England compound their ineptitude

There was an exciting match recently. A tie even. But, in stead of focusing on all the good cricket and intriguing finale, we’ll do what we do best here at AYALAC and moan about England.

First off, for the first time in living memory, our batsmen did alright. Four of the top five scored half-centuries, with Phil “Honey and” Mustard striking 83 from 74. It says something for the English dominance that Jesse Ryder led the Kiwi attack with 2-14.

With late attacks from Paul Collingwood and Luke Wright, England managed an intimidating 340 from their fifty overs.

But then, rather like careering downstairs wearing old slippers, England began to slip dangerously.

First of all, our boys in bucket blue let the New Zealanders off to a flyer, with Ryder and Brendan Whathisface chalking up 70 in under ten overs. “Incompetence” you might think, “pathetic” even. But, I would advice you to hold forth for what is yet to come.

England then allowed some bloke I have barely heard of to score a century. How How got into triple figures, I have no idea. He probably hasn’t scored higher in Scrabble.

Things got so desperate, that they gave Owais Shah seven overs. That’s more than Ravi Bopara bowls in a season. What are they thinking?

Somehow, the Incredibly Incompetent Attribute switch from England's hopeless buccaneers to the Kiwi's useless spanners. New Zealand threw away ever possible advantage to contrive a tie. A tie! A tie for Christ’s sake!

You only get ties at work, and even then I hate them. I hate them even more when England fail to defend 340, especially when they possess the devastating Shah in their attack.

England: useless like a dead monkey

Here’s a picture of an expired monkey I found near my house. I think you’ll agree that its similarity to the England cricket team is striking.

In their latest rout, they decided to adopt the “South African” strategy by dropping their best player. Dimitri Mascarenhas was left out in favour of Ravi Bopara.

Bopara is a nice young lad who has “a lot of potential”. Dimitri is a devastating player who can win matches with both bat and ball.

Mascarenhas is one of those weird county players that make you wonder what exactly is going on with the world. On the face of it, the Dimler doesn’t have any obvious talent. He bats at about seven and bowls ordinary looking medium pacers.

But, every so often, his batting explodes into a run-fest. Even more interestingly, his bowling is capable of Keeping The Runs Down and even taking a few wickets here and there. Notwithstanding the fact that he’s in New Zealand, the home of the medium pace trundler.

Bopara’s bowling is never really used and, at that stage of the innings, you would rather an experienced, weird-looking head to come in. Someone like Mascarenhas.

In any case, whether he was in the side, he wouldn’t have affected the outcome of this match. It was rank incompetence from top to bottom. It was like watching Bangladesh. Or, worse still, England in the 1990s.

However, our kebab-loving, pint-consuming, telly-watching, dog-betting, bowl-licking friend Jesse Ryder got some runs. Hopefully, that will secure his spot for the Kiwians tour of England.