Sri Lankan Cricket Fans

Sangakkara asked to delay retirement by 200 years

R Rajkumar

NOVEMBER 24, 2014

Sri Lanka Cricket has asked Kumar Sangakkara to consider putting off retirement, at least until hell freezes over. It is thought that doing so will give the young Test team, still struggling to cope with the retirement of Mahela Jayawardene, the time needed to settle down and regroup during a period of flux and relative instability.

The board went on to explain that unprecedented weather patterns in the Netherworld over the past few years had actually seen an overall cooling in the region's temperature, and that they anticipated hell to fully freeze over in a couple of hundred years or so. "It is our hope that our middle order should be looking more settled by then," a board source said.


http://www.espncricinfo.com/blogs/content/story/802467.html

I see what you did there.

Moved to General Cricket. You can use this thread to post all the cricket-related jokes.

The administrators of 2014

Andrew Hughes

I don't know about you, but I've had enough of 2014. Like a Jonathan Trott innings or a series between India and Sri Lanka, it has been painful to watch, has contained few highlights and seems to have gone on for longer than is necessary.

But before we can get shot of 2014, we must first go through the ritual of the Naming of the Teams of the Year. As we speak, cricket hacks around the globe are sitting weary at their laptops, tapping out a list of the world's most obviously eminent cricketers (Warner, Amla, Sangakkara, Johnson, Steyn, er, how many is that?) cobbling together some spurious reasoning/statistical fluff/pun-heavy filler and pressing send.

Not until every cricket scribbler on the planet has submitted their near-identical copy, can the great cricket god in the sky knock off the bails of time and declare 2014 closed.

But in this avalanche of praise for the men who play the game, one group of heroes is always overlooked. I'm talking about the men putting in the long hours in the boardroom, working two, sometimes three-day weeks, to make sure that our great global game runs smoothly, and by "smoothly" I mean "not very smoothly at all".

So this year the Long Handle blog contains no Tedious Test XI or Blindingly Obvious Twenty20 All-Star Collective. Instead, I present, for your delectation, appreciation, and legal redress, the 2014 Cricket Board of the Year.

Chairman: Mr P Concrete, BCCI
Special mention to Sir Giles Stanford, for making it mandatory for all village clubs to charge passers-by a fee if they stop to watch the cricket, and to General Coup for his attempt to instigate a military takeover of the PCB in order to get Shahid Afridi back into the Test team, but in the end our selectors had to give the nod to Mr Concrete. His ownership of the Cuttack Kickbacks whilst simultaneously chairing the now defunct Ethics and Standards Committee at the BCCI marked him out as a genuine talent in a vintage year for rogue administrators.

Managing Director: Mr PRD Saster, ECB
After the retirement of Ijaz Butt it was said that the days of the overbearing cricket boss who can't open his mouth without inserting his foot were over, but the ECB's new man has resurrected a lost art. His combination of wacky decision-making and convoluted explanations has caught the public's imagination. Look out for more entertainment in 2015.

Head of Finance: Mr EC Fix, Belize and Luxembourg Cricket Association
The numbers speak for themselves. Ten million dollars in a Swiss bank account, 13 writs and three outstanding arrest warrants are stats that any financial fugitive would be proud of. His nimble footwork, evasive interview technique and impressive range of moustache-based disguises marked him out as one of the stars of 2014.

Head of Human Resources: Mr R Gument, WIPA
Over the last 20 years, the West Indies have produced some of the world's most egregious administrators and Mr R Gument is the latest off the talent production line. A former domestic cricketer and successful businessman, he has 30 years experience of man-management, communication and team-building to draw upon. Fortunately he has chosen not to bother and although only in his rookie season, he already has one player strike and three legal challenges under his belt. One to watch in 2015.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/blogs/content/story/813945.html

An efficient WICB is simply boring

Andrew Hughes

West Indies cricket has been entertaining us for decades, and since the region stopped producing awe-inspiring cricket teams, the players and officials have kept the show on the road with their hilarious administrative pratfalls and wacky squabbling.

So the announcement that the WICB will be taking the advice of their own task force and making big changes, is, at first glance, worrying. As a fan of obscure cricket satire, I have a vested interest in incompetence, and since we can't always rely on the PCB to deliver these days, it's vital that we don't lose another natural resource of amusement.

Fortunately, on closer examination, it seems that this particular plan to save West Indies cricket is no more likely to succeed than the previous 186.

First, the bad news. From now on, tour contracts will be issued before the tour starts, which is quite boring. The WICB has been a daring innovator in this area, pioneering the practice of issuing tour contracts after the tour has started, and I was looking forward to more blue-sky thinking: perhaps issuing tour contracts after the tour has finished, which would also allow the WIPA to take retrospective strike action by asking for all the runs scored and wickets taken on tour to be erased from the records. Alas, it is not to be.

Otherwise, these plans have a lot of potential. I was particularly excited to read about the proposal for a team-building activity in April ahead of the England tour, involving players and board members. It isn't clear where this will take place, but I'm hopeful it will be a survival weekend in the Scottish Highlands, and that highlights will be available via the WICB website. The chance to watch an angry Clive Lloyd pursuing Dwayne Bravo across Loch Ness in a kayak is something for us all to look forward to.

The WICB will also be engaging the services of a mental skills coach at the developmental levels of Caribbean cricket. This is to make sure that youngsters coming into the game are prepared for the mental strain that comes with being employed by the WICB and to ensure that potentially deviant behaviour (expressing an opinion, having ideas, demanding to be paid for the job) can be nipped in the bud.

Finally, the WICB will be issuing a players' handbook full of guidelines for professionals, such as: what they can safely say on Twitter (nothing), how to speak to a WICB board member (with the utmost respect), situations when it is acceptable to withdraw your labour (never) and an updated list of phrases that cannot be used in the same sentence as 'West Indies Cricket Board' (new additions include: incompetent, blithering, train-wreck, apocalyptically stupid and boring at parties).

So the Caribbean satire forecast remains favourable. There may be occasional outbreak of proficiency in the short term, and there is always the possibility of isolated success, but clouds of bickering and failure are expected to build as the year goes on, with the likelihood of petulant outbursts and scattered strikes, becoming silly, later on.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/blogs/content/story/821611.html

The tale of Davey Warner and the mythical line

Andrew Hughes

As a result of his latest faux pas in Sunday's one-day international, David Warner has been fined by the ICC. "So what?" you might be thinking. Seeing the words "fine", "match referee" and "David Warner" in the same sentence is no more remarkable than observing that the sun has risen this morning at roughly the same time that it did yesterday.

But on this occasion I think the wee fella has been the victim of an injustice. I happen to know that Dave is three weeks into the Shout Hindi With Ravi Shastri course and at the moment has only a tenuous hold on the basics of Hindi-shouting grammar.

Sharing a field with several Hindi speakers therefore offered an ideal opportunity to try on a few irregular verb-noun constructions for size. But while wrestling with the subjunctive case, he found himself struggling to follow what was being said and so asked for a translation. This perfectly innocent request has been sadly misconstrued by the ICC.

Anyone who has tried to learn a foreign language can sympathise. For instance, as a non-Australian speaker, I can remember watching a whole episode of Neighbours in my youth and being none the wiser at the end of it.

It was the same whenever I listened to Glenn McGrath or Merv Hughes or Matthew Hayden mumbling into a post-match microphone. I could generally catch the initial "Ah look", which I believe is Australian for, "I don't really want to talk about this, but if I must I will", but what followed was usually unintelligible, a sort of gruff Klingon vernacular squeezed out of the side of the mouth in the style of an inebriated John Wayne chewing a cigar.

Of course some people have taken the less charitable view that this was just another wearisome episode in the career of a man who, not content with scoring lots of runs, seems to be on a mission to pick a fight with every other professional cricketer on the planet.

Indeed, February will see the release of Dave's I-Spy Book Of Cricket Aggro, a publication aimed at anyone bored with traditional autograph-hunting. If you see an international cricketer - at a match, a disciplinary hearing, or the butcher's - just aim a random insult in his direction and tick off his name in your book (double points if he threatens to break your arm or report you to the ICC.)

Whilst it's easy to make fun of Mouthy Dave, Lippy Jimmy, Sulky Virat and the rest, they aren't entirely to blame. Whenever one of their number does something facepalm worthy, the question of "the line" comes up. This "line" is not the same as the ICC playing regulations or the spirit of cricket, but it is frequently invoked as a device for judging whether or not a particular example of stupidity is par for the course or beyond the pale.

But where, exactly, is this line? Who drew the line? Did they use a ruler? Maybe Darren Lehmann can help. If anyone knows where the line is, surely it's the Australian coach:

"We're always going to teeter pretty close to it; we've got to make sure we don't cross it."

But how do you know you've crossed it if you don't know where it is? It seems a bit unfair, like a particularly cruel children's party game called Don't Cross The Line, in which you turn out the lights, draw a line on the carpet, invite the children to move around, then, when the lights go up, send anyone on the wrong side of the line home with no party bag.

So what is a boy like Dave to do? Maybe James Sutherland has the answer:

"Quite simply, he needs to stop looking for trouble. This is the second time he has been before the match referee this season and that's twice too often."

That makes sense. Maybe if cricketers got on with playing cricket instead of behaving like a gaggle of inebriated hooligans looking for a post-pub punch-up, they wouldn't have to worry about the imaginary line. What do you think, Darren?

"David's an aggressive character and we support that."

Well, in that case, I have a suggestion. Next time a player does something crass on the field of play, the ICC should slap his coach with an enormous fine. Perhaps that might concentrate a few minds and enable us to locate the mythical line of acceptable cricket conduct.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/blogs/content/story/822649.html

The ICC's World Cup behavioural regulations revealed

Andrew Hughes


David Warner: Soon to be seen wearing a dunce cap and writing "I will never tell Virat his stubble looks like a baby elephant's backside"

The World Cup is cricket's big day out, or more accurately, cricket's big six and a half weeks out, and so naturally the chaps at the ICC want everything to go smoothly, but like nervous wedding planners, they are having trouble sleeping.

What is it that causes them to wake up screaming in their penthouse suites?

It isn't match-fixing, or ball-tampering or illegal bowling actions, or the fact that two weeks into every World Cup most viewers feel like they are stranded in purgatory facing a trudge through a barren fixture list devoid of surprise, tension or even passing interest, a schedule that could have been designed by Dante to furnish one of his outer circles of hell.

None of that is a problem. What worries them is the thought that the carefully orchestrated extravaganza they have spent months planning will go the way of all disastrous weddings and end in an enormous punch-up.

A football-style brawl on the field of play has long been prophesised, and having spent the last few decades doing absolutely nothing about deteriorating player behaviour, the ICC is now panicking at the prospect of all the world's surliest tantrum-flingers and abuse-dispensers being on the same continent at the same time.

So in the finest traditions of sports administration, it is trying to sort it all out at the last minute with some poorly thought-out emergency measures. These updates to the ICC playing regulations aren't official yet, but having hacked into Dave Richardson's email account (password: BigDave123) I can exclusively reveal them to Long Handle readers:

On-field security
Every World Cup game will be attended by two highly trained security staff, kindly provided by Knuckles Ltd of South London. These shaven-headed gentlemen will be employed to stand around wearing jackets that are too tight and fierce expressions. In the event of anyone causing a bit of bother, they will be invited to "take it outside, sunshine" and propelled in the general direction of the dressing room.

Language police
Bad language has been part of the game ever since the Duke of Richmond first invited the Duke of Cumberland to "kiss my ****** sir!" in a grudge match at the Royal Artillery Ground in 1736. But not any more. The ICC is releasing a 107-page guide listing the swear words, curses, sarcastic phrases and mildly opprobrious remarks which will from now on result in a $1 million fine and a stiff talking to from Richie Benaud.

Gagging order
In the event that any player fails to get it into their tiny brain that verbally abusing an opponent is no longer acceptable, umpires will be permitted to fit gags to the offender's face, preventing them from polluting our ears with their witless badinage. The gags will be provided by Shastri Jaw Ache Solutions of Mumbai, and sponsorship opportunities are available. Act quickly and it could be your company's name emblazoned across David Warner's stopped gob.

Public humiliation
It is a fact that poor behaviour by cricketers was unheard of in the Middle Ages, so the ICC has taken its inspiration from the penal code of 14th-century England. Should any player disgrace themselves in public during the World Cup, he and his coach will be fastened into ICC-approved stocks and the general public invited to pelt him with rotten fruit, putrid vegetables and unsold copies of Kevin Pietersen's book.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/blogs/content/story/823531.html

How can we stop cricket being so entertaining?

James Marsh

These are dangerous times for cricket. It may have survived the apocalyptic threat posed by illegal internet streams, but we're now being warned of a new terror looming on the horizon: batsmen scoring lots of runs in a relentlessly entertaining manner.

You can see it everywhere: AB de Villiers treating the West Indies attack as if it's the West Indies attack. Luke Ronchi treating the Sri Lanka attack the way Chris Gayle treats the concept of feminism. Big Bash batsmen treating Big Bash bowlers as if they'll be forced to introduce David Warner to an easily offended great-aunt unless they strike a boundary every ball. It's worrying stuff, and despite this constant lusty hitting seeming to impress people (not least gullible young children yet to realise the joy of Kraigg Brathwaite's forward-defensive), some pundits are concerned that all this rampant fun is bad for the game. Who's to say they're not right? So, as such, here are five proposals to make cricket less entertaining:

1) Batsmen to use even bigger bats
Much is made of the size of players' blades these days, with many pointing out that batting with a block of wood thicker than the average skinhead's neck might be a little disadvantageous to bowlers. There may be an element of truth to this, but instead of carping about it cynics should encourage Dhoni et al to walk out wielding ever heftier weapons. Eventually there'll be a tipping point when bats become heavier than a rhino thigh and would-be Maxwells will be hoisted on their own unliftable petard by only being able to play the most defensive of forward prods. This may alienate most people except Geoffrey Boycott, but at least we'll see some proper cricket.

2) All pitch-invading seagulls to be shot on sight
As a vegetarian it's tough to propose this, but drastic measures are needed to stop a repeat of the recent joyous incident in the fixture between Melbourne Stars and Perth Scorchers. For those who didn't catch it, an unfortunate seagull was struck by a swipe to midwicket and, presumed departed, had to be carried to the boundary by the perturbed fielder, Rob Quiney. Moments later the ornithological trickster, perhaps forgetting it wasn't a phoenix, had the temerity to rise from the flames of death and reposition itself back in the outfield. The crowd loved it, but in this new age of po-faced cricketing austerity, such flighty japes can't be tolerated. All ground staff to thus be issued with Kalashnikovs and a "Shoot first, sell to KFC later" policy.

3) Ian Healy and James Brayshaw to commentate on all matches for all overs
It's easy to whinge about all Channel Nine's commentary, not least because it's quite often more cringey than your parents telling you about your conception, but there are some standout anti-heroes who genuinely make the blood of cricketing joy drain from the face of even the most committed fan. Healy and Brayshaw are chief among them, chirping on like a pair of parakeets on any subject under the sun bar the actual game itself. If people are enjoying modern cricket too much, a surefire remedy is to make them endure the commentary of these two machismo-banter drones without respite. Supporters will soon be concreting over their own ears.

4) Stadium DJs to play only Leonard Cohen
On a similarly aural note, another trend that has added to the general vivacity of cricket is Kiwi and Australian stadium DJs churning out some eclectic and magnificent tunes in between overs. Recently ODI fans have been treated to a smorgasbord of varied melodic splendour encompassing Radiohead, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Pink Floyd and even a dash of Neil Young. Mixing two of the finest things on the planet, cricket and music, might seem a good idea but it does run the risk of people again regarding the sport as a glorious orgy of entertainment. The proposed remedy is no slight on Leonard Cohen, but what better way to dampen spirits than with the exquisitely morose Canadian troubadour's maudlin classic "Famous Blue Raincoat" being played any time a six is hit? Supporters will soon get the idea.

5) Trevor Chappell to send down all free-hit deliveries
Whenever a bowler oversteps in a T20, the crowd is immediately seized by a frisson of expectation at the prospect of the batsman then being able to have a risk-free wallop. To temper this enthusiasm, the youngest Chappell brother, famed for his morally dubious underarm effort against New Zealand in 1981 to prevent a six off the last delivery of an ODI, shall be employed as a roving free-hit bowling specialist. His unsmashable daisy-cutters will mean the striker can at best take a single to cover. This will ensure none of the current excitement brought about by a bludgeoned maximum can inflict itself on fans.

So, five entirely practical and logical steps to save cricket from the torrent of fun that threatens to consume it. If all else fails, the World Cup could be broadcast in black and white with Sunil Gavaskar brought back to open for India. Actually, on second thoughts, Shikhar Dhawan is currently doing a pretty decent job of making cricket joyless already. As you were, Sunil.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/blogs/content/story/823635.html

In the last World Cup, after 30 days, we were left with the eight traditional Test nations in the quarter-finals. Bangladesh almost sneaked through, England almost sneaked out, and Ireland upset some applecarts, but, essentially, not only would you probably have correctly predicted the quarter-finalists before the tournament began, but you would also probably have correctly predicted them 20 years previously. Or 30 years previously, if you had correctly read the runes that South African politics was going to change a bit. A very big bit.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/blogs/content/story/826379.html