Jesse Ryder

Jesse Ryder adds weight to New Zealand’s middle order

The score was 23-3. Jesse Ryder knew what he had to do.

He started the gentle rocking motion that would propel him out of his chair and when he had enough momentum, he went for the stand. A shower of crisp crumbs indicated success. He stretched his arms up and half a crumpet that had been caught in a fold dropped to the floor. Jesse ignored it.

“Roll me to the crease, boys,” he instructed and his team mates did as he bid. Martin Guptill had been dismissed and he confided in Ryder: “They’re the ones who hid your Yorkies,” pointing at the Indians.

Sweating ever-so-slightly, Jesse took guard. He was less unnerved by the 20 over wait until lunch than he normally would be, because the Indians’ sweet-treat-hiding behaviour had woken something in him; a blazing rage that could not be extinguished.

They had hidden his Yorkie bars. They would pay.

Ross Taylor hit a hundred too, but he’s thin, so he doesn’t get his own post.

Jesse Ryder’s first Test hundred

New Zealand’s third wicket fell. Jesse Ryder picked up his bat, lay down on the outfield and commanded his team mates: “Roll me out there. I’ve got a job to do.”

Without having had inadequate preparation for once, Ryder was primed for action. He brushed the chocolate digestive crumbs off his whites with a doughy paw, slowly levered himself to his feet and took guard, panting and groaning slightly.

The thousands of cruel comments throughout his childhood rendered Jesse impervious to the Indians’ sledging. The thousands of custard creams he’d had in the preceding months rendered him impervious to their well directed bouncers.

Today, Jesse Ryder scored a Test match hundred. So did Daniel Vettori, but he’s thin, so he doesn’t get his own post.

Jesse Ryder quarantined

We have never once seen someone quarantined without dire consequences for everyone on earth.

It starts with vomiting. It ends with zombies or a flesh-eating virus. Maybe there’s an alien gestating inside Jesse Ryder as we speak – Lord knows, there’s room for one.

It’s at times like this that we should all be thankful that Australia’s just a tiny, tiny island miles from anywhere with no inhabitants. The quarantined area can be expanded to incorporate the whole continent and then, in 200 years time when the fuss has all died down, we can venture in to see what happened.

Of course there is a chance that the doctors have merely overreacted to the fact that Jesse isn’t eating. We can see why they might. He doesn’t look like the kind of man who’s easily stopped when there’s a cream bun in his orbit.

No matter how it starts, it always ends up as a Jesse Ryder is fat post.

Jesse Ryder’s back

Is broad and pudgy and malleable like plasticine. It’s an amorphous, wobbling built-in cushion so he can lie down anywhere and feel comfortable.

It’s also a trap. When Jesse Ryder needs to take all that weight off his feet, he plonks himself down and leans into his back’s exquisitely welcoming blubber. It may offer excellent lumbar support, but from this position he’s unable to rise again. He flails around like an upturned beetle until a passing forklift spies him and rescues him from his plight.

In other news, Jesse Ryder is in New Zealand’s Test squad for the tour of Bangladesh.

Jesse Ryder injures himself gaining entrance to a toilet

Jesse Ryder, you really do appear in the most spectacularly glorious stories.

Jesse Ryder injured himself while he was out drinking to celebrate New Zealand’s one-day series win over England. Did he injure himself in a fight? No. Did he injure himself trying to break into a toilet? Yes.

He’s gashed his hand punching through a pane of glass, by the sounds of it. It’s all a little opaque.

New Zealand’s manager, Lindsay Crocker, said: “It was one of those semi-detached toilets with the lock on the outside. There was no one in there and there was a little glass panel next to it and he put his hand through it – quite forcibly, obviously – to unlock it, and that is when he did the damage.”

Semi-detached toilets? What?

Jesse Ryder’s weight

Cricinfo’s Statsguru can produce all sorts of valuable reports for you. However, there’s one that it can’t produce, which would be just about priceless to us. It can’t list every single person who’s played international cricket in order of weight, with Warwick Armstrong at the top and Parthiv Patel at the bottom.

Jesse Ryder would feature towards the top of that list. In fact, let’s invert it. It’s only right that all that weight should sink to the bottom, although fat floats, so maybe we were right the first time. In any case, Jesse’s towards the fat end of the spectrum and is therefore given a green light here at King Cricket.

With Inzy having shrunk and subsequently retired and Mark Cosgrove still failing to make the grade, there’s a lot of weight on Jesse’s shoulders – though not as much as is clinging to his abdomen.