The Long Handle
The fall of the Super Bananas
Chennai Super Kings lost two games in three days. Save the tale for your great grandchildren
Andrew Hughes
05-Oct-2013
When did Chennai Super Kings last lose two games in three days? Twenty20 matches come thicker and faster than the Royal Hippopotamus Parachute Regiment on manoeuvres, so it is perfectly possible that such a thing has happened, but I can't remember it.
Well many years from now, when Chennai are winning their 57th IPL, (under clone captain Dhoni v 3.0.1) I will be able to regale my great-grandchildren with the tale of the week when I saw the Mighty Yellow lose once, and then, two days later, saw them lose again. And the twist in the tale? It was their batsmen who let them down.
It began on Wednesday. The all-conquering Custard were in that familiar state of Already Qualified Nirvana. Batting first against Trinidad, they were in a nudgey-pokey frame of mind. They nudged here, they poked there, here a nudgey-poke, there a pokey-nudge. They were nudging poor Badree all over the place. It was death by a thousand nudges.
Full postA rocket-propelled Champions League
It has been an entertaining tournament, so what if nobody in England seems to know it's happening?
Andrew Hughes
02-Oct-2013
The Champions League Twenty20 isn't getting a lot of coverage in Britain. This is a bit of an understatement. The Champions League Twenty20 is getting about as much coverage in these parts as the Russian Monster Combine Harvester Derby (this year won posthumously by unfortunate rookie Oleg Didntswitchisengineov).
As far as the English know, the entire event could be taking place in a little kingdom, hidden among thorny brambles, between troupes of elves and fairies (including four franchises featuring the most popular elves and fairies from the Incredible Pixie League).
If you don't believe me, try this exercise. If you find yourself within the boundaries of the United Kingdom in the next few days, ask a sample of random passers-by if they've heard of the Champions League Twenty20. You'll get a selection of funny looks, a healthy number of head-shakes, a few unwanted conversations about some trivial European football event with a similar name, and above all, an impenetrable wall of ignorance.
Full postSuper Hick's final revenge
Where our hero infiltrates the lair of the evil Dr Sutherland
Andrew Hughes
28-Sep-2013
For English cricket watchers of a certain vintage, Graeme Hick was the chosen one. He was Super Hick, the hero from the planet Krypton, whose smoking space capsule had made a mysterious crater in a wheat field near Kidderminster, and who would one day swoop in from the shires, stand atop the Lord's pavilion, with the wind gently lifting his flowing green cape, and announce in a booming voice that he was here to save England.
Those long, agonising months waiting for the Home Office's Interplanetary Superhero Immigration Unit to clear Super Hick's citizenship were followed by even longer, even more agonising months of realising that Super Hick wasn't an intergalactic cricket hero after all, he was just Tim Robinson with a funny accent.
But now, behold cricket fans: the final revenge of Super Hick. In his latest adventure, "Super Hick In Australia" our hero infiltrates the lair of the evil Dr Sutherland, steals a clipboard and an overcoat and poses as the Lord High Admiral of the Department of Cricket Fabulousness* from where he can oversee the (further) decline of Australian batting.
Full postSpare a thought for the headline writers
Without Graham Onions in the squad, the pun bank may run dry
Andrew Hughes
25-Sep-2013
The continuing international exile of Graham Onions is not just bad news for Graham Onions, it's bad news for editors, caption-scribblers and obscure bloggers everywhere. Sadly, over the last three years, thanks to the slings, arrows, plaster casts, a worn cartilage and splints of outrageous fortune, we've all had to adjust to the idea that we may never get to use those headlines we've spent many happy hours polishing on long winter nights.
For instance, I was looking forward to reading "Graham's four-fer makes Aussies eyes water" to mark the day in December when our hero, on the way to almost taking five wickets, would hit Shane Watson amidships with a skiddy long hop, causing the blond behemoth to cry like Peppa Pig's little brother George when he's lost his toy dinosaur.*
For a while there was an outside chance of an Onions-Harbhajan confrontation, ideally during the lunch interval, perhaps when Graham took a wrong turn into the Indian players' dining room and helped himself to a plateful of food, only to discover that the plate belonged to the Turbanator, who had been looking forward to his spicy fried vegetable starter, and who was now hopping mad, thereby justifying the headline: "Onions argy-bargy over Bhajji's onion bhajji".**
Full postWhat's the point of the Champions League Twenty20?
You might as well ask what's the point of the Ashes
Andrew Hughes
21-Sep-2013
The Champions League Twenty20 is a goulash of hot, steamy franchise action, a smorgasbord of sexy inter-continental super-sport, a trifle of terrifically fruity T20 goodness, topped with the light frothy cream of cricket celebrity, and the juicy cherry of temporary global domination. It is, in short, a feast.
Yet some apparently rational people prefer to sit outside in the rain, their stomachs rumbling, pretending they can nourish themselves on the memories of the summer's banquet. Some have even said they don't see the point of the Champions League Twenty20. This is dangerous, subversive thinking, cricket chums, and you should not countenance it.
To turn your nose up at one bit of bat-and-ball action on the grounds that it has no purpose is to take the tin-opener of wilful scepticism to the rusty old can at the back of the cricket cupboard, the one with the label that reads, "May contain worms".
Full postA can't-really-be-bothered preview of the Champions League
All that you need to know about a tournament that you might have forgotten about
Andrew Hughes
18-Sep-2013
Although we humans are vastly intelligent, deviously inventive and by far the best thing ever to have come out of planet Earth, we do have our weaknesses.
For instance, we have picked up a few addictions over the millennia; most notably coffee, cigarettes and war. Of the three, we particularly enjoy war. Any war will do, we're not fussy: wars of self-defence, wars of independence, wars of succession, civil wars, tribal wars, religious wars, pre-emptive wars, wars to send a message, wars to defend imaginary red lines, wars to prevent wars. We don't mind how long a war lasts, although purists who favour the Hundred Years' War tend to turn their noses up at the shorter forms.
Another weakness is our fallible human memory. Some people - dictators, head teachers, serial killers, business people, and other suspicious types - get around this by methodically recording their schedules in executive diaries:
Full postBirmingham in the mizzle
It's pretty rancid, if you'd go by what a former England captain thinks
Andrew Hughes
14-Sep-2013
I know very little about architecture. This is not surprising, since I know very little about most subjects, but in the Hughes cranial library, the architecture annexe is particularly sparsely stocked, consisting entirely of dust, empty shelves, and a slim pamphlet written in felt-tipped pen, entitled, "I Don't Know Much About Architecture, But I Know What I Like".
Still, it seems to me that in the last few years, the city of Birmingham has gone in for some spectacularly foul outdoor erections. For example, the ugly 1970s Brutalist public library, an inverted pyramid of brown concrete, has this month been made redundant by an even uglier enormous black library-box, decorated with chicken wire and topped with a shiny golden chimney that surely belongs on a Las Vegas crematorium.
Even good old Edgbaston has not escaped. I wasn't there at the unveiling of the titivated stadium in 2011, but I imagine that when the velvet curtain fell, all you could hear were polite coughs from the assembled guests, and honks of disapprobation from horrified taxi drivers processing, aghast, along the Edgbaston Road.
Full postThe Fawad question
Why the controversy surrounding Fawad Ahmed has nothing to do with sponsorship. Or drinking
Andrew Hughes
11-Sep-2013
By the time many of you read this, I will be sitting on a tiny plastic seat at Edgbaston, enjoying the sunshine, or sheltering under an umbrella waiting for Mr Duckworth and Mr Lewis, or possibly even wading back to the car park, dodging paddling ducks, arks and water-skiers. The weather guessers are non-committal at this stage, having opted to put clouds across the whole of the middle of England and hope for the best.
If I do see cricket, one of the players I'm looking forward to watching is Fawad Ahmed, although obviously, if he isn't wearing the logo of a certain grain-fermentation concern on his shirt, it will spoil my enjoyment. As Doug Walters pointed out recently, if a bloke doesn't want to wear the name of some beer or other on his breast, then a bloke ought to ask himself whether he's the sort of bloke who really belongs with the other blokes.
At least, I think that was the gist of it. It may have come as a surprise to Fawad, having been called up to play for Australia, to find that he was in fact representing a Fizzy Beer XI that just happened to have a Cricket Australia badge on their shirts.
Full postWhy are cricket spectators always short-changed?
We are art lovers, not watchers of some back-alley freak show
Andrew Hughes
07-Sep-2013
Friday's rain in Leeds was not mere meteorological happenstance, resulting from crowded isobars or cheeky northerlies; it came about because God, who I happen to know appreciates a good bit of architecture, still waxes vengeful every time he sets eyes on that monstrosity they call the Carnegie Pavilion: the architectural offspring that resulted from the coming together of an East German secret-police building and a Bond villain's underwater lair.
Similar divinely ordained retribution has been meted out across the Pennines for decades. God knew one day it would come to pass that the citizens of the red rose county would erect an enormous scarlet representation of a child's plastic construction brick right next to a lovely Victorian pavilion, and he wanted to punish them in advance with a deluge, though having promised never to do the full 40-day flood again, he has instead drizzled on them in installments for decades.
The Headingley deluge prevented cricket fans from getting a view of what is being excitingly billed as England's "experimental" one-day team, an interesting use of the word, but an apposite one, in that the cobbled-together collective due to take the field at some point this month reminds us of the kind of experiments Dr Frankenstein liked to dabble in. The whole thing sort of looks okay - bowlers and batsmen more or less in the right place - but there's something vaguely unnatural about it; it appears to be rather clumsily put together, and leaves you feeling uneasy. Particularly if you've paid £100 for your ticket.
Full postWhat are cricket boards for?
Cricket is crying out for the return of the boring administrator
Andrew Hughes
04-Sep-2013
There is a lot to be said for daydreaming. The world is full of tediously focused people who never take their eyes off the ball, but who wants to watch the ball when you can gaze aimlessly at the crowd, the sky, the pitch, the birds, or your own shoelaces?
Some of humanity's best brain-work came through daydreaming. Galileo hadn't given much thought to suns, orbits and suchlike, until his mind started to wander during mass one Sunday morning. Lalit Modi had no interest in franchised hyper-leagues, cheerleaders, megalomania or world domination until he found himself stuck in a Mumbai lift listening to the Lighthouse Family for 27 minutes.
Even a commoner can benefit from daydreaming. Only this week I came up with three chin-strokers while I was stuck in a conversation about illegal parking with an angry policeman.
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