Anderson knacks his ankle

Yes, ‘knacks’. We’re not the BBC here, you know. We don’t have to use proper Standard English words, like ‘knackers’.

Actually, we do like to use the word ‘knackers’, but only as a noun. For the verb, we favour ‘to knack’.

It was one of those days where you’re waiting for the next innings before it gets interesting again. England were a fair way ahead from the start and had plenty of wickets in hand. It was a good one to sleep through, particularly considering England’s batsmen decided to drive home the blanditude by getting about 40-odd each rather than ducks or hundreds.

Then, after the close of play, Anderson knacked his ankle playing football. A couple of years ago, he did much the same thing playing squash. It’s probably for the best that he’s not so susceptible to cricketing ankle injuries, being as cricket’s his job.

We have sympathy. We’ve got an ankle injury too. It’s from the ‘running’. We pretty much always get some sort of injury when we try to do ‘running’, even though we do far more twisty-turny sports regularly with no ill-effects. We don’t have an international sporting career that’s spoilt by our ankle injury though. We don’t have a career that could be spoilt by anything, because we don’t have a career. What luxury.

New Zealand v England, second Test at Wellington – day three
England 342 (Tim Ambrose 102, Paul Collingwood 65, Mark Gillespie 4-79, Jacob Oram 3-46)
New Zealand 198 (Ross Taylor 53, Daniel Vettori 50 not out, James Anderson 5-73, Paul Collingwood 3-23)
England 277-9 (Alastair Cook 60, Paul Collingwood 59, Jacob Oram 3-44)

Similar deliveries:

James Anderson’s back Ryan Sidebottom does the necessary Jacob Oram and his face