Tag: Bat

7 Reasons Not To Have A Bat In Your Dining Room

This may come as something of a surprise to regular readers of 7 Reasons, but we’re not experts on everything that we write about. Often, our pieces contain much speculation and conjecture. Today’s piece, however, is different. Today’s piece is written from experience. If you should find yourself in a dining room with a bat, this is exactly how it will go down.

1. Surprise! As you sit in your dining room on a quiet Saturday night catching up on missed television programmes using the iPlayer, you’ll feel relaxed and at ease. You’ll take a sip of your drink and languidly stretch out your legs. You’ll stifle a yawn and stretch out your arms. Eventually, you’ll lean back in your seat and glance up toward the ceiling light, to ascertain what is casting the strange shadow that you have seen from the corner of your eye for the past few seconds. Then you’ll scream involuntarily and bolt from the room and slam the door shut behind you. A large bat flying around your dining room will come as something of a surprise to you.

2. Disbelief. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Your wife will enquire in a startled manner, somewhat surprised by your shrieking.

“There’s a bat in the dining room.”

“What?”

“There’s a bat in the dining room.”

“What?”

“Bat!” (You’ll flap your arms about miming flight at this point). “Dining room!” (You’ll also point at the dining room.)

“What’s it doing in there?”

“Flying around the ceiling lamp and watching a documentary about Stalin.”

Rather disbelievingly, your wife will go to the dining room, open the door slightly and peer through the gap. On closing it very quickly, she will then announce that “there’s a bat in the dining room”.

3. Spin. Anxious that you should always see the positive side of any situation, you’ll start brainstorming. A bat in the dining room could be a good thing, you’ll think. A bat in the dining room would mean that there would never be any insects in there. A bat in the dining room would ensure that you could write in there with absolutely no chance of interruption: You could look at the internet with no chance of interruption! A bat in the dining room would…be a bloody great bat in the dining room. It turns out that the elephant in the room is that there’s a bat in the room. There’s no upside so good that it can surmount the fact that your dining room contains a bat.

4. Whimsy. Having established that having a bat in the dining room is a bad thing, you’ll turn your mind to what the hell to do with it. “We could call the RSPCA”, your wife will suggest.

“We’re not being cruel to it. We’re being inconvenienced by it.”

“Perhaps there’s a local bat group.”

“Yes, maybe they could send some sort of bat man.”

“A dog warden?”

“Or, we could call Commissioner Gordon and he could raise the bat-signal. Perhaps we could…”

5. Motivation. “…Oh my god!”

“What?!”

“My gin and tonic’s in there!”

6. De-batting. “Darling”, you’ll say, “We’re just going to have to man-up and deal with the bat ourselves…In you go.” This motivational speech will fail to make her deal with the bat on your behalf, so you’ll have to work as a team. You will close every door in the house (so the bat can’t start terrorising you in other rooms) and your wife will peer back into the dining room. She will find that the bat is still flying around in there, fluttering in haphazard circles around the ceiling light like a terrifying and gigantic moth. A behemoth*. You’ll formulate a plan. You will run in, raise the blind, open the window and run out again: Your wife will be in charge of opening and closing the door. You’ll take a deep breath and steel yourself for the task. Eventually, though too soon for you, your wife will open the door and you will burst into the room and stride toward the blind. Startled by the sudden presence in the room, the bat will realise that flying around is not a safe thing to do and he will decide to land. At the very instant that you arrive at the blind, the bat will land on it, inches from your face. “Aaaarrrgghhh”, you’ll scream as you run out of the room. Your wife will close the door.

You’ll realise that another plan is called for. If you raise the blind with the bat on it, you’ll just squash the bat. You’ll have a flat bat. And bats, if you flatten them, appear bigger. So, if you can’t raise the blind and open the window, you’ll have to trap the bat and remove it. Having rummaged in the kitchen cupboard for a suitable container for a considerable time, your wife will emerge with her Tupperware bat-trap. This time, she will be in charge of trapping the bat, and you will be in charge of the door (yay!) and the lid (boo!). You’ll open the door and your wife will stride in and head toward the blind with the container held out in front of her. Arriving at the blind she’ll cover the bat with the container. Now that the bat is safely contained, you’ll enter the room clutching the lid. You’ll slide the lid slowly and carefully between the blind and the Tupperware box and affix it. Phew.

7. Post-bat. As you breathe your sigh of relief the bat will let out a heart-rending squeak. Your wife will head into the back garden to release the bat and you’ll be in charge of the back door (yay again!). The moment that the lid is removed, the bat will flutter out and your wife will scream and run toward the door, which will cause you to laugh. Briefly. Eventually, having congratulated your wife on her brave conduct in the face of a big, scary bat and having closed every window in the house (twice), you’ll return to the comfort and security of Josef Stalin and your gin and tonic. Then you’ll discover that the bat has left you a “present” on your white Verner Panton stackable chair.

So there you go. That’s roughly what will happen if you have a bat in your dining room. I don’t recommend it.

*You’ll be inordinately proud of that wordplay.

July 26, 2011
7 Reasons A Cardboard Tube Is The Essential Accessory

It’s nearly time for the members of the 7 Reasons team to celebrate their birthdays again. Jon reaches the grand old age of 28 tomorrow, while Marc will fall just shy of his half-century on the 18th. As a result there have been a lot of cardboard tubes lying around the 7 Reasons sofa this week. No doubt they were once wound in birthday related wrapping paper. While the forthcoming presents certainly entertain the mind, it is the sight of the cardboard tubes that have excited us thus far. Well, excited Jon anyway. You see, there is so much that a cardboard tube can be used for. Let’s have a look.

1. Sport. If the sport features a bat, you can play it with a cardboard tube. With the amount of cricket related posts on this site, these seemed like an opportune moment to feature another sport. So this is how you would face down Roger Clemens with a cardboard tube.

2. Music. Immediate thoughts of turning a cardboard tube into an instrument will surely give you a vision of a didgeridoo. Fair enough. But a cardboard tube is so much more. It’s also a flute.

3. Wooden Leg. Sadly, accidents will happen. Which is why you need to be ready for any eventuality. What you can’t see in the above photo is that the dog from across the road was gnawing at my right leg. So bad was it that I lost it from the knee down. Luckily I had my cardboard tube with me. It formed an immediate replacement. It’s a not a pre-requisite to look camp, it’s just very hard not to.

4. Pointer. When you want to get you message across, sometimes holding a pointing device will help. Here I show how you would use a cardboard tube to point at a shed. I don’t think there is any doubt that I mean business.

5. On Guard. Unlike scissors, the cardboard tube also works for left-handers. Although I am right-handed, I am comfortable using this sword with my left-hand.

6. Invaders. If the French were to invade the UK – which obviously is a laughable proposition – a cardboard tube would act as a very viable telescope. If would almost certainly give the invading army flashbacks to the sight of Nelson.

7. Fitness. Joining the local gym is expensive. And joining the gym 300 miles away even more so. As a result keeping fit at home is the ultimate alternative. As is aptly displayed here, weightlifting with a cardboard tube is both easy and fun. Again you will look camp, but that seems a small price to pay given the guns you will eventually develop.*

*Yes. I had reattached my leg.

June 9, 2011
7 Reasons Windowgate Is Baffling

If you’re at all interested in cricket or windows, then you can’t have failed to have noticed that, in a tale that came to be known as Windowgate, a window in the England dressing room got broken by Matt Prior at Lord’s yesterday. This story then snowballed taking many unexpected twists and turns along the way. I was listening as events unfolded. Here are seven reasons that the story is baffling.

1. The Explanation. The ECB’s initial explanation for the incident was that “the glass had been broken after Prior’s gloves ricocheted off a kit bag and knocked the bats, resting on the window pane.” This seemed almost entirely plausible. To the abjectly mad. People who have no concept of the relative mass and density of gloves and bats might also be misled by this statement. I, as an owner of both gloves and bats, however, am not taken in by what we can only call the Magic Glove theory. I can categorically state that in over thirty years of glove ownership, I have never seen one ricochet.

2. The Withdrawal Of The Explanation. By the time the explanation was withdrawn, my speculation had become fevered. So if it wasn’t a Magic Glove, what was it? Was a lone glove-man in the England dressing room hurling gloves at bats from a grassy knoll? Were bats being hurled from book depositories? Were books being hurled from bat depositories? Was there a shadowy third glove-hurler in the showers? Oh, they’ve withdrawn the explanation now. Wait! That makes it seem even more sinister and mysterious.

3. The Explanation For The Withdrawal Of The Explanation. On withdrawing his initial explanation, England spokesman James Avery said that he “had been working from second-hand information”. He failed to mention that not only was the information second-hand, it was also implausible gibberish. After all, second-hand information isn’t intrinsically bad. I didn’t find out about the sinking of the Titanic first-hand, and I’m fairly sure that you didn’t either. I’m confident that it happened though, and in the manner that it was told to me. To blame the implausibility and inaccuracy of a laughably shoddily fabricated account on it being second-hand is preposterous. What he should have done is blame it on an idiot, because there’s definitely one involved there somewhere.

4. The All-New Explanation. The ECB then had another go at explaining the breakage. “Prior had his bat on the ledge where the wall met the window of the dressing room. The bat handle bounced off the wall onto the glass and the glass broke.” Ah, this sounds more plausible (as most things do when there isn’t a magic glove involved). This account of events is far more believable than the first, unless, that is, you’re an exponent of that arcane and little-known (to the ECB) science, physics. Newton’s law states that “to every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction”, and that holds true in this case. In my over thirty years of bat-ownership, I’ve never seen one move of its own accord. I also believe that if England possessed a magic or sentient bat, Straussy would have been using it in the second innings, so we can be certain that this is a conventional cricket bat. This means that for it to have bounced off the wall, there must have been an action to which the bat was reacting. In this case, the only possible explanation is that the England dressing room at Lord’s has a twitching wall; a wall that twitched and caused the bat handle to bounce onto the glass, which then shattered. In the interests of research I googled “Lord’s twitching wall” and found no account of it, which is strange for a cricket ground with such a well-documented history. I smelled a rat.* The second explanation was no better than the first.

5. Just What Are They Trying To Keep From Us? So if neither of those explanations are to be believed, what could possibly have happened in that dressing room that would cause the ECB to go to such lengths to cover it up? Some sort of second Roswell incident? Was Glen Miller in there? The Loch Ness Monster? All the ECB seem to have achieved with their accounts of the incident is to fuel much conjecture, discussion, speculation and publicity.

6. I Have A Theory Of My Own. Some may call it fanciful, some may call it far-fetched, some may call it pie-in-the-sky, but here’s what might – in my mind – have happened. Competitive sportsman Matt Prior, who was, according to an eye-witness, “…cursing and muttering when he walked up the stairs to the pavilion”, furious at being run out, entered the dressing room and angrily hurled his bat to the floor. It then ricocheted off the floor and struck the window, causing it to break. This theory of mine is unsubstantiated, unlike the Twitching Wall theory, which has been endorsed by Andrew Strauss (though he was on the balcony at the time and didn’t see it himself), but it does have some advantages over either of the explanations offered by the ECB: It’s plausible, it’s physically possible, it doesn’t involve a magic glove, it doesn’t involve a twitching wall, and James Avery didn’t say it.

7. The Biggest Mystery Of All. If my theory were, in fact, true, no one would have batted an eyelid at that course of events. No one was badly hurt and Prior apologised and was fined. We would all have put it down to a bit natural frustration and moved on. The ECB seem to have taken what was a very unremarkable incident and have turned it into Windowgate: An epic tale of ineptitude, implausibility, bullshit and chicanery. Quite why they did this is the most baffling thing of all.

*Figuratively.

June 8, 2011
Russian Roulette Sunday: The Return Of The 7 Reasons Origami Team

After the success of last weeks poll in which a massive 79% of you said you would prefer to borrow Marc over me, I have decided to accept my place as the lesser member of the 7 Reasons team. I have also decided not to dwell on my humiliating defeat. Though it did hurt. A lot. But like I say, I am not going to dwell. Instead I am going to hand you ungrateful lot over to the 7 Reasons origami team.

March 27, 2011
7 Reasons Ireland Didn’t Beat England At Cricket Yesterday
If you’re a cricket lover, or if you’re following the Cricket World Cup (which isn’t really cricket) and you’re English, you might be happily going about your March 2^nd business right now vaguely aware that you seem to have had some sort of strange and improbable nightmare last night. And you’re right. It is still Wednesday and you’ve had a bit of a funny dream. I know I have. Here are seven reasons why.

This didn't happen. You dreamt this.

1.  It’s Too Conflicting. The English, as popular opinion would have it, love an underdog. And it’s true, we do. There’s nothing that the English like to do more than cheer on plucky minnows. We love to see Italy do well in the Six Nations; we love to see Scotland do well at football; we love to see Malta do well at absolutely bloody everything and, had Ireland been playing any other nation yesterday (except Malta), we would have been cheering them on with cries of “Play up, Ireland” and “Hurrah for the Patricks”. But they weren’t playing anyone else. They were playing us. And we were the overdog. This was somewhat conflicting. Because it was nice to see the plucky Irish do well during the cricket, it was heart-warming even, and to someone who fancies that he has some modicum of appreciation for the game, it was enjoyable. But then it slowly began to look like they might actually beat us and suddenly the thin veneer of being a fair-minded Englishman that appreciates a fine performance (even by an opponent) began to dissipate and I realised that I wasn’t quite the sporting chap I imagine myself to be. I discovered that I am, in fact, the sort of Englishman who would happily don a pith helmet and mow down colonials with a Gatling gun if it meant a victory in war or sport for dear old Blighty. No one needs to find that out about themselves when they’re trying to enjoy the cricket. I started the match as a good, upright, moral chap and finished it as a cruel, bloodthirsty, avaricious monster. Albeit one with a nice hat. But this can’t really have happened, because I’m certain that, at heart, I’m a thoroughly nice chap.

2.  The Irish Don’t Even Play Cricket. I know about Irish sport; I’ve seen it. There are essentially three major sports there. They play football, like we do, but with muddier pitches. They play rugby, like we do, but with muddier pitches. And they play Gaelic-bloody-hurleyball-thing – a sport I once saw on Channel Four at three o’clock one morning in 1997 – which is essentially a mass-brawl in the mud which may or may not have sticks and a ball. And a net.   None of those things even remotely resemble cricket, which is a game played in England, where children are given bats, balls and club ties at birth and spend almost every minute of every childhood summer – except when they are reluctantly dragged away to a tartan picnic blanket and force-fed cucumber sandwiches, orange squash and those Mr Kipling cakes that resemble gaudily coloured plasticine and make your teeth hurt – playing the game of cricket. And then when we grow up many of us carry on doing exactly the same thing, but with Pimm’s instead of the squash and if we’re very lucky, picnic sex. Though the infernal sodding cakes are still there. We have cricket, if not in our blood, then certainly in our souls and in our psyche, it’s a part of our national identity. We are prepared to play cricket from birth, it shouldn’t be possible to just to turn up with a horse and beat us at it. Which is good, because it didn’t happen.

3.  There Was A Horse. I’m not going to knock Kevin O’Brien’s knock*. What he did yesterday was superb. He went out to bat and did what every young boy (and grown man and woman and just about everyone who’s ever had any sporting ambition/interest/has even seen a blade of grass) has ever dreamed of doing: He took a game by the scruff of the neck and improbably – almost impossibly – won it single-handedly, against the odds. It was amazing. He was magnificent. Unlike Irish people, however, I have seen Kevin O’Brien play before, and I know this. He’s essentially a lumbering big, ginger horse in a cricket uniform. Of course he’s going to be able to slog the ball around on a flat pitch, he could probably hit balls to the moon. What we needed to counteract him was a backfiring car. They always put horses off what they’re doing, I’ve seen black and white films and read Edwardian novels, and I know of what I speak. It’s just not possible that England’s enormous – and legendarily meticulous – backroom staff consisting of hordes of people with laptops that studied P.E. at university didn’t consider this tactic, not possible at all. As the saying goes: If you fail to prepare, you prepare to get spanked around the ground by a big ginger man-horse. And that’s what happened…er…didn’t happen.

4.  It Isn’t Mathematically Possible. The Ireland cricket team represents both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. So England were playing two countries out there yesterday, and you might think that would put England (us) at a disadvantage but wait! The acronym ECB is short for The England and Wales (and some South Africans) Cricket Board, so Irelands two nations were in fact playing our three nations, all of whom are individually better at cricket than them. It’s not mathematically possible that they should have won, or geographically or historically. It’s just not possible at all, so it can’t have happened.

5.  Available Talent. That Ireland don’t have any sort of cricketing pedigree is self-evident. But that’s not to say that Ireland is completely lacking any cricketing talent. That would be crass and simplistic. Because there is Irish cricketing talent out there. For there is a man born in Dublin who would get into just about any one day cricket team in the world; a man who won three senior cup titles for Catholic University School; a man who has a ODI batting average of 38.03; a man whose batting shimmers with inventiveness and audacity; a man whose bold stroke-play and natural ease with a bat is admired the world over. And that Irishman’s name is Eoin Morgan and he plays for fecking England!!!! Their best player doesn’t even play for them! He plays for us, so they can’t have won at all.

6.  The Reaction. Do you know what the reaction in England to the Irish victory was last night? From people that don’t follow cricket as closely as you or I, people with children and lives and things, people that the news was only slowly filtering to by yesterday evening? The ones that I spoke to all reacted in exactly the same way with the same question. They asked, “Do the Irish even have a cricket team?” Every last one of them asked this. And in Ireland, I have no doubt that they were all asking, “Do we even have a cricket team?” I had to explain this defeat to a Frenchman last night – A MAN FROM FRANCE – and do you know what his first question was? I’ll tell you. It was, “Do ze Irish even ‘ave a cricket team?”   I can’t begin to tell you how painful this conversation was. It was several minutes before I was able to turn the conversation to the efficacy of the Maginot Line. Several long minutes. Anyway, the upshot of all this is that we were playing a team yesterday that doesn’t exist. And they beat us.

7.  It’s So Weird I Can Only Have Dreamt It. I won’t bore you with all of the details, but it’s fair to say that yesterday was a fairly strange day for me. Here are just some of the things that actually happened to me:
- I purchased Vaseline for my cat.
- I discussed the Ashes with a Frenchman.
- I witnessed a man request “A pint of the lager you have that’s most like Stella” at a bar.
- An Irish team that doesn’t exist beat England at Cricket with an orange horse.
So there you go. All of the available evidence is there and it points to only one thing: That yesterday was a really weird dream that didn’t actually happen. Any moment now I’m going to wake up and it’ll be March 2^nd again and at some point later on today I’m going to listen to England thump Ireland at cricket. It’s going to be great. I can’t wait.

*That’s the first knock-knock joke we’ve ever done at 7 Reasons.**

**The second one will be better.
March 3, 2011
7 Reasons That Ricky Ponting is the Second Coming of Christ

As I was walking yesterday, on the road to Sainsbury’s, a strange and life-changing event occurred. I strolled past a man carrying a newspaper and, upon the back of that newspaper there was a picture. An image of Ricky Ponting looking glum. Christ, I thought, doesn’t that miserable bastard ever look happy? And then, suddenly and without warning, there was a blinding flash of light and a sonorous and divine voice did appear from the sky and say, “Ah look, mate, why do you persecute me?”

I fell to the floor: “Who are you,” I stammered meekly.

“I am Punter, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now rise and get thee unto the supermarket, and you will be told what you must do.”

Blimey, that was weird, I thought, and went to the supermarket as I was bidden. And, to cut a very long story short, in the manner of Saul on the road to Damascus, I, Marc* on the road to Sainsbury’s, had had an epiphany. I realised that I had been wrong all along about Ricky Ponting and had done him many disservices over the years. And now I have truly seen the light and it is my divine mission to tell the world of his glory; here are the seven reasons why Punter is the true successor to our lord Jesus Christ.

Ricky, as he appeared to me on the road to Sainsbury's.

1. The Name. If things look right, and sound right, then they generally are. And when I tried to think of a way to link the names of Jesus and Ponting, I have to admit, I struggled. But then I realised that true struggle is the lot of a disciple, and that I’d just have to think harder. And, lo, I thought harder. But other than the names Ponting and Christ being interchangeable as profane expletives in my heathen life prior to my conversion, I could find very little to link them. Then it hit me: A portmanteau word. Ricky Ponting is no longer merely Punter the cricket captain. He now has a divine and biblical-sounding title. He will henceforth be known as…The Pontychrist.

Ah, look. It's the Pontychrist!

2. Miracles. Jesus was famed for his making of miracles. Specifically, for eking out very little, to make a lot. He turned water into wine, and he fed five-thousand people when equipped with a small quantity of bread and fish; a situation in which a lesser bearded-man – such as Captain Birdseye – merely invented the fish finger. And, in the manner of Jesus, Ponting (who, though not bearded of face, is bearded of arm), the new saviour, is attempting to win the Ashes with a mere nineteen runs from the first two tests. And when he pulls it off, it will be hailed as one of the greatest miracles ever seen. Greater, even, than when he takes a stroll across Sydney Harbour without using the bridge after the fifth test, and greater than when he turns Toohey’s into wine. Or Beer into a world-beating bowler.

3. Serendipity. This current Ashes series began in almost an exact word-for-word replay of one of Christ’s most famous quotes because Australia opened the bowling in the first test. And so it was that he, who is without spin, cast the first stone (or ball, as we call them these days). In fact, like his famous forebear, Ponting tries as much as possible to live a blameless life where lesser men (England) are happy to live a life of spin. In the grand tradition of divine saviours, The Pontychrist is more spinned against, than spinning.

4. The Devil. There would be no need for the coming of Ponting if it weren’t for the presence of darkness among man. Who then, is his nemesis, his bête noire, his archfiend, his foe, the Mephistopheles to his Good Shepherd? It can’t be Andrew Strauss; he’s too nice, he is a mere instrument of the devil. For Beelzebub himself is cunning, yet is vain, and so gives himself away through his choice of name. I ask you, what rhymes with horn? That’s right, many, many, many things but, specifically in this case, Vaughan. Behold The Antipontychrist! For though he has now been banished unto the commentary box for the duration of the series – which if the final test ends on day three will have lasted for forty days and forty nights – (which is both biblical and mathematical proof ), he is surely the puppet-master that the righteous Punter does battle against.

The name of the beast is The Antipontychrist and his number is 6-0-0 (and he doesn't look very well)

5. The Blood of the PontyChrist. In Christian religions, those arcane churches that we had before the birth of Pontianity, especially in Roman-Catholicism, (where the head of the church will, when Ponting is acknowledged as the second coming, be known as The Puntiff) the blood of Christ is important. Jesus, we are told, bled for our sins, and so, in the present day, has the Pontychrist. Here he is bleeding, so that our spirits may be lifted heavenward. And who amongst us can say that this image of his selflessness doesn’t fill their heart with joy?

We have redemption through his blood…in accordance with the riches of God's grace.

Yes, this one's just gratuitous.

6. Iconography. And, much like Christ, when so many of his teachings will be open to the whimsical and wilful interpretations of man, many years after he has passed, so the Pontychrist’s visage will be used, in the millennia to come by men warning others to follow his example and to live without sin. He’s omnipresent, they’ll say, he can see everything that you’re doing, they’ll say. And they’re right. In this portent of the future he seems to be staring into your very soul. And, now that you have seen this picture, you will know, that Ricky can see your every thought and deed. He will know if you think ill of the French. He will know when you’re masturbating. He will know when you’ve eaten Twiglets that you shouldn’t have touched. He knows everything: For he is omnipontent.

He can see into your soul, you bad, bad person.

7. Reflection. And later, on reflection at my conversion to Pontianity, I had a moment of doubt, the sort that afflicted people 2000 years ago in Jesus’s time. I wrote this piece yesterday, but when I woke this morning, I found myself questioning things. In short, I had a crisis of faith. I might have taken too much of my flu medication yesterday, I thought. What if I’d dreamt it? I’d look a fool. I’d be mocked and cast asunder by my peers. I decided that, on reflection, I may have got carried away and resolved to discard what I had written and start afresh with a new piece, after I’d had my breakfast. And then I saw a sign:

It's a sign! (a tasty one, too).

So, in summary, I’m buying myself a ute and I’m going to fill it with corrugated iron and tambourines and head off to the hills to build the first (of many) Puntecostal churches. Who’s with me?

*Henceforth to be known as Parc.

December 15, 2010
Special Guest Post: 7 Reasons I’m Backing Us To Win The Ashes

Hello! It’s Wednesday, and regular 7 Reasons (.org) readers might be surprised to find a guest post here. But today is special. Because today is the day that The Ashes begins, and I can’t begin to tell you how excited the 7 Reasons team are by this. Well, I could begin, but I’d never be able to stop myself and we’d all miss the cricket while I babbled on and on. So, joining us on the 7 Reasons sofa today is Sir Straussy who has taken time out from his busy cricketing and tweeting schedule to explain why he’s backing us to win The Ashes. And by us, I sincerely hope he isn’t referring to the 7 Reasons team; that would be a disaster.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by the England Captain are entirely his own and do not represent those of 7 Reasons (.org)*

1. It’s In The Toss. This is nothing new, but Ricky Ponting and I are tossers. We have to be. It’s in the contract. To be a captain you must be a tosser. And I am very proud to be both. So is Ricky. The difference between us is that, while I’m a good tosser, he’s a useless tosser. The stats don’t lie. Using the motto ‘tails never fails’ I have won 59% of tosses as England captain, Ricky has won a mere 49% in his role as an Australian tosser. And with the toss being so crucial these days, that 10% will give us the edge. But, I hear you ask, what happens if tails fails? Is that it? Shall we give up? Forget about this Test? No, certainly not. Again, let’s examine the stats, in the 41% of matches in which tails never fails has gone tits down, I have led England to victories 64% of the time. And as for Punter? Well, under his tossership, Australia have won just 30% of the Tests in which he has lost the toss. So, just remember, if my tossing goes wonky, don’t worry, I still produce results.

2. Younger, Fitter, Stronger. Assuming we go into the first Test with the team I want and Australia go into the first Test with the team I want, the average age of the England team is going to be twenty years lower than that of our counterparts. And even if Australia don’t go with Dame Edna Everage and Bill Lawry, our boys will still be younger on average. If the probable teams that have been bandied about in the papers for the last few days are to be believed, we’ll step onto the field with the average age of 28 years and six months. Australia will wheel themselves onto the field averaging 31 years. That age difference means we’re much fitter. Just take a look at our bodies. No one can tell me Dougy Bollinger is fitter than pin-up sensation Stuart Broad. Or Simon Katich is fitter than Brighton favourite Jimmy Anderson. Or podge-face Punter is fitter than the hairy-armed version of myself.

3. The Hair Apparent. According to the internet, the American writer, actor and comedian Larry David once said, ‘Anyone can be confident with a full head of hair, but a confident bald man – there’s your diamond in the rough’. He was talking about Matt Prior. The one player in world cricket whose surname inexplicably can’t be used with an O or Y to form a nickname.

4. Names. And talking of nicknames, should you wish to use ours on the Scrabble board we will score you an average of 9.5 points per player. That’s a staggering 0.9 points more than the Aussies. When you also throw into the equation that this includes the nickname-less Prior, it almost defies belief. How is this going to help us win the Ashes though? Well, it’s not directly, it was more an observation I made playing online scrabble with Lady Straussy. But it did get me thinking. Us English and South African-English just whack a Y on the end of a surname and be done with it. We then get on with the cricket. The Aussies though, well judging by some of the nicknames for their players, I imagine they spend a great deal of time in the middle trying to think of something wondrous. That must be why Haddin is called BJ, Bollinger is called Eagle, North is called Snorks and the 27 year-old new boy, Xavier Doherty, is called X. You need to concentrate on the game in this game, not faff around thinking of schoolboy nicknames. In some ways this is why I hope Usman Khawaja plays. Though I suspect he’s called Koala.

5. The KP Factor. With his Movember challenge nearly at an end – a contest Monty has dominated from an early stage – and his blindfold cricket ‘viral’ video for Brylcreem out of the way, KP now has the chance to concentrate on what he loves. And, talking about love, the other day the lads saw that the fat lad Warney had said KP needed loving again. So that’s exactly what we have given him. Lots of it. Aussie, watch out.

6. Midge. That’s the nickname of Mitchell Johnson, presumably because like a midge he has no sense of co-ordination. Anyway, he has vowed to make me crumble. Which is lovely. I’m looking forward to it at tea. But Midge has also vowed to make me suffer under a bouncer barrage. This goes back to the 2006/7 Ashes where I fully admit I got out hooking twice. Midge wants to exploit this perceived weakness. Given that I was caught behind four times in the same series, one could be forgiven to think I am far more susceptible to the one that pitches in the corridor of uncertainty and moves a fraction away off the seam. Mind you, Midge’s corridor of uncertainty is only slightly smaller than Steve Harmison’s, so perhaps that’s what he means anyway.

7. We Are England! To paraphrase Hugh Grant, ‘We may be an England cricket team, but we are a South African one too. A country of Allan Lamb, Basil D’Oliveira, Tony Greig, Robin Smith, Robin Smith’s brother. Nasser Hussain’s index finger. Nasser Hussain’s middle finger come to that. And a friend who bullies us is a Commonwealth country that wants to become a Republic. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward, I will be prepared to whip out my guns more often. And the whole of Australia should be prepared for that.’ Actually, it sounds much better like this.

*Unless he makes fun of Ricky Ponting or the French.

November 24, 2010
7 Reasons That a Cricket Bat is Preferable to a Baseball bat

Hmm. What’s the best bat to keep around the house, you’re probably wondering. Well, I have both, and it’s definitely the cricket bat. Here are seven reasons why.

1. Perception. When you stroll down your nice, quiet unremarkable street with a cricket bat tucked under your arm, you fit in. To passers-by and onlookers you are that nice chap (or chapess) from number 29 on his way to participate in a genteel and respectable game which involves a break for tea, and a lunch which perhaps involves a home-made cake or two on a picturesque village green somewhere.

2. Perception. When you stroll down your nice, quiet unremarkable street twirling a baseball bat you do not fit in. In fact, you are a harbinger of evil, bristling with menace and exuding undiluted violence. Suddenly, in a scene reminiscent of a cheap western, everything will become silent. Young women shield young children behind their voluminous skirts; old women scuttle away in terror; middle-aged women…er…er…(I’ve never even seen a middle-aged women in a cheap western, why is that?); men (of all ages) suddenly become incapable of eye contact, because there’s a madman with a baseball bat on the rampage. Never mind that in your other hand you’re carrying a mitt and a baseball because the people have seen the bat and the panic-stricken-nitwits have been rendered incapable of rational thought. They will blindly assume that you’re off to break someone’s kneecaps or smash a car’s door-mirrors. And that won’t help you get an invite to your next-door neighbour’s birthday party. It may, however, stop trick-or-treaters visiting.*

3. Certainty. Cricket bats, like some of the more successful and big-headed practitioners of the game itself, are doughty, resolute and they stay where you left them. If you put a baseball bat on the dining-room floor, however, it does not. The baseball bat is an inherently flighty creature and, like a hollow-headed flibbertigibbet, it will just disappear from where you left it, merrily rolling away without a care in the world. Eventually, of course, it will turn up, usually while you’re stumbling around in the dark or when your wife is entering the room carrying a glass of orange juice, a plate containing two cheese and real-ale-pickle sandwiches and an apple. Or something.

4. Arms-length. Ever had to pick something up that you really didn’t want to pick up? Something that you wanted to keep at further-than-arms-length? Something with many legs, perhaps, or with steam emanating from it. A cricket bat is ideal for such an eventuality owing to its flat blade. A baseball bat is not. In fact, there’s no way that you’ll be able to carry your friend’s pet “hamster” that you’re looking after or that god-awful smelling bowl of onion soup on a baseball bat.

5. Flour. I have never returned home to find my cricket bat covered in flour. I have, however, returned home to discover my baseball bat covered in flour on several occasions. And, as I’ve tucked into the pie that my wife has prepared for me, I’ve often thought, funny that. I didn’t leave it anywhere near the flour cupboard.**

6. Air-guitar. Try miming along to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion or Led Zeppelin using a baseball bat and you’ll look like a pillock. Do it using a cricket bat and you’ll look like an eminently sensible and respectable chap (or chapess), suitable for a post in the foreign office, perhaps, or as a school governor. No matter how bad the music or the miming, if you use a cricket bat you’ll always maintain a thin veneer of respectability. Until you fall off the table.

7. Visitors. When you entertain foreign guests from non-cricketing nations in your house, a baseball bat is just a bat for baseball. A cricket bat, however, is a strange thing of wonder which they will enquire about. And fairly soon you’ll find yourself explaining – at length – to your blankly-incomprehending friends the finer points of the game of cricket. And they’ll love you for that. Really. And, after several hours talking about cricket, you may even find that they close their eyes in concentration as you explain the finer points of leg-spin.

*Topical top tip.

**The flour cupboard is not exclusively for flour. It contains other things such as; homemade blackberry vodka, homemade limoncello, half a packet of raisins, three packets of linguine, a jar of treacle that may or may not pre-date the Crimean war and a sake jug.

October 18, 2010
7 Reasons I Am Rubbish At Origami

7 Reasons I Am Rubbish At Origami

July 28, 2010