Anyway, it’s World Cup time again – those six months or so when bookmakers over here gather in billions of pounds from gullible fools wagering small fortunes on an English victory in the one tournament that continues to elude them. Fourth favourites they were the last time I looked – something like 8-1. Now assuming those are the odds that Mr Power is offering for a single win that’s perhaps not too bad – after all, they do have upcoming games against Afghanistan and Scotland – but I somehow think that it is to win the whole thing.

Two days into the tournament, it looked to some as though a pattern was beginning to emerge – one that Lucky Eddie described as a “sure fire winner”. He is rather impulsive, and once his mind is made up, there’s no stopping him. “Trust me”, he said, before he turned in for the night. “We’ll make a fortune.” Apparently he had noticed that the team batting first score over 300 every time, then the team batting second get nowhere near. And so it was that he lumped everything he had on the (and I quote) “Mighty West Indies to thrash Ireland”.

Let’s leave that there for a moment to sink in, shall we? If I were a betting duck, which I’m not, I would put some bread on LE buying a few razor blades later, when he discovers that he’s not quite as rich as he thought he would be, and his planned trip over to Clontarf, Dublin, in three months time to see “England put the Irish in their place for once and for all” might suffer for lack of drinking money.

The contrast between England and Ireland could hardly be greater. England, or ‘Surrey’ as they used to be known, are deadly serious and can call on talent from England, Wales, South Africa, India, Australia, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Italy, New Zealand, Antarctica and Ireland. The Irish, on the other hand, are in it ‘for the craic’, and are now reduced to selecting their side from players who drink in the three pubs that England haven’t found yet.

A clever tactic that England have recently taken to employing in order to further stymie the Irish is that of selecting every club cricketer seen with a glass in his hand for ?one or two token ODIs against Denmark or Iceland, then discarding them, never to be seen again until a few ye?ars later when they turn up in the Irish side again under an assumed name. For instance, Ed Joyce. He is, we are assured, definitely the same person as the Edmund Christopher Joyce who once played for England. Not a chance.

Up to 2006, and since 2010, Ed was a brilliant batsman. The sorry?? shell o?f a man who swapped the rugged mountains of the Emerald Isle for the marbled halls of Lords cannot be the same person, surely? If my theory is correct, expect Ireland to unearth a fast bowler going by the name of Royd Bankin in a couple of years time. I would put money on Mowin Organ making a triumphant return to form too, but not for a few years yet. England have only half destroyed his doppelgänger as a cricketer so far.

Coaching is another area of stark contrast. England’s head coach is none other than Peter Moores, who is the answer to the riddle “If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing well, but if you want to do one badly, twice, who’s your man?”. Now Peter is a thoroughly nice chap, but he’d be a better coach if you took his teeth out and put seats in. Ireland, on the other hand, have no coaching at all – everything is completely natural and Phil Simmons is merely employed as a drinks waiter. In fact, Brett Lee has recently employed the entire Irish cricket team to be HIS drinking coach.

Is it no surprise therefore, given all of the above indisputable and absolute truths, that in their opening games, England were beaten before they started and Ireland couldn’t lose? Even before Chris Woakes had decided, in best WG Grace style, that the crowd had come to see Aaron Finch and not him and duly let him off on the grounds that he didn’t want to disappoint thousands, England were doomed. Contrast that horrible drop with the sheer awesomeness and exuberance of the Irish fielding against the Windies. To them, every moment on the cricket field is a moment to be enjoyed.

It’s the English players, you see – their hearts are no longer in it. They know that a couple of years of dreadful form, dropped catches, wides and ignominious dismissals will see them out of the England side. This will then give them time to check ancestry.com and discover an Irish grandmother, or even an old photograph of themselves clutching a bag of Tayto crisps. A swift phone call to Dublin and they will be able to enjoy life again.

Incidentally, in contrast with LE’s ‘bad luck’ with the bookies, I have decided to have a go on the National Lottery. If I win, I’m going to buy his silly football team. All I need is those three numbers!

Toodle quack.

Devil Ducky

New Zealand’s call-up of the aptly-named Jesse ‘Wider’ Ryder to their one-day squad to face England may have been a surprise to some, but he follows in the knee-deep footsteps of a number of players of equally epic proportions who have made a considerable impact on the game – and on the ground when they landed on it.

The part-time Irishman with a taste for high living, together with a reputation for not bothering to turn up for games when selected, made his international debut in the recent Tw??enty20 game against England at Eden Park, Auckland, and he was unsurprisingly run out when he slipped, fell and was unable to clamber out of his own crater in time to regain his ground.

The hard-hitting Ryder, as well as being a more than useful useful seam-up trundler, has actually been picked for his f??ielding as much as anything else. World-renowned?? sports scientist, DeVille Ducky, takes up the story:

“Jesse has a lot of natural ability, and the ball finds its way to him more often than not. In close, he looks every bit the equal of those other great – in the volumetric sense of the word – slip fielders, Phil Sharpe and Robert Key, and no ball heading in his vicinity seems to be out of his colossal reach.

“This is hardly surprising, as he possesses sufficient mass to generate his own gravitational field, and anything passing close enough to his centre of gravity inevitably goes into temporary orbit – sheep, the entire tray of cakes in the restaurant at teatime and, of course, cricket balls.

“On the occasions when he is called upon to field in the deep, his very presence actually creates a momentary indentation in the space-time continuum, and this gives him those extra few seconds in order to be able to haul the ball in towards his event-horizon and prevent those vital boundaries.

“It’s a trade-off, though – on a couple of occasions recently, Jesse has played back to the short ball and the bails have actually been sucked off the top of the stumps by his very proximity. Also once, in practice, one of wicket-keeper Brendon McCullum’s gauntlets became so firmly lodged between his buttocks that we had to use the ‘Jaws of Life’ to cut it free.”

There is one other advantage to the inclusion of Jesse Ryder, and it’s something that will be welcomed by environmentalists the world over. Heavy, petrol-driven rollers will no longer be required between innings where he is playing. Five minutes of Jesse lying on the strip will render even the stickiest turner as hard and bouncy as the WACA in its heyday.

Mr Cricket

Mr Cricket was feeling somewhat out of sorts. He lay in bed with his eyes tightly shut, trying to make the daytime go away. He thought back to the previous evening – it had been a very good night because the Cricket-Writers Guild of Cricket-town had just presented him with an award for being a very good cricketer indeed.

He had eaten a lot of jelly and drank quite a few bottles of lemonade – especially after he had sat down with Mr Warne and Mr Marsh – and everyone had talked about what a really, really good cricketer Mr Cricket was, and that he was getting better all the time.

Someone even said that Mr Cricket was the second-best cricketer who had ever lived in Cricket-town, and Mr Cricket was very pleased with that. Then Mr Marsh had laughed – as loudly as you would have done if Mr Tickle had tickled you in a very ticklish place. That laugh hadn’t worried Mr Cricket at the time, but lying in bed as the morning ebbed away, it worried him a lot. Was he not as good as people had said?

Mr Cricket finally got out of bed just before lunch time, washed his face and oiled his bat. He thought that perhaps Mr Marsh was laughing because he had drunk even more lemonade than Mr Cricket had, but he couldn’t be certain. Cricket-town’s special book of very good cricketers, written by Mr Wisden, said he was really very good, but not one of the best five – not even during the last year. He decided to go for a walk.

After Mr Cricket had been walking for a few minutes, he saw Mr Bump on the other side of the road. He said “Hello, Mr Bump. Why are there two of you?” Harbhajan Singh and Monty Panesar replied in unison “These are not bandages, Mr Cricket – they are patkas. And neither of us is Mr Bump – we are Sikhs.”

Mr Cricket was very confused – he was sure there were two of them, not one – and certainly not six. He decided that he needed another glass of lemonade, so he headed straight for The Bucknor’s Arms. Even more confusingly, the real Mr Bump, who seldom uses his full name because it is treble-barrelled and makes him sound very posh and un-Australian, was playing darts when Mr Cricket asked him, “Am I the second-best cricketer who has ever lived in Cricket-town?”

The pub went very quiet. A dart fell out of the board and Mr Bump-Ball-Clarke, to give him his full name, bent down to pick it up. He hadn’t heard Mr Cricket’s question properly so he said, “How’s that?” The landlord, Mr Wrong, without looking, sucked his teeth and simply said “Out!”

It was the same story wherever Mr Cricket went – he couldn’t get a straight answer out of any of his friends. Mr Topsy-Turvy-Elbow agreed that Mr Cricket had played very well indeed against Sri Lanka, averaging nearly 150 in the test matches, but it was too early to say, whereas Mr Dizzy had simply said, “I’m not sure. How many double-hundreds did you say you had scored again? I have one.”

Mr Messy-Hair said “What was that you said about monkeys?”, Mr Angry-Nel laughed and laughed and mentioned something about Nicky Boje getting him out twice in Johannesburg so how good did he think that made him, and Mr Rush merely said “BetterThanRickyPontingCaptainOfStraya?”

Mr Cricket was just about to give up and go back home when he saw Mr Jelly, who was running up and down the road, trying to get away from his own shadow. As Mr Jelly shot past, Mr Cricket shouted, “Mr Jelly, do you think I am the second-best cricketer who has ever lived in Cricket-town?”

Mr Jelly stopped running for a minute and said, “No, but I know exactly how you can be.” Mr Cricket asked him to explain. “Just do what I do” replied Marcus Trescothick. “Be poorly every time you are picked to play away against the good teams.”

Next Week – Devil Ducky’s Guide to French Cricket

Toodle quack

His sun hat has fallen off the peg and lies buried beneath the vacuum cleaner attachments in the cubby-hole under the stairs, the new cricket score-book he purchased in order to record Rikki Clarke’s maiden Derbyshire century – in 2012 for the Second XI – has long since disappeared, and he wears that permanent, glazed expression of the broken alcoholic.

Not today, though. Today, he was pottering around in the greenhouse with the broken window – the window he broke practicing his forward defensive ten years ago – when he let out a whoop of joy. For the first time since last September, he seemed happy, and his broad, toothless smile seemed to roll away the clouds and melt the snow.

Apparently he had been tending his one pot plant – no, not that sort of pot plant – when fate gave him a timely reminder that no matter how bleak the winter, summer really is only just around the corner. For there, on the bench between the watering can with no sprinkler and the broken trowel, he saw a cricket ball.

He didn’t say anything about the rest of the cricket though. Perhaps the cat had eaten it.

– – – – –

Clarkewatch 08 – Dateline 27 January 2008, Adelaide

Still tired after his century earlier in the game, Pup is allowed to hide at second slip as Brett Lee steams in t??o Vir?ender Sehwag. The wide one is just what the Indian opener needs to get his innings moving again after being bogged down on one for the last ball, and predictably he throws the bat at it.

The ball predictably arcs off the t??oe-end of the bat, straight to our Antipodean hero who equally predictably, promptly drops it. Quick as a flash, he picks the ball up on the third bounce and looks first to the heavens, then to Lee and finally, in turn, to both umpires. Seeing only Billy Bowden and Asad Rauf and not Steve Bucknor, to his eternal credit Michael manages to s?tifle his appeal.

– – – – –

Building The Winning Mentality

Last week, I told you that I was going to explain why Pakistan were rubbish at one-day internationals. Well, apparently I did them a disservice because clearly they are improving,?? ??as their recent whitewash over Zimbabwe only goes to prove.

I le?arned that their recent success is all down to former Australian spearhead, coach Geoff Lawson. Even allowing for the absence of Inzamam ul-Haq, having recently retired from cricket in order to concentrate on international pie-eating contests, Lawson realised that there was a soft under-belly that needed toughening up.

Drawing on his years of experience as a successful player, Lawson decided to introduce radical new training techniques, specifically designed to improve shot selection when batting and a more dynamic approach when fielding. He said “When you think that someone as good as Shahid Afridi has been dismissed for a duck on 20 occasions, it’s obvious that something is badly wrong.

“Nets are fine, but there is no substitute for being out in the middle and so we play matches, matches and more matches. Today, to sharpen the players up, we played a fast and furious Twenty20 game. When we were batting, I got a load of bright orange washing baskets and positioned them where a traditional one-day field would be, and used a bowling machine to fire the balls down. The batsmen only have an instant to make up their mind where to play their strokes – the aim is to make shot selection instinctive.

“As for the bowling and fielding, I positioned another washing basket to one side of the popping crease, stuck a turntable on top of it, tied a couple of bats to that and we just took it from there. The bowlers would run in as normal, try to hit the stumps and our fielders had to more-or-less anticipate where the ball would go.”

I asked Geoff how the players went on today. He replied, “The washing baskets won by seven wickets.”

– – – – –

Hobart Shenanigans

The love affair between Muttiah Muralitharan and the great Australian public continues, with international cricket’s first ‘drive-by egging’. Sri Lanka’s manager, Shriyan Samararatne, takes up the story: “Murali and a few other members of the party were walking back from a restaurant to the team hotel when they were shelled from a black car.

“I don’t know eggsactly what happened, but the players are not going to be beaten by this kind of nonsense. As the first egg broke, the players scrambled into the hotel foyer and were quickly whisked away. There were no witnesses, so I’m a fried that no action can be taken at this time, but don’t think omeletting it go. And there is no truth in the rumour that Murali was pickled.”

– – – – –

Sporting Injuries

Last week, I suggested that Andrew Flintoff ought to consider cycling as a possible way of speeding up his recovery. Well, it appears to be working because he is going to be joining The Lions in India next week, although he has to be careful, so he’s only going in a drinking capacity.

Eddie tells me that he had a similar ankle injury many years ago, and after his operation and many hours of painful physiotherapy, he went to see his doctor and asked him if he could play cricket. The doctor said “No, I’m afraid not.”

He must have seen him in the nets.

– – – – –

Toodle quack.

Next week – Cricket’s latest heavyweight

In the first, the continued repercussions of the collapse of the American ‘sub-prime’ market caused Stock Exchanges from London to Beijing to hit the floor more times than the average chance heading in the general direction of Michael Clarke.

In the second, the price of beer in Eddie’s local went up faster than Steve Bucknor’s finger upon hearing an appeal coming from the general direction of Michael Clarke after he’d picked up said ball.

The third, of course, is much more significant. I finally cracked Eddie’s password, stole his laptop and offered my services once more to Cricket Web. James naturally declined, but as I am in possession of certain incriminating photographs of him and Scott Styris, negotiations eventually proved fruitful, so you now have me to put up with.

– – – – –

Many sportsmen nowadays supplement their meagre earnings by appearing on ‘Reality Television’ – remember Tuffers up the jungle, Goughie tripping the light fantastic and so on?

Well, apparently His Royal ??Left-handedness, Saurav Ganguly, is thinking of doing the same thing, especially seeing as he is going to have rather a lot of time on his hands at the end of the current Test series in Australia.

I am told that he is thinking of making a special guest appearance on ‘Stars in Their Eyes’, performing a Bangra rendition of the old Human League classic, ‘Dhoni You Want Me, Baby?’

– – – – –

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since we last spoke – most of which is now covering New Road, Worcester, to the depth of about six feet. In other news, Andrew Flintoff has failed to win a place on the England Lions tour of India because of continuing worries over his ankle and his liver.

The two facts might not be unrelated. I understand from many instances in the past that the big man is not the greatest of trainers, but I do know for a fact that bike riding,?? whether on the road or in??deed in the gym, is one of the best things to build up those muscles again.

So all Freddie has to do is pop down to Worcester and use the awful English weather to his best advantage. A few laps of the outfield on his Pedalo and he’ll be as right as the rain which shows no sign of abating this side of Ashes 2009.

– – – – –

Or rather, as I should say, ‘npower Ashes Series 2009’. Yes, a year and a half away, we are already being reminded by the Media, and especially Sky TV, that ‘The Big One’ is just around the corner.

The adverts for it are already being aired, together with all the usual images of Ricky Ponting being run out by a village cricketer, Ricky Ponting regaling everyone prepared to listen that it was unfair that he was run out by a village cricketer, Ricky Ponting looking sulkily on whilst The Urn was being held aloft by a triumphant Michael Vaughan surrounded by a dozen Members of the British Empire and a vil??lage cricketer.

‘Pomp and Circumstance’, ‘Jerusalem’, ‘Engerland’, ‘You’re Gonna Get Your Fu…’ well, maybe not that one, and other great patriotic numbers are being constantly played at every occasion. 2007 is fading already, like a bad dream.

– – – – –

Speaking of bad dreams, Rikki Clarke must think he’s had one. He went to bed a Surrey superstar and future saviour of England, and woke up, Rip Van Winkle-like, several years later – as captain of England’s most cash-strapped side, Derbyshire.

Yes, the man with the biggest smile in world cricket – measured from top to bottom – is the man charged with the responsibility of leading Eddie’s favourite county to future glories. Or perhaps it was the fabulous pies that enticed him to venture north of Watford.

Cricket Web will be there, naturally, to bring you ‘Clarkewatch 08’, which this year will not only feature the one-time ‘future captain of England’, but also the one-time ‘future captain of Australia’. Yes, the puppy and his occasional little ‘accidents’ will be scrutinised as never before.

– – – – –

What really happened at Sydney the other week? One minute all was sweetness and light with Killer Harbhajan smearing the Aussie bowlers to all parts, and the next – mayhem with people running around waving their arms in the air, umpires covering their lips and so on.

You don’t know for sure? Well, I’ll tell you. Not for nothing did I invent the ‘Devil Ducky Stump Mic’, not to be confused with the sub-standard nonsense the ICC bought on the cheap from Currys. For the first time, the conversation between Harby and Andrew Symonds can be revealed in all its banality:

G’Day, Harby.

Hello, Mr Symonds, sir.?? It is an honour to be facing such a polite representative of Antipodean cultur??e.

(whack! Umpire signals boundary)

Shot! Bet you can’t do it four times on the trot.

Bet you I can.

(whack! Umpire signals another boundary)

How much?

A full set of DVD’s, winner gets to choose his favourite TV programme.

(whack! Umpire’s arm aches)

You’re on!

Done!

(whack! Umpire calls for a ‘signaller’ – similar to a batsman calling for a runner but used rarely nowadays)

OK, you win. What’s your favourite programme?

Monkey

– – – – –

I understand that a ‘Clear the Air’ meeting happened quite accidentally last week, in a local supermarket. Harby was taking advantage of a week off and he nipped down to the shop to buy a few Indian treats from the delicatessen counter to share among his team-mates.

Shortly after play ended on day one, Ricky Ponting happened to visit exactly the same supermarket to buy some DVD’s as a favour for one of his own team. He saw Harby next to the sports department and the following conversation took place:

HiHarbyHowYouGoing?

I’m sorry?

(slower) Hi, Harby. How are you going?

Do I know you?

It’s me, Ricky

What are you doing so far from Derbyshire?

No, Not Rikki. Ricky.

Ricky who?

Ricky Ponting quickly picked up a bat from the disp??lay and mimed his f?amous off-drive.

I’m really sorry, you’ll have to tell me.

Ricky Ponting, captain of Straya. You’ve played against me often enough.

I’m sorry, I didn’t recognise you. It’s hardly surprising, though. I only ever see you for two or three balls a match when I’m bowling.

– – – – –

See you soon.

Toodle-quack.

Next week – why Pakistan are rubbish at one-day cricket