Cricket media

Cricket headlines with puns in them

There’s a brilliant pun-based board game from the Eighties called You Must Be Joking which must be adored by cricket headline writers. Those guys just can’t let a pun pass them by.

We describe that game as ‘brilliant’, but actually it was anything but. The full title was You Must Be Joking – the punsational play on words game.

If you’re going to have a game about wordplay, you might want to do a bit better than ‘punsational’ on the front of the box. You Must Be Joking also boasted of being a game ‘suitable for ages 6-10 and over’ – so six and over then.

We’re not a huge fan of punning headlines. Today’s unspectacular effort is from the BBC after Dougie Bollinger bowled Australia to victory against Pakistan:

Bollinger fizz hands Aussies win

Richie Benaud to stop commentating

Apart from a brief, meaningless stint at the BBC during the World Cup, we haven’t had Richie Benaud on TV in the UK for a good few years, but it was somehow reassuring to know that he was still leaving his trademark massive great pauses during every day of every Test Down Under.

Sadly, at the end of next season, Richie’s retiring from the commentary box. We’re not really prone to emotions, unless ‘getting distracted’ is an emotion, but this is a blow – an inevitable blow, but a blow nonetheless.

We don’t feel it’s overstating things to say that a small part of all of us will die the day Richie steps down. It will be a tiny part of the brain that responds to blue skies, lengthening days and Test cricket. It’s activated by a soft, familiar, Australian voice saying ‘good morning everybody.’

Mark Nicholas presents Britain’s Best Dish

Did you know about this? Why did no-one tell us?

Here’s what the Britain’s Best Dish site says:

“After a hugely successful transition to cuisine, Mark has returned to present the second series of Britain’s Best Dish.”

We suppose that if you make a hugely successful transition into something, you’re left with no choice.

So what exactly happens on the show?

Well, some people make some food and then some judges say which food’s best. To better ratchet up the tension, Nicholas announces the results over a slow, muffled beat and then a cheap Casio keyboard plays a short ‘ta-daaaa’ fanfare to honour the victor. The Wire it ain’t.

Also, Nicholas dresses like a snooker player throughout. The exact reason for this is unclear.

One of the judges is Jilly ‘damn it woman, just tell me if it’s nice or not’ Goolden. Apparently, her interests include gardening, animals, wildlife, horses, ghosts and palmistry, which we thought was worth sharing, even though it’s wholly unrelated to cricket.

The title for this post could easily have been: ‘Mark Nicholas – Britain’s Best Dish’.

You’ll notice that it isn’t that.

Mike Selvey leaves TMS

Or rather, Mike Selvey is asked to leave TMS.

We’ve had a few goes at writing this where we’ve tried to compare Selvey to his likely replacements, but that’s not the point. The point is simple.

Mike Selvey has spent a lifetime thinking about cricket. He has interesting thoughts on the game. He is good.

Not mentioning any bow-tied, blathering names, but there are people in the TMS box who should go before Selvey. And not mentioning any other names (we’ll include a link instead) but there are people who perhaps shouldn’t appear further.

Producer Adam Mountford explains himself in an article in which he also, contradictorily, claims to need more presenters due to TMS covering more matches. (We’re not providing a link to that article as a petty protest.)

And one thing we will say about Selvey’s likely replacements (even though we said we wouldn’t) is that the ‘more recent Test cricketers’ that Mountford wants to introduce might by their very nature be less impartial.

Not that you can be ‘less impartial’. You either are or you aren’t. And they won’t be. And Mike Selvey is.

Summer’s not over

The Tests are over, the weather’s cooling down, we’re nearly out of bank holidays. It’s about this time of year that all our thoughts turn to suicide – but wait!

Before we wade through the pessimism of another laboured one-day series, there’s a redeeming feature.

There it is, midway down the most recent TMS blog post by producer Adam Mountford. Actually, we say ‘midway down’ but it’s pretty close to the end. In reality it should be in the very first paragraph. In fact it should be the frigging headline:

“… with contributions from South African broadcaster Neil Manthorpe.”

They may not know how to spell his surname, but they do know how to employ him – and that’s the main thing.

We’re going to make it all the way into September in the company of the author of The Beer Drinker’s Guide to Losing Weight. Rejoice people. Rejoice!

More Neil Manthorp

Neil has been earnestly telling Test Match Special listeners how sandwiches are 99p after 7pm in the shop near where he’s staying.

TMS make a grave, grave error every time they don’t use this man for a match.

Neil Manthorp on TMS

Having badmouthed TMS last week, we feel that we should redress the balance and one person we’ve really warmed to has been South African journalist Neil Manthorp.

Somehow we’ve never heard a lot of Manthorp before, or maybe we just haven’t noticed him, but on scant evidence he’s now our favourite.

Manthorp does all the everyday commentary stuff well, but what really appeals is the fact that he’s irrepressibly jovial. Not in a forced laughter ‘aren’t I the life and soul’ kind of way. He’s just one of those people who finds things funny.

He’s not an imbecile. Not by any stretch. He’s not someone who just laughs at things like he’s been overmedicated. He just seems to have joyful mirth constantly bubbling beneath the surface.

A good example would be the teaming of him with Boycott. Where Mark Pougatch gets contradicted and practically whimpers before backpedalling, Manthorp laughs – and genuinely too.

The two of them were talking about Paul Harris. Boycott plainly stated that he things Paul Harris is crap. Manthorp presumably knows Harris quite well, but rather than get remotely upset, he instead pisses himself laughing at Geoffrey’s blunt dismissal. And you know what? When he finds it funny, it IS funny.

Shortly afterwards A B de Villiers reached his hundred. Manthorp was briefly caught up with the moment, before again descending into laughter. Why? Because the crowd were booing de Villiers. For some commentators this would be a sad thing, but Manthorp saw the funny side and effortlessly made you see the funny side too.

From now on, we’re going to imagine Neil Manthorp’s commentating on our everyday life. Stubbed toes will become things of joy. Lost keys will become hilarious.

Mark Pougatch on TMS

We’ve nothing against Mark Pougatch personally, but he doesn’t bring a great deal to Test Match Special. It smacks of the Manish Bhasin debacle during the Ashes and the World Cup.

On the plus side, at least he doesn’t sound like some throwback to the British Raj, unlike some of his colleagues. You don’t hear accents like those in our neck of the woods and we don’t think it does cricket’s image any great favours.

We’ve nothing against old-school Received Pronunciation, but it’s a bit overrepresented in the TMS box.

Our last post at The Wisden Cricketer blog was about Pougatch. They’ve got an RSS feed over there now, so we won’t have to do this linking to our own words thing again for a while.

Video of Dimitri Mascarenhas’s five sixes to end England’s innings