Extras

Yearning for a good old-fashioned display of incompetence

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< 1 minute read

Writing this kind of a website, there’s an optimum level of seriousness when it comes to bad news. Good news is hard to write about, but so is truly bad news like the current Jonathan Trott thing.

What’s easiest is a good old-fashioned display of incompetence. That gives you something to rant about as well as people to ridicule. It’s only funny to get so het up about sport if everyone fundamentally understands that it’s not really worth getting all that het up about. To some extent, the joke’s always on us.

But with Trott, what do you do? You feel like you should tackle the story because it’s such big news – but at the same time, the self-importance of the sport and its media aren’t in the foreground asking to be mocked.

We’ve done a piece for Cricinfo. It’s not about Jonathan Trott, but it’s linked.

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?

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13 comments

    1. Pretty sure the possibility of ignoring it will be proven as the day wears on. But thanks for the other half of that.

  3. Nice piece, KC. For a moment I thought you’d written it before the recent news about Trott.

    I’d be interested in your thoughts on what the match referee might say to the two captains ahead of the second test, in order to ‘calm things down’. Here’s the scenario I imagine:

    Match Referee: Clarkey, mate, I need you to ratchet back the sledging a little this match, OK? No more getting ready for bleepin’ broken arms, mate. What do you think?
    Clarke: Well, what can I go for … broken wrist? broken elbow?
    MR: Need to ratchet back a little bit more, mate.
    Clarke: Hand?
    MR: A little bit more, come on, now, you can do it, mate.
    Clarke: Fingers? Finger?
    MR: There you go, easy, isn’t it?
    Clarke: S’pose so.
    MR: Try it.
    Clarke: Get ready to have your finger broken. Hmmm. Can I use an expletive?
    MR: You can chose one from the new ICC approved Ashes list.
    Clarke: OK. Get ready to have your BLOODY finger broken.
    MR: Perfect. Now, Cooky, mate. It’s pretty simple for England. How about you just drop Broady, KP, Rooty, Belly and Jimmy?
    Cook: Is that it?
    MR: And you can’t pick Monty. That’d be just asking for trouble.

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