The inscrutable silence of Graeme Smith

Wednesday, 6th April Graeme Smith hasn’t Tweeted since March 16th. This has upset some in the cyber wilderness who feel that they have been abandoned, Twitter-jilted, and can’t get closure without 140 characters from the man who used to be South Africa captain. It is true that he gave a press conference that was reported on by every sports news outlet in South Africa. But this isn’t enough for the Twitterati.

So to help him out I’ve come up with a tweet that will resolve this little unpleasantness and satisfy his disgruntled fans. He is welcome to cut and paste:

“Hello Losers. World Cup over. We didn’t win. Not captain anymore. Move on.”

That should do the trick

Thursday, 7th April The next World Cup will be limited to the 10 Test-playing nations, or more precisely, the nine Test-playing nations and the one that is still sitting on the naughty step, or even more precisely, the eight Test-playing nations and the two that are only ever likely to win a Test match if their opponents are on strike, abducted by aliens, or get driven to the wrong ground. Or if they play each other.

The purpose of this piece of tournament butchery is to remove one-sided, boring games from the World Cup. An admirable aim, but surely doomed to fail. Can we really predict dull games in advance? Take England versus Ireland. Expected to be dull; turned out to be hilarious. What about West Indies v Pakistan? Could have been exhilarating, instead it was excruciating. Boring cricket matches are like Monday afternoons or stubbing your toe against a table leg: an inevitable part of life.

Friday, 8th April Its IPL time again! The players are the same, but they have been shuffled around. It’s a bit like a game of musical chairs in which the chairs have been replaced with huge piles of money and the music doesn’t stop. Hopefully most of the players have worked out who they’re playing for by now and the rest will figure out they’re in the wrong city when they find someone else’s underpants on their dressing-room peg.

We also welcome back our old friend, the incongruous advert. I feel that some of these companies are missing a trick by only focusing on the successful and praiseworthy. Surely there is just as much exposure in associating your name with the mundane and the inept? The three-times-fumbled lob with which Yusuf Pathan entertained us today was a Caramel Crème Dropped Sitter if ever I saw one, and there was at least one Laxx Mobile Come On Surely That Was A Wide Call.