England’s success is proof of T20’s randomness

Sorry for the delay in getting back to, but I was preparing my excuse for you.

So I AYALC returns. Various stuff happened to me; various other, more glamorous things, did not.

Prior to the tournament Stuart Broad, no longer the virginal Bambi figure when I started blogging, busied himself by lowering our expectations over the result of the tournament: total England victory.

This shagged out old pro has been around long enough now to recognise a winner, and England’s formula of tedious seamers and buying in foreigners has proven a surprising success. Notwithstanding a rather anomalous loss against the West Indies, which owed more to Duckworth-Lewis peculiarities than superior opposition, England have stormed the competition.

So have Australia, mind you, but we like to be parochial in AYALAC’s dusty, dilapidated towers.

There are some clichés that we can draw out of the hack’s bollocks box of tricks:

• Have England peaked too soon?
• Will the mercurial Pakistan emerge into unexpected success?
• Will England choke in the final?

I offer to you, the traditional AYALAC line, that none of these factors, nor any others relating to skills or confidence, obtain. It’s T20. And therefore we are well into the realm of randomness.

To decide the result, I have thrown my house mate’s stupid little pot plant at the wall. The pathetic carcass of an ex-Bonsai tree is pointing towards the toilet. Chance has spoken: England will win the tournament.

Paul Collingwood shaving

Days have passed. An embryonic beard is growing: An unwanted fuzz forming like a rampant fungus creeps around the neck and face. Although little facial fur has been accumulated, Paul Collingwood sends himself in on the fifth day down to save his face from another hairy situation.

Plodding forth to the bathroom, he steels himself with his trusty, plastic reusable razor bought from Woolworths. Facing a revelation of orange before him, a rare moment of confidence surges forward, and he twiddles his weapon with an enigmatic flourish.

After picking up the razor from the floor, the former and current England captain begins the task before him: the steady construction of a respectable appearance.

Beginning, as is his habit, from the bottom, he worked over the entire field of play up to the eyebrows. As he takes the vorpal blade in hand, the weight of responsibility and expectation becomes too much.

He struggles early on, losing all semblance of technique. Pressure guides his every fumble. A lesser man would have crumbled at the accidentally hacking away of the bridge of his nose, but the redoubtable Collingwood gritted onwards and upwards. Onwards and upwards.

Throughout the mist of pain and self-doubt, Collingwood found motivation in the peaceful sound of progress: the sink’s echoing plops as it harvested the falling fibers, foam and flesh. He considered pass glories. His daily facial flagellation at his work experience week at Northern Rock. The unexpected electric razor discovered in Australia. The destruction of the Inadvisable Moustache.

After the blood began to clear away, Collingwood began to rebuild his confidence with a series of short, stubby strokes. Slowly revealing the tea-hued pallor beneath the ginger grizzle, as he roughly nurdled away at the persistent bristles.

In the end, as Collingwood stared deeply into the mirrored image of cuts, gore and pus, he reflected on the past three-hours of graft. Oh course, he wasn’t pretty, even his mother admitted that to him, but he was effective and he got the job done. Perhaps he faces the word as less of a man, but a least he's a man. And, at the end of the day, it’s not how, it’s how many useless ginger sproutings you cut away.

We need imbalanced cricketers

Right.

Back from Germany now. Sorry about the long absences and rather infrequent posting. But we’re back in business baby, and this time, without bratwurst.

So. There have been a few things that happened to the cricketing world since I have stopped talking to you. Huge, momentous, earth-shattering things. Here is a list:

- South Africa won a bit. Then lost a bit and then won a bit more.
- Afghanistan has become an all-conquering mega-power that is only rivalled by the USA and North Korea for its nuclear strength.
- Sluggo has lost his ODI status.
- Milk, bread and something that isn’t sausage.
- England continued to make tits of themselves.

I remained silent on all these matters, and will plan on doing so for the foreseeable future (except the last one – there’s always room for more Anglophobic bleating).

I want to talk about opening partnerships. Opening partnerships are subject to an inordinate amount of agonising over. Teams don’t look for two decent opening batsmen, but a pair of perfectly complementing lesbian partners.

Let us assume that your team, the Sad Blog Readers' XI, has a decent opening bat, call him Arthur Spelthorne, who is, an “accumulator” who Boycotts his runs slowly but safely. However, another bloke has recently moved into your area: Benjy G. Maximus.

Now Benjy G’s reputation precedes him. He single-handedly smote The CtrlAltDel Second XI in last year’s Door Furniture Championship; scored twelve quadruple hundreds in one season and highest innings score equals Don Bradman’s total career runs.

Problem is Benjy G also Boycotts a gradual, steady hoarding of runs. His run rate is slower than a 200 pound 1500 metre runner whilst listening to Radiohead on his ipod.

Obviously that doesn’t sit well with Spelthorne. We already have a nudger, we don’t need to throw a nurdler into the mix.

So, what do we do? We stick Benjoes in at six of course!

Crushed by this insult, Benjy G loses his confidence, his average sinks to Kursk levels, and eventually leaves the club after a pitiful season, never to sport his whites again.

What bastards we are. What have we done to Benjy G. WHAT HAVE WE DONE?

We have fallen into the cricketer’s continual trap: neatness. There’s nothing a cricket fan likes more than a perfect statistic: an opening partnership of 555 here, three exact centuries in an innings there causes adrenalin, serotonin and semen to course through the delighted veins of any cricketing fan.

We love it when a line-up is neat and tidy. One quick, one swing bowler, one left armer, one offy that bats and an all-rounder at six. This is the ONLY line-up, irregardless of the pool of talent that confronts you, you just have to shoe-horn your guys into the Standard Line-up.

And maybe, you know, we should rethink that. We need to pick four leggies or something. You know, mix it up a bit. Keep them guessing.

We need opening partnerships that hate each other. Violent, loathing hatred. The Australians, as with many things, are leading the way on this one.

English stole cricket from the Belgians

Ah. Belgium. Any society that produces such fine beer, such fine chocolates and a multitude of incomprehensible red tape is ok by my standards. It’s definitely one of my favourite countries, although comes a poor second to Finland when going abroad.

The Belgians have spent most of their history being forgotten by their neighbours. However, they have spent their time wisely, by creating a number of world-changing inventions: chips, Tintin, and now, it has been recently revealed, cricket.

The claim originates from an obviously fake poem from the 16th century which refers to "kings of crekettes" and “wickettes”.

Apparently, being bored out of their skulls by living in Belgian, the inventors of this fine game left for England where upon, a dubious BBC website article claims, they went to university to launch Stanford-style marketing weeze that took the country by storm.

The obvious weakness in this argument that Belgians don’t have the mental capacity for university, so we can quickly uncover the story as a fake.

Cricket was, in fact, invented by Muhammad Ibn Arabi in 1195, somewhere in Northern Africa. It was believed to have started when, after dispatching a camel in a particularly savage style, the Arabic poet had nothing left to better with his enormous “Grāy-ničoułs”, and therefore used the stocks from a nearby orphanage.

Eventually, it became more practicable to use smaller objects that are easier to throw and squirm less.

The game became popular with the higher class rats, who would winter in England. Proving that no pleasure goes unpunished, the rodents also brought with them the Black Death, which wiped out a third of the British population and leaving the survivors badly disfigured.

This is where the phrase “short square leg” comes from.

The problem with Belgians is their low profile. Remember any famous Belgians? Well, you might, but they certainly aren’t famous. And if they are famous, they probably originate from England.

So none of that smart Alecery thank you very much.

The drama of South African domestic cricket

The modern world, as we will all no doubt readily acknowledge, is generally a rather rubbish place. Not only is it showing obvious signs of “going down the pan” (as it has for some millennia now) but, in the words of the great Ed Reardon, it is also run by 12 year olds.

No where is this more apparent that the domestic scene in South Africa. According to the singularity of all knowledge, cricinfo, there are two matches going on in Safferdom. They are:

Dolphins v Cobras
Warriors v Eagles

These two matches, I feel, have been unfairly neglected by the mainstream press. Surely, we are all interested to discover who would win in a fight between poisonous snakes and an angry pod of Delphinidae.

I suppose, as with all matches, the outcome much depends on the conditions. If played on the dry, arid pitches familiar to cobras, the dolphins, for all their superiority in size, would probably be picked off by the snakes after an attritional spell.

Conversely, if the dolphins play at home, then the cobras had better hope for a quick, decisive bite, or they’ll be all at sea.

Now, if they play at some neutral venue, like Bognor Regis beach, for instance, they’ll be on a level playing field. Leaving the cobras in a strong defensive position, but also allowing the dolphins some opportunity to attack with the tide.

Nevertheless, I would still put my money on the snake, that Flipper was fucking useless.

The second match is between eagles and warriors. What they mean by “warriors” is unclear – but I’m guessing they’re either a group of Ultimate Warriors, or some sort of deranged gaggle of Klingons.

The eagles have the advantage of good flight, but once the warriors get ahold of them, it’ll probably be a quick dash to the finish. The birds have to hope that they can baffle the men with a few clever sledges to confuse their enemy’s simple mind, and peck them into submission.

All these exciting events are going on, and the liberal establishment refuse to report on it.

In any case, kudos to the Dolphins for opening the bowling with Sanath Jayasuriya.