Friday 29 February 2008

Matthew Hayden should lose his book deal

I was very disappointed this week to hear that Matthew Hayden called Harbhajan Singh an "obnoxious weed".

As a senior player in the team, he really should know better than to use such inflammatory language. Clearly he meant noxious weed.

As Hayden is an author, such poor copy-editing should not go unnoticed. I call on ABC Books, publishers of his smash hit book The Matthew Hayden Cookbook, to pull all funding until Hayden goes back to English class.

Whilst I'm sure Harbhajan is obnoxious, a weed can't be obnoxious.

ob·nox·ious

adj.
1. Very annoying or objectionable; offensive or odious: "I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution" Ulysses S. Grant.
2. Archaic Exposed to harm, injury, or evil: "The town ... now lies obnoxious to its foes" John Bunyan.
3. Archaic Deserving of or liable to censure.

nox·ious
adj.
1. Harmful to living things; injurious to health: noxious chemical wastes.
2. Harmful to the mind or morals; corrupting: noxious ideas.

I wait to hear that the BCCI are threatening to pull out of the tour due to Hayden's poor grasp of English.

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Thursday 14 February 2008

Ban Sledging? Monkey Bastards!!

In their latest efforts to control cricket and completely turn it into crap, the BCCI are expected to request a ban on sledging. Seems these monkey bastards have gotten into a big huff in the aftermath of the Sydney Test fiasco and since their guys can't keep up with the rampaging Aussies they're going to try and silence everyone. I wonder how they're going to honestly expect to police this. Are we going to see school kid mentality where players dob others in, "Sir, he called me a dummy!" The simple fact is not all sledging is offensive, some of it is just clever and sometimes people find things offensive that just isn't intended to be, so who is going to objectively enforce it? At the end of the day it's all just gamesmanship, you can't stop it, and you shouldn't try.

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Tuesday 12 February 2008

Matthew Elliot Retires

So, Matthew Elliot decided to retire. As far as his international career is concerned, he'll probably be best remembered (if at all) for running into Mark Waugh back in 1999 and damaging his knee so badly he couldn't play for years. Elliot was one of those players that would score a mountain of runs at state level but never converted it into an international career, and it made me think about those "Champion First Class Players" that just can't seem to cut it on the big stage.

Clearly they have the skill, you just can't keep scoring mountains and mountains of runs or take bags and bags of wickets without having a bit of talent, but at the end of the day I suppose sometimes nerves can get the better of a player and they can freeze up and underperform.

Elliot is a prime example, I think Bichel and Kasprowicz (who incidently has also retired just recently) are bowlers that never quite made it despite showing so much form at state level. I suppose in a way Michael Bevan was another example (at least at test level) along with Simon Katich and maybe Chris Rogers...

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Tuesday 5 February 2008

Effigies of Handled the Baller writers burnt on the street

Indian Cricket fans have reacted angrily at comments about the BCCI and Harbhjan on the popular cricket blog Handled the Ball by burning effigies of the writers on the streets.

As the photos below graphically show, an effigy of Scott in an Australian playing guernsey was prepared to be burnt in front of school children, whilst West and Steve Bucknor (who came under enormous flack after the Sydney test) were portrayed as donkeys with misspelt names.

HTB writers have remained silent on the issue, however Greg Chappell and Sourav Ganguly - who have both been burnt many times - stated that such a burning was actually a sign of affection.






Thanks to The Corridor (A Cricket Blog) for the pics

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