The Long Handle

Wednesday, 15th September The curse of Twitter has struck down another unwary pro. This time it’s Dmitri Mascarenhas in the naughty corner for an X-rated, though anatomically inaccurate Tweet addressing the alleged failings of the current Selector-in-Chief.

Sunday, 12th September No one likes fielding, apart from Jonty Rhodes and one or two Australians who have probably spent too much time in the sun. Fielding isn’t natural. Most players need to work incredibly hard at it just to reach a level where they won’t embarrass themselves on television and even then, they can only keep it up for so long. England started the summer well, but it’s wearing off and they too are back to stumbling and slipping about in the field like newborn foals taking their first tentative ice skating lessons.

It came as something of a surprise therefore to hear the estimable Mr Afridi castigating one of his own players, the genial green giant Mohammad Irfan, for not acquitting himself well in the field.

"I'm really disappointed with this guy," said The Boom, "Cricket is not all about just batting and bowling, nowadays fielding is very important.”

Wednesday September 8th It appears that a man who was born in one country but now plays for another will be going back to the first country to play a couple of games. This apparently innocuous piece of news has been to certain sections of the cricket public as a fluttering red handkerchief is to a caged bull. Before you could say “massive overreaction”, hundreds of fingers across two hemispheres were tapping out the word “traitor”. There was no consensus amongst the internet bile purveyors as to which nation he was betraying, but they were united in their conviction that treachery was afoot.

The general public have a strange relationship with Mr Kevin Pietersen. Apparently rational people talk freely of his personality flaws despite the fact that they have not so much as shared a “good morning” with him, let alone had a peek at his MI5 file. They float the idea of dropping him from the Test team, presumably so that someone less talented can replace him. Anyway, isn’t having two games on Australian-style pitches whilst getting used the Kookaburra ball rather a good idea? Adequate preparation for an Ashes series? Clearly the man has learnt nothing about Englishness.

Thursday September 9th Whether you are Archduke Franz Ferdinand out for a pleasant afternoon drive through the streets of Sarajevo or an international cricketer having a chat in a hotel bar with a man whose trilby keeps making odd whirring noises, no one likes to be caught unawares. Yet all morning I had an odd sense of foreboding. Like a Martian standing at the crease watching Michael Holding mark his run-up, I had the vague impression that something was going to happen for which I should be prepared; I just didn’t know what it was.

Saturday, September 4th The events of recent days have brought back some unpleasant memories; memories of an episode in my past of which I am not particularly proud. Since I feel, though, that we are all friends here and since I am fairly sure that none of you work for a tabloid newspaper, I thought it might be cathartic if I unburdened myself.

It happened many years ago, when running around on a hot afternoon still seemed like a good idea. I was playing backyard cricket and with the game at a critical point, I assayed a glorious lofted shot, sending the ball straight over my brother’s head and straight through the glass of our parents' bedroom window.

As you might imagine, there ensued something of an enquiry. My hastily constructed defence rested on the following series of ingenious arguments:

1. I never done nothing 2. You can’t prove I done it 3. Your proof is fake 4. You’re biased against me 5. The Indian Secret Service made me do it 6. I am very young 7. Okay, I might have done it but I’m not the only person who’s ever broken a window with a cricket ball

Tuesday, August 31st The art of Twittering is so often undervalued. One forty characters are all that the Twitterer has and within these artistic constraints, must make his or her magic. It is not, perhaps, as demanding a genre as the haiku or the tanka but it requires of its practitioners a certain brevity and incision. Sadly, not all Twitterers attain Parnassus.

“Yep.. Done for rest of summer!! Man of the World Cup T20 and dropped from the T20 side too.. Its a f**k up!! Surrey have signed me for l …”

This particular Twitterer leaves the reader perplexed. What might that teasing "l" represent? "Lots"? "Levity?" "Lettuce?" Sadly, the author has no room to tell us more, because he has indulged himself in an orgy of full stops, exclamation marks and superfluous ejaculations, whilst the omitted apostrophe in "it’s" looks as ugly as his dismissal by Shakib Al Hasan.

Friday, August 27th More IPL news, this time about the auction before last. I may not have entirely understood, but it seems that the big cheese at the Chennai Catastrophes attempted to rig the auction to ensure that he didn’t end up with Flintoff. The deal was that the yellows would make a pretend bid of $1.55m but would then graciously withdraw. But the plan went wrong and they were lumbered with the big man with the dodgy ankle. Understandably, Chennai were upset. I think that’s it.

I don’t really know, to be honest. I didn’t realise that auctions, let alone multi-million dollar auctions, were supposed to be the acme of transparency. This whole IPL business looks like one of those blazing rows in a soap opera that conceal an underlying heartache. Any minute now, someone will say, “It’s not about the auction, Lalit, you know it’s not about the auction!” I hope it’s some time soon, because this IPL stuff is like watching the business news. No, it’s duller.

Saturday, August 28th Pakistan have gone in the brain, says Nasser Hussain. Again. It isn’t an elegant phrase, but we know what he means. Still, as someone who enjoys reading about the golden age of cricket, it was lovely to see a re-enactment of Edwardian fielding including some gentlemanly ushering of the ball to the boundary, a marked reluctance to bend down and a dignified, patrician silence. Shabash, Kamran? No, okay then.

Tuesday, August 24th Psyops was the least intimidating of all the monsters of Ancient Greece. His plan for overthrowing the gods by putting it about that Zeus was a bed-wetter who cried at romantic films and was frightened of spiders didn’t prove particularly successful. And yet, there are still devotees of Psyops around to this day, in the CIA, MI5 and even the Australian dressing room, where a touching belief in the value of virtual sledging persists.

Naturally, the teasing has become a lot more sophisticated over the years. Simon Katich has, for example, questioned whether the fence panels Matt Prior has recently installed were ethically sourced, Nathan Hauritz has already got in a dig about the lack of screwdrivers in the Swann household and Dougie Bollinger has had some pretty hurtful things to say about the way Andrew Strauss eats asparagus.

Ricky Ponting isn’t worried about the Pommies either. Why’s that Ricky? Because he’s seen all the English batsmen and the ones he hasn’t seen, he’s got footage of, so there are no surprises. Difficult to argue with that. Still, short of picking an entire team of complete unknowns, it is hard to see what might constitute a surprise in the England line-up. Gingerbread bats? Darth Vader in a tutu? Adil Rashid?

Saturday, August 21st The conclusion of the third Test at The Oval was an exciting affair, but not without controversy. As England pressed desperately for wickets, Matt Prior’s imaginative appeals were recorded at 9.7 on the Moin Scale* and resulted in umpire Tony Hill being taken to hospital with a strained incredulity gland. As a result, the shiny-headed Sussex glove-warmer was fined 50% of his throat-sweet allocation and warned that future infractions could result in the fitting of an ICC gag.

Meanwhile, the ECB’s Chief of Spreadsheets, Giles Clarke, professed himself baffled at the poor attendances for some matches this summer. “I really don’t know what else we can do. We’ve set ticket prices at £80 to keep out the riff-raff, and we’ve even laid on floodlights to illuminate the pitch and give the crowd something to look at when the players are off for bad light. Frankly, if the general public don’t up their game, we’ll be left with no choice but to start using smaller grounds, which will inevitably mean a modest 50% increase in ticket prices.”

Sunday, August 22nd There was a further escalation today in the long-running but never interesting wrangle between the WIPA and the WICB. In a surprise move, a spokesman for the WIPA announced that as the WICB had completely failed in its duty to adequately represent West Indian cricket, the WIPA had little option but to assume this function and was therefore renaming itself the WICB with immediate effect. However, within minutes the WICB retaliated by alleging that the WIPA was not properly representing the interests of players in the region and so the WICB had no choice but to take over this role and change its name to the WIPA. Whereupon the WICB, formerly the WIPA, instituted legal action against the WIPA, formerly the WICB, who immediately lodged a counter suit against the renamed WICB (ex-WIPA) for breach of image rights, and in retaliation… (to be continued)

Wednesday, August 18th There has been an angry reaction from some quarters following the apology and suspension of Suraj Randiv for his involvement in what has become known as The Great Dambulla Disaster. The Amalgamated Union of Effigy Burners and Associated Light Arsonists have written to both the BCCI and the Sri Lankan Cricket Board, protesting at the manner in which the issue has been allowed to fizzle out.

"We note with concern,” their letter states, “that both boards appear to have taken a cavalier approach to this issue and in stubbornly refusing to pour petrol on the fire, they have allowed the delicate spark of controversy to be extinguished. We urgently ask the BCCI, the Sri Lankan government and possibly NASA and the United Nations to vigorously poke the embers of this dying scandal, in order to offer support to the hard-pressed likeness conflagrators of the subcontinent.”

Meanwhile the campaign to give Viru back his century has gathered pace. All Indian cricketers are being asked not to score a century in their next innings, out of solidarity. Already it is believed that Ishant Sharma and Praveen Kumar have signed up. And a charity single: “A Six for Sehwag”, designed to raise awareness of the plight of Delhi-based batsmen with only 12 one-day centuries to their name is to be recorded next week by many of the world’s best singers and Brett Lee.

Saturday, August 14th Today was Friends Provident Finally Finished Day; a thrilling eleven hours of cricket, featuring hovercrafts, cheerleaders and live white-line marking, played out in front of a typically English audience of transvestites, umbrellas and packed lunches.

Naturally, Dwayne Bravo was there; he can sniff a Twenty20 tournament from several thousand miles away and his compatriot, Kieron International was also in attendance, being a Somerset player again.

Neither enjoyed the best of days. Dwayne, unfortunately, had signed up for the wrong team and presumably will be speaking to his agent, whilst KP copped a horrible blow to the face that had the whole ground wincing.