Out of kindness I tend to compose treatises on sporting themes at the weekend when no bugger reads them. I find it curious that my virtual friends find plenty of time during the working day to call in to deliver or receive wisdom, but are curiously busy at weekends. Perhaps you are all in the employ of some bizarre internet monitoring company and have been assigned to me.
- Mr Gower: ‘Mighty’ is an adjective. The corresponding adverb is ‘mightily’.
- Most commentators: ‘Ask’ is not a noun.
- Bob Willis: you are not a commentator, you are a sedative. Your tone is so monotonous, and your speech littered with so many inappropriate clichés that you could get a job in an accounts department.
- Sky in general: try to discourage sponsorship of cricket coverage. The repetition of the same unfunny skits is unbearably tedious, in the same league of tediousness as Mr Willis’s voice, if that gives you a clue. I am very weary of hearing that blithering buffoon, Henry Blofeld, uttering the phrase “Protection is our game”. I deeply regret that his parents adopted a different philosophy.
The better bits.
- Michael Holding: as good a commentator as he was a bowler. For those of you who are not sure how good that was, it was fucking good.
- David Lloyd: thank you.
Fred Trueman: we will miss you. I trust that you have found a place in heaven suitably commensurate with your very high standing, and that someone has finally explained what is going off out there. You were one of the best. The best English bowler I ever saw. Up there with the top group (see the reference to Mr Holding above). For those who never saw Mr Trueman bowl (and he mostly bowled in black and white), then you have missed one of the most graceful and at the same time powerful of sporting spectacles.
27 comments:
Cricket.....cricket..... I take it that Cricket is a sport of some kind that you British tyes play over there across the pond?
I've never seen a game played. Or a match. Or whatever it is called.
Types. Types.
Gah. I hate making typos.
Thank you for that informative and insightful essay, old armadillo.
New readers should note that having nothing to say, illiteracy or just plain ignorance is never a bar to commenting here. Just look at the posts themselves if in doubt.
You do realise that it is a mighty big ask of anyone to come here at such an early juncture and read something only a few will have the slightest interest in. I will now sneak out, hopefully without troubling the scorers.
One point. N.Hussain. Not a good captain but also decidedly average batsman. G.Hick scored his 131st and 132nd centuries this last week. Not a captain by any sense but flat track bully? In this weather? A cruel waste I've always thought.
Yes indeed Richard, exactly what I mean about Hussain. Except he was a crap captain, just like Atherton, Stewart and Gooch before him - emphasis on the dour and boring rather than exciting strokeplay. I am sure that Hick and Ramprakash and probably others would have flourished under the new atmosphere.
Michael Holding, that man's voice is like having molasses pored over you yum yum.
Poured obviously
Or even pawed.
Realdoc ct. Freud (at 1st slip) b. Holding 0
There's a 20 year old signed picture of Bob Willis in the window of an Indian restaurant near where I work, together with an old one of Gary Lineker.
Imagine those two droning on as you try to have a quiet meal.
Realdoc, I take it that you when you say 'poured over you', you are referring to humanity in general rather than me specifically. I would find it very strange, even by the 'standards' of this journal that you would find molasses being poured over me in any way pleasant.
Richard that was very funny, but you probably knew that. I yearn for you tragically.
Haven't got anything against Lineker. Jolly decent cove.
Methinks Realdoc was using 'you' in the sense of 'one', with the hidden sense of 'me'. If she'd like to attend our next match I'm sure we could all club in for a large pot of molasses.
Is there some requirement about who gets to lick it off subsequently?
Now I'm an armadillo?
I had something to say but it was illiterate and ignorant.
Don't worry Pam - I misspelled Mosley when responding to the post before this one, although I did spell DEVO correctly, so being illiterate is perfectly acceptable here.
And if you're being called 'armadillo," I'd recommend accepting the compliment without further thought.
No comment on the cricket stuff. I'm with Pammy.
However I heartily concur over the inappropriate use of 'mighty'.
And wholeheartedlyt disagree over the use of 'ask' as a noun. 'It's a big ask' is rather nice idiomatic English, don't you think? And so much more colourful than 'it's a major challenge', which is the kind of drivel I have to write into business conferences all the time.
Just keeping us all on our toes here. Have you been to Boris recently? Don't tell anyone, but I think I'm getting them all to agree to renationalising the railways...
Mr Gamon. At last something (apart from 16th Century Tasmanian folk music) about which we can disagree.
Perpetrators of nouning verbs should be taken out and shot. It is not idiomatic, it is clumsy. I trust you are only saying this to create some lively debate here, and do never use "Big Ask" in speech or in written form.
As for Boris, I must confess to being bored. Because he never responds, I feel a little neglected.
Thanks FE, you're sweet and I'd never call you a cabbage nor an armadillo.
Actually Pam, i've been called far worse than cabbage or armadillo and not in an affectionate way, so calling me a mutant Brussels sprout or armored possum would be more than welcome.
That's true, Vic. It's much more fun sounding off at the Kaliyuga Kronicles, because the proprietor is never short of a witty riposte or two. Strange about Boris. Maybe he's busy, being important or something.
Did they HAVE Tasmania in the 16th Century?
Mark, I was going to point that out to him but well, he doesn't much care for pedantry, does he. Wouldn't want to upset him at all.
Who? Who is a pedant? Come on, name names.
it's just not cricket ;).
I'm sure we here over in the colonies know as much about your cricket superstars as you know about our hockey players, Vicus, so I'm clearly an ignoramus on that score.
However, I dearly loved the title of the post and was hoping to have actually read something that expanded upon it.
I chuckled nonetheless.
And I should point out that we here in Canada actually are familiar with cricket.
A small group of men in white clothes play it every Sunday afternoon at our Assiniboine Park here. I believe they're mostly from India or Pakistan.
I must watch it sometime.
'Assiniboine Park'.
Sounds rude. Please explain why, Mr V.
FE, you're much better than a Mutant Brussel Sprout.
Vicus, I've read your post and all the comments and I can find no reference to sex whatsoever. That's two minutes of my day gone down the pan and I've only been up for five!
No, Tom, but realdoc leaned towards the erotic, and good old Richard mentioned Graeme Hick centuries, which certainly got me aroused.
And stop moaning, if you have been up for 5 minutes then you have probably had sex twice already.
Yes Vicus, but only in my mind. It's been a quiet day so far.
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