County cricket

What are they feeding them in Northamptonshire?

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It must be very calorifically dense. Earlier in the year, we pointed out that Rory Kleinveldt’s nickname could never be Kleinsvelte, but the South African doesn’t appear to be an outlier. He plays in a muscular-yet-flabby team that appears to be getting most its protein from pork belly and fried chicken.

But great weight is better able to carry that most vital of all cricket commodities – momentum. Despite the efforts of the frequently-mentioned-on-this-website-this-season Keaton Jennings, they swanned to the T20 Blast title with aplomb. Shit trophy though. Seeing Alex Wakely hold aloft a big metal Natwest logo seemed odd in the extreme.

We missed much of the final. Our abiding memory of Finals Day will therefore be the contribution of Durham’s Mark Wood in the semi-final against Yorkshire. Joe Root – a handy batsman – was beaten multiple times, while his England colleagues Jonny Bairstow and Gary Ballance were both comprehensively dismissed.

Northamptonshire aren’t afraid of Wood fire though. Anything but. All it did was encourage them to think of their victory pizzas.

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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Default ThumbnailIs Rory Kleinveldt the archetypal South African pro?

36 comments

  1. I touched the big metal NatWest logo when the Bears won it in 2014.

    It was not as heavy as you would expect.

    1. What in blazes were you doing putting your greasy paws all over that? You’re not a Natwest T20 Blast winning cricketer. Are you?

      2. Porterfield looks tiny and about twelve in that picture, Sam. Did you give him a swig from the “shrink me” bottle before the photo was taken?

        Nice article, btw. Bearing [sic] your soul.

      3. I’m actually nine feet tall.

        That was genuinely one of the greatest moments of my life. Closely followed by marriage, birth of kids and sealing the Axa Equity and Law League at Bristol in 1994.

  2. Excellent pay-off line at the end of this piece, KC. Some of us notice these things.

    In other news, this week’s Twitter round up is great fun, not least the Charles Dagnall “six tyres” tweet:

    http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/1047733.html

    I was half expecting a “folk handles” type joke, but the reality is funnier than a joke, when “Daggers” publishes a picture to prove the veracity of his tyre offer.

    Looking closely at the photo, I notice a single welly as well as the six tyres. Do you think Mr Dagnall would throw in the welly along with the tyres, KC? Could you ask him please – it might swing the decision for someone on whether or not to take up Daggers offer.

    Mind you, I cannot see BailOut’s timid “free cottage in the Dordogne-avoiding” mate Richard H taking up such a puny freebie offer.

      1. Indeed, BailOut, I think the on-line review which read, ““DO NOT STAY THERE, you’d be better off in a cardboard box” rather summed the place up.

        It’s just a shame that the on-line review site started in 2007, after we stayed there in 2006.

        The things some of us have been through in the cause of watching cricket.

      1. Ignore that, i had just eaten all my cookies.

        Admittedly it’s been a quiet Sunday but i can’t find a 4 candles joke about 6 tyres,

      2. I did construct in my brain a sort-of six tyres equivalent of the fork handles jok.

        A Kiwi (who delivers the pay off line) explains that he (or she) is from the HR department. Rather than asking for half-a-dozen rubber wheel covers, he (or she) is asking for gender balance in the recruitment process…

        …but I decided that the joke was a little too convoluted, even for King Cricket comment purposes.

    4. I dreamt I met Vaughan last night and he was just as big a tosser as you’d expect him to be in person.

      1. We saw him in Costa Coffee once. We were having a meeting with someone who seemed convinced that we would be massively keen to agree to do terrible work for poor money having been given minimal details of how it would all work.

      3. I hope we’ll see both Vaughan sightings (the Mike dream sequence and the KC Costa one) in Cricket Badger at some point.

      4. It was some kind of hold-up/hostage situation in a hardware store or similar. Which is a pretty stupid place to have such a thing, but heh, it’s my dream. He was arrogant, rude and belittling towards anyone who wanted to talk to him.

  3. Maybe it’s the ock ‘n’ dough (“pork scraps, such as hock or rib meat, with sliced potato, onion, stock and herbs baked in a dish the sides and part of the base of which are lined with suet pastry”)?

  4. At one point in the commentary, David Lloyd said that Jennings had “picked up Kleinveldt over long on”. Strong lad.

  6. I see that India are so worried about the mace that they have been secretly pouring buckets of water on the outfield at Port of Spain. South Africa seem to be pre-emptively doing something similar in Durban.

    1. Pakistan rising to World Number One by dint of washout in foreign fields seems distinctly unpakistani to me. England fans have given supplications to the rain-gods for many a decade, it would somehow have seemed more fitting for a downpour to bring about an English ascension. (Or to be fair, even more fitting for it to bring about England being dethroned.)

    2. To be fair to the Saffers, they were probably quaking in their boots at the prospect of a fresh and fully-rested TGNW charging in with bustling fast-medium after only 15 overs in the first innings and a couple of days with his feet up; they knew the game was up, so surrendered to the weather accordingly to save sporting armageddon.

  8. The Sledgehammer of Eternal Justice will rise up once more and shove it up your arses.

    I have literally lost the ability to spake.

    1. Can we recall him for the first Test, where he’ll inevitably score a big hundred; then drop him before the remaining series of one fifty, four pretty twenties, and three single-figure scores?

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