Friday 4 April 2008

That frightful bounder


I've been somewhat busy with planning for the new financial year, new work developments and what-not over the past week or two, so I've not been able to muster the enthusiasm to furnish you any pearls of cricketing wisdom (read: self-important drivel)

So what's happened during my time away

Well, Sehwag cracked another triple hundred in what transpired to be the most absurd draw played out on a quite ridiculously flat wicket in the first Test at Chennai ( South Africa are now giving India a frightful pasting in the 2nd Test on a sporting wicket at Ahmedabad), Sri Lanka posted their first win in the Caribbean but appeared to be in the soup in their first innings of the 2nd Test at Port of Spain until the elements hauled 'em out, Rana Naved has been allowed by the Pakistani cricket authorities to sign for Yorkshire after all and, most interesting of all, comic villain Shoaib Akhtar seems to have thrown down his last thunderbolt in international cricket

It is Shoaib I want to focus on, as I haven't had occasion to watch any play lately

It took me years to warm at all to the Rawalpindi Express, for the most part because I am suspicious not of extreme pace in itself, but of the idiot consensus that sheer speed is an end in itself. Moreover, he's more than a little obnoxious, isn't he, and barely does our once fair game (now so greatly tarnished) credit but I must say that my attitude toward him was considerably thawed by a ferociously hostile spell he bowled at Hayden in the 2004-5 series in Oz. Damned if I can tell you which particular session of which day of which Test it actually took place in but, my, I enjoyed it - enjoyed it more than any other spell of bowling I can remember, may the devil take me if it's not true

Remember, 'twas about the time our Antipodean friends were licking all comers left, right and centre (incredible that we beat them the next English summer, really), with that confounded Hayden at the centre of it all, laying waste to bowling attacks across the globe and I, for one, was infernal sick of it, I tell ye; infernal sick

So who should come along to wipe the leer off his over-sized face with a few volleys across the bows but that scoundrel Shoaib

No word of a lie, he fair set out to do bloody murder unto Hayden that day, dastardly daring the fellow to take a heave at anything around his chops, throwing his flopping locks back with a wicked, booming guffaw each time the horror-stricken Hayden stumbled about himself wondering where the deuce the ball had gone, as rocket after rocket passed his ear. The damn fool even took one to the helmet, if memory doesn't fail me, and only Lucifer knows how the Australian survived the blow, for Shoaib was verily in cahoots with Aeolus that day - mighty Ares, too - and would surely have killed a lesser batsman; but that's the thing itself, yer see: Hayden was on top of the world, strutting about the place like Agamemnon, and good old Shoaiby, that impudent soul, decided upon bringing him down a peg or two and he jolly well gave him what-for, didn't he? For that - and that alone - I'm sad to see the lad go, but go he finally must, the bounder

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