England finally reach the Bell End

It took a lot of hinting, cajoling and physical coercing, but the England selections finally gave in to our desires, to show that they know what to do with heads, and satisfying released exactly what we all want to see: a white paper of real substance.

Although, in its usual desperate search for branding with which it could use to “sell” to the “media”, England’s line-up has already been branded as the “new face”, the “future” on our happy march towards the “next era”.

A completely novel era where the bits and pieces player that doesn’t really excel at anything have been given central importance. Let’s look at England new vanguard:

Ravi Bopara – bats a bit, apparently bowls, but the ECB FORBIDS him from doing so.
Paul Collingwood – see above.
Tim Bresnan – although his medium pacers aren’t good enough for international level, he bats a bit, so that’s ok.
Stuart Broad – see above.
Graeme Swann – see above (ish).
Matt Prior – his keeping is rubbish, but…

In fact, the only players that actually appear to be good at anything are Andrew Strauss (whose seems to be alright at batting at the moment) and KP (whose brilliant mind games have surely won England at least eight matches in the past).

It’s as though the Englanders looked at New Zealand and collective thought “oh yeah, that’s where we’ve been going wrong – let’s pick the crap players.”

Ah well. Spare a thought for Michael Vaughan though – his chances were smote by the Yorkshire weather. Not for the first time has a promising career been suppressed by Northern precipitation.

Welcome to the defensive era, where we succumb the Ashes before it begins and seem to be meekly comply with the Australians demands for whatever debauched designs they have for us. It’ll be all over our faces before long. And I’m telling you, knowing Australians, it won’t be very long at all.

Come on, Tim!

In a rather surprising development, Matt Prior has been dropped. Generally, I don’t like Matt Prior; he’s a bit of a twat, really. But paradoxically, I’m not too keen on this decision.

I’m in agreement with Angus Fraser when he says:

“It is easy to call for Prior’s head and those who do would have little idea of how physically demanding it is to keep wicket in such heat in back-to-back tests… Prior is a very capable cricketer and he deserves one more opportunity to show that he can do it.”

Indeed, he certainly proved himself with the bat: scoring the fourth highest in the recent Sri Lanka tour. Overall he averages over 40 and scored a century in his debut.

OK – he dropped about a million catches in Sri Lanka, but he’s not exactly the only player to under-perform in difficult conditions.

Compare Prior’s treatment to Geraint Jones’. Jones scored a century early in his career, and that, despite uncertain keeping, got him about three years of ECB support. Prior, who looks dominant with the bat, gets the boot after about half a year after one dubious tour.

Harsh, unfair and, frankly, arbitrary. Choosing Ravi Bopara over Owais Shah was another mistake. But why, when with even my dodgy foresight, did they not see the overwhelming argument in favour of Shah’s inclusion. Why so? I wonder if these “brave decisions” might have anything to do with the Selectors having to apply for their own jobs again? Justifying your existence with feck-brained decisions may not be the best approach to secure your position.

Anyway, who’s this young Tim Ambrose fellow? He averages in the mid-thirties with the bat, and not as many drops as Prior with the gloves. He first rose to prominence with a double century against Cobden second XI last season. He seems competent enough but, to be honest, I don’t think he’s going to much different.

The England keeping debate will not find resolution for some years. There are a lot of “quite good” keepers at county-level, but all of whom are only “mediocre” at best when playing test matches. May as well stick with one and hope he improves, you would think. Oh no. Let’s drop the bugger and try another one for three months.

Ah, Humiliation, my old friend.

Well. Just when you thought that the viscous, pulsating flow of faeces that constitutes life couldn’t get any thicker, the England cricket team thicken the mix by collapsing to 21 all out.

It looked really shaky, at one point. We lost six wickets for only three runs. But we recovered to a stronger position when Ulbator Choobleton worked his magic on the skies. But lo! Even England Chief Raining Coach was having a shocker, and we were dismissed in short time.

For those of us waking up to the news that the country of our birth is incapable of producing (or importing) a single decent cricketer are familiar with the bad mood that pertains.

It’s not just a little annoyed disposition. By way of constrast, say you’ve hit “back” on a site, but, because it has some infuriating ad thing you remain on the page. So you have to launch a frenzied attack upon the back button to get anywhere. And then you usually end up on your home page. (I mean really people, how could that possibly constitute effective marketing? You aren’t even directed to another site. You just sit there. What? What are you thinking?)

No. After that you remain annoyed for about two seconds, before you realise that the little “back” button has a drop-down, that could have effortless obviated this problem. Of course, you’ll always forget this convenient fact, and the frustration will return.

But the point is this: the annoyance is temporal. Whereas England’s river of poo is permanent. Occasionally, it empties into a clear, clean lake. But it won’t be long before the pristine waters are contaminated by sewage.

Observe Pratty Prior’s technique here. Just look at him. He’s a broken man. I heard that he has dropped six catches off Ryan Hairybottom alone during this tour. Prior isn’t a bad player. At least, he wasn’t before he joined the England team.

Another is Kevin Pietersen. When he burst onto the scene he openly declared his ambition to be the best batsman in the world. Some applauded his motivation, others thought him a twat, some of us even believed him.

But how long has it taken for the grinding drudgery of all things English to crush his aspiration and obliterate his spirits? I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you the answer to the question.

No time.

Prior makes bald claims

Some of you may remember that I don’t like Matt Prior. It’s not really, a bitter, obsessive loathing, more a generalised hatred. It’s akin to the feelings you have for the person who has just taken up that seat next to you on the train. Nothing personal; you just find their presence insufferable.

Here’s what he has to say for himself, in a recent BBC column:

“It's been two weeks now since we arrived in Sri Lanka and, so far, pretty much everything has been going according to plan.”

If England planned to lose their best bowler’s boots and the use of his spine; if they planned for James Anderson receiving an injury; if they planned to have no idea who was going to fill the number six spot; if they planned to get humiliated in the first warm-up game then everything has gone splendidly.

He then proffers the usual cricketers’ line of “playing too much” and being over-worked. Then he goes on to say that he is addicted to a non-cricket related computer game. (For shame!) But re-assures us that “[t]he work ethic of this squad is second to none.”

Second to perhaps more devoted people? Perhaps to me, even, who have never been addicted to a computer game involving football.

It’s at this point that my hatred moves from the generalised, to the specific: when the over-adjacent passenger pulls out her mobile telephone and relates to the carriage the romantic failings of her “over half”, Darren.

I imagine we all expect Prior to disappoint on some level. But we’re used to a shambles in the number seven department. And no matter how strongly you argue that there is an obvious replacement in the form of [insert name of mediocre county trudger here] you know that we’re just going to have to put up with nonsense for some years to come.

It’s like the Northern Line all over again.

Matt Prior shows he has balls

Matt Prior stung by the attacks of his prattishness and incompetence, has fought back by saying:

“I have a huge testicle.”

He went on to say.

“I can use it for a seat.”

Continuing to say:

“How do you like them apples?”

In other news, England’s women lost to New Zealand’s women. No one knows why, because no one follows women’s cricket. It’s like giving quorn to a drunken Northern: alright for an appetiser, but where’s the foockin’ meat, ya Soothern pan-seh. Violence subsequently ensues.

In other news, half the Indian team have died because of an outbreak of Dorset Ebola. Sachin Tendulkar, Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, RP Singh and Yuvraj Singh have all caught the rare disease and will probably expire in under 24 hours. Doctors are quoted to say:

“Well, I’m not going any where near them.”

Lack of dead players may give England the cruicial edge in the forthcoming games.

England get a bit nasty

I criticised Australians heavily a while ago for being prats. I argued that their no-holds-barred approach to the game lay outside the spirit of the game. Whether it was effective was irrelevant, people had paid good money to see people play high quality cricket, and if a batsman’s concentration was disturbed by a verbal harassment then you are denying the public the full spectacle of test match cricket. It’s akin to cheating.

England’s behaviour on the field in this test match has been a disgrace. The conduct of Kevin Pietersen and James Anderson in particular was embarrassing and pathetic.

In the prats league, they are running neck-and-neck with the Aussies at the moment. However, unlike the Aussies, the strategy is proving ineffective.

Matt Prior attempted to defend England appalling display:

“It’s international cricket. It’s a hard game, we all want to win, so you’re going to have your banter.”

If you want to win, why don’t you just brain the opposition batsmen in the changing room? That would guarantee success. Oh no, there is some invisible threshold of acceptability defined not in the rules, but in England’s head.

Prior then reveals the truth of the matter:

“I do enjoy [sledging]. It’s part of the game and if you don’t enjoy it then you’re going to struggle. It’s never nice when it’s you batting and there’s 11 blokes around you giving you a barrage. It can be uncomfortable, obviously, but having known that as a batter as well it can definitely be used as an advantage.”

Matthew Prior is a prat.

Cricket is a sport, whereby winning and losing is determined by skill. These flaky arguments in favour of verbal abuse and mental attacks are affront to morality as much as the spirit of the game. And, as Christopher Martin-Jenkins pointed out, they are also illegal.

Indian have traditionally been seen as a “soft touch” on the field. Their batsmen are liable to be intimidated and riled easily. Probably because Indians, as people, are so polite, diplomatic, diffident and generally some of the best human beings in the world. Sadly, they’ve had to toughen up to combat this onslaught. And they did just that. Deflating the lary England bowlers with a solid batting performance.

India thoroughly deserve to win this match, just as much as England deserve to lose it.

West Indies bowl moderately better

Whenever England go out to get, I have this feeling that Paul “Colly” Collingwood is a game away from being dropped. Somehow, he stays in. That’s the magic of Collingwood: the Adhesive Ginger. But yesterday he, and the rest of the middle order, became unstuck.

Ian “Belly” Bell did well to rescue the side from a potentially disastrous collapse. He was still there at the end of the day’s play, with 77. He put on 98 for the fifth wicket with Matt “Priory” Prior, the skinhead wicket keeper contributing 40.

There’s something of the flat-track bully about Prior. Most county attacks have more venom than these Windies, and the South African born Sussex man with two legs has taken every opportunity to strike. It will be interesting to see how well he does against sides with quality attacks, like Glamorgan.

His downfall may have been his partner’s fault. In a period of studied strike-farming, Prior faced only six balls in the seven preceding overs prior to his demise. After scoring a four, he attempted a daft shot and was caught in the deep. Was this because of self-inflicted pressure? Did Bello not rotate the strike? No one cares. All we want to see is another Belly century at number six.

Do I have anything else to say? No.

Nothing else.