Tag: Cricket

7 Reasons That Not Having a Key is Frustrating

My key isn’t working, and this is going to be a difficult thing to convey to you, but I don’t mean the key to a door, a safe or a bicycle lock. I mean a key on my keyboard. My comuter keyboard. But I can’t tell you which key isn’t working, because I can’t tye the damned letter because the key isn’t working. Just to be clear about it though, it’s the letter that comes between O and Q in the alhabet and is situated immediately to the right of the letter O on a qwerty keyboard. There’s a big icture of it just below. Here are seven reasons that not having a working key is frustrating.

1. Google Is Not Always Useful. I first realised that my key wasn’t working earlier this evening while trying to access a friend’s blog. It’s called Sectator Sort. Oh, I thought, that’s going to be a bit of a roblem. So I did what I always do when a technical issue arises with my comuter. I searched Google for a solution. It wasn’t very successful. I tyed: “Hel! The key on my keyboard has stoed working”. The results weren’t any use at all. Never mind, there are more ways to skin a cat.

2. The Direct Route. It occurred to me that I didn’t have to Google the roblem. I could just go directly to the relevant section of the keyboard manufacturer’s website. I even knew the address. I tyed www.ale.com/suort and was most disleased with the result. Because I had a 7 Reasons ost to reare for the following morning. Never mind, I decided that I would just get on with it, and exlain at the to of the iece that my key isn’t working (which is what I’ve done). I then oened Word and began to tye u my notes.

3. The Law. I got as far as the title. I realised at once, that if I went ahead with the ost I had lanned to write, we’d robably end u in court. There was no way round it. 7 Reasons Shane Warne Is The Most Inventive Deliverer of Leg Sin That The World Has Seen was going to have to be ostoned. I thought I’d have another go at getting the keyboard fixed first though. Because I had an idea.

4. Email. I could email my writing artner, Jon, for hel. While I was in Word I wrote a brief exlanation of my roblem, and a few key hrases that I’d like him to Google for me and then I tried to log into my email account. My assword didn’t work. Bugger. My assword contains a . In fact, my asswords for just about everything do. So it was no good, I was definitely going to have to write something else.

5. Other Titles. I went back to my notebook and trawled through the list of otential ost titles I have jotted down there. I quickly discarded 7 Reasons That The en Is Mightier Than The Sword, 7 Reasons That it’s Fun to lay ranks on eole, 7 Reasons That irates Are Amazing, 7 Reasons That Graveyards Are Sooky and 7 Reasons That Sace Exloration Is ointless. That left me with 7 Reasons That Valentine’s Day is for Girls. Which would have been fine if we ublished it in February, but didn’t seem very toical in October. So I decided to write about my key roblem instead. To hel me get some focus, I started with the icture.

6. hotosho. We always ut a icture at the to of every 7 Reasons ost – usually a hoto that we’ve got from Google Images – or occasionally one that we’ve made ourselves in hotosho. I soon realised that utting the letter into Google Images wasn’t going to yield an image of the letter , so I hotoshoed one. It took me a while to work out how I was going to do it but eventually I did. I tyed in a letter b and flied the image over. That was clever thinking and I felt quite roud of myself.

7. ride Comes Before A Fall. And then I wrote for a coule of hours, the stuff you see u there, totally sontaneously without making any notes at all. And then I got to reason seven, and I aused to consider it. And while I was thinking, something occurred to me. Something quite fundamental. I could have cut and asted the letter from an existing document. What a illock!

October 8, 2010
7 Reasons My Dream Was A Bit Odd

In a last minute change to 7 Reasons proceedings, the post originally planned for today has been postponed in favour of something that happened overnight. A bit like Martin Luther King, I had a dream. Unlike him however, I was the only one to witness it. Which is why I must share mine with you. Now. It was weird.

1. Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! I’m in a house. But it’s also a hotel. And an airport. It’s next to a London train station. It’s supposed to be London Victoria, but it’s not. So I’m in this house – which is also a hotel and an airport – and everything is going well. I am just wandering. Wandering around. Looking at plates and planes and….oh, a playground. I remember now, there was a playground. And then there’s a fire. Like Billy Joel, I didn’t start the fire, but if I don’t get a bloody shift on I’m going to burn to a crisp. (We’ll come to the crisps later). So I start running. And I find myself in a…

2. Room. It’s a bedroom. And it has a window. Two of them in fact. And outside of the window is a roof terrace. And a ladder into the garden. A garden which I can only assume is on the opposite side of the house to the airfield. I open the window and in a move that a contortionist or Anne Widdecombe would be proud of, manage to get myself through the smallest gap in the world. And with it, to safety. We then shift forward to…

3. The Next Day. I can only assume it’s the next day because otherwise I’d be re-entering a house that is on fire. And that would be stupid. And as I had the intelligence to get out the of house fire in the first place, I don’t believe I am stupid in this dream. So, it’s the next day and I am back in the room that I escaped from. There is smoke damage and Dr Howard Denton. You probably won’t recognise this name because he was one of my lecturers when I was at University. What the bloody hell he is doing here, I have no idea. But I don’t seem to care. In fact I am very happy to see him. Because he starts helping me look for my…

4. iPhone Charger. I must have lost it the previous night. Along with my wallet and car keys. Rather brilliantly I find my iPhone charger lying on top of a dressing table. Obviously that’s one of the most important things to do when trying to escape a house fire. Put your iPhone charger on a dressing table so you can come back to get it the next day. You’d do well to remember that. I am so delighted that I’ve found my iPhone charger that I give Dr Howard Denton my crisps. (Told you we’d come back to them). They’re Phileas Fogg range. Irish cheddar with onion chutney flavour. I know I’ve eaten some already because there’s a wooden clothes peg fastening the packet closed. You can say what you like about me, but I know how to keep crisps fresh. This is when…

…I wake up. My girlfriend’s shouting about babies. At least I think she is at the time. In hindsight I am not entirely sure she was. Either way, I show my caring side by asking her if she’s okay. She is, so I fall back to sleep. And I start dreaming again. And I’m back in another house. A house belonging to…

5. Judy Murray. And the only reason I know the house belongs to Judy Murray is because she has just walked through the front door and said, ‘What are you doing in my house?’ For reasons (probably less than seven) unbeknown to me, we go into the garden where I try and explain. Rather splendidly Judy has sofas and chairs in her garden. And I decide to put two chairs together to form a boat. I then explain to Judy that I was merely in her house to work because it was too noisy back at mine. She seems to understand and, for the first time in my life, I begin to like Judy Murray. Which is when everything becomes a blur until I find myself outside Judy Murray’s house. And in through the window of next door, I can see England bowler…

6. Steven Finn. He’s doing the washing up and not looking as tall as I had seen him on TV. To make sure it doesn’t look like I am stalking him, I get down in Judy Murray’s driveway and start doing press-ups. I’m obviously an optimistic dreamer because I do bloody hundreds of them. All while looking at Steven Finn. Until Judy Murray’s front door opens and out walks…

7. Judy Murray. She starts asking me if – while I’ve been living in her house – I have moved the car. Apparently the hedges look a bit bashed up. Now, I don’t remember dreaming about it, but I know that I did drive Judy Murray’s car into the flowerbed. Which is why I lie and deny I have been anywhere near her Volvo. Once again, she seems to understand. Which is when one of my old school friends rocks up and starts telling me how much he loved my film. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I say, ‘Thanks’ anyway. He then mentions he reads 7 Reasons. Which is when I wake up. Hopefully I’ll find out tonight whether he likes it or not.

October 1, 2010
7 Reasons Playing With A Cuddly Toy 2010 Was Not A Let Down

Hello it’s Jon again. I know you weren’t expecting me again today – I wasn’t expecting me again today – but here I am. In my third and final attempt at reliving my childhood, I have decided to go all the way back to 1983. The year of my birth. On Christmas Day 1983, I was given a bear. Humbear. (He was the official bear of the Humber Bridge. Obviously). For many years he never left my side. So, in a bid to recreate the joys I once had, I am going to spend a day in the company of a cuddly toy. Unfortunately, Humbear isn’t with me. He’s at my parent’s house. So I have had to substitute him. And into Humbear’s place comes my girlfriend’s lamb, Lamb. (This is not his official name). Lamb and I spent a whole twenty-four hours together. And it was great. Truly great.

1. Lamb Can Fly. One of the things I have always regretted, is that Humbear always landed on his head whenever he slid down the handrail. Lamb doesn’t. Lamb bounces. Off his rather rotund chest. And then he sits upright. Ready for another go.

2. Lamb Can Dance. I learnt all my dance moves from Humbear, which explains a lot. Mostly why I prefer to do all my dancing sitting down ignoring the dance floor. If I had had Lamb on Christmas Day 1983, I dare say no one would credit the moonwalk to Michael Jackson. No matter what comes on the radio, Lamb does know how to have a good old bop. I did question his moves to Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On, but I shouldn’t have done. If we all liked the same things the world would be very boring.

3. Lamb Can Play Cricket. Not matter how much I coached him, Humbear was quite a poor cricketer. He never seemed to learn and sadly had to retire from the game in circa 1989 after he was called for chucking a record 347 times in a row. Lamb though, well he’s quite a different character. Rather wonderfully, he doesn’t have much stuffing under his arms and so they actually move. A full 360 degrees at the shoulder. As a result he is quite rapid. Even if he does suffer from Harmison-itis.

4. Lamb Doesn’t Get Bored. Humbear, despite all the epic adventures he shared with me, always had a habit of looking very bored. Whether this was actually the case or whether it was just because the person whole made him stitched his mouth on upside down, I never discovered. Thankfully, Lamb comes with a positive attitude to life. He just sits there, watching me work, loving every minute of it. Whenever I look up, he is there, smiling away. It makes one very proud of the little fella.

5. Lamb Doesn’t Eat Biscuits. To this day, I am still convinced it was my Dad who stole the biscuit and implicated Humbear in the whole affair. Though, at the time, I may have believed him. Thankfully, Lamb doesn’t like biscuits. He just sits there, watching me, munching away. And he seems to enjoy the spectacle. So I have another one to entertain him.

6. Lamb Is Happy To Sleep On The Floor. I was always too scared to let Humbear sleep on the floor. I thought he may run away in the night, torn up inside by my rejection of him. As a result, he always slept in my bed. And to this day, he still does. At least he does when I’m not there. Lamb is very different. We came to an agreement. Whoever won the pillow fight, got to sleep in the bed. It wasn’t a long fight.

7. Lamb Doesn’t Miss Me. I always felt incredibly guilty about leaving Humbear alone if I had to go to school or play in the garden or hide him under the bed if a friend came round to play pirates. Thankfully, I don’t feel a shred of guilt about leaving Lamb alone when I go to play pirates with my friends. I say friends. They are more local school children. And I like to roar at them from behind bushes. Still good fun though. Anyway, Lamb is very happy not coming with me. He stays in bed with Big Bear and Strong Yoghurt. Again, not their official names.

*Many thanks to Claire for the loan (albeit unknown) of Lamb.

September 16, 2010
7 Reasons It’s Difficult Remembering To Take Chicken Out Of The Freezer

You know how it is, you want chicken for dinner. That means you need to remove it from the freezer. It’s never that easy though. Is it?

1. First Trip To The Freezer. Sadly you don’t make it as far as the freezer. Instead, out of the corner of your eye, you notice something alarming. A significant lack of tea-bags in the tea-bag jar. This is poor tea-bag management and must be rectified with immediate effect. You then make a cup of tea and go and do something else. Probably drink it while spoofing an England cricket captain. Well, I do anyway.

2. Second Trip To The Freezer. Rather brilliantly, your girlfriend/wife/significant other has just sent you a message reminding you to get the chicken out of the freezer. ‘That’s rather brilliant,’ you say. Rather unbrilliantly though, she has also asked you to put beetroot in a bag and then transfer it to the fridge. This is a delicate operation as one false move can result in a pair of red stained boxer shorts. Thankfully, you make it through and then go and relax on the sofa for half-an-hour. Just to, you know, recover.

3. Third Trip To The Freezer. This time you really are going to get the chicken out of the freezer. And indeed you get as far as opening the door. Sadly, you are not confronted by chicken and instead are reminded that you should get a couple of rolls out for your lunch later. You then try and put the remaining rolls back in the freezer without something else falling to the floor. By the time you have picked up all the shattered ice cubes and refilled the tray, you have completely forgotten about whatever it was you shouldn’t have forgotten about. Probably chicken.

4. Fourth Trip To The Freezer. Just as you are stepping into the kitchen, the stupid woman on the radio stops repeating, ‘Coming up in a few minutes – Test Match Cricket,’ and is replaced by the sound of, ‘Soul Limbo’. Suddenly you are thinking back to the good old days in (circa) 2002 when Michael Bevan smashed you all around Leicestershire and then you were promptly smacked on the head by a Devon Malcolm beamer. Then you stop thinking that it really should have been you playing for England today and go and listen some people who actually can play cricket.

5. Fifth Trip To The Freezer. Washing-up! It’s 12pm and you still haven’t washed the breakfast things. Your Mum might be 140 miles away, but you can’t help but feel she is disappointed in you. You shake your head and do what needs doing. Then you drop an apple on your foot.

6. Sixth Trip To The Freezer. The first thing you see as you walk into the kitchen are your rolls. They have defrosted. That means it must be lunchtime.

7. Seventh Trip To The Freezer. This time there is no stopping you. You are straight in to that freezer and out you come with chicken. It needs to defrost in approximately two hours. Which is why you employ delaying tactics when you are out shopping that evening and why your girlfriend/wife/significant other now thinks you have an unhealthy interest in the style of men’s underwear.

August 27, 2010
7 Reasons The Brylcreem Batting Challenge Is Flawed

The Brylcreem Batting Challenge puts you in the shoes of Kevin Pietersen and tells you to smack the ball as far as you can. It sounds like fun. And it was. Until I started getting bored and noticed how much better it could be.

1. The Ball. It’s bloody huge. It should break KP’s bat. Does it? Of course not. In fact it can be hit as far as a giant India-based jelly. As we shall see in a minute.

2. KP’s Neck. He hasn’t got one. I have seen Kevin Pietersen in the flesh. And there was quite a sizable neck on show. So where the hell has it gone? If they wanted a cricketer without a neck they should have called Gladstone Small.

3. Barbados. According to Brylcreem this is Barbados. Not only is it very small it would appear that a three toed giant is buried under the beach.

4. The Giant Lizard. This lizard is just across the sea from Barbados – on a beach in St. Vincent and the Grenadines by my calculations. That’s some 100 miles away. That scale makes this lizard approximately 65 miles long. Thank goodness my shot landed in the water. I would hate to have riled it.

5. India. At least I assume this is India. That is where I thought the Taj Mahal was situated. It’s quite hard to tell though when you have the Sydney Opera House and a giant jelly in the background.

6. New York. We started in England, then we went to the West Indies, then India, then Australia. I can understand that. Proper cricket nations in a proper cricket game. So why the hell have I just ended up in the Big Apple? Where is South Africa or Sri Lanka or New Zealand?

7. The Brylcreem Zone. It is not so much the fact that I ended up in the Brylcreem Zone that frustrates me – this is the objective of the game – it’s what I get for arriving here. My style is upgraded and I get a bonus 2000 points. Is that it? I have just twatted a ball from London to the Brylcreem Zone and all I get is a style upgrade and 2000 meaningless bonus points? Where the hell is my 10% discount code? Why is KP not nodding his appreciation? Has his big head fallen off? What a waste of bloody time.

May 3, 2010
Guest Post: 7 Reasons You’re Not Watching The IPL

Taking over the good ship sofa 7 Reasons today, is student and Muse fanatic Rob. A. Foot. (No we’re not sure what the ‘A’ stands for either). When Rob isn’t reading 7 Reasons or arguing about politics with an angry Scotsman on twitter, he can be found blogging away at There Is Music In The Breakdown. Oh, and judging by what’s coming next, sticking pins in his Lalit Modi voodoo doll.

1. Duration Of Matches. It just isn’t long enough. 120 balls per innings? That’s not even long enough to get yourself in before compiling a decent innings! It is also nowhere near enough time to get all of the batting side out. Before you know it, you’ve just batted yourself in, and then you’re being told that the innings is over? Ludicrous! The whole game is over and done with in just a few hours. How are you meant to while away a day that’s meant to be spent writing an essay/revising/doing work by listening to Jonathan Agnew and Geoffrey Boycott bicker about how someone’s relative could have hit the ball with a piece of fruit?

2. Vulgarity. First of all, the team strips. They are ridiculous. The Mumbai Indians strip looks like it has little cymbals lining the hems along the shoulders. The Chennai Super Kings’ kit looks the colour of a banana, and the Royal Bangalore Challengers kit looks like someone has dumped it in tomato sauce. Then there’s the music that plays at every boundary/wicket/ball/scratching of noses. And then there’s the cheerleaders. Why are they necessary? Isn’t there anything more exciting than seeing a highly rated batsman playing and missing at a ball which fizzes by his off-stump? Cheerleaders have nothing on that.

3. Money. Most of the foreign players are only there for the money. When you see someone getting auctioned off for several million dollars, you get the impression that it is just cattle being sold, not cricket players. Then you see that they are getting lots of money for the privilege of playing cricket in a hot country when their homelands are freezing cold. You begin to question their morals. Cricket players should have standards. They aren’t footballers.

4. The advertisements. If you have the misfortune to watch the cricket on YouTube, then you will quickly become familiar with the adverts. All two of them. The first, an advert for a hair styling cream, is innocuous enough, with only mildly annoying music accompanying it. The second really gets my goat. An advert for a phone company, with annoying music and a painfully annoying voiceover. Then you end up putting the computer on mute until the advert finishes. But then you do something else, and by the time that you go back to it, it’s that bloody advert again. The other alternative is to watch it on ITV. With that woman staring at you.

5. The Tactics. Or lack of them. All the captain of the fielding side needs to say is: “Right, Dale, bowl at the stumps early in the innings, then as wide as the umpire will allow later” and he’s done with it. Yes, he can move his fielders around to try and catch a batsman out, but then again, most of the catches made by fielders are just for miscued smashes which balloon high into the air before being smothered by the wicketkeeper or the long-on fielder. The batsman’s mentality, by the way, is just to smash every ball as far as he can.

6. The Umpires. The players aren’t the only people to see this slogfest as a way of going over the top; the umpires want in on the game too. As the batsmen play more extravagant shots, the umpires find more extravagant ways of signalling that these shots have been rewarded. Instead of just raising the finger (index) at a decent speed when someone is given out, it takes an age for it to be raised. Instead of standing still whilst waving the arm sedately when signalling for four runs, the umpires now appear to be helicopters about to take off. Then with the six signalling, instead of raising the hands, the umpires now appear to be attempting to break the high jump world record. Alright, I’ll admit it. All of the previous points have related to Billy Bowden.

7. You Don’t Like Cricket. I’m sure that this will cover the vast majority of people who haven’t been watching the IPL this season. Does it need explaining?

April 17, 2010
Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Live In Lagos

Elbowing us out of the way and lounging on our sofa this week is photographer and all round nice gal, Sarah Ansell. Having lived and worked in Lagos between 1995-98 who better to tell us why to live there? Well, maybe someone who lives there right now, but we don’t know any of those. Obviously these reasons are based on her experiences of life there a few years ago and so they may not be an accurate reflection of life there in 2010. But no one is really bothered about that are they? You can view Sarah’s showcase of work over at SarahCanterbury.com. It is well worth the visit.

1. A greater tolerance of the M25. Once you’ve cleared the joy that is Murtala Mohammed International Airport, the first thing that strikes you about Lagos is the driving. And I use that word in its very loosest sense. Go-Slows (their wonderful name for traffic jams) are the norm and as for adhering to something akin to a Highway Code, pah! No such thing! It’s each man (or in my case, woman) for him(her)self. Don’t worry about the direction the traffic is meant to be facing – see a space, take it! Add to this all sorts of delights: habitual fuel shortages; attempting to drive through black fumes churned out by ancient vehicles liable to shed exhaust pipes at any moment (MOTs? Hahaha!); avoiding rust heaps abandoned at the side of the road; passengers leaping on and off buses; road sellers trying to talk you in to that must-have plastic toilet seat purchase; beggars on skateboards; and the occasional dead body (sadly I kid you not). As if this wasn’t enough, all is accompanied by the din of a thousand car horns. The M25 is a doddle after this.

2. Communing with nature. For lovers of wildlife, Lagos is a quite marvellous place to get up close and personal with creatures in a manner you could only dream of back home in Britain. There’s nothing quite like opening your pencil drawer at work and seeing a frantic scurrying of cockroaches to sharpen your hand-eye coordination and speed up those reflexes. Ditto the reaction time on seeing a rat run across your sitting room to hide behind the bookcase when you’re home alone at 10.30 on a Friday night. Or any night for that matter. Also, where else could you have a real live gecko as a wall ornament in your dining room? Lagos is also an excellent place in which to overcome silly phobias – no longer do I run shrieking from teeny tiny spiders (or even the big ones), but embrace them with equanimity. Well, not literally embrace them or they would get squashed and I’d suffer from spider murdering guilt. I should pay homage here, too, to the humble mosquito. Ah, the fun of being awakened from your slumbers by that distinctive whiny noise and having to go into full on Rambo attack mode with a rolled-up newspaper while you’re still half asleep. That’s assuming, of course, that you can locate the bugger.

3. An appreciation of the finer things in life. Baths with clear water in which you are not perched on grains of brown rust doubling as a makeshift mat. Electricity that works (for electricity substitute telephones, lifts, pretty much anything really) and the knowledge that the power isn’t suddenly going to cut out just as Nasser Hussain faces Curtley Ambrose with 2 runs needed off the last ball. PAH! Hairdressers: I never quite summoned up the courage to have my hair cut there, so trips back to the UK every 6 months always began with a hat wearing trip to the hairdressers – a maximum of 30 minutes after arriving home. I have the fondest memories of the subsequent sheer joy of sporting a “do” for the next six weeks that didn’t make me resemble Hair Bear (Google the Hair Bear Bunch if you’re too young to remember him!). Croquet played on the lawn during a weekend trip to the High Commissioner’s residence in Ibadan. I felt very posh. And mushrooms. Oh how I missed mushrooms.

4. The thrill of living on the edge. I appreciate that living on the edge is not exclusive to Lagos, but it is the only place I’ve lived where the excitement of a Friday night trip downtown included being caught up inadvertently in an exhilarating car chase complete with gunfire. Mercifully I wasn’t driving! A G&T in The Red Lion has always seemed a little tame in comparison since. Then there’s living in a compound surrounded by razor wire & patrolled by gate guards; negotiating army & police roadblocks in bulletproof glassed cars (“have you got something for my Easter?”); being bussed to work with an armed policeman and accompanying security vehicle because the office was in a dodgy part of town; and the very real danger of a potential car-jack. All a little removed from nipping out to Sainbury’s on a Tuesday afternoon in February. Just call me Lara Croft!

5. The ability to reinvent yourself. Fed up with your mundane existence? Then change it! You can be whoever you want to be. Just pop along to any street corner and pick yourself a fresh identity, complete with sparkly new passport & a full set of supporting documents. You’ll also be well placed to learn from the finest scammers in the world.

6. A reminder that there’s always someone worse off than you. Lagosians are truly inspiring and I do mean that sincerely – their faith & resilience in the face of adversity is astonishing. Plus they have lots of fab names like Patience, Charity & Blessing and give uplifting names to their businesses. Buying your tin of beans in Goodness & Mercy Enterprises or God’s Favour Enterprises seems so much more edifying than in a store with a name like Lidl (not that I have anything against names like Lidl – I am just using artistic license, you understand). Also, having never lived somewhere before where it took no less than 5 men to drill a hole, I appreciate their inventiveness when it comes to job creation.

7. The lack of snow. It has to be said that it’s highly unlikely you will be bothered by a preponderance of snow in Lagos. That’s a good enough reason all by itself to live there. Though it can get a bit wet at times.

February 20, 2010
Russian Roulette Sunday: 7 Reasons Away Day Postcards

There has been a lot of speculation and rumour surrounding 7 Reasons over the last couple of weeks. Most of it is completely unfounded. Jon wanting to set up a sister site called 7 Raisins, for instance. (He did suggest 1 Week, 1 Reason but he’s still waiting for a reply to that email). Another rumour is that we don’t actually have a life outside of 7 Reasons. Again, this is a complete fabrication. To prove it, we thought we’d show you what we do on our days off. Due to popular demand, these postcards will be available for purchase from the 7 Reasons shop. In June.

January 10, 2010
7 Reasons Sports Personality 2009 Was A Joke

1. Andy Murray. Where was he? If Andrew Strauss could be on a live link, then why couldn’t Murray? He may have had a legitimate reason, but as things stand he has just made it slightly harder for me to like him again. Goodness me, that boy’s an effort.

2. Coach of the Year. Yes, Fabio Capello has done a good job with England – I say good job, it’s actually a sad indictment of English football that it takes an Italian coach to make the players England possess play well together – but what did he actually coach us to? Top spot in the qualifying table. The last time I checked that meant sod all – apart from that it is part one of the proper job. Have the panel ever heard of Ross Brawn or Declan Kidney? How did they not even make the shortlist? Muppetry.

3. Team of the Year. Well, the pundits got this half right. The sport was right, sadly the team was not. England Women’s Cricket Team should have won this. What more did the pundits want them to do? They won the Ashes. They won the World Cup. They won the Twenty20 World Cup. That’s really quite a big clue. More muppetry.

4. Kelly Holmes. What the hell was she wearing? If I was a girl I am pretty sure that would have been the kind of outfit I would want to have worn when I was about twelve and going bowling with my friends Bianca and Stace.

5. James Corden. For a minute I thought he had just wandered into the wrong studio, but then he appeared on stage. And then he presented an award. If the BBC wanted him to present an award they should have had him on BBC2 getting ready to handover the Pukka Pies UK Snooker Championship trophy.

6. Andrew Strauss. Personally, I think he should have won – for reasons I have outlined before on this website – but not even coming in the top three is bizarre. He single-handedly dragged a team that was humiliated in the West Indies to winning the Ashes just five months later. It wasn’t like 2005 when England had beaten everyone in the past eighteen months. What more do our sportsmen/women have to do to please people?

7. Ryan Giggs. Yes, the big one. How the bloody hell is Ryan Giggs Sports Personality of the Year 2009? I am still trying to work it out. Yes, he had a fine year. Yes, he is a fine player. Yes, it is refreshing to have a footballer with humility in a sport where there is severe lack of it (not that that should be grounds for winning SPOTY). But seriously? He did not have a better sporting year than six World Champions. He did not have a better year than an Ashes winning captain. He did not have a better year than a tennis player who reached the ranking of number two in the world. He did not have a better year than a six-time Tour de France stage winner. Give him a lifetime achievement award someday, sure, but no one can tell me he deserved to beat the other nine contenders this year. But as you voted for him, please try. I really need to understand this.

December 14, 2009
7 Reasons Andrew Strauss Should Win Sports Personality of the Year

Andrew Strauss ©SarahCanterbury

1. Mess. At the start of the summer the England cricket team was in a mess. They were a team still reeling on the back of coach-captain issues and defeat to the West Indies. Not a productive environment to be in. But somehow Strauss led them out of the darkness and into the light. From zeros to heroes. From ashes to, erm, Ashes.

2. Form. The general rule with captains, and certainly English captains, is that when you take over, your form dips. No matter how good Nasser Hussain and Michael Vaughan were as captains, they weren’t the same players. And to be fair neither is Strauss. Unlike messrs. Hussain and Vaughan though, Strauss has improved his game. He has been unstoppable in his pursuit of runs. Not just in Tests, but also in the ODI format. A format he supposedly couldn’t perform in. He has bucked the trend to spectacular effect.

3. Team. Not only did Andrew Strauss have to lead himself, he had to lead a team. That’s another ten people to motivate, stimulate and berate. The other contenders this year only had number one to look after. Button. Tweddle. Ennis. They had it easy. Andrew Strauss should probably win SPOTY multiple times over.

4. ICC Muppetry. For some bizarre reason Mitchell Johnson was named 2009 ICC Cricketer of the Year. Did the board not watch the Ashes? Johnson was owned by Strauss. How can someone who owns someone lose out to the person they own? It’s a bit like me beating my Mum to the 2009 Ironer of the Year. Just nonsense. SPOTY will go some way to make up for this. (Strauss losing out to Johnson I mean, not my Mum losing out to me. That never happened).

5. Formula One Factor. Jenson Button was great this year. I very much enjoyed watching him rule. However, he shouldn’t win. Lewis Hamilton won the F1 Championship last year and he was the SPOTY runner-up. It is only right that the same happens to Jenson. Next year Lewis and Jenson will almost certainly be in the same team. Whichever one wins the World Championship can be SPOTY 2010. Fair and simple.

6. Compton Miller. Andrew Strauss won the Compton-Miller medal this year. The Compton-Miller medal. The name just exudes greatness. Anyone who has a medal that exudes greatness should win a large trophy in the shape of a TV camera.

7. Personality. The whole personality bit of SPOTY annoys me. You can be sure that, the day after SPOTY, people will be moaning about the fact that the winner doesn’t have a personality. Of course they bloody don’t. They are not supposed to. They spend every hour of every day focusing on being the best in their field. They don’t have time to have a personality. Interestingly though, Andrew Strauss has one. I know this because he calls people dude. Only people with personality call others dude.

November 18, 2009