Weather or not…

Ah, cricket lovely cricket and yesterday there was no place we’d rather have been than Lord’s and the start of a glorious cricketing summer – though obviously the weather didn’t live up to the billing.

A near heat wave for five days and then with the first vital toss of a coin of the summer in prospect, didn’t the heavens just open and threaten to rain all over our parade?

Still, even in watery repose there’s few places on earth we’d rather be than Lord’s at the start of an English summer. The place has a soothing, calming effect and we’re sure it’s just impossible to feel melancholic there.

The bubble of polite conversation and informed opinion, the thwop of wine being unleashed at ten in the morning, the cheery clink of glasses being raised, members striding past with improbable moustaches and fathers inculcating their sons in a long and noble tradition. Fine stuff indeed and enough to warm the very cockles of the soul.

Even empty, it deserves it reputation as a veritable cathedral of cricket and it’s one of the few venues where thousands can gather freely to worship in a spirit of bi-partisan admiration and mutual appreciation of the world’s greatest game.

We’ve often thought that purgatory would consist of an endless taxi ride around the suburbs of Los Angeles, but heaven might, just might mind, consist of some decent company, a never ending bottle of tasty red and a showery morning at Lord’s, with the enticing prospect of play soon, but not too soon, after lunch.

Bile and invective

Down here at the fag end of the footy season things are starting to warm up – and we don’t mean Watford’s vital game against Hull tonight (come on you Horns!) or indeed Rangers UEFA cup clash with Zenit St Petersburg.

No, when we mention warm up, we’re actually talking about the bubbling primal rage and our blood literally boiling at the news that new BBC pundit Steve McLaren will make his commentary debut tonight, prior to being one of the analysts on this summer’s Euro 2008 duties.

Now when McLaren led England, if it can be called led, we didn’t exactly blame him. Yup he was shit, tactically inept, allegedly in the thrall of his senior players and one of the worst England managers ever, but if we’d been offered that role on those terms even we’d have snapped it up.

Nope we were content to vent our bile and invective on the blazers at the FA for making such a hash of hiring big Phil and eventually settling for the second, third or fifth best, god knows whatever number McLaren actually was on the list.

However now we feel we’ve got a legitimate beef. Surely that huge payoff was enough and McLaren should have disappeared quietly for a while to contemplate his future, not suddenly popping up as a rent-a-quote for the very tournament for which he failed to qualify.

And, we have to ask what BBC fucktard hired him? What insights will he have into the teams which did actually qualify for Europe? Wouldn’t they have been more useful at the time?

This is not so much rubbing salt into a very raw wound but tipping buckets of the stuff into a bloody seeping gash.

Sometimes our wrists just seem to slit themselves.

No going back

And so to Tuesday and we’re mightily cheered to have scored a ticket for the first Test at Lord’s on Thursday where the prospect of smiting the Kiwis has receded only a little following The Fred’s side strain.

Still, it’s been top quality to see Ryan Sidebottom rewarded for a year of honest endeavour as he’s named England player of the year. For a bowler who was in danger of becoming a one-test wonder, master Sidebottom has matured superbly and is now rightly regarded as the leader of England’s pack. Honest, self-effacing and possessed of one of the great comedy haircuts (and names) of international cricket, he’s a bowler and a sportsman who’s easy to like.

Elsewhere, with Mark ‘Ramps’ Ramprakash closing in on his hundredth hundred delightful old Frank Keating in the Guardian is full of his praises and even suggests he may even be worth a recall to the England side.

We’ve the utmost respect for Mr Keating who we’ve stood shoulder to shoulder alongside the scribblers coalface and is a thoroughly nice bloke but we beg to disagree.

While there’s no doubt Ramps has flourished since his move to Surrey, is one of the most attractive and technically correct batsmen to watch and has been shabbily treated by past regimes - that’s not really enough to merit a call up now.

Like Hick he’s a truly great first-class batsman, but when he was exposed at the highest level, sadly he wasn’t mentally strong enough to cut it and is there any reason to think that’s changed? At 39 he’d keep a younger batsmen out of the game and is Ramps going to be one of our senior players against the Aussies next year? We can’t see it somehow

Incidentally we saw Ramps on his way to the car park during that last fateful game at the Oval after we’d lost to the Kiwis. He had a face like thunder and looked genuinely hurt and ashamed as if he knew it was all over. Arguably Ramps deserved a second chance after scoring a shedload of runs, but that should have come four years ago.

Nope, unfortunately Ramps' glorious return must be confined to his stint on Strictly Come Dancing and just like a beguiling but ultimately unsuitable ex- , it’s better to just never go back.

When second best is good enough...

Of course everyone loves a winner and our heartiest spurting congrats are extended to Man Utd today after Alex Ferguson’s side took their tenth premier league title after an (in the end) emphatic win at Wigan.

But on this sunny summery Monday we’d also to take a moment to pay tribute to the also rans, the runners-up and second placers who prop up those on the winner's rostrum. ‘Uh like why?’ you may ask? Well more on that in a moment...

But first up Chelsea and more especially Avram Grant who all season has looked like a sacrifical lamb - despite pushing United hard and qualifying for Chelsea’s first ever Champions League final.

Mighty magnanimous words for the Red Devils from Avram yesterday after United’s victory and can anyone ever see the self-styled special one being anything less than supremely bitter and twisted after such a defeat? Mr Grant steadily grows in stature.

But today’s spurting topic has really been influenced by yesterday’s Turkish Grand Prix, where Lewis Hamilton drove a simply astonishing race to snatch second place behind Filippe Massa. An audacious three-stop strategy was forced on McLaren by tyre reliability issues, but Lewis pulled it off with aplomb including a marvellous overtaking move on Massa, some real hot laps and the slickest of pit stops to put himself ahead of Kimi Raikkonen at the second pit stop and claw back two vital world championship points.

With McLaren’s pre-race predictions suggesting a fifth at best, Hamilton’s drive was nothing short of dynamite and arbuably more impressive than any of his five Grand Prix wins.

It just goes to prove that sometimes second best really is good enough*.

(oh except in Watford’s case. We’re not even mentioning the Hornets semi-final first leg defeat today. We’re still in mourning)

Bring back Fred?

Despite our nagging hangovers this morning, we’re cheered to think there’s just under one short week now until the summer Test calendar kicks off with the return fixture against the Kiwis and even given England’s consistent erm inconsistency recently, this is one we should win at a canter.

The young New Zealand side, is led no doubt ably by the admirable Daniel Vittori but it’s still green as asparagus and shorn of two world class players in retired ex-skipper Stephen Fleming and ICL outcast fast bowler Shane Bond.

Of course with the squad named on Sunday debate now rages about the return of the Fred, iconic England all-rounder Freddie ‘Andrew’ Flintoff who’s returned to county duties this season after a long lay off with a troublesome ankle injury.

Should he play in this first Test? Sir Beefy Botham thinks not, others like Phil DeFreitas say throw him in. Here’s our take. The Fred is at least two and possibly three world class cricketers in one (superb fast bowler, destructive middle-order bat and sure-fingered slip catcher) and England are simply not the same side without him. He’d walk straight into any XI in world cricket including the Aussies, no argument.

The fact he’s had a couple of ducks in his County games is immaterial, and we’d love to see him roar back and smear the Kiwis all over Lord’s but really, there is no need to throw him into this first Test when he could keep strengthening himself up for sterner tests like South Africa later in the summer. You can’t keep The Fred bubble wrapped forever, but there’s two more Tests against the Kiwis which would also serve as nice warm ups. Knowing The Fred he’ll probably want to play anyway.

We recently put it to a straw poll and The Fred is incidentally also the sportsman we Spurters would most like to go out on the lash with. Though frankly, given his Herculean efforts on this score in times past, we think we have to get in some serious nets before we could even contemplate it.

Good luck Fred, it is great to see you back, though, no hurry.

Turkeys and bats

Hilarious news today from the big money world of football, where Greek MEP and surely the most optimistic and man in the game Manolis Mavrommatis has recommended to the European Commission that TV revenues should be shared equally throughout football.

The man from the cradle of democracy reckons revenue should be shared ‘equitably’ and not solely concentrated on the bigger boys, but also distributed equally to smaller clubs and even amateurs to redress the current financial imbalance.

Predictably and a in no-way reactionary and self-protectionist measure, the Premier League has described this proposal as ‘a policy to attack English football.’

Sorry Manolis, nice idea but file under ‘never gonna happen’. After years of gorging on an orgy of cash, the Premier League turkeys aren’t going to be voting for Christmas.

Elsewhere in the convivial world of cricket, the MCC is currently investigating the composition of modern bats or rather bat handles and the devious modern technical chicanery employed to give batsmen the edge with their carbon fibre shafts (steady now).

We all remember Dennis Lilley’s aluminium smiter and more recently Ricky Ponting’s Kookabura which fell foul of the laws so some clarity is needed.

As Law 6 notes there should always be a ‘balance between bat and ball’ in the holy game.

Try telling that to us poor long suffering bowlers...

Fabulous forties...

And just like that we’re back... the break in transmission has been unforgivable and our excuses are legion; first up we were sent to the gulag to train us to train our minions to become better drones and then the impending howling loss of our golden youth was softened by a weekend away in a luxury spa with Mrs Spurt.

But now we return, renewed, refreshed and something else beginning with ‘R’ as we enter our fourth glorious spurting decade here on planet earth. We are still on earth right?

Yet if a week’s a long time in politics, it’s an eternity in spurt, not only do we now have our own Social Networking initiative (see we weren’t entirely idle), well a Facebook group (tune in, turn on, sign up) but the past seven days have seen Chelsea and Man Utd through to a Champions League final in Moscow, the Premiership title still to be decided and Essex’s Ravi Bopara turn down the easy money charms of the IPL (good lad)

But today’s spurt concerns the immense goings on of the weekend, when even amidst the popping of champagne corks and the bubbling of the Jacuzzi we had half an ear turned to the radio and the mighty denouement of the Championship.

Our own beloved Hornets squeezed into the playoffs by a single mark in the goal difference column, but it certainly had us reflecting on this lasting appeal of this most exciting of English footy leagues, the fourth best supported in Europe lest we forget?

Why is that? Well, the reasons are legion, the Championship is untainted by any big four stranglehold, the financial playing field is pretty even and on the last day of the season anyone of 13 clubs could have gone up and down.

Perhaps most of all it reminds us of the classic days of yore, when the English virtues of pace, power and beefy challenges were all the rage and the fancy dan finesse of the continental game had yet to be embraced. With nearly 60 per cent of the players hailing from these shores as well, it has the virtues and none of the vices of the modern money pit premiership.

In short, it’s full of good old fashioned values, just like the spurt and your humble and rapidly ageing correspondent.