“Even more than making it in Twenty20 or 50‑over cricket my real ambition has been to become a Test player,” said Eoin Morgan when England first gave him a shot at the five-day stuff.
After 16 Tests and two hundreds, it seems highly unlikely they’ll give him another go, but the ICC’s latest proposals would see Ireland become a Test nation. The country of his birth would surely give him a game, no?
A certain part of us would love to see Morgan up sticks and head home purely to see how forceful and obnoxious the “SEE! SEE! WE TOLD YOU HE WAS A TRAITOR!” response would be in those parts of the media that like to characterise him as a kind of national-anthem-scorning pseudo-Pietersen.
The truth is Ireland’s Test status wouldn’t be for another couple of years, even if it happens, and Morgan currently seems rather heavy-in with leading England’s short format sides anyway. A career-minded cricketer, you can’t really imagine him walking away from his current job.
This might be a possibility further down the line though. If nothing else, a Test match between England and an Ireland side led by a cold-eyed Morgan furious about media criticism would surely be well-attended. Even if they played it in April. Which they would.
One again, top class hover caption, KC. Well done.
I’m being offered a busty, baby-faced Russian date this time. Not scary-looking, unlike the previous Russian offerings, although doubtless just as dangerous if not more so in practice. I’ll pass if that’s OK with you, KC.
Meanwhile, I see no reason why Eoin Morgan shouldn’t be “The Celtic Kepler” in the fullness of time.
To paraphrase St Augustine, for both me and Eoin, “Lord, make me chaste/tested – but not yet!”
Google’s algorithm presents us with ads for a local furniture shop and the web hosting company we already use.
Assess that accuracy and make of it what you will.
Different machines serve me with different types of stuff for your site, KC.
I get the Chinese and Russian beauties on my “home office” machine, which the algorithm has clearly assessed to be a reasonably affluent middle aged man. Hence the offers to invest my £250,000 portfolio of spare cash for me (if only) as well as offers of exotic ladies.
But down here on my private machine: “Ged Central” as it were, I’m now being offered a £59 ferry trip to france and some middle manager software for drawing visual roadmaps – the latter presumably a hangover from our venn diagram craze on this site a few years ago. Happy days, they were.
I’ve never seen an ad for my web hosting company on this machine, from whence I subscribed to my web host. But on the “Ged West” machine in Noddyland, from whence I do a lot of my Ogblogging, your site offers to sell me my web host all the time.
All this prattle is merely putting off the inevitable; going back upstairs to finish writing a mighty tedious document for work.
I don’t understand the hatred of Morgan. I like him and would be happy to see him carry on as ODI skipper.
Many people don’t seem to have forgiven him for skipping Bangladesh. As if that were some sort of offence.
To sum up: cricket fans are angry people in need of therapy.
Not just cricket fans. That’s social media for you.
If, hypothetically, international scheduling permitted Morgan to play both Tests for Ireland and ODIs and T20s for England, does any rule prevent him from captaining both sides?
As things stand, a player could not represent one country in one or more formats and represent another country in another/other formats.