Modesty Forbids

Where we spurt others most surely follow and while modest forbids and all that, it was undoubtedly the Spurt wot done it with Wednesday’s fine upstanding column finally tipping the balance and ensuring Cristiano went public on his fondly held desire to head off to sunny Spain next season.

But enough of our triumphs and onto England’s. Ahem. Following yesterday utter disarray when our middle order made a Saturday night post pub kebab shop queue look orderly and well disciplined, it was down to good ol’ KP to rescue us with a thrilling century which not so much hauled the fat out of the fire, but shoved it to bottom the freezer and supercooled it for three months.

With a fine supporting act from diminutive Tim Ambrose it was the best last hope stand since a combined Welsh XI held off the Zulus at the Rorke’s Drift oval in 1879.

There’s been much talk of not changing a winning team, consistency of selection and backing players even if they’re totally out of form and couldn’t hit a ban door with a sledgehammer and to an extent that is true; to the extent that it’s absolute bollocks.

Not changing a winning team? If the Fred was fit he’d walk straight back in. End of.
Loyalty to players in a bad trot is fine up to a point but just like certain deranged evangelical Christians who went faced with a difficult dilemma ask ‘What would Jesus do?’, the cricketing equivalent is asking ‘what would the Aussies do?

The answer is drop Bell and Collingwood like a shot and bring in Ravi Bopara and poor neglected Owais Shah.

Toodle pip.

Swing Your Pants...

As super secret weapons go it’s hardly up there with Fat Man and Little Boy, Cruise Missiles or the Strategic Defence Initiative, but today during the third and final Test at Trent Bridge the Kiwis opened up a new front in their quest to draw the series by unveiling a potentially frightening new armament, swinging trousers.

Powerful enough to scare children, small animals and possibly even opening batsmen, these swinging Microshine trousers are apparently constructed of a cunning new material specially formulated to keep one side of the ball shiny and swinging throughout an innings.

We can almost hear the snorts of the outraged blazers from here, but unfortunately we’ll never have a chance to find out the efficacy of this potentially lethal new weapon as right on the point of deployment, the Kiwi’s captain Daniel Vittori confirmed they’d had second thoughts and declined to take to the field in the miracle trews.

Never mind we say. Sportsmen are always looking for a cutting edge, but enahanced flannels are hardly the way forward and just like the SDI, these super strides must unfortunately be consigned to the laundry basket of history.