AB de Villiers wants a cake-eating window

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Photo by Sarah Ansell
Photo by Sarah Ansell

AB de Villiers wants to retain The Cake of International Cricket and also eat The Lucrative Cake of T20 Franchise Cricket. It doesn’t sound so ludicrous an ambition until you examine the bizarre cake-for-cake barter system that is currently in operation.

Under current law, The Lucrative Cake of T20 Franchise Cricket can only be acquired in full by trading in The Cake of International Cricket. ‘Up with this I will not put,’ says De Villiers. ‘This will not stand‘.

That’s the way we’re reading the recent comments of South Africa’s new Test captain anyway. He says Test cricket is “the main format” and that his focus is on international cricket – but he also says he’s playing too much cricket and that he “cannot ignore” some of the “big tournaments going on around the world at the moment.”

We’re absolutely in agreement that there is too much international cricket, but all his talk of needing a break could be a bit misleading. We suspect that what he actually wants is a whole wall of double-glazed windows in international cricket which would allow him to take part in the IPL, the Big Bash, The Caribbean Premier League and whatever else might pay well.

He wants to gorge on the The Lucrative Cake of T20 Franchise Cricket and then return to the still intact Cake of International Cricket, safe in the knowledge he isn’t missing out on anything.

He wants a cake-eating window.

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?

20 comments

  1. Oh! how the tables have reversed

    Captain quits midway during home series & Star player wants to semi-retire so that he can turn-out for IPL. Only thing missing is for (leaked news about) AB secretly dissing Amla to Compton …

    Is there some spooky quantum entanglement at play here?

    Or is it Karma catching up with the South African team? I can imagine the Ghost of KP’s career cackling deliriously in the background

  2. I have several questions.

    What is the relative size of these cakes?

    Could part of one (say, Test Tarte Tatin or an Ashes Apple Cake) be exchanged for the entirety of the other (a Ram Slam Rock Cake, or Big Bash Butterfly Cake)?

    Is a cup of tea included with the purchase of said cake?

    Is there a way I can work in a ‘flat as a pancake’ comment about recent Test pitches?

    1. He’s not wrong, oh King. Why are you wasting your time on actual cricketing opinions and players when you could be working on, say, a cook book? Your talent is wasted here.

  3. I’ve never managed to get my head around the old saying, “you cannot have your cake and eat it”. There is really not much point having a cake unless you eat it.

    Unless it is a wedding cake or some sort of celebratory thing which is for ornamental purposes only, but most cakes are not that and I don’t think the “cake and eat it” expression is talking about that sort of ornamental cake.

    Indeed, on the one occasion I have had such an ornamental cake – click here to see it the cake in fact was comprehensively eaten and only the ornamentation was preserved. So even then we had our cake and ate it.

    In short, the saw is fundamentally flawed.

    1. Think we’ve had the ‘cake and eat it’ discussion on here before. It’s more accurately worded, “eat your cake and also retain it.”

      We suppose the cake doesn’t cease to exist once consumed, but it does cease to be recognisable as a cake, so in that respect you no longer ‘have’ it. The concept of the cake is no more, even if its constituent parts are being broken down and put to use within your body. Or are being shat out.

      1. I do like a bit of existentialism on the evening before a test match. It gives one a good perspective on life, eternity and the rarefied atmosphere of the Highveld.

        Eternity is an awfully long time, especially towards the end.

  4. I’m glad my kitchen isn’t fitted with a cake-eating window: it sounds voracious and I’d rather prefer to eat the cake myself.

  5. Meanwhile, it transpires that our boys have all had a dose of the raging Jonathans in the build up to today’s match.

    Full of runs.

    1. Yarp, he’s making things happen. Already he’s made Hashim Amla coming to the wicket to bat forever happen.

  6. No.

    25.4
    Stokes to Amla, FOUR, sits up and begs, and Amla obliges with a spanking pull, right on top of the bounce. Rolls his wrists well and keeps it down through midwicket

    Ben Stokes makes spanking happen.

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