Posted by Dandy Dan writes:
I recently met Price for a few beers for the first time since my rather glorious night of drinking with the England cricket team. The glory has somewhat been tainted by the events in the winter, but hey ho.
Anyway, I obviously wanted to talk about it again. I said to him my only regret was not actually having a chat with Cook instead of just sharing a nod at the urinals. Price wanted to know why I didn’t even say hello. I told him that there was loud music in the toilet and that he had come in and gone to the end urinal.
This displeased Price. He is firmly of the view that the England cricket captain should have enough alpha-male confidence to stride into any toilet situation and take the urinal closest to the middle, not one at the end.
Now I’m not sure I agree with him 100 per cent, but I can certainly see where he is coming from. There have been a couple of moments recently where Alastair has not demonstrated ‘pissing in the middle urinal’ captaincy. For example, in the first Test, he should have said: ‘Sorry Gary, I know it’s a ton at Lords but I’m going to declare and have a few overs at them tonight’. But he didn’t. He didn’t piss in the middle urinal.
We’re certainly going to be looking for examples of pissing in the middle urinal captaincy for the rest of our lives, and examples of where it should have been applied too. If I ever have the chance to meet Mike Brearley, I’ll mention it to him. He might want to include it in a revised edition of The Art of Captaincy.
Taking the middle urinal? Making eye contact? Talking?
What kind of a monster are you?
The kind of confident monster who should be the England cricket captain.
It could have been worse i suppose, he could have gone into the cubicle to have a piss. That would have concerned me deeply
Not only would I expect an England captain to use the middle urinal, I would expect him to put both his hands behind his head while saying “better out than in,” or some such phrase. What kind of people are we giving the job to? It beggars belief.
Fine investigative journalism, Dan. There’s a Pulitzer Prize in this, let me tell you.
So you want Ian Botham to be captain?
Mike Brearley is an end urinal man. He comes form the right sort of family and went to the right sort of school.
Your theory, while momentarily enticing, is thus proved to be specious and is now in tatters, Dandy Dan. Sorry.
Mike Brearley would use the end urinal when appropriate, or the middle urinal when he felt it was required. I’ve no doubt he said during that epic series, “Hey Both, you use whichever urinal suits you best,” but that he would note which urinals all they players were using and adjust his field settings accordingly. It’s all in his book – Urinalysis.
Woah, woah, woah. This is Price’s theory, not mine.
I think I made that perfectly clear in the article.
Ged. I await your apology.
It was a collective you, Dandy Dan, covering both yourself and Price. In much the same way as urinal use in the presence of others is, by definition, a collective wee.
In any case, I think the word “sorry” at the end of my original posting on this thread is more than enough apology stuff. I’m no apologetic cubical-skulker, me. What do you take me for?
At least you didn’t meet Monty Panesar in there. By all accounts he doesn’t care much for urinals at all.
Michael Clarke, now, I bet he’d stand right beside you, tell you straight that he was going to break at least one of your arms and then intentionally misdirect his aim over your new suede shoes, before later apologising to the bar (but not to you) about overstepping the line, while remaining suitably vague about which line exactly he had overstepped (invasion of personal space, threat to break your arm, ruining your shoes or some arbitrary line in the car park).
But I could be wrong about that.
In other news, Alastair Cook is currently digging himself a massive hole. I wouldn’t be surprised if he quits by the end of the year.
“To be criticised for 3 years totally with those results,I find quite hard to take, and support and positivity is what this team needs.
“Something needs to be done. for 3 years of being England captain, in my eyes, I have been criticised for a hell of a lot of that.”
Oh dear.
Classic endurinalist talk. As you say, gone by the end of the year.
Is it any coincidence that the day after the king posts this, cook complains about personal attacks?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/27923227
Cook seems to have heeded our advice and pissed in the middle urinal when he elected to bowl.