Posted by We’re picking an England XI comprising the players we invested in the most.
Once upon a time we worked on a helpdesk for those credit card type machines you get in shops where people top up their electricity and gas and pay-as-you-go mobile phones, back when going to a shop to do such things seemed a very normal way of going about matters.
It was every bit as soul-destroying as you’d imagine. Each Monday we’d be given scripted comments about how Orange hadn’t “gone live” and how it would “go live” next Monday instead. There was quite a lot of being shouted at.
This wasn’t helped by our level of training. We all spent a good few months confidently telling shopkeepers that none of our machines had an on-off button until we discovered that one of them actually did. We only had two different machines.
The relevance of this is that we worked with a guy called James Anderson and James Anderson was also into cricket and while we were both working together this other guy called James Anderson made his Lancashire debut.
These were the days when following cricket was mostly about reading scorecards in the newspaper. Both of us instantly spotted James Anderson (cricketer) and immediately started following his fortunes incredibly closely.
If Jimmy is at 10 then Monty MUST be at 11.
With Harrmison at 9 it has to be a dog shit awful batsman. Also the rules of the website say always pick a spinner.
Monty or Tuffnell.
Disappointed no place for Ian Austin. Big battle for the comedy number 11 slot. Tuffers, Monty, Giddins, Mullally, Malcolm, Hoggard?
The King’s a closet Peter Such fan.
I often feel like Jimmy is unfairly treated outside of the UK. The idea that he can’t bowl outside of England is just untrue. The 2010/11 Ashes and 2012/13 India wins, wouldn’t have happened without his fantastic bowling. Add in the fact that he was our best bowler last time we were down under. Anderson is a great example of why career stats do not paint the full picture.
Will there be a Sim series match using this team?
Yes. See the piece linked in the opening par.
Not exactly a surprise.
It’s going to be quite a good team, KC.
Is it to play some manner of Aussie-invested XI, gathered by Dan Liebke (your ridiculous sparring partner from the last Ashes series) or Jrod or someone? That’d be great.
Personally I’d rather the Aussies were picked based on how invested Poms are in their failure. The ones you (or His Maj) would be most gleeful to see fail, would feel happy-but-not-happy at hearing they’d tripped over a ball or broken a thumb in the nets, or if they didn’t fail, at least were glad to see the back of when their innings or bowling spell ended. The ones ingrained in English imagination as the most archnemesissy Ashes rivals. Even just the ones who annoyed more when they did well. I have the sinking feeling that this would be disturbingly strong Aussie team, mind.
5 – 0.
You can’t have a team of eleven Matthew Haydens.
At least you could feel confident of racking up a decent total against that attack.
Hayden AND Haddins