Posted by Will Alastair Cook learn his lesson? Most people know that it’s incredibly unwise for the England captain to demand that critics be less critical.
But not Cook, apparently. He recently said that “something needs to be done” about Shane Warne’s relentless criticism of his captaincy.
The headline of Warne’s latest column?
“Alastair Cook’s captaincy was the worst I have ever seen.”
Over to you, Alastair. Which highly inflammable material are you going to use to try and extinguish the flames this time?
Wonder if our Cooky’s one of those people who thinks that “inflammable” is the opposite of “flammable”.
I once had a big fluffy chair that had ‘inflammable’ written on a label attached to it.
‘Looks flammable enough to me’ thought I, so in the spirit of scientific experiment, I held a lighter against it.
So that was when I learnt what inflammable means. Using a dictionary/google would have saved me from throwing a big, burning, fluffy chair out of a (mercifully also large) second floor window, but I doubt it would have stuck in my head quite the same way.
Calling Shane Warne an Idiot implies he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He does. Cook is an idiot for chasing it (rather like his batting of late).
Shane Warne knows what he’s doing in this one specific instance.
If you can’t call Shane Warne an idiot, who can you call an idiot?
Can we settle on “twat”?
Warne is more or less a cricket genius. If you took Warne’s on field captaincy abilites with Cook’s off field abilities you would have a captain who is as close to perfect as you could get.
It’s also the only thing about which I would call Warne a genius of any kind.
If you can’t call Shane Warne an idiot, who can you call an idiot?
That is one of the great questions of the modern age. Who exhibits more idiot-like characteristics than Shane Warne? Is it even a logical possibility that someone could, like someone being more unmarried than a bachelor? Although Andrew cleverly hints at a possible escape from the paradox, I feel that still leaves the question unasked.
I’m on the phone to Jacques Derrida as we speak.
Jacques Derrida looks a lot like David Gower will look in a few years, if not already. Uncanny, especially since he’s been dead 8 years.
Jacques Derrida, that is. Dead 8 years. David Gower alive and kicking, as far as I know.
Derrida’s been on. He says Alastair Cook is a bigger idiot than Shane Warne. He also said, confirming the work of Andrew, that Warne is a twat. So I guess that’s settled, unless anyone is thinking of getting Willard Quine on the blower.
If you can’t call Shane Warne an idiot, who can you call an idiot?
Shane Watson.
Those are some serious ouija board skills, Bert. I’m impressed.
Derrida died 10 years ago, Chuck.
Doesn’t time fly when you’re deconstructing Shane Warne.
My French philosopher of choice for the Cook/Warne paradox would be Sartre, though, not Derrida. “Hell is other people” might easily be Cook’s mantra at the moment.
Derrida was born during the Headingley Ashes Test in 1930 when Bradman made 309 not out on the first day. Is this relevant?
This just shows how seriously England are unable to make the most of winning positions.
A more of attacking captain would have said “the only thing worse than my captaincy is Shane Warne’s criticism of my captaincy and the only thing duller than our batting is his punditry”. Instead he saw an a non-striker well out of his crease and ready for mankading and just let him off with a stern warning about how he was not acting in the spirit of the game.
You get the impression that the way he eats his weetabix is to drown it in milk and wait for it to become so mushy that there is no chance if any chewing related injury.