Posted by An inadvertently topical but quite possibly inaccurate-by-the-morning headline for UK readers.
In
Anil Kumble’s… well, he’s not exactly back. He’s back in the public eye, we suppose. He’s India’s new coach.
Kumble is a hard, smart and determined man. Coaching India demands more than those qualities, but it’s a fair start.
Out
Poor Nick Compton. For 20-odd years he’s worked towards being an England cricketer. Last week he was just such a thing. This week it seems rather obvious that he is not – and nor shall he ever be again.
That kind of thing is not easy to take. It’s the nature of top level sport, but to have played and been found wanting is nevertheless a crushing blow for the individual. Understandably, he isn’t quite sure what he’s doing any more. He’s taking a break from the game and who knows whether he’ll find a reason to return.
Not out
Earlier this season, we mentioned that Durham’s Keaton Jennings might have been one to watch this year if we still did such things. Today he denied Yorkshire what had seemed a highly likely win by making 221 not out in the second innings.
In fact, that score was sufficiently large that it was actually Durham who were pressing for victory towards the close, despite having conceded a sizeable first innings deficit.
Fortunately for Yorkshire, Tim Bresnan and Jack Leaning remained not out. Wonder whether the nation will follow their lead.
So totally out! Bold, caught, caught behind, leg before, hit wicket, Mankad-ed, all of that!
Interesting typo.
Hooray for the cricket that happened! Hooray for the sport that has no ramifications to anything else, and indeed is just a form of simple entertainment! Hooray!!!!!
I do feel sorry for Compton though. Confidence player who had his confidence undermined, by his own coaches, twice.
There is inherent fragility in being a confidence player in Test cricket. Far better to be delusional.
There, we can do it. We can distract ourselves with cricket…
Freedom!
Freedom has come!
According to yet-to-be-published EU directive 27782/33-B, all sport in the EU was to be homogenised into one of seven categories. There was football in a category all by itself. Then there were moving sports, moving-on-a-thing sports, hitting-a-thing-with-a-stringy-thing sports, trying-to-get-a-thing-into-or-over-a-thing-but-not-football sports, and of course, stabbing-animals-for-a-laugh sports. And finally, and crucially for us, there was hitting-a-thing-with-a-thing-that-doesn’t-have-any-strings sports.
Each category would have only one allowable sport, and these were to be football, athletics, cycling, tennis, rugby, slaughtering live, and of course, piñata walloping. Cricket would have been BANNED. The punishment for playing or watching cricket was to have been having all your toenails pulled out one-by-one, and for a second offence, being made to watch a football match. Lord’s would have been renamed Lords, and would have become the UK headquarters of the European Model Donkey Battering Society.
But we have REJECTED this. We have set out a glorious future of warm beer and petty racism. We have REJECTED dubstep in favour of Morris Dancing, Ferrari in favour of Triumph Stags, coq-au-vin in favour of chicken-in-a-sort-of-sauce. And most importantly of all, we have embraced a future that contains CRICKET. No Frenchman is going to tell me what I can and cannot do.
God Save the Queen.
Wickets are devaluing by the minute! The worth of a single run is rising! One of the finest tenets of this website has been broken! Nick Compton resigns – says new era requires new journeyman cricketer! More exclamation marks!!!
And just when today couldn’t get any worse – they’ve gone and announced another IPL.