Coach-speak: a crime against humanity

One of the unfortunate side effects of watching a lot of sport is having to watch a lot of sports interviews. This is because sport occurs at odd non-advertising friendly intervals, there's a lot of standing about waiting for the thing to start, and television has yet to come up with a better way of filling this time than asking sports people to open and close their jaws whilst passing air through their larynx and capturing the sound for posterity.

These days, the interviewees receive training so that when their personal space is invaded by Ian Ward or Ramiz Raja, they don't run off and hide behind the sightscreen for fear that the microphone will steal their soul. And the easiest way to train a sports person to cope with interviews is to teach them the zombie technique: as soon as you see a camera lens, imagine you are a zombie.

"Congratulations on your fifty, generic opening batsman, you must be pleased."

"Yeah, mumble, mumble, mumble, (awkward shuffle), ball was doing a bit early on, mumble, mumble, mumble, (blank gaze), mumble, mumble, mumble, can I eat your brains…"

Still, sports interviews are terrible television. When politicans are interrogated, you can at least enjoy watching them being tormented by the little demon in their brain that wants to spill the beans about what really happened at the prime minister's birthday orgy, and the other little demon in their brain that continually reminds them about the fiery pit of obscurity awaiting the pathetic wimp who can't tow the party line.

Politicians have interesting things to say, they just can't say them. Sports people have nothing interesting to say. Subject them to five hours in front of the Fast Bowling Select Committee and what will you find out? Their least favourite nicknames, their averages, their most embarrassing Xbox fails. This isn't surprising. Sports people have spent most of their lives running around chasing a ball. You might as well interview a springer spaniel.

But while we can probably forgive players their contractually obligatory zombie platitudes, we should never forgive coach-speak. What do I mean by coach-speak?

Coach-speak is like political spin, only worse. It's a mode of communication so utterly debased, a use of language so entirely demeaning and beneath contempt, that anyone practising it should be immediately arrested and thrown into a windowless six foot square sewer with only bloodthirsty psychotic lab rats for company. Try taking the positives out of that, you tracksuited nincompoops.

Take Mike Hesson, for example. In two Tests in spin-friendly conditions, his hand-picked spinners have managed eight wickets at a healthy 90.18 runs apiece, forcing selectors to consider calling up 82-year-old Daniel Vettori, who hasn't played proper cricket for so long he may need to be reminded of the rules. What's going on, Mike?

"I thought the way Ish and Mark have adapted over the last couple of Tests has been pleasing."

There you have it, New Zealand fans. If you were wondering what they were doing in the first two matches, they were "adapting". The good news is that if they carry on adapting at this rate, they should be competitive by the ninth or possibly the tenth Test of the series.

And when you've finished savouring the subtly understated delusion of vintage Hesson, have a taste of this, from Marvan Atapattu.

"The best thing that happened to us in the three weeks in India is that although we went through a very bad period losing one match after another, we had a very positive dressing room."

Enjoy that, Sri Lanka fans? How about this?

"The players kept motivating each other, contributions were coming from every corner and the players wanted to do well although the execution was not right there."

Well, when you put it like that, Marvan, a 5-0 thrashing doesn't sound quite so bad. Have a contract extension.