Michael Vaughan

Artballing – we love the use of the word “accurately”

Remember Michael Vaughan’s paint thing? He was commissioned to produce a painting of the Chevrolet Cruze.

“The painting took eight hours to create with Vaughan calling on his cricketing expertise to accurately recreate the bodywork, tyres and alloys on canvas using five different coloured cricket balls and over 20 litres of paint.”

It’s uncanny.

We love artballing. We love how it’s shit.

Michael Vaughan wants South Africans DEAD

There’s a beautifully hazy piece in The Independent today on Michael Vaughan’s comments about South African born cricketers representing England.

Essentially, his thoughts about how some South African players come to England for money have been presented as if he’s saying that Kevin Pietersen should be dropped because he was born in South Africa.

Taking the headline from Vaughan’s thoughts about Kevin Pietersen’s poor form, “Vaughan calls for Pietersen to be dropped from side,” the opening line then sums up Vaughan’s comments about something completely different and makes his view slightly more extreme to boot: “Michael Vaughan wants South Africa-born cricketers to be disallowed from playing for England.”

As far as we can tell, Vaughan said that if any South African born batsman were to be dropped, it would be Kevin Pietersen on current form. He also said that he had ‘a bit of a problem’ with some (not all) South African born cricketers playing for England, saying that ideally all England players would be as English as possible, while admitting that will never happen.

Ask Michael Vaughan a question

Recovered England captain, Michael Vaughan, is being interviewed tomorrow (Thursday) and you may be able to have your question put to him if you comment here.

We would ask him to conjugate a verb and then watch him fall at the first-person hurdle.

Then we would ask him the one question that we always ask people: if you could have an additional body part taken from another animal, what would you have and why?

Update: CNN International want us to credit CNN International in this post and point out that some of these suggested questions will be put to Vaughan on air on CNN International.

Why is Michael Vaughan not in England’s Ashes squad?

Because he’s busy scoring tens of runs for Yorkshire and pensively rubbing his knee when in the field. Seven first-class innings, 147 runs at 21 with a top score of 43. County cricket can consider itself safe from combustion.

It’s common for people to say that Michael Vaughan has ‘class’, but without being allied to fitness and a single-minded attitude, that unquantifiable attribute doesn’t count for much. We’ve a suspicion that Vaughan’s batting started to decline around the time he started becoming a property magnate.

While twatting painted balls against canvas isn’t too distracting, Vaughan’s also taken on things like becoming head of corporate leisure for the Skelwith Group. Outside interests are good, but can you spin so many plates with your fingers in so many pies. If you try and spin the plate using the pies, you’ll only damage the pies and probably spazz the plates over as well.

Far better to put the pies on the plates and leave them somewhere safe while you go and hit a few balls in the nets.

Michael Vaughan’s paint thing

You’ll have heard of Michael Vaughan’s ‘artballing’ by now. He throws, hits and bowls paint-covered cricket balls against a canvas and what results is branded ‘art’.

Vaughan took this up as part of his winter getting away from cricket. We’re not entirely sure whether this really counts as ‘getting away from cricket’. If Vaughan thinks it does, he’s rather lacking in imagination.

If you do something for a living, doing the exact same thing only with the odd implement dipped in paint isn’t ‘getting away from it’.

If you were a mechanic and at the end of the day you were sick of work, would you spend eight hours working on a car using a spanner that had been dunked in red Dulux?

No. Chances are that might seem just a bit too similar to work.

We did a rare half-decent post about this artballing lark, so we gave it to The Wisden Cricketer where it would be more at home.

Don’t totally discard Michael Vaughan

“The best thing for me is to try and get back to being best batsmen I can be.”

Fair point. If they didn’t have to drop you, you wouldn’t be losing the captaincy and if you scored more runs, maybe the series would have gone better.

Michael Vaughan now knows that everything isn’t scripted especially for him.

He had to convince everyone he could successfully come back from injury a year ago. He made a hundred in his first innings back. That probably sent him over.

All the effort, all the hard work was instantly vindicated. Put that into the head of a captain who’d received one too many plaudits for an unexpected Ashes win and he maybe gets a bit ahead of himself.

Vaughan never makes runs in county cricket, but tells himself and us that he’s above that. He’s not.

An element of complacency seems to have set in – certainly in his own game. It was always a magic ball. A big score was always just round the corner. Maybe he didn’t really mean it when he said things like that, but it certainly seemed like he did.

Michael Vaughan was a great captain, but like most British sports people, he only really paid lip service to the philosophy of constant improvement that’s the hallmark of true success. Either that or he responded to pressure and criticism in an arrogant way that gave that impression.

If it’s the latter, he’s screwed. That basically just means that he’s not good enough and gets a bit defensive about his shortcomings.

If he did just get a bit lazy, then at least there’s something he can do about it – and he’s the kind of guy who would do something about it. His pride’s been clean bowled first ball and Vaughan’s a proud man.

Half-cut and half-asleep. We’ll come back to this another time.

Come in number six – your time is up

Shove Michael Vaughan down to number six – that’s where England keep their worst batsman.

Paul Collingwood seems likely to lose his place. He has another innings, but does he honestly look like a man who’ll make use of it? It’s the latest chapter in England’s number six saga and after Tim Ambrose’s brief appearance in the slot, the chapters are getting shorter.

Where other nations value their number six batsman, England use it as a dumping ground for the newest arrival to the team, the most likely departure from it, or, in the case of Ambrose, whoever’s left over.

South Africa have vehement letter C denier, AB de Villiers, batting at six. India have VVS Laxman. India’s number sixes have averaged 13 runs more than England’s since 2000. Even Bangladesh’s average more and you’re not even supposed to include Bangladesh when you talk about Test cricket, because it’s an unwritten rule that they don’t count.

Vaughan won’t move to six, because he’ll see it as a demotion, but that’s because of the way England treat the slot. If number six weren’t such a tainted limbo, maybe the fall of the fourth wicket wouldn’t send such shockwaves through the side and maybe the earlier batsmen wouldn’t live in constant fear of that.

England v South Africa, third Test at Edgbaston, day one
England 231 all out (Alastair Cook 76, Ian Bell 50, Jacques Kallis 3-31, Andre Nel 3-47)
South Africa 38-1

Less tweediness from Strauss’s team mates

Remember how Andrew Strauss was going to GET THE JOB DONE? Ceci sent more pictures, saying:

“Squire Hoggard and the chav Vaughan. KP however will always be an alien life form to me. I’d like to say the rough edges are there as an ironic statement, but of course I would be a big fat liar.”

This one we can take, even if the dog on the left is a bit… visible.

This is harder to take. Don’t look at the weirdly taut groin, whatever you do.

And this one – we don’t know what to say about this one.

You people know that graphic designers read this site, don’t you? Imagine how they feel being so comprehensively outshone.

Michael Vaughan and Alastair Cook keep panic at bay

It was far from a classic Test match. It felt like it was mapped out from the start and the players were just doing what they were expected to do.

Now we’re no strangers to going through the motions, but we don’t put a professional veneer on like the cricketers did. It’s deceitful. The more worthy approach is to wallow in your half-heartedness, perhaps by referring to it directly in the second paragraph of a post.

We liked what Michael Vaughan and Alastair Cook did though – a hundred partnership in each innings. Vaughan’s always looked best as an opener and it’s refreshing to have a right-hander in that role for once.

It wasn’t a difficult batting pitch, but Vaughan and Cook are two players you want in the England side and they’re probably in their best batting positions. Bad news for Andrew Strauss, who’s currently masquerading as a really, really early arriving member of England’s squad to tour New Zealand. He’s signed with Northern Districts.

Sri Lanka v England, second Test at Columbo – day four
England 351 all out (Michael Vaughan 87, Alastair Cook 81, Matt Prior 79, Muttiah Muralitharan 5-116, Lasith Malinga 3-78)
Sri Lanka 548-9 declared (Mahela Jayawardene 195, Michael Vandort 138, Prasanna Jayawardene 79, Ryan Sidebottom 3-100, Steve Harmison 3-111)
England 250-3 (Alastair Cook 62, Michael Vaughan 61, Ian Bell 54)
Match drawn