'I should have kept my legs closed......'

By remarkable coincidence, in the same week as ‘the troubles’ the English Test cricket team  made us feel good about ourselves. They didn’t just beat the best team in the world. They thumped, clobbered, and moerad them. England is now playing the Aussie way. The downside to this is that they seem rather dour. The last real character was Flintoff, with his booze-fuelled escapades, like swanning around in a pedallo at a very late hour, risking drowning the night before a big game in the West Indies.

Cricket has always produced spaced-out characters.

Shane Warne, the greatest spin bowler of our times and reputedly prodigious in the underpants department, is currently getting a lot of coverage over his affair with a passé popsie who once made a film but has since earned her keep by doing what she is best at, and  is now reaching her ‘use by’ date. Warnie is noted for his biting wit but he met his match when bowling to Botham. ‘Hello, Beefy’, he said, ‘How’s the missus and my kids?’ ‘The missus is fine’, replied Botham ‘but the kids are retarded!’

This is on a par with the exchange between McGrath (Aussie) and Brandes (portly Zimbawean). McGrath ‘Why are you so fat?’ ‘Because every time I screw your missus she gives me a biscuit!’

Botham got suspended for describing the English selectors as ‘a bunch of gin-soaked old farts’. His mate David Gower was suspended for buzzing the field in a Tiger Moth.

Many years ago the Duke of Norfolk was a keen cricketer and his team was drawn from the estate. The captain was the head gamekeeper or some such. The umpire was his butler. On appeal to the umpire for an obvious dismissal the umpire replied ‘His Grace is not quite out!’

I must confess that I started to lose interest years ago when ‘sledging’ started to get out of hand (for those who don’t follow the game this is the art of so abusing and teasing the opposite sides players that they lose concentration). But it goes back a long way. A perfect example is when one of the Aussie players in the 1932/3 series called the English captain, Douglas Jardine, a ‘pommie bastard. When Jardine complained (and he was notoriously stuck—up), Woodhall, the Aussie skipper, yelled through their dressing room door ‘Which of you bastards called this Pommie bastard a Pommie bastard?’

But the cruellest cut must have come from Fiery Fred Truman, one of the all-time great pacemen. A batsman hit an easy catch of Fred’s ball, but the fielder let it go straight between his legs. ’Sorry, Fred’ he said ‘I should have kept my legs closed’. ‘Aye’ growled Fred ‘And so should thy mother!’

When an American asked an old English gent what kind of game was this cricket, the reply was ‘Game? It’s not a game. It’s a way of life!’

How true!