Cricket media

Nasser Hussain describes one or two India players as ‘donkeys’

The BCCI are pissed off because Nasser Hussain said some of the India players were donkeys in the field. British viewers will find the comments below pretty innocuous, because ‘donkey’ is pretty common slang over here when referring to less athletic fielders. We’re guessing the term isn’t used so much in India though.

King Cricket wields a staggering degree of influence

We’ve an announcement to make.

Remember how we got unjustifiably worked up about the shape of the K in the middle of the new logo for The Cricketer? Well, we’ve just had word from their offices and it seems that they’ve been moved to carry out AN OFFICIAL REVIEW.

That’s right, King Cricket words CAN lead to action.

We have the power to make people carefully consider the shape of letters they use in the middle of words, provided lots of other people independently take issue with the exact same letter and also voice their displeasure.

What influence. This is how Martin Luther King must have felt.

Newsreader’s ’small and impressive’ joke about the Ashes

Brian pointed us towards this. We haven’t really got anything to add.

Not enough Blu-Tack in cricket

You know it and we know it too.

Thankfully, there’s a little bit of Blu-Tack on the Wisden Cricketer blog at the moment.

The bit where some of the Blu-Tack looks sad is a high point.

Geoff Boycott fourth Test Ashes prediction failure

Sam writes:

First morning of the fourth Test on Test Match Special.

Geoff Boycott: “I can’t see any way England are going to win this.”
Jonathan Agnew: “We’ve only had 12 minutes!”
Geoff Boycott: “Well, I’m supposed to know what I’m talking about. That’s why I’m the expert and you’re the commentator.”

Boycott’s argument was based on the supposed flatness of the pitch, but it smacked of a five-year-old child waking up on Christmas morning, rushing downstairs, ripping open his present to find a Playstation 3, jamming the scart socket into the back of the TV, finding that nothing appears on the screen and then stamping his feet and screaming.

Three days later he has completed Gran Turismo 5, eaten too many mince pies and learned absolutely nothing.

Straight Outta Surrey – cricket, Received Pronunciation and hip hop, together at last

Have you ever thought to yourself how hip hop music could be improved if the artists used Received Pronunciation and made tracks about cricket?

Thought so.

Thanks to Vil for pointing us towards this and apologies to those of you who knew about Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer already and are absolutely staggered that we’re so slow with these things.

Actually, no, not sorry. Sod you. We pride ourself on not knowing what’s going on in the world. We will not apologise for that.

The Cricket Sadists’ Monthly

Jarrod Balls – as we’re going to start calling him, because it’ll get on his nerves – has put together an alternative cricket magazine with help from some friends. Many of you will already know about it, because you seem to have written a proportion of it.

It’s called the Cricket Sadists’ Monthly and we’re told it came out on the 1st. If it didn’t, sorry, but to be fair, we are on a plane somewhere over the Middle East right now. We’re not in a position to keep tabs on these things.

In one column, Ian O’Brien tells you what professional cricketers eat. That’s the kind of stuff we want to know.

NEW OBSESSION: Danny Morrison commentary

We haven’t had a weird obsession with a trivial element of cricket in ages. Luckily Danny Morrison’s bizarrely beguiling intonation has stepped into the breach.

Hanging on his every word

We don’t dislike Danny Morrison, but he’s not a good commentator. Despite this, we find ourself listening to him far more closely than any other IPL commentator. This is because we’re fascinated with his halting, percussive speech patterns. We wrote about a fairly typical piece of Danny Morrison commentary last week. He basically talks in unrelated bullet points.

But the staccato delivery’s not even half of it. His commentary’s weirder still when he draws out his sentences to give added emphasis. What he’s actually saying pretty much never warrants that emphasis, so you find yourself in a constant state of puzzlement.

Pay attention: significant plot development

The best way we can describe it is that it’s as if Morrison is narrating the match, rather than commentating on it. What we mean by this is that he describes a leg-bye as if he KNOWS that this is a match-turning event; as if he’s already privy to what’s going to happen later on and is giving you hints.

There are only two ways to react:

1. Be absolutely baffled as to why this is a significant moment
2. Be absolutely baffled as to why Danny Morrison feels it necessary to make this seem like a significant moment

Why does he do this?

Our guess is that he feels obliged to make every on-field event sound momentous. By applying an excitable, momentous way of speaking when describing inconsequential events, he confuses everyone.

Mandira Bedi, IPL presenter on ITV4, has a high percentage of her face taken up by eyes

It’s astonishing. We’d say that around 10 per cent of Mandira Bedi’s face is eyes.

That’s an unusually high percentage, particularly when you consider she’s only got two of them.

Imagine if she had three!

Also worth imagining is what she’d look like if she attempted the patented Damien Martyn ‘I can see into your soul’ technique.

Mandira Bedi would be able to see into your soul through a brick a wall from three miles away.

Cricket podcasts – why they’re better than real life

1. You only have to talk about cricket, meaning you can’t be exposed as the one-dimensional freak who’s lost touch with the wider world that really are
2. Whenever you say something stupid or your brain comes to a grinding halt, Andy Zaltzman takes those bits out

Listen to the latest episode of Andy Zaltzman’s World Cricket Podcast to hear us talking about Darren Gough ‘gesturing’ at the crowd as well as the potential for sponsored comfort breaks.

Andy himself tells us on what basis he’s settled on the Deccan Chargers as his IPL team (it’s to do with the second part of their name).