they were saving their energy for the Real Start. No. This is false. You lost because you are not very good. It is not part of any plan to lose.

Why must all my heroes lie to me? I suppose if I emulate them, I’m more likely to get a job. H’mmm…so I suppose I ought to be grateful to the England PR machine for turning me into a deceitful cheat. That's something.

On a more interesting note, did anyone listen to the Test Match Special coverage of the New Zealand vs. Bangladesh game? (Sir) Viv Richards gave a fascinating talk on the difference between bananas and plantains, and the best methods of preparation of plantains. With “Jonny Cakes” apparently.