The Heavy Ball

How to take a cricket selfie

That and other existential questions that only our agony aunt can answer

Trish Plunket
04-Apr-2014
Dale Steyn aka Bradley Cooper  •  Getty Images

Dale Steyn aka Bradley Cooper  •  Getty Images

If the cricket world took a selfie like Hollywood did at the Oscars, who would you like to see in it? asks O Snap
Definitely Ellen DeGeneres.
Oh, cricketers? I suppose you have to ask yourself how many egos can possibly fit into one picture and if they got that close to one another, would they bite?
If it were possible, you would have to get the facial-hair warriors of the southern summer - Mitchell Johnson and Brendon McCullum. Virat Kohli, because you just know he would sulk otherwise; Dale Steyn, because he has arms long enough to take the photo; Brett Lee because he's everywhere and would obviously be there as well.
But to be honest, the only people to be in a cricket selfie would be the ones the BCCI officially approve of, with the others standing down in mysterious circumstances.
Will big muscles and a big bat turn me into a big T20 hitter? asks Not-yet Beefy
Depends. Are you partially or mostly blind? Are you Chris Martin, wanting to make a comeback from retirement? Is your average somewhere in the low single figures? In all of these cases you might have a bat that weighs as much as a small child and more muscles than A-Rod when he was really into the juicing, but you're still going to suck. Hard.
While sheer forearm strength might help you deposit the ball over the boundary a few times, it's timing that makes you able to do it over and over without getting out.
Do they drug test cricketers for steroids? Because I have a feeling some genius is going to try this sometime in the near future. Drugs are bad, kids.
Is the use of glowing bails in T20 cricket indicative of our infantile obsession with shiny, flashing objects? asks B Dazzle
Indeed. They are kind of like the adult version of those sneakers that flash when you walk. In fact I think that if those sneakers were available in adult sizes, half the cricketers on the field would be wearing them.
Many of the cricketers at this World T20 are trailblazers of the iGeneration* - they want it now, they don't want to have to work for it, they want it for themselves, they don't want anyone else to have it, and they want it in a shiny metallic colour. With flashy lights.
I want to expose my board's utter incompetence. Should I do it via a Youtube video the way Tim Gruijters did, or is there a better way? asks B Sting
Is the fact your cricketing board is completely incompetent something that actually needs to be revealed? Or does everyone already know this and just kind of work around it, like everyone has that one uncle who is really, really racist but you have to invite him to family events anyway, so everyone just subconsciously decides to ignore him?
Youtube is a very accessible medium. Tim could definitely have picked a worse way to throw this toys (see Twitter), but what you really want is some help from an independent documentary maker or two so you can really get arty shots of your deep angst over just how wrong your cricketing board has gone. Also, you could show it at Cannes, because you're sure as hell never getting picked in another team, so you best think about an alternate career while you're exposing yourself.
I'm a South African fan. How do I deal with chokes? asks A Hem
Seek help. Enlist the support of friends who understand your plight, and join together to hide one another's implements of harm and violence. Make sure you watch the games in a safe place, with your psychiatrist on speed dial. Pick a psychiatrist who is not a cricket fan, or one who supports Australia.
You might want to take the position that many New Zealand fans have adopted over the years - expect the choke, embrace the choke. Understand that your team is going to choke and try to figure out how they are going to manage it this year. Hope for nothing more than that they will pick a new and intriguing way to choke, rather than the way they have in the past.
Then, if they don't, you can be pleasantly surprised.
*This obviously excludes the Australians. Who are really, really old.
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Trish Plunket is a grumpy old man. Except she's not old. Or a man