Acquiescence and the art of securing an unremarkable defeat

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England scored not-enough-runs and then India made slightly more. England’s wasn’t so much a one-day innings as an impression of a one-day innings; an approximation involving steady accumulation and later acceleration, only without either segment being quite what it should have been.

We get the impression that Alastair Cook had given a pre-match rallying speech along these lines:

“Come on! Let’s lose this! Let’s go out there, give it not quite our best shot and lose this.

 

“I don’t want you to go out there, risking everything in pursuit of victory. I’d far rather we acquiesced to defeat and secured it in a slightly more respectable manner. Batsmen: establish the optimum balance between risk and reward and then drop it down a few notches.

 

“If we do this, we should end up with a total that won’t be chased down too soon, but which isn’t so intimidating that India will feel they really need to go after the bowling. Let’s lose this lads! Let’s lose this in unremarkable fashion.”

Assuming this is what happened – mission accomplished.

DON'T BE LIKE GATT!

Mike Gatting wasn't receiving the King Cricket email when he dropped that ludicrously easy chance against India in 1993.

Coincidence?

Why risk it when it's so easy to sign up?

11 comments

    1. There’s… um… there’s another one as well. Same word, later on. Sorry KC. I can’t help myself.

    2. Clearly our fingers don’t like typing that many vowels in a row – it’s just too French.

  1. Grammar horror and grocers’ apostrophe catastrophe.

    Woe is me.

    I’ve had a tough enough day already and now I return home to this.

  2. India beat England in a boring match.
    There I said in 7 words what you said in 174 words(assuming hyphenated words are counted as one, and igoring your shameful marketing attempts at the bottom of the post)

    Yes, I need to get a life.

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